[annals] The life of Septima, enchantress, according to Marcel Schwob
Septima was a slave beneath the African sun, in the city of Hadramentum. And her mother, Amoena, had been a slave, and her mother before her had been a slave, and all were beautiful and unfathomable, and the infernal gods revealed to them philters of love and death. The city of Hadrumentum was white, and the stones of the house where Septima lived were a quavering pink. And the sand of the shore was strewn with seashells that the tepid sea dragged there from far-off Egypt, from the place where the seven mouths of the Nile pour into seven vases of different colors. In the coastal house where Septima lived, you could hear the silver hem of the Mediterranean as it died away, and from its foot fanned out lines of dazzling blue, unfurling all the way to the open sky. The palms of Septima's hands were reddened with gold, and the nails of her fingers were painted; her lips were scented with myrrh and her anointed eyelids softly trembled. Thus she was as she walked along the roads at the city's edge, carrying to the servants' house a basket of soft loaves.
Septima fell in love with a young free man, Sextilius, thee son of Dionysia. And yet love is forbidden to those women who are versed in the mysteries of the underworld, for they are subject to the rival of Eros, whose name is Anteros. And so while Eros sharpens the tips of his arrows and directs the glint in the eye, Anteros diverts the gaze and blunts the bite of those same bolts. He is a charitable god who reigns among the dead. He is not cruel, unlike his brother. He is the keeper of the nepenthe, which brings forgetfulness. And knowing that love is the worst of the terrestrial sufferings, he hates and heals this love. However, he is powerless when it comes to chasing Eros from a heart that he has already occupied. And so he takes hold of the other heart. In this way Anteros fights against Eros; this is why Sextilius could not love Septima. As soon as Eros had lit the torch within the breast of the initiate, Anteros, irked, took hold of the one she most desired.
Septima could see the power of Anteros in Sextilius's lowered eyes. And when the crimson flickering stirred the evening air, she left on the road that led from Hadrumentum to the sea. It is a peaceful road where lovers drink date wine, leaning against the polished walls of the tombs. The wind from the East blows its heady perfume over the necropolis. The young moon, still veiled, comes meandering, uncertain. A great many of the embalmed dead hold court outside Hadrumentum from within their sepulchers. And there slumbered Phoinissa, sister of Septima, a slave like her, and dead at sixteen before any man was able to breathe in her scent. Phoinissa's tomb was as narrow as her body was slender. The stone embraced her bandage-wound breasts. Before her sunken brow, a tall stone slab interrupted her empty gaze. From her blackened lips still floated the odor of the aromatics with which they had been drenched. On her virtuous hand gleamed a ring of green gold inlaid with two pale and clouded rubies. In her fruitless dreams, she eternally pondered the many things she had never known.
Beneath the virgin white of the new moon, Septima lay down next to her sister's narrow tomb, against the good earth. She cried and pressed her pained face up next to the sculpted garland. And she brought her mouth up to the conduit through which the libations were poured, and gave vent to her passion:
"O my sister," she said, "step away from your slumber to hear me. The small lamp that lights the first hours of the dead has gone out. You have let slip from your fingers the colorful glassen phial that we gave you. The string of your necklace has come apart and the beads of gold lie scattered around your neck. Nothing of us is still with you, and now the one with a falcon on his head is your master. Listen to me, as you have the power to speak on my behalf. Go into that cave you now know, and plead with Anteros. Plead with the goddess Hathor. Plead with him whose dismembered body was carried by the sea in a coffin, all the way to Byblos. My sister, have pity on an anguish you have never known. By the seven stars of the sorcerers of Chaldea, I beseech you. By the infernal powers invoked in Carthage, Iao, Abriao, Salbal, Bathbal, hear my incantation. Compel Sextilius, son of Dionysia, to be consumed by love for me, Septima, daughter of our mother Amoena. Such that he burns through the night; such that he comes seeking me next to your grave, O Phoinissa! Or, carry the both of us into the shadow world, O powerful one. Beg of Anteros that he sets our breathing afrost, if he will not permit Eros to set it aflame. O perfumed dead, receive the libation that is my voice. Achrammachalala!"
No sooner said, the enshrouded virgin sat up, and then dove down into the earth, her teeth bared.
And Septima, ashamed, ran through the sarcophagi. She remained in the company of the dead until the end of a second sleepless night. She gazed upon a fleeting moon. She offered up her throat to the salty bite of the ocean wind. She was caressed by the first golden rays of the day. Then she went back into Hadrumentum, her long blue shift floating behind her.
Meanwhile, Phoinissa stiffly wandered the infernal paths. And he with a falcon on his head would not hear her lamentation. And the goddess Hathor remained where she lay, in her painted slip. And Phoinissa was unable to locate Anteros, as she knew nothing of desire. But in her withered heart she felt the pity that the dead carry for the living. And so, on the second night, at the hour when the dead break free to fulfill the incantations, she shuffled her bound feet down the streets of Hadrumentum.
Sextilius trembled regularly from the steady breathing of sleep, his face turned toward the diamond-checkered ceiling of his bedchamber. And Phoinissa, dead, wrapped in fragrant bandages, sat down next to him. And although she had been left with neither a brain nor internal organs, her desiccated heart had been returned to her chest. And in that moment, Eros struggled against Anteros, and he seized Phoinissa's embalmed heart. Thereupon, she desired the body of Sextilius, so that he might be made to lie down between her and her sister Septima in the house of the night.
Phoinissa placed her painted lips against Sextilius's living mouth, and the life slipped from him like a bubble. Then she made her way to the slave chamber where Septima resided, and took her by the hand. And Septima, fast asleep, yielded to her sister; and Phoinissa's kiss and Phoinissa's embrace brought death, at nearly the same hour of the night, to both Septima and Sextilius. Thus was the funereal outcome of the battle between Eros and Anteros; and the infernal powers received both a slave and a free man at the same time.
Sextilius rests in the necropolis of Hadrumentum, between the enchantress Septima and her virgin sister Phoinissa. The text of the incantation is inscribed upon the leaden sheet, rolled up and pierced by a nail, that the enchantress slid into the libations conduit of her sister's tomb.
—Imaginary Lives, translated by Chris Clarke