The Death of Salomé (A Nubian Apocrypha) by Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic translated by Kirsten Lodge
Day after day Salomé came in secret with a single slave to the hut of Séhon, hunter of gazelles. The beautiful boy, all tanned and dark, with such white teeth that nothing was brighter, with black tresses that shone to a dark blue hue, as though sprinkled with azure powder, was loved by the Jewish princess, who tried in vain to hide the traces of old age with make-up. Only her eyes still shone in bright, flaming points like stars. But the exhausted pallor of her withered skin testified to their deceit. Did Séhon know who the strange woman was who brought him gifts and followed him with passionate words? He barely sensed what shades crept behind the figure that appeared daily at the threshold of his hut, agitated, errant, sorrowful, concealed in a purple peplum, with her arms lost in the folds of long, rustling sleeves, her head veiled to the breast by a silver veil, with dark chalcedony in her ears. All of her movements expressed desire to entice the boy, who always escaped her, and who had no more than a smirk for her age and ugliness. And often when she suddenly collapsed in a corner of Séhon’s hut and put her face in her hands, not to weep, but to flood her eyes with darkness and emptiness, and she remained there for a long time, motionless, without thinking, her figure expressed such suffering that even Séhon was moved for a time and spoke kindly to her. But then Salomé would rise up, and the chalcedony earrings would clatter ominously in her ears, and pride would lash out of her eyes. She would give up, because she did not want to be pitied, but loved. She, whose arms, whose breasts, whose hips had once shot forth sparks, beneath whose strength the strongest men had given way, was now powerless against this boy, for whose body, the color of the darkest amber, she yearned so insatiably. Only one evening, when her hands suddenly emerged from beneath the wide sleeves, hands pale as a bluish ray of moonlight when it cuts through ebony clouds, Séhon approached her with interest. He did not suspect that these were the hands that had once raised the head of John the Baptist on a silver plate with exultation, as Salomé had quivered in an inexpressibly light and supple wave of pleasure that made the precious stones hanging in her hair, on her hands, on her throat, on her breasts, on all the shining nakedness of her young body ring lightly... Then she had triumphed through nakedness, and her youth was an insatiable abyss that swallowed masculinity after masculinity. The vapors of her body, more fragrant than galbanum, ambergris, and incense, the warmth of her skin triumphed even over the brilliance of sapphires and overpowered the resplendent, golden yellow of beryl. Her lips, aflame with infinite cruelty, blazed more than the rubies fusing in the necklace on her breast, and her eyes, almost terrible, had more fire in them than the blackest, most mysterious garnets.