In the Wee Hours of the Morning(Charles E.J. Moulton) In the Wee Hours of the Morning

A short story about the Baghdad Phoenix

By Charles E.J. Moulton

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1

Jean Lafayette de la Tour became the apple of everyone's eye. Maybe it was the fact that his mother had miscarried a few years earlier. No one wanted to break the previous jewel that actually made it. The royal parents were afraid any time he took a risk. Walking alone on the palace grounds? Unthinkable. Dancing with the others on the roof? Insane.
That coupled with a stern but loving father that threatened to punish him whenever he didn't listen to advice were enough to make him not trust himself. The pressure of having been a child born through a caesarean with water in his lungs made him a miracle. Needless to say, he took everything too seriously.

His round face, his big smile, his buck teeth and his blonde hair made him a cute decoration. His fear caused others not to take him seriously. He took other people seriously. That was enough. The humorous paintings of him sitting on the potty surrounded by extraordinary action brought a smile to everyone's face. The boy was accustomed in being the center of attention, but never as an actor. More as a viewer. Jean became used to having the eyes of the court on him. Even his birth had been an event. It all pointed to one thing: Jean was special. The court composers wrote him songs, his mother told him stories, his father made sure that he liked the right things.

In time, the young prince became reclusive, trying to compensate his insecurities with stories of his special upbringing. He was a prince. Sure. But special? The other kids just found him weird. Not being like others produced inner conflicts. He wanted to belong, but he didn't belong. He couldn't talk to the other kids. His parents worries made him think that, of course, he could not make it on his own. He needed help to make it. Everyone knew better. He feared making decisions. After all, his parents had doubted his decisions enough because they were afraid he would make a mistake.

Jean fled into his dreams. Dreams were safe. One dream in particular. Where he soared above a strange Persian city as a female phoenix, sending light and blessings on a castle where he had lived in an earlier life. It was a curious dream. One he had every morning before waking up for the rest of his life. Explaining it was impossible.

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2

The attention made him self conscious. The children in his school were all different, even the aristocratic ones. He had nothing to speak to them about. Jean communicated with people outside of his own age. He spoke of deep things such as art and love and the universe. And at night, he cried, because his parents fought, his father blaming his mother for his own loud screams, provoking him. Defending himself became a cause for cataclysm. Someone else suffered because he followed his own road. It was his mother who reprimanded him for telling a silly joke with sexual content. He had the urges of a young man, followed them, but was ashamed of them because his mother felt personally insulted by them. Every girl he liked was meticulously inspected. Every urge to paint nude portraits of women sneered at. After all, the king and queen had stopped sleeping with each other years ago.

At the same time, the young boy developed a high respect for women. His paternal grandmother was feisty Irish aristocrat who drank whiskey like water and handled a sabre like others handled cutlery. His maternal grandmother was a baroness who hosted parties with such elegance that he felt he was in heaven. His father spoke of his great aunt with the highest respect. She kept the family together. Jean's respect for the female gender was teamed up with the idea that women were the glue that kept society together. Without them, society would fall apart. Jean's birthday was also the Virgin Mary's birthday. So, naturally, Jean became a kind of Don Quixote, regarding women at a distance as Goddesses of Light, their bodies immaculate, their spirits perfect. The girls he admired, he admired at a distance. His own satisfaction was conducted in front of the art gallery of nudes in the back of the library. But he would never have dreamed of dating a woman without her consent.

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3

The young adult he became was complicated. Maybe the expectations were too high, so he didn't seem to be able to live up to them. Fear ruled his life. Fear of doing things wrong. He repeated atrocities to himself, mimicking his parents reprimands of not doing this right or that right. His inner prohibitions took over.

Jean became the owner of a small patch of land at age thirty. His brief acquaintances with women had led to brief affairs, but the subsequent critique of his mother had ruined them. No one was good enough for the young aristocrat. So needless to say, when Jean ruled his own land from his castle with a hundred people or so on it, he really swept into a time of sheer lovemaking. Every woman became his princess. Every woman he made love to was lavishly betrothed with gifts, heard personally composed music, drank expensive wine and ate splendid truffles. Every woman was an empress. Every woman deserved a poem. He literally bathed in the gazes of these women. It weren't the bodies alone that fascinated him. He adored the female spirit. He worshiped them.

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4

During one of his aristocratic meetings abroad, cutting the ribbon of the opening of some cathedral, he fell madly in love with a young lady named Vanessa. His six month affair was sexual to say the least. In fact, his worship knew no bounds. He had a sculpture erected for her, brought her scented garments to bed when she wasn't around, wrote her songs and served her lavish breakfasts.

When he left the castle for a three month excursion to lead a troop in battle, she left him. He loved her too much, she claimed.

The pain of never being good enough exploded into sheer panic. Jean wallowed in self pity, deliberately visiting their favorite places, having the court orchestra play her favorite song while crying such hot tears that he almost laughed while doing so.

***

5

The pain of having lost Vanessa became unbearable, so Jean left the barracks during one of his battles, asking his second in command to lead the troops at war. He came up to Vanessa's doorstep with roses, telling her he loved her. She refused him categorically, claiming she loved someone else.

A funny thing happened. He let go. He didn't know why. Something he had never done before happened. He stopped mourning her. That morning, the morning he let go, he had the dream about the rising phoenix again just like every morning. This time, however, the sun spoke to him, telling him to trust himself and not his fear. It had been given to him by his parents and was based on pain.

On his return to battle one night, sleeping in the Persian ambassador's mansion, he had another dream. In that dream, he was a beautiful Byzantine woman named Anicia Iuliana, revered by many, envied by many more. The lady in whose body he lived was a quiet woman when sober and loud and funny when drunk. She was remarkably beautiful with a large bosom and long flowing brown hair and luscious brown eyes. He loved being her. She wore a guilded bronze necklace of a phoenix around her neck. There was also a man there with good posture and a direct gaze.

Jean's breakfast with the Persian imam was so quiet and reserved, in spite of stuffed peacock and Roman wine, that the imam asked him what had happened to make him so quiet. He had been so jaunty yesterday. He told the imam of his dream and added that he strangely recognized the tale, just like he recognized this city and the palace itself. There was remarkable beauty here, but also a strange and a rather familiar sadness.

The imam threw down his own cutlery, grabbing his wine and leaving for the terrace. Jean, worried that he had upset his host, grabbed the guilded carafe of wine and stood up from his own red satin chair. The view of Baghdad through the silk curtains seemed like a different world to him and yet it still seemed just like home. Jean stood the next to the imam for many minutes before the old man with the long beard spoke. His subdued voice was deep and quiet. There was no accusation there, just pain.

"Where have you heard that story, young man?"

Jean was surprised, his wine dripping from his chin. "Story? It was my dream."

The imam turned to him. "You mean you didn't search the archives for any information?"

Jean shook his head, wondering what mood swings were hitting the old man. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

The imam raised his wine to his lips, gazing out across mosques and temples and wild geese flying with the sun on their wings. "A hundred years ago, a woman lived here in this palace by that name and with the looks you describe. She was the most dashing woman of her day, destined to be a rich man's wife. The phoenix was her nickname, hence the necklace."

The imam sighed.

"She never married. One night, a gang of angry enemy soldiers broke into the palace and killed five of the women in here. The last one was the woman you spoke of. The phoenix. Anicia Iuliana."

Jean looked out across the morning landscape, the thoughts in his head dancing the minuet with his inner turmoil. Suddenly, he recognized it all. The shoreline, the terrace, the view. He remembered the fiance, the rich man named Mustafa.

"The rich man never married, did he? He remained childless and asked everyone to keep the story a secret," Jean added. "Am I right?"

The imam drank up his wine and gestured for Jean to refill. "You cannot know these things. Unless ..."

Jean nodded. "Unless I was her once ..."

The imam added, very softly under his breath: "There is a legend in the palace that the phoenix rises every morning at sunrise like the Aurora Borealis by the spirit of the lady to commemorate that she is still around."

He turned to Jean: "Maybe you never left this place. "

***

6

Jean sat in his wagon all the way home, wondering what all this meant. Of course he loved women, respected them highly, was apprehensive about starting any new relationships. If he had died not being able to consume his marriage, his soul had hit a snag, not being able to trust that love eventually would come. His soul was still waiting for Mustafa.

***

7

A long time passed and Jean ruled his land in solitude. He organized, conferred, paid, received and built. All the time, he wondered how it must've been to be that woman. Nothing could change his reclusive attitude. He knew now why he had been so wary of new partners. He loved women because he had been one. He revered making love to them because his soul wanted to be inside a female body and yet he was a man with a man's urges. A conflict was born.

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8

Three years later, a young widow named Aurora was assigned by a neighboring state to manage the aristocratic household. The last palace matron had left to become a wife. The new lady was an aristocrat, but one who preferred to lay low and work in the background. Her late husband had died in battle. She was remarkably strong minded and very strong willed, which led to enormously well organized feasts, indeed.

Jean admired Aurora immensely and started counting on her for help whenever help was needed. In fact, it very soon became mutual respect. Aurora was a beautiful lady with a very down to earth quality. Her good posture and direct gaze inspired him.

One evening after having knighted a young artist for his efforts as a composer, he sat alone amongst the emptied bottles of cognac, a young lute player plucking away in the corner. Aurora arrived and began chatting with him. As things go, the question came up what had happened with him and why he had been alone for so long.

Jean answered that he had enjoyed many women and their beauty and had only one love who had disappointed him. After that, he had searched for true love but never found it. Maybe, he added, love was the sunrise that promised to come. Such was life in darkness.

Aurora took a slow sip of her cognac, listening to the gentle tones of the lute player. "My father," she said, "named me Aurora after hearing a Persian legend about a murdered woman in Baghdad who came back as a phoenix every morning at sunrise to tell the people of the palace she was still alive. I keep having a weird dream that I once was a sultan who lost a phoenix. Tell me, what does this mean?"

***

9

The sun rose over the green pastures that morning and Aurora and Jean kissed on the balcony overlooking the land. It was then that a bird rose from the plains, flying into the stratosphere. Aurora remembered.

"I was Mustafa," she spoke. "And so we meet again."

***

10

Two souls had been man and woman in one life, lost each other, and returned in the next life in switched places. Jean, the reincarnation of Anicia Iuliana, had finally reacquainted with Aurora, the reincarnation of Mustafa.

The circle was complete.

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11

Aurora became Jean's sunrise and Jean became Aurora's Moonlight. In their dreams, the phoenix rode into the sunrise with the sultan on her back.

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12

They married in Baghdad in the Persian palace and the imam was their priest.

They called their daughter Saya, Sanskrit for sunrise.

Jean had the dream of the Persian sunrise every morning for the rest of his life. Aurora and Saya were always in it. They still talk of Jean and feel his presence flying over the palace in the wee hours of the morning, protecting them from above.

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