Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  But a new sensation ran through her body. She had a desire to cry out, to start running, to exteriorize a warm force that was burning her without her being able to specify how. She perceived that the bushes and flowers around her had brighter colors and more emphatic forms, a language whose terrible meaning she understood for the first time.

  A pistil brushed her hand and left a kind of gray semen on her skin, which she experienced as a pollution. She saw a yellow droplet in the heart of a flower whose rigid stem emerged from a bush and seemed to be reaching toward her. Plants were exhaling seeds, pollen and moisture all round her, which inspired disgust in her. Stamens vibrated with desire, calices sweated enjoyment, corollas displayed themselves lewdly.

  Certain flowers affected the form of an erect egg, others reproduced female and male sexual parts, the generative organs of animals. There were strange vegetal pumps that absorbed the life of the dying light. A fecund respiration caused the lungs of lilies to rise, inflated their bulbs, and descended into the lowers layers of plants, making them palpitate all the way to their roots.

  And that circled around her like a terrestrial rainbow, quivering, embalming and moistening, running light frictions over her as she passed, intoxicating her with insipid aromas. Abruptly, under a solitary oak, a little acorn was detached and ran between her breasts. It was round and warm. It slid down her abdomen and she took a few steps, her head buzzing, with the sensation than an audacious beast was about to bruise her with an unsuspected caress.

  Feeling faint, she leaned against a parasol pine, and, her hand having encountered an outflow of soft resin, she withdrew it, sticky, as if she had touched he stupor of the trees.

  Then she collected herself. She had just known temptation. Like the anchorites of the desert, it was necessary for her to sustain the struggle. She had read the story of the combat that the saints had delivered a hundred times over. She knew what diverse forms the demon was able to take, his power of becoming, by turns, a man, an animal or a plant. It was him who had appeared on the crespuscular ship with the obscene visage of those dancing actors. It was him who was now swaying in the velvety roses, putting the milky juice into the umbels of the euphorbias, extending the darts of the cacti, causing the large white nympheas to burgeon like crushed flesh on the water of the pools, gripping the basins with the unfurling of crimson ipomoeas. In the nearby wood, it was him yet again who was making, with the knots of trunks and the gestures of branches, caricatures of legs, hairy stirrings of deformed arms.

  Why was she the victim of that enchantment? She had prayed, as usual, she had driven away evil thoughts, she had repented of the kiss that her mouth had enjoyed in spite of her.

  And suddenly, she was able to understand what the force of temptation was that was surrounding her. Lightly, she started to run, going alongside the villa, and reached a little house with a flat roof backed up against the baths. There was a workshop there in which an old man labored. He had just tidied away his tools and folded up his leather apron.

  “Give me a hammer,” Priscilla said. “A heavy hammer.”

  And, without waiting for a response, having spotted what she needed, she took it away.

  Beyond the flower-beds, a large green meadow extended, irrigated by streams. Priscilla traversed it and went into a wood of parasol pines, which she also traversed. A path descended beneath interlaced branches toward a part of the garden at a lower level, whose cultivation had been renounced, and where a luxuriant vegetation blossomed in disorder.

  Priscilla parted the branches of the tamarind and turpentine trees and uncovered a marble form lying under the vegetation.

  It was a statue of Aphrodite.

  She had remained marvelously white in spite of the rain and the vegetable parasites. She unveiled an impeccable shoulder and a hollow back, in accordance with the poem of human form. Her legs were partly buried in the soil, as if to testify to the eternal relationship of the earth with the symbol that she represented. Her mouth retained an ineffable smile, by which the sculptor had tried to indicate the enigma of amorous attraction.

  Then Priscilla, with all her strength, brought her hammer down on the marble smile; she smashed the narrow forehead, the sightless eyes, and then the breasts and the rounded legs. She struck with the energy that the certainty of a virtuous and profitable action gives. She felt full of delight.

  When the work of destruction was complete, she was hot and she was weary. A vague melancholy was mingled with her sentiment of deliverance. She wondered whether she might not have incurred a vengeance on the part of hidden powers, of which she had only been able to reach the image.

  She raised her head, and on the slope opposite the one she had come down, she perceived a young woman between the branches of the turpentine trees, a few paces away, who was looking at her.

  She knew her face. She seemed to find in her dark eyes, that bright oval filled with ardor, anxiety and goodness, the features of a slave scarcely older than her, whom she often encountered when she went out, and who followed her with a gaze full of affection. She considered her for a second, and did not find the same expression in the depths of her eyes. She found there, on the contrary, reproach, and almost fear. The evening made the flesh of her shoulder glisten. Beneath the veil, the breast seemed form and harmoniously designed. The beauty that emanated from her was that of the goddess. Priscilla had only struck the material form, but the living carnal goddess, the Aphrodite who did not perish was before her and about to strike her in her turn with an invisible spell.

  The image of Aphrodite made a movement of the hand. She was about to advance and speak.

  Priscilla dropped the hammer she was holding and, driven by a panic terror, she fled.

  Touta watched Priscilla’s silhouette disappear under the pines in the twilight. She saw her again in the meadow, where she was gliding, charming and rapid, like a fleeing hope.

  Then Touta returned slowly, the way she had come, through the wild plants. Anyway, exactly what she would have said, she did not know. A vague inspiration had impelled her. Aurelius, her master, was about to leave Alexandria for a voyage from which he would not return. She wanted to retain him at any price. She had thought about the only link that retained him to things of the world, his affection for that young woman, whom he had only glimpsed when she was a child, and to whom he had never spoken.

  Touta had often gazed, in her master’s library, at a cameo representing the head of a woman who had Priscilla’s features, with a few years more. She had often surprised Aurelius in contemplation before that portrait, and she had made a connection between that sorrowful contemplation and the news of the young woman with which she was charged with reporting every day.

  She did not want him to go. She had traversed Alexandria, and launched forth along the road that ran along the coast, all the way to Diodorus’ villa in order to reach Priscilla, the only creature able to retain the philosopher. She had intended to throw herself at her feet, to tell her that a very wise and very good man who sometimes wept while looking at a cameo in which there was her mother’s face, needed a word from her, or even less, a gaze in passing, of which he would have made the great light of his life.

  She had felt a marvelous force of persuasion. She had slipped through a breach in the wall of the flower-garden and had watched for part of the afternoon. Hazard had taken Priscilla to the most solitary place, the most propitious for a conversation.

  But Touta had witnessed the murder of the statue. She had seen the charming Priscilla, her forehead furrowed and her lips taut, strike with all her strength the image of the beauty that was an object of veneration for her master.

  What unexpected differences there were in souls! Was it worth the trouble of appealing to that one? The words had caught in her throat.

  Touta arrived at the place in the wall where she had climbed over. She darted a glance at the garden, which the sun was illuminating with splendor, before disappearing. The parasol pines gave the impression of cups extended tow
ard the sky for offerings by dolorous supplicants. The flower-beds formed enormous iridescent sheaves in which flames were brooding. The jets of water rose up incessantly and perished untiringly against the crimson of the setting sun.

  Oh, how far some people were from others!

  She leapt on to the road and set forth in the direction of Alexandria.

  VII. The Monk Simon

  Among the monks of Mount Nitra who had just arrived in Alexandria, Simon was surrounded by a sort of admiring veneration. He was scarcely twenty years old. He was thin and fair of face. It was said that he had come to the convent as a beggar and that, if he had knocked on the door one evening, it was because he had seen from a distance a miraculous cross of fire designed there.

  He spoke rarely and always gave the impression of emerging from a dream. Sometimes he advanced toward one of his comrades in the convent and, without any reason, while looking him in the eyes, announced an event concerning him that was about to occur. It was as if what he said were pronounced by another mouth than his own, having the semblance of a message that he was charged with transmitting.

  One night, he had woken up the superior of the convent because he had witnessed a shipwreck somewhere at sea and was suffering from the laments of the drowned. They had learned the next day that a ship full of passengers coming from Carthage had sunk not far from Alexandria.

  Another time, he had suddenly approached the old porter of the convent, whose path he had crossed in a courtyard, and said to him: “Start praying quickly, I’ve heard Death setting out on his way to collect you.”

  The old porter, who was a pious man, had said his farewells, and then ran toward the door of the convent, for he had made a vow to die beside that door, which he had opened and closed for years. He had knelt down, and had not got up again.

  Simon also said things that appeared to be devoid of meaning, and many people merely estimated that he did not have all his reason.

  The monks of Mount Nitra were warriors as well as peasants. Sometimes, a marauding tribe from the desert attacked the convent and it was then necessary to take up arms and fight. They were also regimented and disciplined, they had decurions and centurions.

  Simon had started to laugh the first time someone had handed him a pike, and he had thrown it away. Nor did he seem to understand how to handle a bow. One evening, when he was walking along a path at the extremity of the crop-fields, several monks worthy of faith certified that they had seen a jackal at his heels, which followed him as if he had domesticated it, and which stopped at intervals to lick his feet.

  Simon had the habit of turning his head abruptly to the right, as if someone had spoken beside him, and his face then took on a blissful expression. Those who liked him said that it was his guardian angel, who was informing him of divine matters.

  The monks of Mount Nitra had been lodged in various convents in Alexandria. The group of which Simon was a part was camped under the porticos of a courtyard near the Church of Caesarea.

  That morning, Simon was walking slowly back and forth. His comrades watched him in surprise. Since his arrival he had lost his serene tranquility. He was not smiling softly, as usual, and his gaze sometimes had a sudden expression of dread.

  In the midst of the buzz that filled the courtyard, an appeal rang out: “Simon!”

  The monks talking among themselves pointed him out.

  Someone was asking for Simon! It was Bishop Cyril who wanted to see him!

  He did not realize the honor that had fallen to him, for he started to tremble in the presence of the Patriarch’s emissary. That was Peter. He loomed up before him, gigantic, and looked at him with scornful pity.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  He drew him outside, and they started to walk rapidly.

  It’s with a very wretched individual, Peter thought, on the way, that the Bishop wants to converse. He can scarcely keep his feet, and the most complete imbecility is inscribed in his features.

  Simon had, indeed, changed his appearance. He was livid, he was weak. He looked in all directions, as if he were searching for someone. As they went past the Church of Saint Mark in the street of the Sema, without paying any attention to his companion and before the latter could stop him, he went into the church and immediately fell to his knees in prayer on the flagstones.

  “Bishop Cyril is waiting for us,” said Peter, who had followed him, nudging him gently with his knee.

  Simon made no response. Then Peter reflected that he could give him a few minutes to pray. He took advantage of it to assure himself of the exactitude of the caretaker, whom he paid and for whom he was responsible. Sometimes, the caretaker, after having opened the door at the first hour of the day, went to sleep in a corner of the church. Peter thought about the pleasure of waking him up with a few kicks, and set forth to make a tour of the nave.

  He perceived a slight sound in the part that was behind the altar. There was a narrow iron door there, to which he alone had the key, which opened on to a stone stairway. That stairway communicated with vast subterrains that extended beneath the church and far beyond it, through old Bruchium, destroyed by the earthquake. The subterrains had been blocked up and only two rooms had been retained, where religious objects were stored.

  Peter saw a form crouching in front of the iron door, examining the lock. It was a woman. As the sound of his footsteps she stood up and tried to run away. But in the presence of any woman, Peter carried within him the instincts of hunting and violence, which precipitated him forward and caused him to seize her around the waist.

  The rising sun only cast a faint light through the stained glass windows, He grabbed the head, which was moving away, and dragged it toward his own. He uttered a grunt of joy on recognizing Touta.

  She was only a slave, but the most beautiful of all those he knew. He had often encountered her at the market of the gate of the Sun, to which she came every morning. He had pursued her with propositions and obscene words, but she had always drawn away, silent and scornful, along the road that descended outside the city wall toward Lake Mareotis. He had desired her forcefully and had sometimes gone to prowl, in the evening, around the villa full of white roses, in order to try to drag her into some remote place.

  Now he held her in his arms like a palpitating bird.

  “What are you doing here? Why were you looking at that lock?”

  To his great surprise, however, Touta did not manifest any terror. She did not even try to get away. She looked him in the face, half-smiling. He sensed her warm body against him, and here was a hint of abandonment in its movement that made him quiver with desire.

  “I thought I might encounter you,” said Touta. “I was waiting for you. The church was deserted. It’s impossible for me to come at any other time. I have a severe master, and I don’t know what he’d do if he saw me with a Christian.”

  Peter had relaxed his grip. Touta did not flee; she even put her hand on his shoulder with a spontaneous familiarity.

  “You know that there are gold monstrances and pyxes at the bottom of the stairs,” he said. “There are also relics, and certain demoniac pagans try to take possession of them for profanations.”

  She burst into laughter whose echoes resonated under the vault. Peter did not distinguish the exaggeration in that hilarity.

  “Silly! I’d like to see all those riches with you, and how the relics are made. There are some, it appears, that give lifelong good fortune if one touches them. Can you enable me to touch them? Oh, say yes! You won’t refuse me. Take me down with you into the subterrains...”

  No, he did not have the key on him. Bishop Cyril was waiting for him. It wasn’t possible right now. But if she wanted to come back...”

  “Come back! I should think so. I’ve been thinking about meeting you here for a long time. You frighten me a little, but I can see that you’re not nasty. I’ll come back this evening, if you wish, but swear to me that you’ll let me touch the relics?”

  Peter was suspicious. Touta
might perhaps have been trying to steal, and, having been surprised, she was making promises in order to get away. He drew her to him and placed his thick lips on the pure design of the Armenian’s mouth. He ran his hands over her firm breasts and her hips. Stuck to him, she returned his kiss.

  His powerful build and his brutal manner had been worth much vulgar good fortune to Peter. Touta’s disdain, when he had encountered her, might have been feminine feints. That happened sometimes. One pleased women, but they only let one see it later.

  “Well, this evening,” he said. “I live in the little single-story red brick house beside the church. I’ll wait for you there at the first hour of the night.” He laughed coarsely and significantly. “Do you like the wine of the Sais hills? It’s the best in Egypt. I have a few bottles that we can open together.”

  Touta smiled, and her eyelids, in creasing, consented more eloquently than any response.

  Then Peter let her leave and went back to the young monk. He was obliged to lift him up by the shoulders to extract him from his prayer.

  Bishop Cyril was pacing back and forth in the large square room of the Serapeum where he slept and worked.

  Possessed of a narrow faith, he believed himself to be the champion of Jesus Christ, the man chosen to make his religion triumph against the pagans. But he suffered because no celestial sign designated him to the world. He believed in miracles but he had never witnessed one. On the eve of a decisive action he was waiting for a marvelous event, a prophecy, something to indicate to him that he was following God’s path. And as he was a violent man, anger was mingled with that expectation. He aspired to sanctity with all the more force because he knew that he did not have the right to claim it, and if he could, he would have imposed his title of saint by force.30

  A servant came to announce to him that the monk he had asked for had arrived. He ran to the door, shouting “Send him in!”