The Changing Room 4

  

He came back at the time set for our first session, three days before the new moon. I could not smell the ointments in his hair because my own body was so heavily perfumed, but in the ways Grandfather had taught me I knew the scent Ezra had chosen: musk of the wild ox.

I began the dance of a female ox who is shy but unafraid. I wore only a skirt of feathers and my jewelry and still he kept his eyes on my feet. He sat before me, his eyes wide, dark, above his black beard, and his hair glistened from the ointments he had rubbed into it. I moved slowly and with deliberation, smooth as a cobra, steady as an ox, my feet dancing to the rhythm of the ankle bells while the ring on my toe glistened from the lamps. My eyes closed, yet I knew that while my movements continued to fill Ezra he never looked up from my feet. It happened outside of time. The day after that first session I went to the marketplace and so did two of Ezra's wives. Behind their veils they stared at Ilona and stole glances at me, and there was both curiosity and friendship in their dark eyes. Soon a pleasing subtlety began to show in Ezra and a softening of the boldness. I learned that his wives began to groom him to come, helping to dress him and turn him out of the house so he could get to my place at the appointed times. When Ezra quit the wild ox scent and took musk of the sperm whale, I knew he was getting near the ocean in him, and I began a different set of movements, with veils that changed colors like the sea. I removed my jewelry, though never the lapis ring, piece by piece from session to session, so that its rhythmic music slowly ceased. Ezra was hearing the sounds in himself.And I used the sand basin, snuffing the lamps to darken the room, except for a candle set in the circle of sand. From a collection Ezra selected small stones and carvings to place in the sand. With the shadows cast by the flame this brought up all the secrets that lodged in him, and he spoke, and I witnessed the stories he told in the sand.

When Ezra's youngest wife died I heard that the other three were astonished at how he treated the death. He took the task of mourning upon himself instead of