You’ve Really Got to Think About It #3
While she was passing the time yearning for improbable loves, news of the marriage proposal spread through the kingdom of Sheba and its subjects entertained themselves with talk and speculation.
Which throne is more splendid, Solomon’s or Goat Foot’s?
His is marble, with ten stairs flanked by lions leading to the cushion where he rests his feet, which wear Roman sandals.
And her throne? She boasts of having none apart from her horse’s saddle.
Goat Foot, the richest woman in the land, dresses like a peasant, while Solomon uses elegance to compensate for what he lacks in wealth, and wears the finest mantles the textile industry of that era can produce, so exclusive that they even have their own name: The daytime one is called Birth and is hyacinth blue in color; the nighttime one is called Agony, and its color, Tyrian purple, is created from the secretions of nine thousand snails ground with a mortar.
If anyone mentions, to Goat Foot, the white-domed palaces and temples that king is building in his city, she shoots back that her only home is the open road, her only roof the immensity of the sky.
If they tell her that people refer to Solomon as Red-Hot Heart, that he doesn’t fear fire and that his face is aflame, she says, scornfully: Let him burn, I’ll scatter his ashes.
What cannot be, should not be. It’s no good trying to unite water and oil, white and black, what’s on this side and what’s on the other.
Life, like a coin, maintains its two opposite sides, the head and tail never see each other, the obverse and reverse don’t meet, it’s even possible that neither side knows the other exists right behind them.
So it is with the nomadic princess and the sedentary king, because he who sits feels mistrust and fear toward the person who’s in motion. And vice versa.
Goat Foot refuses to participate in the preparations her lady mother has begun for the future wedding, she will not share in the hopes or revelry.
She won’t marry, she’s made up her mind.
But doubts start circling her when she hears intriguing reports of that king’s furious beauty, his reputation as a passionate and despotic lover, the kind that suffers and makes others suffer too.
He’s a prophet and poet, owner of horses and flocks, wheat fields and olive groves, and something nobody else possesses: a crop of Black Baccara, the black rose, the one that only sprouts in caverns, the rose that bleeds.
Goat Foot knows about them, and understands that all the other roses, in their overcultivation, have gained in size and beauty, but have lost their scent.
The black rose, meanwhile, has kept its wild fragrance.
What she wouldn’t give to possess that fierce, untamed rose, which opens at night, alone, enclosed in its own circle and concealed from human eyes .
. . Goat Foot’s mouth waters; she’d do anything to touch the Black Baccara, rose of anarchy!
But no. Calm down, calm down, no need to rush into anything or let yourself be seduced by passing whims, that king has too many names and that worries Goat Foot, who has heard him called Solomon, Logos, and Judah, also Temple and Jedediah, as well as Messiah, Lord, Israel, and Suleiman.
“So many titles for a single man!” the princess grumbles, but even so, she runs them through her mind, trying to remember them, Messiah, Israel, Judah, Suleiman . . .
She too has her own rosary of names and nicknames, which Solomon utters on the other side of the world in his tallest tower: Goat Foot, Mekeda, Shekhina, Church, Torah, Bilkis, and Sophia.
Wisdom, Soul, María, Aurora, Ennoia, and Anna-Livia.
The faraway king savors those names, finds them exotic and sonorous, repeats them in a different order: Aurora, Shekhina, Pédauque, Torah, Anna-Livia, Ennoia, Sophia, Regina Sabae, Goat Foot, until the recitation makes the profane sacred and turns the spoken into a commitment and a promise.
Solomon and Sheba: Future spouses? For now, everything separates them—distance, habits, language.
They worship rival deities and come from incompatible traditions.
Nevertheless, there’s something in the very distance itself that connects them, something in their differences that equalizes them, and, in their foreignness, something that intrigues and attracts them both: We could say they wouldn’t seek each other if they hadn’t in some way found each other already.
But everything in love is a seesaw of tiring highs and lows, a vacillation between doubts and certainties, outbursts and abandon.
Now the reference to that king’s wealth turns out to be more of a fable.
In reality, Solomon’s nation is smaller and poorer than the one she could recover, if she wanted, when the Maiden dies, or abdicates, or gets bored of her role.
Sheba’s kingdom is millennial and rooted in the dawn of time, while Jerusalem is a younger realm of warrior shepherds, flourishing because it inflicts military destruction on all its neighbors and forces them to pay taxes.
That’s it! Finally, Goat Foot is clear on her lady mother’s ruse.
What the Maiden really wants to do is strip away her daughter’s control of incense, perfumes, and caravans, hence the send-off to some lost land and the wedding to a pirate, an extortionist, a warring tyrant who would trap her forever. Curse you, Maiden, you malicious woman!
This whole affair must be thought through carefully, Goat Foot tells herself.
She should calculate her next move, be cautious, turn the tortilla this way and that so the queen mother’s plan backfires against her.
Even if that Solomon isn’t as rich as people claim, it’s known that he dominates a strategic position on the commercial routes that connect East with West. That is, in mercantile terms, he could well become a decisive partner in Goat Foot’s expansion of her commerce into new terrains.
If he were to allow her free passage through his territories, she’d have access to the rich markets of Damascus, Sidon, and Tyre, as well as the port of Gaza, key to the Mediterranean.
And would it make her happy, a bond of convenience, a practical commercial alliance, even if it has nothing to do with that ancient music that on a recent night made her dream and weep?
Also, not all the news is good: Now she’s hearing that he’s a somewhat sinister person, insatiably emotive, who has seven wives and is angling for another; he has wealth of his own yet harbors ambitions of taking more from others; he’s conquered nearby peoples and now wants to do the same to the people of Sheba; he’s mastered many wisdoms, yet they’re not enough; he owns treasures, but isn’t satisfied; he knows the earth’s secrets and aims to equally unravel the secrets of the sky.
Goat Foot is undecided, weighing pros and cons, shifting the scales this way and that. She thinks about this ambitious suitor who has everything, yet has nothing. She thinks of him and dares write him a message on a sheet of white flax, in a South Arabian tongue, in the Musnad script:
Esteemed Sir,
The Queen of Sheba is not who you seek; Queen of Sheba is no more than the name you have given to everything you seek.
She sends this along with a small yet valuable gift: an ebony box containing incense tears, coagulated into a white resin.
The message and the little box take eternities to cross the vast spaces of Rub‘ al-Khali and reach their destination, and during this delay, Solomon has also felt mixed emotions. With so many wives and concubines already, it doesn’t seem quite relevant to seek another; as it stands, he doesn’t have enough time or strength to attend to them all.
And as far as this Princess of Sheba, he’s heard rumors that make him lean toward disillusionment, this thing and the other, that she’s vulgar and rebellious, domineering and bad-tempered, with an intimidating personality that inspires both attraction and fear.
Of course, it also doesn’t escape him that she, owner of the precious frankincense as well as a vast perfume industry, might be the most powerful woman in the world.
Enough of a reason, Solomon muses, to keep his proposal in the air.
And yet . . . the rumors describe a fickle female who quickly falls into hysterics if she’s not obeyed or her desires aren’t fulfilled.
A bad thing, thinks Suleiman, also called Solomon.
His harem of wives and concubines is a nest of gossip, envy, and jealousy, and bringing another woman in could disrupt and whip up the hive.
When that messenger with the presents and flax-written note finally arrives from the far-off kingdom of Sheba, the king with the curved eyelashes and florid beard reads the script with pleasure.
He sees himself reflected, wholly embodied as if in a mirror, in those two lines of fine perception that Goat Foot sent him through the seven climates and eight deserts.
So it’s not the Queen of Sheba I seek, Suleiman reflects, but rather Queen of Sheba is the name I’ve put on everything I’m searching for?
That strikes a chord, yes, that’s me, truth be told, I recognize myself.
She’s got sharp insight, that Sheba girl, she’s no fool.
No. Not a fool at all, that’s for sure. As her reputation claimed, she’s too smart, and nothing seduces him like flights of intelligence.
What had to happen has just happened to him, and there’s no longer any cure: The queen’s kiss has pricked him on the forehead, like a thorn.
Forehead red, heart bleeding. His hour of falling in love has arrived, he, Solomon, already a man of coeur blessé, a soul that’s wounded and prone to relapses of feeling.
The young woman’s intelligence has conquered him, and he wastes no time in sending, to Sheba, as a sign of matrimonial commitment, a heavy gold seal that inside its ring bears the brief inscription: TO DESTINY.
On the other side of the world, Goat Foot receives Solomon’s seal and is perplexed by the words engraved in the ring.
“To destiny”? What does that mean? Could this wedding really be the destiny that awaits her?
She doesn’t want to reply yes, but can’t say no; she can neither dismiss the matter, nor endorse it.
Clever as a fox, she invents a ruse to stall and prolong the impasse, sure that the eyelash-batting faraway king will fall for her trick.
She’s heard it murmured that Solomon is like a crab, mysterious yet dumb.
So she thinks for a while and comes up with this response:
I, Princess Goat Foot, Star of the South and Light of the Dawn, owner of incense and military chief of a thousand and two hundred caravans, send you word—oh, great Solomon!
—that I’ll agree to be your wife, as long as you make me a perfume more subtle, seductive, and aromatic than the one I myself create and distribute in my name.
Goat Foot is convinced that Suleiman will fall right into her trap and put his court’s sages and scientists to work with essences and aromas, trying everything, pouring months and years into the effort with nothing to show for it, because to be a true perfumer it’s essential to have experience like her own.
Is Solomon like the crab, mysterious yet dumb?
This assumption is correct, but only halfway, because Solomon is indeed mysterious but there’s no dumb in him, not even a drop.
He sees right through the ruse, and is surprised and amused; he accepts the challenge immediately.
He’ll join the game and win the bet. He laughs, enjoying himself.
He knows he can’t make a perfume of that caliber; he couldn’t do it even if he crushed all the black roses from his garden.
And, in the face of the trap set for him, he develops a counter-trap: If he can’t fulfill it, nor will she.
Given his fame as a poet, as well as a sage, he sends the know-it-all of Sheba a retinue bearing sumptuous silks, along with this reply:
Esteemed Lady of the Nascent Sun, Favorite of the Southern Wind, and Mistress of the People of the Dawn,
Your powerful and enchanting person shall receive the perfume you request, as long as you send me a poem devised by your own mind and written by your own hand, and it must be more beautiful and sonorous than any I’ve composed and that are attributed to my name.