Ludzie pragną czasami się rozstawać, żeby móc tęsknić, czekać i cieszyć się z powrotem.
..], and She will take my soul as the price of herself!’” Holly complains about the hardship men have to endure: ” [...] how easily the best of us are lighted down to evil by the gleam of a woman’s eyes!” (p. 189). Like Satan, however , Ayesha is capable of sudden transformation. Having cast off her terror and sad wisdom, She is the ”incarnation of lovely tempting womanhood” (p. 184). Both life - ”radiant, ecstatic, wonderful” - and death flow from Ayesha. This makes her the exact counterpart of the dark continent, which is riddling with hideous snakes, lions and crocodiles whilst at the same time presenting itself in full bloom and in a huge variety of tropical flowers, trees and animals. Her moods change as unexpectedly as those of the ocean, and like the sight of the unclouded, full African moon, her unveiled face has maddening, blinding powers.
4.3.1.2 Ruling over Men: Ayesha’s Empire of the Imagination
Ayesha is the only one who is ”obeyed throughout the length and breadth of the land,” and ”to question her command” is ”instant death” (p. 92). Her loveliness lies in Her ”visible majesty, in an imperial grace, in a god-like stamp of softened power” (p.153). The supremacy of She-who-must-be-obeyed, however, is of a merely spiritual kind, and She has no need for an extensive military machine:
”How thinkest thou that I rule this people? I have but a regiment of guards to do my biding, therefore it is not by force. It is by terror. My empire is of the imagination.” (p. 172, my italics)
This, of course, means that her authority is as imaginary as her empire, and therefore extremely vulnerable. When it comes to passing judgement, Ayesha is therefore very careful to leave her ”underlings” (p. 190), whom She contemptuously addresses with ”’Dogs and Serpents’” (p. 170), with the right set of lasting impressions:
”Suddenly they was a cry of ‘Hiya! Hiya!’ (‘She! She!’), and thereupon the entire crowd of spectators instantly precipitated itself upon the ground, and lay still as though it were individually and collectively stricken dead, leaving me standing there like some survivor of a massacre.” (p. 167, my italics)
The ”cold power of judgement” (p. 184) is exercized from ”her barbaric chair above them all,” with Holly to her feet (p. 170). She reminds her people of the fact that ”’the law of She is an ever fixed law, and that he who breaketh it by so much as one jot or tittle shall perish’” (p. 171). Seeing that Ayesha’s ”’slightest word is a law,’” it goes without saying that their disobedience is severely and mercilessly punished. To Holly, who tries to make her change her mind, She coolly explains that ”’those who live long, my Holly, have no passions, save where they have interests’” (p. 172).
Although Ayesha is ”weary of flattery and titles” (p. 150), She is fully conscious of the sheer pleasures of power and, on occasions, enjoys them to the fullest: ”’sometimes when they vex me I could blast them for very sport, and see the rest turn white, even to the heart.’” (p. 143) . From time to time She is tempted to use her omnipotence ”’out of vexation’” (p. 154). This shows the demonic and corrupt aspect of her rule.
4.3.2. The White Sorceress: Preserver and Destroyer
4.3.2.1 Terrifying Men: Ayesha’s Necrophilia and Unholy Rites
It is not by chance that Job mistakes Ayesha, whose garment has ”’a death-like air’” (p. 190), for ”’a corpse a-coming sliding down the passage’” (p. 190).[28] More than 2000 years of age, Ayesha has been embalmed alive and now lives under a mountain in the heart of African darkness in what Job anxiously refers to as ”’dark rabbit-burrows’” (p. 237), labyrinthine passages and underground caverns, half of which consist of elegant apartments furnished with ”rich hangings”, ”lamps” (p. 139) and ”cushions” (p. 216), the other half being a set of vast catacombs.