Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  When Priscilla, taking a short cut, had reached the wall of the convent and had passed through the door, she found herself in the presence of a terrible and singular spectacle.

  A skeleton of tall stature covered with yellow-tinted skin, from the skull of which sprang white hair of an extraordinary vivacity—a feminine and living skeleton covered in vague rags—was agitating the bell-rope frenetically with all her might, with bizarre laughter and dance-like contortions. Several birds were flying around her head, making her a sinister aureole and watching for the first moment of immobility in order to strike with their beaks.

  In that demented creature, Priscilla recognized the Syrian Zenobia.

  But she did not stop to consider her. Mastering her horror, she only darted a hateful glance at her, and she ran into the courtyard rapidly.

  To begin with, she could not distinguish anything in the ruddy auroral twilight but the flapping wings of a great flock of vultures that rose into the air, circling.

  Several half-consumed cadavers lay in the sand, outside the cells. The tortured expression of what remained of the faces, and the jutting bones, indicated a death from hunger and thirst after indescribable suffering. One head had taken between its teeth the wood of a door and life must have fled with that illusion of nourishment.

  One woman was kneeling, her hands joined, in an attitude of invocation, and her plucked-out eyes attested to the manner in which divine aid had been manifest for her.

  Another, prey to madness, had scaled the wall of the enclosure and set herself astride it, and death must have struck her while she was miming a caricature of flight on horseback.

  Priscilla divined the drama that had occurred.

  In the tempest that had been raging for several days, the nuns charged with going to fetch the provision of water for the week must have died. Doubtless a delivery of food supplies had also been delayed, and the few miserable creatures who had escaped until then the torture of the solitude had succumbed one by one to thirst and hunger.

  The birds swooped down again, gliding.

  Priscilla took a few steps into the courtyard, and it seemed to her that she heard a faint groan. She saw a woman on the threshold of the chapel, the door of which was open. The woman was lying face down and protecting her face with her arms, which she was holding tightly over her eyes. Priscilla understood that she feared the thrusts of the vultures’ beaks, and she made a sign to the slaves to advance and drive them away by agitating their cloaks.

  She wondered why that woman had preferred to struggle in the dark against the carnivores, beside her dead and decomposing companions, rather than drag herself inside the chapel and find shelter there by shutting herself in.

  Gently, she raised the head of the unfortunate woman, whose plaint trickled like blood from a wound, and leaned over her.

  What a fleshless, emaciated, exsanguinated face! It almost had the same mortuary appearance as the madwoman who was ringing the bell. The gaze seemed dead, and did not revive. Only fear sometimes caused a glimmer to be reborn there.

  In the gleam of the eyes, however, in what remained of the features, within that vestige of humanity, Priscilla thought that she recognized her mother.

  She brought the face close to hers and repeated, several times: “I’m Priscilla! I’m your daughter!”

  But that did not seem to evoke anything for her. She stammered, very faintly, a name unknown to Priscilla: “Aurelius!”

  And as she was still raising her arms to hide her face, in the dread of the vultures, Priscilla called Thoutmos and they both carried her under the narrow vault of the chapel.

  But then, Priscilla’s mother, vaguely perceiving the coolness of the stones, was reanimated, sat up, and uttered a frightful clamor of terror. She attempted to flee, to escape the altar and the cross, and, struggling, she pointed at an invisible image by which she thought herself menaced and she repeated: “There he is! The Bishop! Bishop Cyril! Pardon!”

  It was necessary to take her back to the threshold of the church. She preferred the odor of cadavers, the presence of death and the devouring vultures to the calm chapel where her ever-terrified soul discovered the evil genius of her life.

  And she expired a few minutes later, when the first ray of sunlight posed upon her.

  The slaves had taken the bodies of the dead women down to the bottom of the hill in order to bury them.

  The birds were high in the sky.

  Priscilla darted one last glance at the convent of desolation and death. She looked at the bare cells, the mute chapel, and the walls of that pitiless tomb of ascetics.

  And before the Christ devoid of ornamentation she said: “A curse on your religion, which kills happiness, which uproots from exalted souls the love of life, and does not even give in exchange the particle of justice that they have the right to demand. A curse on you, whose worship distances people from the spirit instead of bringing them closer. You wanted the mother to be locked up here in a prison where prayer was futile, and the daughter to be locked up out there in a convent where pleasure was devoid of hope, in order that their bodies should be broken and their souls martyrized by an equal dolor. You have engendered nothing but self-destructive revolt. Because of you I am animated by an inexorable thought of vengeance that will not perish with my life.”

  The sun now illuminated the hill and the horizon of sand with a taint of ardent flame.

  Zenobia the Syrian was still hanging on to the bell-rope, and Thoutmos had tried in vain to extract it from her hands.

  “Should we take her away by force?” he asked Priscilla.

  She laughed bitterly.

  She approached the fanatical guardian who had invented that tortuous way of life and had made other women share it with her against their will. For if there had been mystics who had come to suffer and die there of their own free will, there had also been weak creatures whom she had maintained in that Hell by her authority and her religious fury.

  And her mother was one of them. Priscilla would have like to slap her, to fight a duel with her. She gazed at the skeleton agitated by convulsions without experiencing any pity.

  “Leave her,” she said to Thoutmos. “Let her die where she wanted to live.”

  The caravan had not gone far along the trail that led toward Alexandria when the sound of the bell quavered and was interrupted, and then rang out again, more cracked, and then expired.

  The little troop emerged from the shadow projected by the hill of stone, and only then did the camels raise their heads again and the men breathe more easily; and as if a malevolent influence had dissipated, anguish ceased to oppress their souls.

  XIX. The Severed Hand

  It was no longer a secret for anyone that the cobbler Theonas possessed a desiccated hand, one of Hypatia’s, which he had cut off himself in front of the Church of Caesarea after the stoning of the philosopher.

  At first, fearing reprisals, he had only shown it to his friends, but now he drew vanity publicly from that possession. He had hung it up on a nail in his shop and he showed off his knife with pride, saying: “It was with this tool. I only had to slash once. The hand came away and I cut it.”

  He also explained, obligingly, the method by which he had dried it in order to conserve it, and he pointed with one of his fingers at a slight circular depression, which was the trace of a ring. He had sometimes prided himself on having that ring in his possession.

  Theonas was a colossus with a dense brain. He scarcely left his shop in Rhacotis where he worked leather and wove sandals of palm-fiber. He slept on a meager bed at the back and a nauseating odor of tanned hides and human dirtiness escaped into the street.

  He fell ill. He had eaten corrupted meat. He had fits of vertigo and vomiting. It was the first time in his life that he had been afflicted in the strength of his body. He did not get out of bed. He allowed himself to fall into the dejection that the fear of death causes.

  Three whores from a small brothel next door to his shop came to care for hi
m. They took turns to bring him tisanes, and when night fell, they lit a lamp beside his bed. They did not love him, but in exchange for their bodies they sometimes obtained brodequins with straps.

  The one with whom he had gone most frequently was a Nabataean named Sara. It was her who penetrated into his shop on the evening of the third day of his illness, lit the lamp and placed next to the bed the cakes made from flour and honey that the proprietress of the house next door had prepared for him.

  He thanked her with an unaccustomed mildness and he drew from the horrible sheets on which he was lying a small object wrapped in a greasy cloth. It was a ring with a blue stone of an extraordinary purity. He showed it to Sara and he said: “One day, I’ll give you this jewel if you care for me and if you love me.”

  It was that same evening that Bishop Cyril decided to go and see Theonas.

  The death of Hypatia had caused a surge if indignation throughout Christianity. Cyril had had a great deal of difficulty disculpating himself and distancing himself from the horror of that crime. It had been necessary for him to buy the testimony of Count Candidianus,39 charged by the Emperor to carry out an investigation. He did not want any further mention of Hypatia. He had been informed by several sources that a cobbler was glorying in having in his shop a desiccated hand that was that of the philosopher. It was a subject of scandal to which it was necessary to put an end. Times had changed. Such memories could only throw discredit upon his triumph. It was appropriate to give a sepulcher to that accusing hand.

  He had the Parabalanus Paulin accompany him, who knew where the cobbler lived, and he set off on foot for Rhacotis.

  “It appears that he’s an obstinate brute, said Paulin, on the way, “and the presence of the Patriarch himself might not be sufficient.”

  The back street into which they had just penetrated was sordid. They bumped by turns into piles of rubbish or women crouched in doorways muttering obscene invitations as they passed. Sometimes, luminous liquid fell from a window. The night was dark and the two men were almost feeling their way.

  “I think this is it,” said Paulin, indicating a door that stood ajar. “Theonas!” he shouted.

  There was no response. Then he pushed the door and stood aside before Cyril.

  The latter took a step forward, but remained immobile, struck by the offensive odor of leather and dirty linen, with which a strangely insipid and repulsive perfume was mingled. His eyes adapted to the demi-obscurity and he uttered a fearful exclamation.

  Above a small wooden table bearing the cobbler’s tools, Cyril saw a hand attached to a nail by a piece of lambskin. But it was not the hand he had imagined. This one was a large, hairy hand of a man, with square fingers and blackened fingernails—a hand freshly severed, for a drop of blood sometimes dripped from it and fell on to the table. Cyril perceived with horror the minuscule sound of that regular drip.

  At the back, on the bed, the cobbler was lying. As if it were as heavy as lead, his head made a profound depression in the bed, into which it was plunged. His left arm was dangling, frightfully mutilated. It had been sectioned at the wrist and a flood of blood had escaped from it, soiling the wooden floor of the room. That arm must have been twisted and broken by a brutal grip, for it was swinging slowly, like something deprived of all resistance, inert and limp.

  Cyril approached and saw that the cobbler Theonas was dead.

  He understood immediately that he was in the presence of a belated vengeance of the death of Hypatia. He saw the danger that there was for him and the church if that affair were resuscitated by a scandal. It was necessary to reflect. He made an imperious sign to Paulin to close the door.

  It was too late.

  There was a woman on the threshold. She uttered exclamations and raised her arms to the heavens, repeating: “I knew it! He’s been murdered!”

  Cyril seized her by the arm and dragged her inside. He intimated an order to explain to him in a low voice what she knew.

  She knew everything. She had warned Theonas personally several times. The dead sometimes come back. She knew many examples of those returns. Theonas was not a very bad man, but he was devoid of judgment and prudence. Three days ago, the malady had weakened his mind. He had been well cared for. She had made pastries herself with his intention. And yet life was hard, one was heaped with taxes. Men broke glasses, even broke stools while fighting with one another. She had three women in her house, but they were scarcely beautiful and were only desired by mariners and camel-drivers. Theonas sometimes gave footwear, but never money. It was known, however, that he possessed a valuable jewel hidden somewhere in his mattress. He had shown it to her sometimes.

  Because of that it might be claimed that thieves had murdered him; but no, it wasn’t thieves. Why would they have cut off his hand? Thieves kill and flee, and don’t hang a severed hand on a wall. Anyway, she had seen. She was on her doorstep, as usual, to appeal to passers-by and indicate the price of the women—a very modest price! She had seen two shadows gliding past. But one of them was a woman and she believed that she had recognized her...

  She had recognized Hypatia.

  The two shadows had gone into the cobbler’s shop. She had wanted to listen, but she had not dared. She knew that it was Hypatia, who was coming to reclaim her hand. She had told Theonas many a time that it would happen. He laughed. Now, he was dead. There had been cries. He must have tried to avoid giving back the ring. He hadn’t struggled. He was so weak! The two shadows had departed without haste. The dead woman marched ahead. The second shadow, that of a man, gave the impression of being the slave of the first. Can the dead have slaves?

  “Were there other people than you who knew that Theonas was ill?” asked Cyril.

  “Certainly. Neighbors, the three women in my house, especially the Nabataean Sara, who brought him my cakes.

  “No one would be astonished, then,” said Cyril, “if they learned that Theonas had died tonight of his illness?”

  “No one except me.”

  Cyril uttered a sigh of satisfaction. The affair could be stifled. He would buy this woman’s silence. The commander of the night watch was a good Christian who was devoted to him, and by whom he could have the cobbler’s body carried away as if he had been afflicted with a contagious disease.

  The first thing to do was to go with the woman to the centurion of the quarter and to inform the commander of the watch.

  A vengeance, he said to himself, on the way. But whose? Perhaps simply thieves. And he repeated, in order to convince himself: The dead don’t come back.

  XX. In the Shade of the Bodhi Tree

  Accompanied by his master Nanda, Aurelius had quit the Buddhist community of Palibothra and had started walking, clad in the yellow robe of pilgrims, toward the confluence of the rivers Niladjan and Mohara, to reach the place where, in the shade of broad-leaved mahouas, among sansar and bir bushes, the Buddha had discovered the truth.

  They had both traversed the village of Senani, which looked like a cluster of thatched huts surrounded by a crown of palm trees and they had climbed a small ridge. An immense forest commenced there.

  Indicating a marvelous tree, taller and bushier that the others, Nanda said to his companion: “That is the Bodhi Tree under which, a little before daybreak in the one hundred and third year of the Eatzana era, on the day of the full moon of Katsou, the Buddha sat down, cross-legged, and where he found within his spirit the divine science by means of which humans can escape the wheel of eternal reincarnations. The foliage of that tree will never fade again. The water of the stream that flows past it is charged with aromatic juices that give those who drink from it a facility of ecstasy, and the air that circulates over this hill is impregnated with wisdom.”

  Nanda and Aurelius slaked their thirst in the aromatic stream, put down their staffs, sat down cross-legged under the branches of the Bodhi Tree, and looked into themselves.

  Snakes slid among the starry flowers of white and gold Champaks; gazelles approached and considered them
fearlessly; butterflies and hummingbirds fluttered around them, and the sun went down.

  Evening came.

  Then Nanda emerged from his meditation and touched Aurelius on the shoulder.

  “Has calm returned to you now?” he asked.

  Aurelius shook his head sadly, indicating that it had not.

  “Since I’ve arrived in this sacred place,” he said, “contrary to my expectation, I’ve been more anxious and more troubled, and my thoughts wander with more ardor among the things of the past. It seems to me that I’m held by a powerful chain, which a human creature, who is linked to me without knowing it, is pulling from afar.”

  Nanda stood up, picked up dry leaves and a few branches of dead wood, took his briquette from his pouch and lit a small fire. Thick smoke rose up from it. Then he started to chant a kind of invocation. Afterwards, he extended his hand, placed his thumb between Aurelius’ eyes, and said: “Look!”

  In the white spirals of smoke that were rising before him, Aurelius saw, with a gripping reality, without being able to discern whether what he was seeing was close at hand or distant, a miserable room with a bed. On that bed, two nearly naked human forms were lying. One of them was that of a stout man who was sleeping heavily, and whom he did not know. The other, slightly raised on one elbow, was that of Priscilla. He saw her straighten up further. She leaned over the man, her face full of passion, hesitated, and suddenly, with a great sweep of her hand, armed with a dagger, she traversed the man’s throat, which she pinned to the wood of the bed.

  The cloud of smoke became the color of blood, and Aurelius uttered a cry of horror.

  At the same instant, another image appeared. It represented a white cell whose door had an opening in the form of a cross. In that cell, a woman was sitting who was gazing obstinately at the ground. Her face was ravaged, furrowed by wrinkles. Her hair was sparse and white. She was not praying. She had no expectation. Her lips murmured a name: “Aurelius!”