“I am in love,” Bekrao announced to me one day not long ago. My readers may recall that Bekrao was the inebriated friend whose ring I recovered. My readers will be pleased to read that at no point in this account do I search for a ring of any kind. (A ring is, alas, involved, but it is not lost: it is firmly on my finger as I write.) Up to this point I had not known Bekrao to be particularly amorously inclined, as absorbed as he was in his drinking, so it was with skepticism that I received this announcement. “I am in love,” he said again, though the repetition did not make his statement any more persuasive

“All right, you are in love,” I said. “Who is the unfortunate girl? Your father will be pleased if it is Sāletinai.”

“You speak our language very well for a foreigner, but the proper word to use in this case is ‘fortunate,’ not ‘unfortunate.’ Her name is Ripāti.”

“Not Sāletinai, then.”

“My father governs many things on my life, but not my love. Ripāti is the most beautiful thing between earth and sky.” Bekrao went on in this vein for some time, describing her eyes (sweet raisins), her nose (as gracefully curved as a tower, yet as precious as a pearl), her lips (red as coral), and so on and so forth through a litany of analogies that showed greater enthusiasm than originality or taste.

“Yes, yes,” I said at last. “But who is she? Have I ever met her? Whose daughter is she?”

“If you had met her, you would never have forgotten her. She is a nymph in human flesh. I don’t know who her father is, but does it really matter? Her voice is the voice of the pure stream running down to the sea, and all her words are full of wisdom and insight beyond any bard.”

“All right. But where did you meet her?”

“It was at one of Agamnu’s dinners.” He sank into a reverie, staring off into the distance, or possibly at a piece of dirt on my left shoulder.

“Was she a kinswoman of Agamnu? Someone’s daughter or maiden sister? A courtesan?”

“I don’t know,” he said softly.

“But you know her name, and what she looks like. That is something, at least. You spoke with her?”

“Yes! Well, no, not personally. I saw her on the other side of the room, and I heard her talking to someone else, an older man, who called her Ripāti.”

“Not her husband, I hope.”

“No, no. Some of us in this room are not fools.” Since I hadn’t been aware that there were any fools in that room, this remark puzzled me, but I let it pass without comment. “I am not sure what he was to her, exactly, but he was asking her questions about the nature of the world that she answered without hesitation. She must be a remarkable woman. She is a remarkable woman. I am in love with her.”

“If you want me to find out who she is, you only have to ask.”

“Thank you,” said Bekrao with a certain edge to his voice. “But I am quite capable of finding out who she is on my own.”

“By which you mean you will ask Yaretzamu.” Yaretzamu is Bekrao’s faithful and knowledgeable manservant.

“I only wanted to tell you about her. Love is like a fountain, as the poets say, overflowing with its abundance. If I hadn’t told anyone, my heart and kidneys would have burst with bottled-up passion.”

This sounded unpleasant, if not obscene. “All right,” I said again, and lay back on the couch to listen to him praise Ripāti for some considerable time. I did not actually fall asleep as he spoke, but I did decide to shut my eyes and ponder other things. It was while I was pondering a three-headed ogre that asked me if I knew the way to the southern ocean that Bekrao shook my shoulder and told me to pay attention.

“I am paying attention,” I told him. “You were saying that Ripāti is beautiful.”

“So I was. She is like,” he began to say, but any further metaphors were interrupted by the arrival of Yaretzamu, who was staggering under the weight of a lidded basket. He dropped it, not entirely intentionally I think, on the ground in front of Bekrao.

“There,” said Yaretzamu. “Did you need anything else? A griffin’s egg from the lands of the far east? The scepter of the Father Above? A drink from one of the rivers of the underworld?”

“No, no, my friend, this is enough.” Ripāti, it seemed, was completely forgotten as Bekrao crouched by the basket and took the lid away. He took out a tablet and gave it to me. “Read this,” he said.

Reading is always something of a gamble for me, at least in this part of the world. With my Bird to help me, I do not truly understand the languages here, so if they were written in an alphabet like those used in my home, I doubt I would be able to read anything at all. But happily many of the symbols represent words or suffixes rather than sounds, so fairly often I find myself able to piece together the meaning.

As for the tablet that Bekrao gave me, I was able to tell immediately that it described a group of craftsmen and their attempt to create a masterwork of some kind. After further perusal, I discovered that the craftsmen were in fact fashioning from gold and silver and jewels the figure of a woman. In fact, the account seemed to be a version of the story of Letellusi, the first woman the gods made, and I told Bekrao so.

“A version? My dear friend, it is the version. You know the new temple they’re building on that hill in the north?” I didn’t, but it seemed easier to nod and pretend I did. “While they were doing some digging, they found these tablets buried. Do you understand what that means?”

“I don’t understand how you got them.”

Bekrao waved his arm vaguely. “I have connections.”

“I still don’t understand how you got them.”

He waved his arm vaguely again. “My connections were able to make these copies for me to look over and see what insight I could offer with my vast learning.”

“Your connections are menial workers, and you bribed them to let Yaretzamu make copies for you.”

Bekrao waved his arm, but this time in a somewhat more specific fashion. “I have always been interested in the beginning of things. You should know that. The womb from which all things were born. You know that is why I always try to, shall we say, forget myself.”

“I understand,” I said, though I didn’t. It sounded vaguely religious, but I hadn’t been aware that Bekrao was involved with any of the mysteries. His father was a priest of Adāī, but Bekrao was a disappointment to him in many ways. I think I saw Bekrao talking to an unrelated priest once, but that was about some money that was owed to one party by the other party.

“Well, these tablets are the beginning. Once I read them, I will know.”

Bekrao was admittedly on the inebriated side during most of my conversations with him, but I had never known him to be this nonspecific before. I suspected then that my Bird was beginning to fail me. It will be a gloomy day when that comes to pass, and I hope that it never will. I can only trust that the craftsmanship of the fair folk will last for a very long time yet. “What will you know?” I asked him, prodding his shoulder.

“Pay attention! I always knew your mind was an earthbound one, but you are being amazingly obtuse. Here, give that tablet to me. In your hands it’s not doing anyone any good.”

I shrugged and gave him the tablet. As he brought it to his table to examine it, I took the second tablet from the basket. This one appeared to describe a war between two groups of deities. I provide my best rendering of its meaning below, for anyone who may be interested. Names or words I did not recognize are indicated with alternative readings of characters, my best guesses, or simply dashes when the character was completely foreign to me.

When the Spear Gods had finished building their stronghold, they took council with one another as to how they should pay the Earth Men who had laid the foundations. It was agreed that because of the — they would not be able to pay the Earth Men with gold or silver, nor were any of the Spear Gods willing to go among the Earth Men as a hostage. Burning spoke and told them that he knew a way to trick the Earth Men. Agreement was made.

Burning went among the Earth Men disguised as a — and offered them a golden apple taken from the West Garden as payment. [I do not understand why this Burning character needed to be in disguise. I rather think I made an error in translation here.]

He gave them the apple; Burning gave them the golden apple.

He repaid the debt of the Spear Gods; the debt for the building.

But the apple was — truly — from the orchards of the Bowl Gods.

When the Earth Men knew they had been cheated, they were angry, but their vow bound them, and so they left for another part of the cosmos. They will — when the day of — comes. The Spear Gods sat down to feast, and Burning received the —, but the Bowl Gods came to the stronghold of the Spear Gods in a storm and demanded that Burning be handed over to them for punishment. Sea Beard chief of the Bowl Gods proclaimed that Burning had stolen the — from their orchard, but Burning denied it. Old Bark chief of the Spear Gods demanded that the Bowl Gods leave, and with a thunder blow he struck Sea Beard in one of the Great Blows of —.

This was the extent of the second tablet, and I set it aside to pick up the third. But before I could begin to read it, I heard the noise of a faint conversation right outside Bekrao’s gate. Yaretzamu entered again and said in a low voice, “A woman is here to see you.”

“Me?”

Yaretzamu coughed like a trodden frog. “To see my master.”

“I have no time for women!” Bekrao cried, his hand flying up above his head, where it froze. “Wait. Would this particular woman be Ripāti?”

“That was the name she gave.”

I have seen men move quickly in times of peril, fleeing from the enemy or from a wild animal, but I don’t recall having seen anyone move faster than Bekrao did at that moment. He returned from the gate accompanied by a woman whom I deduced to be Ripāti herself. She was indeed very pretty, though I didn’t think she quite lived up to Bekrao’s description. In particular I did not find that her nose reminded me either of a tower or a pearl. Nor had she mentioned that she was rather on the short side.

“Ah,” Bekrao was saying, sounding something like a trodden frog himself. “This is a friend of mine, who was just leaving.”

“Oh, but there’s no need for that. I only wanted to say one little thing,” Ripāti said, smiling pleasantly at both of us. I smiled back, wanting to be polite, but something seemed to be bothering Bekrao, and he kept looking from me to the entrance and giving me nods that were probably meant to be significant, though it was beyond my powers to tell what he wanted. My Bird does not bother translating pantomime.

“Ah?”

“Give back those tablets.”

“But they’re only copies,” Bekrao explained. “The originals are still in the keeping of the man in charge of the new temple. His name actually escapes me at the moment.”

“Phumalluo. And he is my father.” Bekrao began speaking very quickly, and in fact I believe he was trying to say multiple things at once. He stopped when Ripāti held up her hand. “My father is also a learned man, an initiate of the oldest mysteries, and when he says that you should not keep these texts, it would be wise to listen.”

“I read one and it seemed harmless enough,” I said.

“And what do you know about the mysteries? Have you ever been to the caves beneath Edazzo? Have you ever seen what is hidden under Teleko’s lamp? Have you heard the words that Adāī mutters?”

“Very little, no, no, and no.”

“Then you shouldn’t talk. You are half-blind, at best. As for you, you thief whose name escapes me at the moment. I will be taking those tablets now.”

Bekrao’s courtship of Ripāti did not seem to me to be getting off to a prosperous start, but I am an optimist. There have been happy marriages that began under worse circumstances.

“My father is a priest of Adāī,” said Bekrao. “I know what I am getting into by reading these tablets, and I welcome it.”

“Do you really? I doubt it. This is something that lies behind Teleko and Adāī.”

“Good!”

Ripāti’s eyebrows rose. She sounded impressed as she said, “You are bold.” As I remarked, I am an optimist.

Bekrao snatched the third tablet out of my hand and put it back in the basket. “I can assure you that I will be the only one to read these tablets, if you think they are dangerous.”

“No one reads these. Not even you.”

“Then I’ll go with you and speak to your father. He’ll see that I am not such an ignoramus as you think me to be.”

She smiled and shook her head. In her smile I could glimpse something of why Bekrao was so enraptured with her. If I may turn to poetry for a moment, it seemed to me to offer a mountaintop from which I could see whole rivers and fields of beauty in the distance. (You see, Bekrao, that is how you write a poetic metaphor. Not that you will ever read this, I trust.) “I wasn’t sent here to bring the tablets and a fool, only the tablets.”

“In that case I refuse. They belong to me and I will read them as I wish. Tell your father that.”

She reddened. “Tell my father? You can tell your father, that old priest of Adāī, that Phumalluo father of Ripāti demands his texts back. Else a thousand curses will fall on all your heads, but it will not be he who casts them.”

“It will be you?” I wondered. The imprudence of this was demonstrated when she turned her fury on me.

“Do I look like a witch?” she demanded.

I was not entirely sure what a witch looked like. To be honest, I had never met one, but because Ripāti bore no distinctive signs such as preternatural ugliness or spiders crawling in her hair, and because she was glaring especially fiercely at me, I said no.

Immediately she picked up the basket and, struggling somewhat with its weight, went out into the street. Bekrao and I looked at one another, no doubt thinking much the same thing. Why hadn’t she brought someone with her to help her carry the basket, and to protect her in the streets?

“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” asked Bekrao. Maybe we hadn’t been thinking the same thing after all. “And now that I know she has those amazing texts, it is as if everything I desire in the world has been set in one place for me.” I thought to myself that this would only be true if Ripāti was also a brewer.

“What now? I assume you’ll try to see her again, not to mention those tablets.”

He nodded solemnly, but before he could expound on whatever plan he had in mind, Yaretzamu spoke up. “I do know a little something about Phumalluo, if you would like to hear it.”

“I would,” said Bekrao, and began pouring wine for himself in a large cup and for me in a smaller.

“He is, as I’m sure you know, the most powerful man in the upper section of the city. His wife died some years ago, and Ripāti is their only child. This is what everyone knows, but fewer know of Phumalluo’s interest in the gray lords.”

“The who now?” asked Bekrao. I searched my memory, wondering like Bekrao if I had ever heard that phrase before.

“There are fewer still who know who the gray lords are, sir. I am not among them. All I know is that they are said by the wise to be the true rulers of Edazzo, and by the rulers to be a rumor spread by seditious plotters. But Phumalluo’s interest is on a more esoteric plane.”

“A more what?”

“A more esoteric plane.”

“A beggar’s scraper?” One of the unfortunate effects of relying on my Bird is that I have no awareness of when two phrases in the Parako language sound similar to one another. I therefore miss puns and lose much of the effect of poetry.

Yaretzamu wisely ignored Bekrao. “The details are beyond my knowledge. But it does not surprise me that Phumalluo would be interested in texts such as these. It would not surprise me if he made those excavations for the purpose of acquiring them.”

“My curiosity is piqued,” said Bekrao. The Bird’s rendition of this sentence was halting enough that I suspect Bekrao was beginning to feel the effects of the unmixed wine he had been pouring into his mouth whenever Yaretzamu was speaking. “I think I’ll have to pay Phumalluo a visit.”

Yaretzamu and I exchanged glances. Our thoughts were as one: it would be disastrous imprudence for Bekrao to call on Phumalluo at any other time, but now that he had been drinking it would be especially disastrous. “I’ll see what I can do to arrange a meeting, but I wouldn’t be optimistic. He is a very private man.”

“That’s all right. He’ll know who I am. He’ll want to talk to me. I want to love Ripāti. I want to die.” I heard these words with alarm and saw that Bekrao was staring into the distance over my shoulder. Generally Bekrao was not the kind of man who became melancholy when he drank.

“You’re talking nonsense,” I told him.

“Do you want to know what the story I was reading was about?”

“It was about the first woman, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s not the version you typically hear, either from men or women. It’s darker, sadder, better.” He rested his chin on his hand, suddenly sounding much more sober than he had a moment earlier. “It’s the story of how destruction came over the first world, and how mankind utterly failed to save themselves from the wrath of the gods.”

I raised my hand in protest. “Perhaps this is not the best time for such a gloomy story.” I am honestly not sure what the best time for a gloomy story is, myself preferring those stories that end in triumph, reconciliation, weddings, and general happiness.

“There is no better time. And if I wait any longer I’ll forget the story.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue and a motion with his hand, both of which I found utterly incomprehensible, but which I suspect to have represented the story falling out of his memory. “This is how it went, I think.

“The gods met in their council above to decide what should be done about humanity, which had grown to be something of a plague on the earth. Their sins were without number. Name a sin, and they committed it.”

“Wait a moment,” I said. “Is this before the first woman was made? How did humanity grow without women?”

He considered this question. “I think I got the order of things mixed around. Let me see. No, that’s right. I think this was before the gods made the first man too.”

“That makes even less sense. I think the wine you drank has muddled your story.”

“No, no. These are old stories! They’re meant to be strange! Humanity, which was around before the first man or the first woman, had grown to be something of a plague on the earth.” He paused here and thought for a moment. I myself was trying very hard to imagine what this primeval mankind was like.

“I believe you may have misread one of the pertinent symbols,” said Yaretzamu.

“Maybe, maybe, maybe. I’m starting to forget the story already, so please, no more interruptions. Something of a plague on the earth, sins beyond number. The gods met in their council above to debate and decide and argue. Some gods said one thing, some gods said another thing. The text was kind of confusing here and I’m not entirely sure who took what position, but in the end they all decided to create the first man.”

It was at this point that it became clear to me that Bekrao was mangling the story out of all sense and order, but I kept listening in order to humor him.

“This first man was not like you or me, but his skin shone like gold and his eyes gleamed with fire. Or maybe it was the other way around, his eyes shining like gold and his skin burning like fire. In any case, he was given precious gifts and sent down to his descendants on earth. He led them to a sacred tree atop a sacred hill, where he proclaimed himself their king, and was accepted.”

“How exactly did this solve the problem of humanity being a plague on the earth?” I asked.

“I forget that part. Anyway, this first man was very lonely.”

“With all the other people around?”

“They were a plague, remember. You should pay more attention. He was lonely, so he implored the gods and they granted him a companion, the first woman.”

“Generous of them.”

“The text didn’t say, but I assume she had gold and fire skin and eyes like the first man. So he took her as his wife and they were happy for a time.”

“I’m still waiting for the disaster.”

“The people grew tired of the first man’s rule, and they banished him into the wilderness with his wife. Then they built a thing that I don’t have the slightest idea how to translate, but it apparently brought the wrath of the gods down on them. Each god did something to punish mankind. It’s like that old joke about the gallant who gets beaten by a whole series of outraged fathers, brothers, and husbands, until at the end there’s nothing left of him.” Bekrao began to laugh, which delayed the continuation of his story for some time until he was able to recall what he was doing and where he was. “So all that was left was the first man and the first woman. A new beginning for us all!”

“I’m not sure I see the point of the story,” I commented, assuming he was done.

“The point is very simple. The man, for reasons the story does not bother to explain, promptly goes and gets drunk and dances around making a fool of himself until the woman uses the arts of love with him. And so we are all cursed by our fools of ancestors, who squandered the gift the gods had given them. And that is the world.” Bekrao looked around in triumph, his story finished, and fell asleep.

I left him, bidding farewell to Yaretzamu, and returned to my own home. I said before that I am an optimist, but even so I was doubtful that Bekrao would have much success in his pursuit of either Ripāti or the tablets.