All this she recounted for Danlo as he sat before a different fire and drank three cups of peppermint tea. Although he waited quietly with all the concentration of a kittakee-sha bird listening for a worm deep beneath the snow, many things about her story disturbed him. For every question that she answered concerning her miraculous appearance in the house, two more questions arose to twist their way into his mind. For instance, not once did Tamara mention the warrior-poet who journeyed with Sivan. What had happened to Malaclypse of Qallar, he of the two red rings? Had the Entity separated the two men to test them, each according to his own strength and purpose? Had the Entity recited poems to Malaclypse or perhaps trapped him on a different beach to face a ravening tiger with nothing more than his killing knife? It worried Danlo to think of the warrior-poet loose somewhere upon the planet. And even more he worried that Sivan might survive the Entity’s tests and ask a question that he himself wanted answered. For surely Sivan would ask where he might find Mallory Ringess. Tamara had hinted that Sivan had his own reasons for seeking Mallory Ringess, perhaps no more than the simple hope of learning how to apply the Great Theorem and thus to fall through the galaxy at will. Or perhaps he had other reasons, deeper reasons. Sometimes, when Danlo descried the future and beheld the terrible beauty behind the pattern of their lives, he feared for his father. Sometimes this was his greatest concern, although it struck him as absurd that he should worry over the fate of a god. Because if Mallory Ringess were truly a god, then would he not keep his distance from pilots and warrior-poets and other human beings? Why else had he left Neverness at a time when his fame and glory outshone the very sun? No, Danlo thought, surely his father would never allow himself to be touched – especially not by a warrior-poet who had come to kill him. The gods could not countenance any violation of their godly selves. They might laugh at the conceits of women and men, or they might love them or slay them, or sometimes, as with Tamara, they might even lay their invisible hands on human flesh and heal them of their hurts. The goddess known as the Solid State Entity, it seemed, liked to test people – with knives or poems or promises of a happier life. As Tamara squeezed her empty teacup between her hands, she hinted that the Entity tested people in order to discover the possibilities of humankind. But who could really know? How could Danlo know why he was being tested, if he was being tested, here, now, while he enjoyed a cup of sweet mint tea with this blessed woman whom the Entity had restored to him?
‘I … am glad that the Entity has brought you here,’ Danlo finally said. He put down his cup and smiled. ‘You seem so alive again. So happy.’
‘I am happy. Aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course – but I am puzzled, too.’
‘Why?’
‘On the beach,’ Danlo said, ‘on the rocks when the Entity wanted me to kill the lamb, She promised to tell me how I could find you. To restore your memories. But I did not kill the lamb. I … could not.’
Tamara put down her cup then slid the tea service a few feet across the floor out of the way. With all the poise and grace of a master courtesan, she knelt on the wooden floor tiles so that she could push her cushion up next to Danlo’s. When she sat back down again – with her spine straight and her feet tucked politely beneath her long robe – her face was very close to his. She looked at him and took up his hands. Across a short space of the firelit room, they looked at each other eye to eye, and Danlo remembered that this touching of the eyes was one of the oldest of the merging yogas. He felt her breath on his face, all warm and soft and sweet with mint and honey. He remembered then how they had once breathed together for hours, synchronizing the movements of their bellies in and out as they drew in streams of cool, sweet air. Sometimes, they had breathed each other’s souls all night in front of the fire, merging eye to eye, and at last, when they could stand it no longer, coming together lip to lip and belly to belly as they fell into the deepest merging of all.
‘Perhaps the Entity did what She did out of compassion,’ Tamara said.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Is that so hard to believe?’
‘Compassion,’ Danlo said. ‘There is an Alaloi word for compassion. Anaslia – this means suffering with. But why would a god wish to share anyone’s pain?’
‘I believe that the goddess healed me for you.’
‘For me? Truly? But why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But if this Entity were really a compassionate being, then wouldn’t She have healed you purely out of compassion for you?’
‘Well, I believe She did. But how can either of us guess at Her deeper purposes?’
‘But I have to guess,’ Danlo said quietly. ‘I must know … how I am being tested.’
Tamara squeezed his hands together and said, ‘If there’s really a test, perhaps it’s nothing more than your willingness to accept a gift freely, without doubts. Without doubting what you really know.’
‘But I know … so little.’
‘You know that I’m here, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He looked at her strangely, then almost smiled. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’
In answer, she ran her long fingernail over his scarred knuckles in the way she had often done before losing her memories. She laughed softly and said, ‘I think I’m almost the same as when we met in Bardo’s sunroom. I’m the same woman you gave the pearl to, in this house – do you remember?’
‘Do I remember? Do … you?’
‘I remember everything, Danlo.’
‘Truly?’
‘I remember that we promised to marry each other.’
‘I remember that, too.’
At this, she pulled his hand closer and pressed it to her chest, over her heart. Beneath the softness of her robe, he felt something round and hard, almost like a nut. He remembered very well what this thing must be.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I still wear it, do you see?’
She stood up and slowly undid the buttons of her robe and let it fall to the floor. Between her naked breasts there dangled a single black pearl shaped like a teardrop. The pearl – of a soft sable colour cut with streaks of purple and pink – made a fine contrast with the whiteness of her skin.
‘I … see,’ he said.
Tamara sat back down on her cushion. At the sight of her sudden nakedness, Danlo drew in a quick breath of air and felt a tightening in his belly. Because she liked to be naked beneath her clothing, she wore no undergarments. The skin enfolding her body from her toes to her forehead was wholly bare, a marvellous covering of flesh whose smooth, ecstatic touch his fingers remembered so well. She was sitting back on her heels, a difficult posture for many but one that she held rather easily due to the strength of her long, naked thighs, her full hips, the long flowing muscles that stood out along her spine. Her hands were folded neatly over the thick golden hair below her belly, not out of any sort of modesty but simply because this was the most natural way for her to sit. In truth, she was completely at ease with her nakedness. He remembered very well how she loved going naked about her house at all times of day or night. He had always thought that her instinct to bare herself to the world was one of her most beautiful qualities. With her head held high and her long hair falling like a curtain over her lovely shoulders, he was struck for the thousandth