Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  “Since you hate her,” he said, “you can spend the night with her, in her bed, and you’ll cure your hatred.”

  He watched the two women lay down side by side and he shot the exterior bolt of the door on them.

  In the darkness, Priscilla remained immobile for a long time. She did not even hear her enemy’s respiration, with the consequence that she eventually went to sleep.

  And suddenly, two hands with bones as hard as stone seized her by the throat.

  A merciless struggle was engaged. Priscilla fought with a surprising force. Breast to breast, the two women rolled on the floor. They got up, only to come to grips again, and to fall down again. Sometimes, holding one another by the shoulders, they remained motionless for some time, each waiting for some weakness on the other’s part.

  Priscilla felt the warmth of the body of the Jewess and divined, very close to her in the darkness, the expression of her furious face. She did not experience any terror, or veritable hatred. She had sensed, rising in her soul like a tide, the desire not to be vanquished by the force of evil that possessed Deborah.

  She fought until sunrise, without crying out and without weakening. When the light appeared, it illuminated two disheveled, savage creatures with breasts scratched by fingernails and bites, equally inexorable. Then great spasms began to run the length of Deborah’s body and she fell into one of the convulsive fits to which she was accustomed.

  But her hatred was not appeased by her defeat. That same evening she announced to her confidante Livia, who repeated it to the other women, that she would stab Priscilla in the back when she was not expecting it. Ostentatiously, she sharpened a large double-edged knife that she possessed, sniggering and humming a Syrian song.

  From that moment on, when she went downstairs, when she went to fetch water from the courtyard and when she walked along the corridor, Priscilla had the sensation that the Jewess’s blade was about to plunge into her back.

  She had thought that she wanted to die. She perceived that she was mistaken and that it would be horrible to die like that. She kept on her guard. She spent her time watching over the existence that she thought she could no longer bear. That was a new torture.

  Most of all, it was when she went down with her heavy pitcher on her head that she thought that she might be struck. She waited in order to go fetch water for moments when Deborah was with a man in her room. When she was in the common room and Deborah was drinking she did not lose sight of her, because it was especially when she was drunk that the Jewess was capable of anything.

  But that obsession with murder gave her a strange appetite for life. She perceived that she participated in certain pleasures, that of breathing, that of perceiving soft light, that of receiving and sometimes giving caresses to unknown men.

  She was conscious of that pleasure, but she had no remorse in consequence, and she did not ask forgiveness from God.

  Toward that epoch, the body of the Babylonian Artystone, who was tall and graceful, sprouted smooth swellings. Her hair fell out, her skin split in places and symmetrical tumors appeared under her breasts.

  She was placed in a damp cell at the back of the courtyard, which had once served as a pig sty. The cell was hermetically sealed at dusk, in order that no one would suspect that a woman afflicted by that disease was retained in the brothel. She stayed there all night, without air and light, forbidden to call out. Sometimes, out of pity, a woman went in the darkness to rap on the door, and she responded with an inarticulate cry that emerged with difficulty from her swollen throat.

  They had doubted it at first. The Roman Livia, who claimed to know what to do because she had once lived with a student of the physician Archigenes,36 had made her drunk an aster tisane that cured buboes and had applied cataplasms of boiled hyssop under her breasts. But it was gradually remembered that some time before, Artystone had spent an entire night with a mariner from Capua.

  Capua was notorious for a hereditary disease that its inhabitants transmitted by the act of amour, sometimes even by a kiss, or even by the breath. According to what Artystone had said the next day, that mariner, simulating an exceptional modesty, had refused to take off his clothes in order to go to bed and, in spite of the heat, had kept a thick kerchief around his neck and his mouth.

  The ceased to doubt when Artystone’s face became coppery, when her lips swelled and hung down, when blackish excrescences and tubercles emerged all over her body.

  Fear took possession of all souls.

  Spartacus deliberated as to whether, in accordance with the prescriptions of the Nycteparch, he ought to go find the centurion in order for Artystone to be sent to an island near Zante where there were leprosaria and from which no one ever returned. Alone among the women of the brothel, Priscilla and Deborah consented to care for her and sometimes to sit with her.

  In the afternoon, they went to sit down to either side of the unfortunate woman in the pig sty, the door of which it was necessary to close in order that the nauseating odor of the lesions would not reach the house. By the light of a candle they looked at one another in order not to see the frightful face that separated them.

  Artystone repeated incessantly: “It’s for my sins! It will happen to you too. It will happen to everyone.”

  Even then, Deborah did not abdicate her hatred. Priscilla sometimes thought that she was about to profit from the demi-obscurity to throw the dagger whose handle she was fingering under her robe. Deborah undoubtedly thought about it, but dared not. Between then, the wretched body of their companion was like a wide abyss of dolor that rendered hatred impotent.

  One night, a few men gathered in the low room of Spartacus’ brothel drinking witnessed a strange and terrible sight. Unsteady on her feet, Artystone, who had not been seen standing up for several days, appeared in the doorway that opened to the corridor.

  She had put on a large crimson garment from Persia, which she donned on feast days when she went to walk in the port. The garment fell to her feet; it was interwoven with gold thread and the lamplight gave it reflections of flame and blood. She had put her red Assyrian miter on her bald head and, thus clad, with her empty nose, whose bones had collapsed, her enormous lips and the two green-tinted globes of her eyes, her hand extended, on which there were no longer any fingernails, she seemed a accused queen, a goddess of the subterranean realms where prostitutes must suffer the torture of eternal debauchery.

  Everyone was petrified by horror.

  Then the unfortunate Artystone said a few words in a hoarse, quavering, absolutely unintelligible voice.

  She thanked Spartacus for his humanity because he had kept her in his house. She thanked her friends for having cared for her. Everyone had been good. But she did not want to be a burden. She announced that all the listeners would be struck by a similar disease.

  And suddenly, without anyone having dared to make a move, she disappeared like a nightmare.

  All kinds of herbs were fetched to purify the places where she had put her feet, and Spartacus obtained promises from the witnesses that they would not say anything about that frightful scene.

  Women who were hooking at the extremity of a street ending at the Golden Horn reported the next day that they had seen a spectral empress clad in crimson, an ambulant dead woman who was staggering, a caricature of decomposition, throw herself into the stagnant waters of the port, which closed over her.

  Many different men enjoyed Priscilla’s body, but their caresses passed over her like wind over the sand, without leaving a trace. She forgot their faces and their forms. There were some who loved her and returned frequently. A man named Ibas who owned vineyards on Zante and chartered a boat himself to come to sell his grapes on Constantinople, acquired the habit, during each of his voyages, on spending his nights with her. Two soldiers who wanted her at the same time fought hand-to-hand one day, and she refused herself to the one who had been victorious. A crazy old physician proposed marriage to her and subsequently attempted to poison her because she had not accep
ted. A sadist offered Spartacus large sums of money for the right to flagellate her until death seemed good to her, but as she was not a slave the bargain could not be struck. A mime wanted to teach her to dance and a herdsman who was rich but who only paid Spartacus in kind gave her a dried sheep’s head with glass eyes, which she hung on the wall of her room. A man condemned to death who was being pursued and who was drunk spent an entire night telling her about the pleasure he obtained from murdering women after having loved them. It was in her bed that the condemned man was arrested, and he declared on leaving that what he regretted the most in life was the pleasure he had had with Priscilla.

  Once, a man clad in a white robe, like the philosophers Priscilla had once seen coming out of the Museum in Alexandria, opened the door of her room and sat down familiarly on her bed. He had bright eyes, and he started talking to her. To her great surprise, he made no attempt to take her. He stayed with her for a long time, sometimes caressing her forehead with his hand. Memories returned to Priscilla’s soul. She recalled the Gymnasium, Hypatia, the sages in white robes, and Telamon’s kiss.

  The man quit her without even having kissed her lips. Shortly afterwards, Priscilla perceived with surprise that a dagger, which he had doubtless been carrying in his garments, had slipped out and fallen on to the floor.

  She kept it, and hid it under her mattress, in order to return it to him if he came back. But he never came back.

  And many days passed, bringing joys and pains, always more pains than joys. Priscilla’s beauty developed mysteriously. She became slimmer, with a brighter gleam in her gaze, her hair more heavily twisted over her nape, into which the saffron dye put somber flames. She participated more in petty quotidian events. She took an interest in the quarrels of women, the brutality of men and the misery of all. Her intelligence awoke and grew. She was more desired and more hated. The sensuality that could arise and the dread of Deborah’s knife added salt to her days.

  She started to love life.

  XVI. The Philosopher’s Dagger

  Spartacus was told one day that the Logothete of the Chrysargire taxes would come to his house in the evening.

  That was a redoubtable event. The tax was levied regularly by subaltern collectors who taxed the brothels on the number of women who lived there. demanding more for free women than slaves, the former having cost the brothel-keeper nothing.

  Spartacus had his registers in order and did not attempt fraud, but the coming of the high functionary that the Logothete was could only presage expense and annoyance.

  The Logothete was reputed to be a venal and debauched man who extorted money from brothels by threats and who organized crapulously sumptuous orgies in them at their expense, for which he had a liking.

  Spartacus was immediately obliged to threaten Deborah with the whip. The Jewess declared that she intended to throw the wine that was offered to her in the Logothete’s face. She hated all the functionaries of the Empire that participated in the persecution of her race. Rumor of the expulsion of the Jews of Alexandria had spread throughout the world and that soul in revolt had extracted an excess of fury therefrom.

  All the women had to put in their most beautiful tunics and their colored cothurnes, and arrange themselves round the tables in the low room as if on parade.

  “I’ll prevent him from going upstairs with her, if it’s her he wants,” said Deborah, indicating Priscilla to the other women. And she sniggered hatefully.

  Priscilla’s hand was extended on the table top. Swiftly, without anyone being able to stop her, Deborah took out her knife and delivered a great blow, intended to nail that white hand to the table. The blade plunged between Priscilla’s fingers, vibrating. She felt the cold brush her.

  Spartacus ran forward. The women got up and surrounded Priscilla, whose face had gone pale. At that moment, Livia, who was on watch at the door, shouted that the Logothete had arrived.

  He irrupted into the room violently with three or four functionaries who were his companions in debauchery. He was already drunk. Enormous, under his gold dalmatic, he collapsed into a chair shouting to Spartacus that it was not a matter of taxation but amour.

  “Have crowns of roses been prepared?” he demanded.

  Spartacus had not thought of that.

  The Logothete became indignant, and then started to laugh. “Let all the women strip naked!” he said.

  The majority got ready to do so meekly, but they watched Deborah from the corner of the eye.

  The latter clicked her teeth, trembling with fury.

  But the Logothete swayed to the right and left, and leaned his bull-like neck and bestial head forward. His little eyes blinked. He looked at Priscilla with enormous attention.

  And Priscilla, agape with horror, recognized Peter.

  “What’s the name of that woman?” he stammered.

  “Fabrilla,” Spartacus replied.

  Peter repeated that name several time. “Fabrilla! Priscilla!” he murmured, in a low voice. He seemed bewildered.

  Suddenly, he got up. He almost danced. He fell on to the breast of one of his companions, whom he clutched and embraced, repeating: “She resembles her! How she resembles her!”

  Priscilla calculated the time she would need to bound to the door and reach the street. She braced herself. But she did not have time to put the project into execution.

  Peter’s large moist hands had seized her by the armpits and he squeezed her and lifted her up. He carried her to the staircase.

  “Right away!” he shouted. “I want her right away.”

  Priscilla climbed the stairs with an apparent resignation. She counted on taking advantage of a moment of inattention.

  There was none.

  Peter shoved her into the room, turned over the placard and closed the door. He grunted with satisfaction and repeated to himself: “How she resembles her! How she resembles her!”

  He had a new explosion of terrible joy. He sat down on the stool, laughing.

  Priscilla took advantage of that to run to the door. She had opened it when he grabbed her by the neck and threw her back brutally into the room.

  He was panting with wrath.

  “It appears that I don’t please you,” he said. And he shook her forcefully.

  Priscilla felt her energy dissolve and give way to fear: the frightful fear of a being delivered to a savage beast, the fear that makes one cry out for one’s mother.

  “Get undressed!” exclaimed Peter.

  As she remained motionless, shaken by sobs, he ripped her long linen chemise in two.

  “Kneel down before me!”

  Terrified, Priscilla knelt down.

  “Kiss my feet!”

  Humbly, Priscilla kissed the cothurnes stained with dust and wine.

  Then Peter started laughing, enormously, and he let himself fall on to the bed, but while still holding her by a fistful of hair. He spoke, for he had a need to exteriorize his satisfaction verbally, and while speaking he moved his head closer to Priscilla’s head, exhaling a winy breath over her.

  “You please me. Why did you want to run away? I’ll give you all the money you want. You’re a girl named Fabrilla, aren’t you? From what country? Alexandria, perhaps? Ha ha! In Alexandria, they wanted to murder me. But one doesn’t murder Peter like that. I’ll go back there one day and march over them. I’ll go back with you. Do you know the Church of Saint Mark? Yes, everyone knows it. But there’s only me who knows what’s underneath it, under the ground. There are incalculable treasures, with a cadaver that guards them. I’ll give you jewels that have slept for a thousand years in sarcophagi, necklaces that Cleopatra wore around her neck. But you’re going to lie down here, beside me.”

  Priscilla listened as if in a dream, and internally, she formulated the most ardent of prayers.

  Oh, let Jesus Christ free her from Peter thus minute! Doubtless he wanted to punish her for having allowed herself to lapse into bodily enjoyment. She would accomplish unprecedented penances. She would follow anot
her path. It was her mother who was on the true one. She too would go into the mysterious convent in the middle of the sands and would let herself die there of thirst. But let her be delivered from the pollution that has no name.

  Peter’s voice was thick and Priscilla had seen so many men struck with torpor while drunk that she hoped that he would fall asleep.

  He was still holding her by the hair with one hand, with the other he sometimes caressed her body, moistening it with the dampness of his palm, and he spoke, stirring his memories.

  “You want to deceive me. Your name isn’t Fabrilla but Priscilla. You’re the sister of the idiot and the daughter of the woman who was taken into the desert because she’d had a child by another man than your so-called father, the imbecile Diodorus. How many things one never knows! Me, I didn’t know that I’d end up having you. But I’ll have you. You’re going to lie down here beside me.”

  There had been so many miracles! The one that Priscilla was asking of God was not very difficult. Let slumber weigh upon that man! But not this abomination!

  “Oh, that Priscilla! I went to prowl around her house by night. She might have been fifteen years old then. She was so gentle. If I’d held her in my arms I’d have killed her afterwards, so that she wouldn’t be anyone else’s.”

  Peter had softened; he was almost weeping.

  But suddenly, he straightened up and cried: “Bitch! You, you’re nothing but a whore for soldiers.”

  And he knocked her down on the bed, striking her.

  Priscilla had a second to invoke Jesus and also the other gods whose images she knew to be nearby in the other rooms. She appealed to Isis the merciful, the white Ormuz, Indra with the seven arms. She would belong to the one who saved her.

  But she was not saved. Peter gripped her sides with his arms, pressed her against him, crushed her. He possessed her, insulting her, and she submitted to him as she had submitted to others. But this was too much. This surpassed the measure of horror that a soul can contain.