謝謝文東.

可能你說得對的. 這是英文原版本:


Adrianus and Sabeena

(1)

The Curse

He knew he was dying.

The wound was too deep and through experience, he knew the arrows were always poisoned.

His men had all died. Though they had fought bravely, it was only a matter of time that his tiny contingent of a hundred would be wiped out in this dense jungle. He knew there would be no relief force.  The main army had started its way back, led by Alexander, towards Macedonia which they had not seen for the past ten years.  He was eighteen then, a common hoplite.  Ten years later, at twenty-eight, he was in command of a hundred men; a hundred dead men now.  The rest of the army had forgotten about them, given them up as lost, an affordable price to ensure the rest could disengage safely for orderly retreat.

But he did not want to die.  He, Adrianus, born in Thebes, still young, good-looking, intelligent, so full of life and hungry to know the wonders of life, wanted to live.  And this was the most unenviable place to die anyway, this dark, damp hell crawling with reptiles and savages armed with poisonous darts and arrows.  If he were to die, he would choose a place where he could at least have a last look at the sun, felt its warmth and if possible, in the arms of a friend, or better still, a woman.  Yes, a woman!  How long had he been away from the company of women: their tenderness, their sublime body, the moaning under him when he made love to them, a sound that made him feel alive…

There was no friend.  All his men were dead.  They would all be reduced to skeletons in a day or two.  If the savages did not get them for meals, the reptiles and the ants would do the job.  And he knew, he would soon be one like them.

He felt the parching thirst at his throat.  His body seemed on fire: fever.  He wanted a drink, a sip, anything that could quench his thirst, even just a little bit.  Water!  Yes, he could hear the sound now: s stream perhaps.  He could no longer walk; could only crawl, and this he did, painfully, laboriously.  He knew he would probably die there, or die even before he got there.  But he tried, he must.

He reached the water, a small murky pool.  He dipped his hands in it, saw the blood on his palms dissolve into filaments of brown before disappearing into the absorbing green.  He used his hands as a cup and drank.

Then, he saw her.

She was walking towards him.  And for the first time in his life, he knew what fear meant.  She was blue.  No, not her dress, but her skin; blue, deep, dark blue.

“Zeus! Save me!” He prayed.

She was standing by him now and bent her head towards him.

“Do you wish to live or to die?” She said, smiling.  

He froze, in terror, uncomprehending.

“You have tarnished my pool by the blood of my people.  For that you are cursed.  I will give you two choices: a merciful one, death and a terrible fate: live forever.”

He thought he must have mistaken her.  Why was death a merciful choice? And immortality a curse?

“I want to live!” Then he remembered the story about a man granted immortality but steadily grew older and older until he was turned into a grasshopper.

She shook her head and smiled.  “Foolish one.  I will grant you what you wish.  You shall live and also stay young, young and strong and irresistible to women. On one condition: you must sacrifice the woman whom you are sleeping with to me every time your finger-nails turn black.  Remember that!  If you ever fail, you will wish you have never been born.  That, I promise you.  And the curse will not be lifted until you have sacrificed me one hundred such chosen women and finding the purest water in the world.”

He nodded, half-thinking he was just hallucinating; that this bluish female thing was nothing but his imagination.  He saw her smile.  And then she was gone.   And he found he was no longer thirsty, his wound no longer hurt, his strength had returned.  He was healed.

He could not remember how he walked out of the jungle, why the savages who had massacred his men did not attack him.  When he regained his mind, he was already in the city of Babylon and learned his king, Alexander, had died of a fever.

He went back to his Thebes, lived for a while.  And he did not grow old, nor die.
Nothing could touch him: disease, blade, fire.  He could become an invincible and indestructible warrior except that he could still feel pain, intense pain at times. He would not die of hunger but he could still starve and he must eat like everyone else.  And to get food, he must find work, any kind of work. For that, he harbored no great ambition other than the conquest of women, all of whom grew old and died in time while he was still in the prime of youth.  The women loved him, at first.  Then, the love turned to suspicion and suspicion turned to fear.  He was ostracized, chased away as being unnatural, cursed.

He left his home-city, wandered incognito.  

He traveled to places unheard by his peers who had now long since died. He witnessed the rise of empires and their fall.  He saw horror of plagues, destruction of whole city by the ashes of a volcano, the carrying off of thousands by mountain height tidal waves, wholesale massacre of cities, nations… Yet he survived.

And fifty years after he left that jungle, his finger-nails turned black the first time.  He sacrificed her, a mere slave-girl who meant nothing to him.  The nails returned to normal.

Another hundred years passed and he was bedding a courtesan who fell in love with his good-looks.  She was a very beautiful woman.  When he saw his finger-nails turned black, he tried to disregard it, only to beg for mercy as he felt all his fingers on fire, eating him to the bones.  He strangled the screaming woman and the fingers cooled.  For the first time after gaining his immortality, he wondered if he had made the right choice.

But there was no turning back.

As he could live perpetually, he amassed great knowledge: in languages, history, science, any subject he could lay hands on.  By now, he knew the identity of the one who saved him from death and gave him this torment: Kali, the Hindu goddess of Time and Death!  

He lived on, dared not develop any serious relationship with any woman as he knew she would die one day, either by natural cause or by his constricting hands if he saw color changing of his nails.  He had tried to be celibate but the curse had also implanted in him a fire of lust he could not keep suppressed.  He needed to feel the bodies of women, their kisses, their adoration even he knew they were running the risk of dying in his hands.

He never got caught.  The bodies of the victims simply vanished after the killing was done.  No bodies, no charges could be brought forward and no conviction, of course.

Over the centuries, he ended the lives of many women, by his hands, by swords, axes, guillotines, firearms…  He had counted: seventy four. That is the figure until now, the Year 2014.

(2)

Sabeena

He knew he was in trouble when he saw her.
For the past five years, he was Professor Adrian Smith(he changed his name as he thought the ancient name Adrianus was a bit out of date ) of History in the University of Delhi, the youngest, most handsome and highly learned professor of the campus. He knew history better than anyone.  The others read about it.  He had lived it.
Her name was Sabeena, Indian, twenty-one, had lush raven black hair, large brown eyes, a figure that could compete with any beauty-queen and the face of an angel.
But these were not important.  What drew him to her were her eyes, limpid as the virgin lakes in the high mountains, unpolluted, crystal clean, reflecting an equally clean soul.
She was one of his students, the best one.  He could see the fire of intelligence dancing in her eyes when she listened to his lectures, asked the most sensible questions and nodded in comprehension.  There was something more he saw: admiration, and love. Through their lines of sight, their souls connected.  And it made him tremble.
He tried to appear harsh to her, being picky with her work, hurt her so that she would leave him in anger.  He would rather break her heart than see her dead body.  
But it was all in vain.  She did not leave.  He could not let her leave.  He knew they were doomed.
He allowed her to visit him, talked about philosophy, history, literature or any subject she might raise.  They talked into the small hours.  Then, they dated.  Then, they kissed.  Then, they made love.
And the next morning, he noticed his finger-nails were changing color.
“No!” H shouted into the empty room. “Not her! Please!”
There was a hollow laugh from the empty room. “You have thirty days.” He heard the voice.
He thought he was going mad.  If he could end this by throwing himself out of the window from his twelve floor apartment, he would have done so.  But he knew.  It would not kill him.  He would survive; suffered horrible pain and his fingers would feel on fire.
He looked through every available source, both scientific and occult, trying to find a way to lift the curse.  He failed.  There was none.  Meanwhile, his finger-nails’ blackness deepened.
With despair, he confessed to her.
She did not believe him at first, naturally.  He proved it to her, by bringing down a cleaver on his arm.  She screamed but then was stunned to see that though he felt the pain, his arm was unscathed.  He put it into fire.  Same result.
“Leave me! Run for your life!” he said.
She refused.  She knew he could not stand the consequent pain; his fingers would burn until he found her and killed her.
“Let us find a way to fight this,” He said.
She shook her head.
“I am not going to let you die!” he said.
“I am willing to die for you but it would not solve anything.  You still have to kill another twenty-five to end the curse.  Do you want to do that?”
He shook his head.  
“May be we can go to a witch, pray to a different and more powerful god for protection.” He suggested.
“Do not do this.  You will only make Kali angry.  We are just puny humans and can never outwit or fight against a goddess.” She said.
Instead, she took him to her village, to a shrine.
When he saw the statue in front of him, he froze in terror.
It was the statue of Kali!

(3)

The Sacrifice

“Run! Sabeena!” He shouted.
But Sabeena held his arm and made him kneel beside her.
“Might Kali, hear my prayer. Have mercy on us. I know you can strike terror into hearts of men but you also have the tender heart of a mother. Lift the curse from him, I humbly beg you.  Let me pay the price of sacrifice.”
Then, he saw her, Kali, walking down from the altar in all her dark glory.
“Silly girl! Are you really willing to die for him? “The goddess asked.
“Yes,” Sabeena did not look frightened seeing the goddess of Death though tears were running down her face.
“Why?”
“Because I love him.”
The goddess laughed. “How noble! But your death alone would not lift the curse.  And even I cannot go back on my words.”
Sabeena nodded. “I know. But you are powerful, Mighty Kali and you control life and death.  Let me be this sacrifice and all the further sacrifices needed to free him. Let me be reincarnated over and over again, meet him in the next twenty five lives and die by his hands.  I only implore you to let me be born an abandoned child so as to spare my parents the agony of losing their daughter.”
Adrian was speechless.
Even the goddess was surprised.
“You are willing to die for him again and again?  Do you realize that for every life, you would be allowed to be with him only for thirty days?”
“Yes.”
Adrian was about to object but the goddess raised up one of her many hands, stopping him.
“So be it,” The goddess announced. “And now, die!”

And he killed her, in a hotel room in Madrid when Hemmingway was boasting his stories in the salon below.

He killed her, shot her in the back on the way from Armenia to Palestine, after making love to her in his Turkish uniform.

He killed her by sending her up the guillotine.

He killed her by sending her to a stake as a witch.

He killed her by vanquishing her in the arena, he a gladiator, her, a slave girl put inside a leather armor and given a sword.

He killed her by throwing her overboard from a corsair vessel, after enjoying her body.

He killed her again, and again, and again.

He killed her and felt his pain, her pain, the pain of those who knew her, the pain of the people all around, the pain of all the others he had killed, the pain of others whose deaths were caused by other people in all these three thousand years, the horror and grief caused by cruelty, vanity, greed and intolerance…the cries of the vanquished and the slain, the hollow laughs of victors, the crumbling sound of palaces and temples once thought to be able to stand the ravish of time…

But he noticed something was wrong: the chronological order of the killings.

And then, it all stopped.

He was at the pond, with its murky green water, a captain in Alexander’s army.  The only two things different was that there was no poisoned arrow buried in his chest and that Sabeena was standing beside him.

“What had happened? “He was bewildered.

“You have killed her twenty six times already.” The goddess said.

“But we were going backwards in time…”

The goddess smiled. “Of course. Have you forgotten who I am? I controlled Death and Time.  And Time is not linear.  The curse is lifted.”

Adrian was stunned.  He caught hold of Sabeena’s hand and could not believe this to be true.

“But…but what about the purest water in the world?” He remembered the curse and the condition of its lifting.

The goddess laughed. “It is found, on your face.”

“What?”

“Your tears, of remorse and compassion.  They are the purest form of water you can find in this universe. Now go.”

“Go? Where?” Adrian or Adrianus was at a loss.

“To class, of course, Professor.” The goddess said and turned. “I will meet you both again, in around fifty years time.”

And the pool was gone; the jungle was gone.  Before the pair of lovers stood the buildings of the university and an azure blue sky in the summer of 2014.

(End)