She knew that he would come into her bedroom and that she would be his, but she had not understood that she would be able to belong to him in that fashion.
So many arms had enveloped her, so many caresses had run over her body. She confounded all those pleasures and she had not believed that there could be any more profound. Physical amour had been for her at first the suffering of a martyr, and then the sadness of a task accepted with resignation, and then a quotidian function, neither good nor bad. Now, abruptly, she had discovered that that state of dream, that joyous impulse to offer oneself, that ineffable complaisance of the flesh, which desire gives the senses when it is mingled with the sympathy of the heart.
It was as if she had been lifted up by a warm wave, carried away in the arms that were kneading her. She had wanted to lose herself like a child in a forest, to evaporate like a perfume in the sun.
“Do you remember when you kissed me,” she said, “in the garden of the Gymnasium in Alexandria? There were white laurels in bloom and jets of water in onyx basins. How I detested you afterwards! How I love you now!”
The lamp threw off a more vivid light and Priscilla’s eyes wandered at random over the tiles of the room, which represented designs of flowers and birds. It seemed to her that the flower-bed in question was animated; sandy paths slid between clumps of spindle trees that had just been watered and she saw brilliant droplets in the foliage, like pearls. A jet of water sprang forth between branches of white laurels and swayed in the middle of the room like an animate individual. Climbing roses on the walls shed their petals around her, raining down on the table encrusted with ivory, on the little lather rug embroidered with silver thread. She was naked and intoxicated in the garden of the Gymnasium of Alexandria. She rediscovered on Telamon’s mouth the perfume of honey and acacia that had tortured her with remorse and desire.
In the middle of the room there was a silver tripod supporting a bronze tray, and on the tray an Arab perfume was burning, the smoke of which rose up, swirling, in a blue-tinted spiral.
As she gazed at that smoke, Priscilla thought she could see the glint of a sapphire there, and a confused face, which was that of Hypatia. There was no reproach in that face, no sadness of jealousy. It seemed to be saying:
Be happy with one another. Thought is multiplied by the desire that beings have for one another. Every harmonious sensuality in a useful note in the concert of the earth and is amplified in echoing indefinitely. In the afterlife, where my intelligence lives, our pleasure permits me to communicate with you subtly. Amour is one of the roads that lead to the spirit.
The things that surrounded her seemed to Priscilla more laden with mystery and beauty. Her from was radiant with life. She read its history in its reliefs and in its color. The little leather rugs at the foot of the bed came from so far away! She saw the caravans in which long black files traversed the gray desert to bring them from Gandhara. Elephants had died in forests in order that the oval doorway facing her, leading to the atrium, could be framed in ivory. She could hear the song of the women of Jerusalem reducing the wood of the Sandalis tree to powder and kneading that powder into a cone in order that the one could intoxicate with its blue-tinted smoke. The flame of the bronze lamp that was reddening over the crimson of her bed and over her nudity, would burn endlessly, like the eternal lamps that watches over the tombs of the Emperors of Rome. She felt that she was enveloped by talismans and spells. King Solomon, Hermes and Zoroaster had combined the power of their magic in order that she should be here, on an enchanted bed, against the warm and naked body of this young man, whom she loved.
She had always loved him. She identified him with all the men whose embrace she had felt.
Every time that, for a minute, she had forgotten the horror of life, in Spartacus’ brothel, it was because he was pressing against her loins. He had borrowed the face of a puerile mariner from Carthage, that of a cataphract with blue eyes; he had been the Illyrian adolescent who came to see her with a guzla, which he played to charm her. He had never quit her since the evening of the first kiss.
She huddled against him and she told him again that she loved him.
“Don’t speak so loudly,” said Telamon, smiling. “The goddess Nemesis might hear you and come running. As soon as humans have too great a sum of happiness, she hastens to snatch it way from them.”
Then Priscilla remembered. The goddess Nemesis was present. She had summoned her to punish. The sixth hour of the night had passed and on the road, with his ear stuck to the shutter, Palladius must have heard what Telamon had said. The bed was next to the window. The rustle of their skin, the creaking of their bones, must have reached him. Every plaint, and every word, had been like a stone hurled at his vanity. He had just been subjected to an invisible lapidation whose wounds would not heal.
“I thought I heard a human respiration behind the window,” Telamon said. “Someone passing on the road must have stopped at the sound of our sighs.”
“You’re not mistaken,” said Priscilla. “Now there’s the sound of heavy footsteps drawing away. I won’t say any more to you except in a low voice, but I believe that the goddess Nemesis has gone.”
Telamon had just thrown his cloak of light silk over his shoulder. He was about to leave. The rising sun was brightening the room with pink. Priscilla had just opened the ivory-framed door opening to the atrium and, with one hand placed on her lover’s shoulder, she was breathing in the fresh air.
Telamon hesitated. He looked at her. He seemed to be searching in her bight yes for vanished images.
“Would you love me more,” she said, “if I told you about my life since the day when I fled Alexandria?”
And without waiting for his response, gripped by a sudden great need to tell her story, to reveal herself, she drew Telamon into the bedroom, and closed the door again.
“Listen…,” she said.
But he shook his head. “No. Later, perhaps. Not now. I don’t want to know what you’ve done, or who you’ve loved. When I was fifteen, I dreamed of being the lover of a statue of Aphrodite that I had seen in the temple of that goddess in Byblos. I imagined that her marble footfalls were about to resonate on the mosaics of the vestibule and that she would come to lie down in my bed, beside me. I would have liked her lips and her torso only to be animated in order to caress me, and that all her possibilities of amour would be enclosed again afterwards in the mystery of the stone. You’re as beautiful as that Aphrodite. A part of my dream has been realized. But I prefer not to know the weaknesses and pleasures of the goddess, and not to know whether many unknown hands have profaned her beauty.”
“But what if I were suffering,” said Priscilla, “what if I had a secret that weighs upon me, a heavy burden of the soul to set down...”
The expression of Telamon’s gaze became more distant. With a slow gesture, he arranged the pleats of his cloak. In an atonal voice he said: “Suffering is the error of those who have understood nature poorly. It’s necessary to strive toward joy. I only want to know your beauty.”
Priscilla withdrew her bare arm from the ray of sunlight that illuminated it and, as if she had suddenly been gripped by modesty, she hid it under her veil.
“I’ll come back this evening,” said Telamon then, “but you’ll remain the Aphrodite of my dream. Later, only then, you can tell me...”
“Yes, only later,” said Priscilla, looking at the sky above Telamon’s head. “You’re right. Everyone is born for one thing. Your part is beauty, and that’s the most beautiful. Mine...”
She stopped. Telamon did not invite her to continue.
“Don’t come this evening,” she said. “I’m going to leave for Alexandria. My father wants to see me again. You can join me out there, or I’ll come back here. At any rate, the statue will be devoid of dolor for you.”
She offered him her cold lips.
Telamon drew away.
That evening, in the public gardens at the bottom of the road to Cenchreae, the Alexandrian philoso
phers, when they met, announced two news items to one another.
The previous night, the poet Palladius had returned to his villa like a madman. He had broken his statues, and trampled his works of art underfoot. He had just embarked for Antioch, without saying adieu to anyone.
At the same time, Priscilla had boarded a ship that set sail for Alexandria.
Antagoras, who was going along the quays at dusk, had seen the two ships leave the harbor at the same time. He reported that Palladius, having perceived Priscilla, had shouted a coarse insult at her from afar, and that she had replied, with a smile on her lips: “It’s in order for you to remember Hypatia.”
XVIII. The Death of the Convent
The funeral of Diodorus had just taken place, with an extraordinary pomp. No one knew of what he had died. His mind had weakened during the last years of his life and it seemed that it had been extinguished by a lack of will.
It was at his funeral that the Christians of Alexandria whispered to one another, for the first time, the news of the unexpected return of his daughter Priscilla. The disappearance of the young woman a few years before had caused a great fuss. Some had believed her to be dead. According to the most widespread opinion, however, she had satisfied, unknown to everyone, the mysterious demands of her nature and had gone to bury herself in one of the convents of Palestine entirely closed to the world, which were not subject to any religious authority and from which one never emerged once one had passed through the door.
Thanks to his fortune and the protection of Bishop Cyril, Diodorus had had enquiries made in all the communities of women, even those on the shores of the Red Sea, which were the most celebrated for the rigor of their rule. He had not found any trace of his daughter but, at length, in accord with the Bishop, he had allowed the rumor that she was in a convent somewhere to be accredited.
It did not appear extraordinary that she had reappeared in order to be present at the father’s last moments. It was said that she had arrived when Diodorus had entered his death throes and that he had hardly recognized her.
She was not seen at the funeral. In any case, the curiosity awakened by her return was eclipsed by another event. Cyril had just returned to Alexandria after an absence of a year. It was at Diodorus’ interment that he appeared in public for the first time.
He had been obliged to go to Constantinople to justify his violence against the partisans of Nestorius. He had entered into a conflict with the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, and the Empire, impassioned by theological questions, had been divided into two camps. There had been fighting in Ephesus, Antioch and Constantinople because Nestorius affirmed that there were two persons in Jesus Christ, while Cyril maintained that there was only one.
The Emperor Theodosius,38 not knowing which to support, had had Nestorius and Cyril imprisoned, but the Council of Ephesus had decided in favor of Cyril. He had been freed, and put back in possession of the patriarchate of Alexandria. He had returned to his city, triumphant but devoured by hatred against his enemies, desirous of crushing the Nestorian heretics definitively, and especially of causing the death of the former Patriarch of Constantinople, who had fled to Arabia and was hiding in a convent there.
Cyril had aged, and, contrary to what happens to the majority of men, the evil sentiments that possessed him had given rose to an exaggerated corpulence. He was bald, his jowls were jaundiced, and his enormous blue eyes bulged even further from his head, only to express pitiless thoughts. Evil had accumulated in his fat body and seemed to ooze out with the sweat of his brow, which he mopped incessantly.
He was acclaimed by the Christians of Alexandria.
Not one week! Not one day! She did not want to wait. The iron fittings of the tents had rusted? It was necessary to run to Alexandria to replace them. There were no camels available? They would find as many as they wished at the market at the Gate of the Sun. Guards for the journey. They were unnecessary. Armed slaves would suffice. And Priscilla gave the order to Thoutmos to choose them carefully from among those who were not Christians.
Her father’s funeral celebrations had not yet concluded when Priscilla already had the authority of a redoubtable master in her house. That authority was exercised first upon Majorin.
The former tutor of Priscilla and Marcus had become a kind of majordomo-in-chief for Diodorus. The weakness of the latter and the incapacity of Marcus had enabled him to acquire the habit of command. A mean and religious spirit, he practiced intolerance toward those whose Christian sentiments appeared to him to be lukewarm. Afflicted by a disease of the liver, he hated everyone who offered an image of health and took pleasure in having the youngest and most vigorous of the slaves whipped under futile pretexts.
That day, the servants occupied in removing the funereal hangings from the staircase saw Majorin emerge from Priscilla’s room and run down the stairs, with her in pursuit, whip In hand.
“Sacrilege!” he cried.
He had seen Priscilla snatch from the walls and throw on the floor the statuettes of saints that were in the four corners of the room. He had attempted to oppose it, and had raised his voice, invoking the name of Bishop Cyril.
The air had whistled around his face, and he hastened to flee.
“Throw in the gutter his clothes and all the objects that belong to him,” Priscilla said to the slaves.
Then Majorin had made a gesture of supplication.
Cracking her whip, Priscilla added: “Call me if he crosses that threshold again.”
Marcus, dazzled by his sister, made no objection to her will and watched with a bewildered gaze the preparations for departure that she was making.
No, she did not want to wait one hour more! In addition to Thoutmos, six vigorous slaves were sufficient to provide an escort.
The cavalcade traversed Alexandria and the quarter of catacombs like a whirlwind and hurtled along the road that ran alongside Lake Mareotis. Priscilla was in the lead, disdaining to look at the landscape, in which she did not want to find reminders of the past.
She saw, however, as if in a dream, the plantations intercut with canals, the hexagonal houses with their varied colors. Late in the night the little caravan arrived at the dilapidated palace of the time of the Ptolemies in which the steward of Diodorus’ cotton plantations lived.
They rested there for a few hours.
Priscilla had decided that they would leave again at first light. Thoutmos reminded her that it was there that they had previously loaded the camels with the provisions of vegetables and fruits that were presents for Zenobia’s convent.
Priscilla shook her head.
But the wind was blowing with an extreme violence. The herdsmen guarding the livestock on the bare hills that preceded the region of sands had come back to shelter in the villages. A caravan had arrived from the desert the previous evening and the camel-drivers had reported that the simoom was blowing there tempestuously.
All day they traveled through whirlwinds of sand. They traversed immense plains strewn with stones, they passed the place known as the “waterless sea” because the waves of the Nile had unfurled there long ago. It was necessary to stop at every well to refill the water-skins, for the air was so hot that it dried up the water through the leather. White powder blinded the eyes, inflamed the throat and covered the men and camels entirely, which gave the impression of carrying shrouds of a sort and made it a cavalcade of specters.
In the evening the wind eased slightly and they camped in the middle of the sand, in an abode of lions. They were no longer very far from their objective. They departed before sunrise, fearful that the tempest might recommence with the daylight.
Then, as if there was a secret communication between them, the animals and he men were gripped by a malaise, an inexplicable anxiety. It did not come from fear of the elements, for as they advanced the wind seemed to die down, the gusts of hot sand fell back, and an extraordinary calm seemed to spread over the desert. It was an internal apprehension that took possession of souls.
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br /> Lions that roared in the distance fell silent and the silence aggravated the anxiety. The light of the sun had not yet appeared, but the sand had recovered a uniformly ruddy hue, the floating dust became ocher and the shadow was a dirty red. The oldest of the slaves, overtaken by weakness, tottered on his camel and began to weep. Another, claiming that he could see menacing forms in the air, uttered cries of terror at times. A discouragement that no one expressed in words showed the progress of the caravan.
Suddenly, Thoutmos, who was in the lead, stopped.
An entire pack of jackals had just fled. The swarming life of those desert scavengers caused everyone to shudder.
There were the bones of a camel mingled with human bones. They were dispersed and mixed up, and some were broken and partly splintered by the teeth of the beasts. Thoutmos recognized by their whiteness that they were not very old.
They set off again. And it was then that the anguishing silence that covered the expanse was troubled by an imperceptible plaint: a quavering, cracked, desperate voice; a frightful appeal, that began to grow and then became a murmur again; the voice of the dead expressing the nameless terror of the beyond.
Priscilla recognized the timbre of the bell that she had heard in the same place in her childhood and she made a sign to her servants to hasten their pace.
A wan, sickly light that preceded the dawn illuminated the bleak stone silhouette of the convent of thirst.
When they arrived at the bottom of the hill, Priscilla ordered one of the slaves to stay there and guard the camels. The others, with Thoutmos, would go up to the convent. Perhaps they would be necessary.
And she commenced climbing the zigzags of the path. But at half way she thought that the slaves would not be necessary and there would not be any violence to employ.
A breath of desolation, a pestilential exhalation of horror, emerged from the door of the convent like a palpable phantom in putrescence, which advanced along the path. The bell was still ringing, and everyone fortified their souls in advance.
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