Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  But Olympios stopped. He measured the distance, the dangers of the journey for a solitary man, the half-savage peoples that it would be necessary to traverse, and he lowered his head.

  “Let’s embrace one last time,” he said, simply.

  When Aurelius looked back, at the place where the path quit the marsh to turn through a grove of palm trees, he perceived his friend in the distance, at the door of his hut, who was still making him a sign, and he thought: All affections make us suffer. We are torn by amour, we are torn by friendship. May I find out there the secret of the serene verity!

  Socles had come to make one last attempt to retain him, but he had not foreseen the astonishing activity that now animated Aurelius. The latter had gone to the port of Eunostos and had reserved his place on a ship that was about to set sail for Tyre that same day at sunset. He had been obliged to bring forward his departure and put his affairs in order rapidly, because, if he missed that ship, two weeks might go by before he could depart, because of the large number of people who were quitting Alexandria for Greece and all the ports of Syria.

  He had just had a long conversation with Mucius the trapezite,34 whose shop was in the emporium. It was him who received the income from his lands and he had regulated the usage that was to be made of it henceforth.

  Socles found his friend clad in his traveling cloak, sitting on the steps of his perron, contemplating the roses of his garden one last time.

  The calm that befits a philosopher was not radiating from his person. Immediately, he stood up, and seemed disappointed on seeing Socles.

  “Have you seen Touta?” he asked. “Touta left this morning and hasn’t come back.”

  And he explained that it was necessary for him to see his slave before his departure and inform her of the arrangements he had made with the trapezite Mucius in order that a part of his income should be put into her hands. In any case, he was anxious about an absence that had never happened before in ten years.

  Socles sat down beside his friend and insisted affectionately that he should renounce his voyage.

  “Plotinus also attempted to reach India, following the armies of the Emperor Gordian, and was obliged to turn back. What guide will you have when you arrive at Circesium, the last city of the Empire? How will you traverse Persia, whose language you don’t know and where those who speak Greek are hated? Oh, I know what you’re counting on: the fraternity of the hierophants of the temples. But times have changed since Apollonius traveled the earth, favorably welcomed everywhere by the priests of different gods, but who celebrated the same mysteries.

  “And supposing that, through a thousand dangers, you reach Attock, Taxila and the River Ganges, what proof do you have that you’ll discover the mysterious brotherhood of sages whose thought directs the world? They assuredly lived in Egypt in the epoch of Alexander, but I only found half-savage priests at the temple of Ammon. Perhaps they inhabited India in the days of Apollonius and Jesus, but four centuries have passed. Where are they now?”

  Aurelius got up, went to the door of his garden that overlooked the road and looked at the horizon to see whether he could perceive Touta’s violet garment in the distance.

  Then, his eyes lowered, he came back to Socles slowly and said to him in a low voice: “The faculty of cherishing the beings that surround us is almost imperishable within us. I confess to myself for the first time that I’m attached to that slave. I find her beautiful. She’s devoted to me. She surrounds me with an atmosphere of affection. Where can she be?”

  And as Socles was about to represent the difficulties of the journey to him again, he stopped him.

  “I have to go. I shall go like Apollonius, without baggage, leaning on a staff. I shall only differ from him in that I shall carry a few mina in my belt converted into Persian coin by my trapezite. I’ve determined the Tyanian’s itinerary, very nearly. I shall follow it exactly, on foot, like him. If it’s given to me to reach the seven clay cells that form the design of a lotus I shall stay out there until I have been instructed in the wisdom. But if I die on the way, which is possible, I count on you, Socles, to watch over Touta, the thought of whom fills me with anxiety at this moment.”

  Aurelius got up again to see whether Touta was about to appear, and then walked back and forth, agitatedly.

  “She’s a child,” he said. “She knows very little about life. A host of procurers emerge from Rhacotis every day in search of young foreign women whom they entice with promises. Who knows what trap she might have fallen into? But I no longer have time to go to the police commander...”

  “Postpone your journey,” said Socles. “Touta will come back, and I’ll have time to succeed in the discovery of Alexander’s tomb. It’s ridiculous to go in search of the truth in the depths of India if we have it alongside us, written on a papyrus by the hands of the masters of wisdom themselves. I’ve been to Menalchos’ house. He’s almost completely mad. When I talked to him about buying his house he fell into a sort of bizarre crisis. I thought that he was about to leap at my throat. But I saw his son, who is direly in need of money, and I’m on the point of settling things with him. I’m convinced that if you wait a few more days...”

  Aurelius shook his head sadly. He did not believe in that chimera.

  “Can the swimmer who wishes to traverse a river and is carried away by the current turn back?” he said. “I am that swimmer, driven irresistibly by the desire for knowledge. But I believe that I can go with the joy of hope in my heart. Nothing can stop me. Regret and anxiety will be my lot. I’ve just discovered an affection of which I was unaware, and affections are tyrants that devastate the soul and deflect us from the path.”

  He went through the door to the vestibule of the house and listened for a few seconds to the sigh of the water-clock. Then he came back to his friend.

  “The captain told me that he would have to depart at sunset because of the favorable breeze that rises at that moment. Doubtless I would rejoice if someone told me that his ship has caught fire or that it isn’t leaving, because of some event independent of my will, but that won’t happen, and I shall embark at sunset, for my reason must hold sway over my sentiments, or my entire life has been an error.”

  The afternoon was about to reach its conclusion. The spring roses had a more penetrating aroma, which mingled with that of box trees and sycamores.

  What! The gaze of the sage, in embracing the trees and the waters, when evening was about to fall, could reflect such a great anguish, such a human despair?

  Rapidly, Aurelius went back into his house and started moving through the rooms. He saw the books in their wooden and metal cylinders lined up on the shelves, as regular and faithful as the evenings of study that he had spent in their company. He saw a cameo before which he had often wept. He saw the room where Touta had slept.

  “Touta,” he repeated, in a low voice. “A slave, nothing but a slave!”

  He went out into the garden again. He picked up his staff and he said to Socles: “The time has come. You can accompany me as far as the port.”

  He closed the garden door again, and they started walking along the road.

  They had covered half a stadion when Aurelius grabbed the arm of his companion. He had to go back. He absolutely had to go back. Socles would wait for him on the road.

  He retraced his steps at a run. He climbed the steps of the perron. He went back inside.

  Another glance at the books, a glance t the cameo, a glance at Touta’s bedroom...

  And he started to write: only a few words for Touta. He began thus:

  When Diodorus, the father of Priscilla, dies...

  He placed the papyrus very evidently. She could not fail to see it. He added a formula of adieu.

  Oh, wisdom truly does not give any strength. The water-clock marked the time inexorably. By hurrying, he would arrive at the port of Eunostos just before the departure. When she came back, Touta would read the papyrus, and those few words that he had just added…

  When s
he same back...

  But she was never to return.

  X. The Tomb of Alexander

  Almost soundlessly, the lock opened, and Touta went down the stone staircase that led to the subterrain of the Church of Saint Mark.

  She knew now that she would not be surprised. The caretaker had just left, without suspecting that she was hidden in the sculpted wooden pulpit from which the Patriach, on certain days, delivered sermons, It had been necessary for her to take advantage of a favorable opportunity to slip into it, and she had remained there for several hours. But now evening had come. It was the hour when Peter was waiting for her at home, in the house next to the church. She was calm and resolute.

  Touta loved her master and did not want to lose him. She only understood very vaguely what the mysterious wisdom might be about which he talked with his friends and dreamed of going to seek in India, but she had discerned in the discussions of the three philosophers that an inestimable papyrus was around the neck of the mummy of Alexander and that possession of that papyrus would fill Aurelius with joy and retain him.

  A room of black marble in ground that had collapsed! Who knows?

  She had heard mention of the legendary Sema, the magnificent and formidable tomb once constructed by kings who put a talismanic value of royal eternity on their conservation. She knew that next to the Sema reposed, in tombs no less splendid, the family of all those kings, all those constructor Ptolemies who had wanted masterpieces of architecture for their remains as astonishing as the palaces in which they had lived while alive. And that had made an incomparable necropolis, an accumulation of cupolas and mortuary chambers, a forest of columns and porticos, a sumptuous city of the dead. People had admired it, gods had fought their battles around it; Jesus, Jupiter and Osiris had enclosed it in a circle of different emblems and statues, and one day, that funerary capital, by virtue of a natural revolution, had descended mysteriously into the earth.

  The pagans had said that the gods had wanted to remove the masters of ancient Egypt from the sadness of the Christian sun. The Christians had claimed that Jesus himself had swept way those excessively splendid vestiges of paganism, and they had edified the vast Church of Saint Mark on the site.

  Who knows? Touta had thought. Since the Church of Saint Mark had subterrains, there was a possibility that those subterrains communicated at one point with the buried tombs.

  On the day of the feast of Saint Mark, the relics of the saint were exposed in the church near the altar. They were taken out of the rooms where they reposed in their gold and silver cases. Then the host of Christians filled the nave and filed past the relics. Touta had followed the crowd the previous year and she had visited the church, which she did not know. The door behind the altar remained open then, and one could descend into the subterranean rooms. In any case, one could only see an ordinary stone staircase and a vaulted gallery with two rooms to either side, which presented nothing curious, and one of which was entirely filled with candles that people bought for religious purposes.

  But Touta, who had gone down there to pass the time, had noticed a wooden door at the extremity of the gallery, which had intrigued her. She had wondered at the time where that door might lead. She had not attached any importance to it, but the memory of that door had returned to her when she had heard Socles talking about the tomb of Alexander and making hypotheses as to its approximate position. And she had conceived the audacious project of penetrating into the tombs via the church.

  In case of difficulty, she had resolved to go find Peter and offer herself to him, if he would help her. She did not worry about her disgust. What did the gift of her slave’s body matter by comparison with the grandeur of the result?

  And she glimpsed a sublime moment. The three philosophers were sitting out there in the rose garden, and she was gently stirring the air around them with a palm. They had just resumed their habitual subject of conversation. Socles was speaking with abundance and conviction. Her master was doubtful and shook his head. But when he repeated: “I don’t believe in that papyrus,” she, the maidservant, the slave, advanced and said, simply: “I’ve been to look for it—here it is!”

  At the bottom of the stone staircase, Touta struck a briquette and lit a little bronze lamp that she had hidden under her garments. It was an oil lamp that only cast a miserable glow. Behind that drop of light she arrived at the end of the gallery. But then she saw the room where he great piles of candles were heaped. She seized one of the stoutest and lit it instead of her oil lamp.

  She examined the door and ran the flame of the candle over the lock. Luck favored her again. The door could not have been opened for years. It was worm-eaten, and the wood was disjointed. The lock was shaky and she saw that it would yield to the iron hook that she had bought even more easily than the lock of the first door.

  Her heart beat faster. Destiny seemed to be favoring her expedition.

  A few minutes later, the lock fell to the ground and the door yielded to her effort and swung open before her.

  Touta gazed into the darkness.

  It seemed to her that a damp breath, a subterranean exhalation, was coming from very far away, cold and mephitic: an almost living respiration that died at her feet and tilted the flame of the candle, which she had placed on the ground. It was like the sight of the Amenti where the dead trailed. And there was something melancholy and terrifying in that sadness of another world, exhaled silently by the corruption of that breath.

  But Touta had a simple and firm soul that was never tormented by the mystery of the afterlife. She saw nothing but the goal to be attained and she had made the sacrifice of her life.

  She secured her briquette preciously in her linen belt, for she knew that the greatest danger for her was being lost in the darkness. She picked up the candle, measured its length with her eye, which would give her several hours of light, and she advanced resolutely into the unknown.

  The gallery sloped downwards. Touta walked for quite a long time. She saw, not without astonishment, that the vault and the walls were not very ancient in their contrivance, and must date from the epoch in which the Church of Saint Mark had been built. For her that was a fortunate augury. Her only chance of success reposed on the knowledge that the architects of the church had had of the Sema and the tombs of the Ptolemies. In building the foundations they might have found a part of them and established a gallery enabling them to be reached.

  Touta had heard Socles speak abundantly on that subject and emit all possible hypotheses. He said that Johannes of Corinth, the architect to whom the care of building the Church of Saint Mark had been confided, was simultaneously a pious Christian and a scholar passionate about the beauties of antiquity. He could not have edified a church on ground in which the most admirable monuments of Alexandria reposed without carrying out research to find them.

  Socles claimed to know that the construction of the Church of Saint Mark had taken an unusually long time and that that time had been employed by Johannes in excavations. He affirmed that Johannes had changed the origin disposition of his plans and modified the orientation of the church in order not to disturb the tombs that he had discovered. He could not have failed to construct some kind of secret way to penetrate as far as the tombs himself. But he had drowned while bathing in the sea at the moment when the last stones of the church were about to be placed. He had left no children or close relatives and it seemed that no one had inherited his secrets.

  Touta remembered Socles’ speeches as she walked. She had heard him give the measurements of monuments, and specify their position relative to the church with so much exactitude that she was not astonished to see the gallery she was following turn left. It was to the left of the church, she had concluded, that the Sema ought to be found.

  To the left! She thought that a few feet above her was the brick house of the wretched Peter, who was waiting for her, and she smiled in satisfaction.

  She stopped. In front of her here was a narrow stairway. There was no longer any dou
bt. Socles’ hypotheses were accurate. Works dating from the epoch of the church had extended this gallery and these stairs toward the rediscovered tombs. If that had not been the case she would have found herself in the presence of a chaos of rubble and ruins. She had seen clearly. Perhaps she was about to reach her goal. She felt faint.

  A deleterious atmosphere full of miasmas, almost unbreathable, was stagnating in the spiral stone stairwell that she had begun to descend. It seemed to her that she was entering an abode of granitic decomposition, of mineral putrescence, as if down there, far from the vivifying solar light, the dead stones were rotting. She was penetrated by a sepulchral impression so gripping and so horrifying that memories of religious beliefs that dated from her earliest childhood surged forth from the depths of her soul.

  Once, in Armenia, she had been raised in the religion of Zoroaster. But since then, as a slave in Syria and Egypt, she had heard mention of so many different gods, had seen so many statues and so many temples that Ormuz with the luminous robe and Ahriman with the three grimacing faces had been effaced from her thoughts.

  And now, suddenly, she found herself on the threshold of the subterranean realms, at the door to the Hell that had been described to her when she was very small, on winter evenings in her village in Armenia.

  It was just as she had imagined the departure from life. She recognized the funereal entrance, the endless stairway. She had seen it before in dreams. She experienced the pitiless solitude of the being who will never see daylight again or the faces of beloved individuals. Yima, the master of the dead, was waiting for her down below, surrounded by the Drujs who go to search for bodies and the Yatus who carry out their metamorphoses. And she advanced all alone, raising her faint candle toward the menacing night, like the symbol of liberating good deeds.