Salome Read Online Free Page B

fruit trees wither.” The world was locked in barren winter, blighted by the goddess Demeter’s sorrow.
    Then the ladies wept again at the happy ending, when Persephone returns to the earth and her mother, bringing springtime. As the flute played a merry tune, I danced around our garden, scattering flowers. “Joy!” chorused the maids. “Joy,” muttered Gundi, lifting the heavy Pluto mask from her head.
    “How light-footed Salome was!” said the ladies afterward. My mother was pleased with herself and with me, and I felt a deep glow.
    Now, the day before the full moon, Herodias invited her friends again for a new performance. This time we would act out the myth of Europa, a beautiful princess kidnapped by the god Zeus. Zeus transformed himself into a bull in a meadow at the edge of the sea, where Europa was playing. The princess was so charmed by this handsome, gentle animal that she climbed up on his back. At once he trotted into the waves with her—and the hapless maiden was never seen again.
    As we practiced, Herodias noticed that Gundi and I, playing the two halves of the bull, were the weak part of this performance. My mother recited her lines with great feeling as she acted out the part of Europa. Two slaves rippled long, blue-green scarves along the ground in a good imitation of waves. But Gundi and I had a terrible time learning to move together as one animal inside our hide and horns. Especially with Herodias perched on the back.
    “Alas!” cried Herodias, clinging to the hide.
    Inside the bull, Gundi muttered, “I didn’t mind so much playing the lord of the underworld. But the rear end of a bull—!”
    On the afternoon of the performance, Gundi and I managed all right. Herodias sat gracefully on the back of the “bull,” real-looking fear and sorrow on her expressive face. (I couldn’t see, of course, but the guests complimented her on this afterward.) She spoke the last lines, the chorus of servants exclaimed, “Alas!” and the ladies applauded. As Herodias slipped from the hide, Gundi sighed with relief. “Oh, my aching bones.”
    “Dear friends,” I heard my mother say to the guests in a still sorrowful voice, “Europa’s story is not only a myth. Before long, I will indeed be borne across the sea by a mighty one.”
    What? What was she talking about? I squirmed to find a gap in the hide and peer out.
    Herodias paused, posing with her left hand to her heart. I noticed a new gold ring, set with a large emerald, on her third finger. “I am leaving Herod Junior and marrying Herod Antipas. In a few days I will be the wife of the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.” To a question from one of her friends she answered, “Yes, Salome will come with me.”
    Through the gap in the hide I cried out, “No!” My mother laughed a musical laugh, signaling not to take me seriously. The ladies laughed, too, maybe thinking that was a planned comic ending. I felt ashamed and confused. Gundi and I scuttled through the colonnade and shrugged off the hide. Gundi muttered, “I could have told you.”
    “Then why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. Before I even knew how angry I was, I slapped her face. Gundi staggered against a column. I hated myself, and I wanted to run away. At the same time, I didn’t want to let anyone, especially my mother, know how upset I was.
    Now that the play was over, the servants were bringing in refreshments, and the garden filled with chatter. I sat down glumly in a corner, leaning against the mosaic of the dancing maenad. The palm of my hand still stung from slapping Gundi.
    One of the guests, the mother of a girl in my class at the Temple, spoke to me kindly. “Just think, Salome,” she said. “In Galilee, you’ll be a princess.”
    “Not really a princess, any more than Herodias will be a queen,” I said. “Uncle Antipas is only a tetrarch, the ruler of a
quarter
of a kingdom.”
    The woman looked shocked at my rudeness, but she couldn’t have been more shocked than