THE CONVERSATION OF THE DANCERS
501
ing
is
nothing but wishing and striving. You spring to and fro:
are you fleeing from yourself? When you are hiding, are you hiding
yourself from the eternal restless yearning within you? You are aping
the gestures of animals in trees: do you ever become one with them?
You step out of your garment: do you step out of your fear? Can
you ever, even for two hours, lose all fear? They can. They have
no fear of dancing like that in the open under the sacred trees.
Hymnis:
Who on earth are these people you're talking about?
Do they skip on one foot and cover themselves with the lobes of their
ears? Are they spotted like leopards or striped like the animal called
zebra?
Laidion:
They are of a golden color, and their mouths are strong
like the m.ouths of wild animals. Their hips are strong and slender.
Hymnis:
Would you like to be like that? Pah! I'm sure their skin
stinks enough to make one sick.
Laidion:
The trees there are much bigger than our trees; their
blue-black shadow is like something alive; you can touch it like the
body of a fruit. Their gods are in the trees and between the trees,
he says, and even so they are not ashamed to do it.
Hymnis:
They dance?
Laidion:
Once they dance like this, once a year. The young men
crouch on the ground, the girls of the island stand in front of them
all together, so motionless that their bodies are like one body. Then
they dance and in the end they give themselves to the youths, with–
out choosing-whoever seizes one, his she is. For the sake of the gods
they do it and the gods bless it.
H ymnis:
Such shamelessness!
Laidion:
The happy ones! They are without fear.
Hymnis:
What do you mean by that, Laidion?
Laidion:
Oh, can't you understand me? You see, I grew up in the
house of my mother, and was a naughty child, and always wanted
something and didn't have it. So it went on from morning to night.
Then I turned fourteen and began to yearn-and then they brought
me to the rich Kallias; there I lay and walked around and stared in
amazement and shuddered and bit myself in the wrists with impa–
tience; and then I gave myself to the one I was in love with and he
was filled with hatred and bitterness because I had first been the other
one's, and so that passed, and then came another one and still an-
