Priscilla was immediately struck by the conventional character of those words. She loved her grandfather and she would subsequently feel a deep remorse at not having felt a sharp dolor immediately. Her sole thought now was to prevent her simple-minded brother Marcus from starting to laugh stupidly or say something incongruous in front of the Bishop, and all those who were looking at them curiously. She took him by the neck and embraced him abruptly. He struggled, but she was able to hold him against her until her father, having shaken the Bishop’s hand, weeping, and escorted him as far as the street, had taken them back into the house.
That night, Priscilla went to sleep to the murmur of chanted prayers, and it was not until the next day that she found out what had happened.
Old Diodorus, while supervising the construction of a church the previous day on land that belonged to him, had perceived children playing, some of whom had long and curly hair. He had seen that as an indication of paganism, a sort of bravado against the simplicity of Christian fashion. He had had them seized by slaves and their heads shaved before him.
That had aroused the indignation of the pagan families to which they belonged. The news had spread from quarter to quarter. After the temples, they were attacking children! A dog-clipper had incited the mob while waving enormous shears and shouting that it was necessary to do the same to Diodorus. That idea had taken hold. The rabble of the port had followed the dog-clipper and had come en masse to surround Diodorus’ house
Misfortune had determined that the irascible old man, confident in the majesty of his person, had opened the door wide. He had been knocked down. The dog-clipper had come too far to do nothing, but as Diodorus was extraordinarily bald, desiring nevertheless to show the crowd a trophy, he had attempted to tear off the skin of his scalp with the point of his scissors.
Diodorus was dead. The soldiers had arrived just in time to prevent the pillage of the palace by the pagans.
The funeral was celebrated with extreme magnificence. All the monasteries in Egypt were represented there. The news of a new martyr having penetrated into the deserts where the solitaries lived, several of them, with their hirsute manes and their animal skins, had set out on the march to attend the burial of the pious Diodorus. Several days after everything had been concluded, they were still presenting themselves at the gates of the city, covered in dust and mud.
Priscilla prayed with such fervor that her knees ached by dint of being folded, and she could only stand up afterwards with great difficulty. The frightful death of her grandfather inspired a horror in her of everything that was not Christian.
She often looked between her two breasts to see whether the little priapic stone that she had had around her neck while she slept had not left traces of a burn.
II. The Convent of Thirst
The convent of Zenobia the Syrian stood amid the sands on a stony hill, far into the desert beyond the last human habitation and the last anchorite hut. It was not on any caravan route. In order to reach it, it was necessary to go alongside Lake Mareotis, on the road that Alexander had taken several centuries earlier when he had gone to the temple of Ammon,16 and then turn left on to a scarcely-visible sandy trail and plunge into a region bristling with rocks.
From a distance, it looked like a fortress, but at closer range one could see that it was only formed by a circular white wall surrounding an area of rather mediocre grandeur in the middle of which was a chapel without a bell-tower.17 About fifty cells opened on to that space, and those cells only saw daylight through a narrow opening in the form of a cross cut out of the door. The chapel was juxtaposed with hangars in which there was wheat, barley, oil and a stable for camels.
That convent was known as the convent of thirst because it had no well, and in order to reach the nearest one it was necessary to travel for two days. Every week, a few nuns departed on the back of camels in order to go and fetch the provision of water that was to serve the community for seven days. They set forth before dawn, for even showing diligence, they could not return before the next evening but one. Some had been devoured by lions, others had disappeared in sandstorms. Others had gone astray on the return journey in spite of the bell that Zenobia rang herself all night long, and had wandered into the desert never to reappear. But no matter! Zenobia was a saint with a firm heart. She gladly offered to God the lives of her ewes as well as her own life, and when the well was dry and the convent had been suffering thirst for several days, she claimed that a purer prayer emerged from lips cracked by lack of water.
Every year, Priscilla and her brother, under the guard of majordomo Longinian, set out for the convent of thirst. That distant expedition was a great joy for the two children. The joy in question commenced several days before the departure when the tents were taken down to the courtyard and the slaves checked their canvas, their metal fittings and hooks. It continued when the sacks of provisions were prepared and the large jugs of wine.
It was a marvelous minute for the children when their father kissed them before they were hoisted on to the most vigorous of the camels of the caravan. But what pleased them most of all was the company of a few soldiers that Bishop Cyril had put at the disposal of Diodorus to protect them in the desert. They admired their weapons, theirs stature and the words they pronounced.
They traversed fertile plains, intercut with canals, where wheat grew and where he houses made golden patches. In the fields, they saw naked bronzed men swarming, picking cucumbers and sowing cotton. Sometimes behind a clump of palm trees, there was a village made up of mud cottages covered in straw and reeds, and a few stone houses, which resembled white hexahedra with flat roofs, in which a door and windows had been pierced. Those hexahedra often bore a smaller one, and on top of that there was a third. They were painted different colors in bright shades, which the sun made flamboyant, and Priscilla pointed them out to her brother from a distance, with exclamations,
The halt after the first stage was the less agreeable because they stayed overnight with an employee of Diodorus who supervised the large cotton plantations that he owned there. He was an austere and tedious man who lived in a large dilapidated palace dating back to the time of the Ptolemies. The wind made a sinister noise there and the large quadrangular room where the children spent the night was surrounded by red-tinted bas-reliefs that became impressive under the mobile light of the lamp.
An extended canvas divided the room into two, but Priscilla did not like spending the night with her brother. Marcus was showing signs of degeneracy. His intelligence only awoke slowly. He sometimes laughed idiotically and inexplicably. As he had grown older, his ears had fanned out immeasurably, his nose had become too long, his lips had thickened and, with his slightly hunched back and his enormous hands, there was something of the animal about him. His sister exerted an unhealthy physical attraction upon him. He could not be beside her without squeezing her neck, palpating her arms and caressing her skin. She had sometimes been obliged to strike him in order for him to let her go. So, in that room, where Marcus was more frightened than her, she feared that he would come to find her. She spoke to him to reassure him and looked for a long time, on the sheet that separated them, at the shadow that he cast, sitting up, with his ears like two ridiculous wings.
But the following evening, Priscilla savored the great emotion of beauty that the magnificence of nature procures children when it is mingled with dread.
They camped not far from a pool at the bottom of a circus of sand, near two stunted palm trees. The slaves ran hither and yon to light the fire, unroll the tents and pitch them, and make the camels drink. The soldiers lay down on the ground, and when the moon appeared in the sky, it made little gilded lights dance over their armor. Some of them threw their javelins into the distance to amuse the children. They formed a great circle to take the meal.
Then, by the light of the fire, like a phantom emerging from the darkness, an old anchorite appeared, who had a white beard down to his feet. He raised a little wooden cross and blessed everyon
e, even those soldiers who were not Christians, who knelt down like the others. Afterwards he sat down, and did not disdain to eat, drink and laugh. He stared at Priscilla with extraordinarily intelligent, laughing and benevolent eyes, and recounted marvelous stories of miracles while extending his hands toward the fire. Then he left the camp and disappeared, as if he had returned to another world.
They sometimes heard the roar of a lion, but when Priscilla expressed anxiety for the old man, she learned with admiration that in order for the wild beasts of the desert to come and lick the feet of solitaries they only had to extend the middle finger while keeping the others closed and murmur the name of Christ.
Late into the night, a soldier, a native of a northern country, intoned a long melancholy chant that evoked the passing of great rivers through forests of firs, villages obliquely illuminated by low suns, and smoke swirling over snowy valleys. Priscilla fell asleep to that chant, her heart deliciously gripped by anguish, and clutching in each hand a fistful of the warm sand of the land of Egypt.
It was not without apprehension that the majordomo Longinian and the soldiers of the caravan approached the convent. They gazed from afar at its terrible silhouette of stone outlined on the horizon and wondered whether it might not have become a college of dead women. That place of penitence had become famous in Alexandria. The tortures contained in its walls and the dangers by which that solitude was besieged were known, and the pious admiration that it provoked was mingled with a little pity and a little horror.
For not all the penitents were voluntary. Noble families had sent young women there possessed by the demon of lust and husbands had taken adulterous wives there. Face to face with the fiery sky and the bleak extent of the desert, burned by thirst, the sinners were bound to find repentance of their sins. And many, in the narrow cell that they could not flee without going to the certainty of death, had ended up resigning themselves to it. But not all! There had been frightful revolts that had only been appeased by the energy of Zenobia.
The peasants who renewed the convent’s food supplies four times a year had heard many laments and many appeals, and they drew away making the sign of the cross, being uncertain, in their simple hearts, that so much suffering could be agreeable to God.
Every year, in accordance with an unchanging ritual, Priscilla and her brother accomplished their visit to the convent of thirst. The caravan camped at the base of the hill. Longinian climbed the narrow, winding path that led to the convent door with the children, whom he held by the hand. Three slaves marched behind him, laden with bananas, dates and olives, the only gifts that Zenobia consented to receive. Invariably, she was standing at the door. She did not smile and scarcely spoke. She conducted the children across the courtyard.
Then, from a cell facing them, a woman emerged, with immense eyes full of tears and a face whose features were a little more drawn every year. She kissed Priscilla and Marcus by turns, especially Priscilla, with all her might. That only lasted a few moments; it could not last any longer, by virtue of a pact that was doubtless accepted, but was still very cruel. Every time, the woman made an imploring gesture; Zenobia, making another, remained as mute as divine justice, and she took the children away. She accompanied them to the door, and expended her hand to bless them.
That was all. That long voyage had had no other objective than that interview of a few seconds. They set out for Alexandria again.
The children submitted to all the events, strange as they appeared to them, as the result of a fatality they could not change. Priscilla reviewed the acts of the drama, but she only connected them vaguely and did not understand their original cause; nor could she understand their cruelty.
She remembered a distant time when life had changed abruptly in the house of Diodorus. She had been told at first that her mother was ill and confined to bed in the room. It had been forbidden for her to go and embrace her. A few days passed. Priscilla had noticed that none of the usual physicians had come and that only Bishop Cyril had made frequent visits to her grandfather. Her father wept incessantly, and Priscilla had heard Cyril say to old Diodorus, indicating him, that he was the one that it was necessary to save.
Her mother was ill, but it was her father who was in danger. She had not understood.
While playing in the garden, however, she had perceived her mother at the widow of her room. She had never seemed so full of life. Never, either, had her great splendid eyes stared so desperately at the blue of the sky. Her hair, in heavy tresses, hung down over the nape of her neck like vivacious plants. Her milky neck and the blonde birth of her shoulder were radiant with the richness of her blood. That visage of desire was framed by sycamore branches; it seemed to be drinking the afternoon sunlight; it gave such an impression of youth and amour that Priscilla remained dazzled by it.
She had been woken up the following night by the heart-rending voice of her mother. That voice was mingled with that of her grandfather, dry and inexorable. Footsteps descended the staircase. A horse whinnied in the courtyard. Priscilla had got out of bed, had opened the door of her bedroom and had leaned over the stone balustrade.
She had not grasped what was said very clearly. Her mother was begging. She repeated her name and her brother’s. She was asking for something that was not granted to her.
“You’ll see them once a year, I swear before God,” her grandfather had said.
“Have pity on me! Have pity on me!”
Priscilla was about to run downstairs. An inexplicable dread had held her back.
Oh, why had she not gone down those stairs? She was to reproach herself for that a thousand times in the course of her life, to ask herself a thousand times by virtue of what force she had not done it. In that second, the destiny of her family, and her own, had been decided. If, obedient to her instinct, she had suddenly appeared in her long night-dress, like the angelic savior for which her mother doubtless hoped, her grandfather’s will might have weakened, pity might have intervened, thanks to her. But no. She had not dared. She had crept back to her room. She had listened again. The main door had closed. She had gone to sleep.
Priscilla knew that it was her grandfather who had done everything, on the advice of Bishop Cyril. Her father had only wept and obeyed. The first time she had departed for the beautiful and terrible journey, she had heard old Diodorus give his instructions to the majordomo Longinian.
“I promised that she would see them once a year but I didn’t make any promise as to the duration of the meeting. You’ll let her see the children for the time of a glance, no longer.” And as Longinian remained standing before him in the attitude of a man who has a phrase on his lips that he dare not pronounce, he added: “It’s the Patriarch himself who has decided it thus.”
Diodorus had spread the rumor that his wife had retired voluntarily to a convent following a mystical crisis. Those who knew her had not believed it. A rich Alexandrian with whom she had sometimes been seen had disappeared at about the same time, without anyone making a connection between that disappearance and her departure for the convent.
Years had passed. Everything was forgotten.
Priscilla was accustomed only to see her mother out there for a few moments, under the burning sky, in the abode of stones and sand. She was accustomed to seeing her pure and bright visage, ravaged by the torment of thirst, lose its beauty year by year, becoming more haggard at every visit, more desperate and more similar to the bleak desert.
What had happened that year? Had Priscilla and Marcus emitted a more attractive life? Are there, in the resignation of souls, unexpected surges of revolt, like a tidal wave suddenly swelling a calm sea?
Everything had happened as usual. Longinian and the children had climbed the little winding path, the slaves had deposited the fruits on the threshold and a few silent women had carried them to the hangars behind the chapel The annual kiss had been given, the tears had been shed, and Priscilla, as she drew away across the courtyard, had carried one away on her cheek, so quickly dried!
The door had closed again, they had gone back down, the camels had stretched out their necks, and they had departed.
Then a strange cry had been heard. It was not someone calling to tell the caravan to stop and wait; it was not a human plaint; it was a hoarse sound like the cry of a beast, a instinctive voice coming from the utmost depths of being: a frightful, prolonged sound that did not evoke dolor but something worse, unnamable, surpassing the known measure of horror.
A form had been seen to descend, a gesticulating form that was running so rapidly through the stones that everyone, unable to believe their eyes, remained immobilized. An unkempt woman with frightened eyes raced down the slopes, letting herself fall into the short cuts. She reached the bottom of the hill and advanced into the sand. Everyone understood, for the story of Diodorus was known in Alexandria, and everyone watched, consternated.
Longinian gave orders to a few soldiers.
It was necessary to take the mother back to the convent, willingly or by force; it was necessary to move the children away.
The savage and terrible being was now clinging on to a large leather bag suspended from the flank of a camel, without ceasing to utter her inconceivable cry. To that cry, by virtue of a power of communication that no one could explain, another, almost identical, responded. It was Marcus who uttered it, in spite of the fact that his stupid face denoted incomprehension of what was happening.
There was a minute of extraordinary disarray. Priscilla had let herself slide down to the sand and had attempted to join her mother. Longinian had been able to stop her and she struggled in his arms. Then, one of the soldiers, a man who was called the barbarian, a simple and taciturn man with long blond hair, without anything enabling the gesture to be anticipated, drew his sword and delivered a forceful blow to the head of one of his comrades who was trying to detach the woman’s arms by force from the leather bag to which they were clinging. He was pale, and his limbs were agitated by a tremor. His blow, launched at hazard, struck the soldier’s helmet, and did not inflict any wound.
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