Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  And she gazed obstinately at the ground.

  Then Aurelius hid his head in his hands. Then he got up, and he stood in front of Nanda, who said to him: “We are chained to life, and we multiply our chains by our actions and by our thoughts. You loved a woman, and you created by that love a Karma of which you will receive the good and evil retribution. A child has been born of you and the actions that child accomplishes are indirectly yours, and if she sheds blood, you will pay the price of it in your future lives. The search for wisdom is not sufficient reason to flee the consequences of what you have done, and there is a manner of aiding those one loves that takes you further along the perfect path than the wisdom of the most sage. In any case, that wisdom is the jewel hidden in the heart of the lotus, to which a man can only pretend when all debts are paid, all duties accomplished, all amours purified.”

  “It is still very far away from me,” said Aurelius, sadly.

  “Perhaps. But perhaps you’ll discover soon that you carry it within you without suspecting it. The seed that requires an entire winter to germinate under the earth sometimes only requires an hour to enable its stem to appear in the sunlight, on certain spring mornings. Go, return to the country from which you came. Since the evening when I encountered you, naked and exhausted, on the bank of the River Ganges, and when I took you to the convent of Palibothra, I have taught you the fruit of transmitted knowledge, the illusion by which we are enveloped, the seven human bodies, Tanha, the force of desire that drives us to be reborn in new lives, inexorable Karma, the four noble virtues the practice of which leads men to nirvana, the end of change and perfect repose. You have slept in the cell where Apollonius slept and you have just meditated in the place where the Buddha meditated. But your mind has always been tormented, dragged down, and when you receive the highest teaching you demand material proofs, not knowing that the higher a truth is, the less, perhaps, it can be verified by the senses.”

  “That’s true,” said Aurelius. “I have had the dream of seeing the wise men who direct humanity, those with whom Apollonius conversed. You’ve told me that they quit Palibothra a long time ago in order to go beyond those high mountains, which seem to close the earth, into the Gobi desert which surrounds the subterranean city of Shambala with its uncrossable sands. You’ve told me that one of them sometimes returns to Palibothra and that you have conversed with him. I hoped ardently to kneel before him, to kiss his robe, to collect an immortal robe—in vain. Often, I’ve woken up at night in my cell, to listen, in case the light tread of an ascetic is brushing the stone of the corridor. But no, the convent of Palibothra has not received the marvelous visit.”

  “How do you know?” said Nanda. “All eyes do not see, all ears do not hear. You will end up seeing and hearing, but only when there is no longer an image or a sound on the earth that makes you tremble.”

  “Shambala in the Gobi desert is much further away from the Egypt where I might perhaps succeed than Palibothra. Do you think, all the same, that one day…?” asked Aurelius.

  “Distance does not exist for them. When the time comes, they will be beside you.”

  Nanda had risen to his feet. He drew Aurelius away from the shade of the Bodhi Tree. They went down the hill. Night had almost fallen. After the last thatched huts of the village of Senani there were two roads that intersected.

  “It’s here that we’re going to separate,” said Nanda, “but for a mendicant monk, the journey is too long and too dangerous. Take this.”

  He handed Aurelius a small bag that he took out of his pouch, and which was full of gold coins.

  “The sharaff of the next town will change these ancient coins into current money. It is via Taxila, the city where King Asoka lives, that you must reach the Indus and descend as far as Caumara, on the edge of the sea. There, ships belonging to the Jewish colonies depart frequently for the Red Sea, with cargoes of spices, aromatics and ivory. Embark on one of them and you’ll shorten your voyage to Yanavapura, which you call Alexandria, by at least a year.”

  He hugged Aurelius in his arms and strove not to let any emotion resulting from that separation show.

  “Amity also chains us to the wheel,” he said then, so softly that Aurelius was not sure that he had heard him.

  Several times, when they had parted, Aurelius looked back to see the stooped silhouette of the old sage decreasing in the shadow.

  But the old sage did not look back.

  XXI. The Chain of the Dead

  Thoutmos preceded Priscilla long a narrow street in the Necropolis quarter. The heat was overwhelming, in spite of the darkness that had fallen, and an odor of putrescence rose from the ground.

  “It was almost at the same hour when we passed this way on the day of your grandfather’s death,” said the old slave. “That was many years ago! Do you remember it?”

  Did she remember it! She had often relived in thought the hours spent in the home of the embalmer, had often heard in her memory a low whispering voice that did not express itself by means of lips and which had said: “Priscilla it’s you, Priscilla!”

  She had never forgotten Sebek, the embalmer with the triangular beard, and his wife Khepra, the Rhacotis prostitute who had stared at her with moist glaucous eyes and had placed a little stone between her breasts while she slept, the contact of which had burned her.

  At the moment when he was about to push a wooden barrier giving access to a patch of waste ground strewn with rubbish, Thoutmos stopped.

  “She makes a beverage with male hemp and palm wine,” he said. “Often, she drinks too much of it. Don’t be astonished if she says extravagant things. She always remains lucid with regard to what you want.”

  They traversed the waste ground and Thoutmos knocked on the door of a low house.

  A shrill voice shouted: “Who’s there?”

  The judas grille allowed a glimpse of glaucous eyes, and the door opened immediately.

  Priscilla did not recognize the woman who was standing before her. Khepra had aged extraordinarily, and most of all grown fat. Her face, furrowed with wrinkles, was enveloped by unhealthy yellow fat from which the eyes emerged, secreting an impure water. With her bushy red hair, her fleshy lips, her breasts sagging over an enormous belly, and legs that seemed frail, she gave the impression of a tragic beast, whom desire had bloated and rendered similar to a wineskin.

  Behind her, the colored bottles, the sachets full of perfume, the tongs, the knives the minuscule tools that served for embalming, and the aligned golden masks with enamel eyes, added by their enigmatic assembly to the strangeness of her form.

  It was for pleasure that Khepra had practiced prostitution in Rhacotis all her life, for the embalming gave Sebek a certain ease. Now, she could no longer find men, even for nothing. So she went to prowl the cemeteries by night, where she ended up coupling with some thief or runaway slave.

  On perceiving Priscilla she uttered a savage cry of admiration.

  Thoutmos had no need to provide an explanation. Yes, it was the little princess who had slept there once! How she had grown! How beautiful she was!

  And suddenly, she guffawed. She sat down, shaken by enormous laughter.

  Khem! The god Khem! He must have thrown her on her back! There had been no lack of men! That was why she had become beautiful!

  Priscilla looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  “You don’t remember the little stone Priapus that I put between your breasts. He never misses its goal. You must have received pleasure and you must have rendered it, and done it over and over again. Ha ha!

  And she continued laughing.

  But Thoutmos intervened. It was a matter of something else. She could ask for any sum of money she wanted. The figure was unlimited provided that the secret was kept.

  “I understand,” said Khepra, exultantly. “It’s a matter of amour. You did well to come to find me. I have roots from Ethiopia, Arab mandrakes and the famous blue hellebores from the land of Serica. If there’s a man who has refused you, you’ll h
ave him in your bed whenever you want. I’ll even make him swoon so often against you that he’ll die of exhaustion. I exercise influences by means of perfumes, ointments, potions, poisons, light, strings that are made to vibrate and mirrors on which one spits. I’m at your orders, little princess of amour!” And with a sudden alteration in her features and a hoarser tone in her voice, she added: “Me, I’m just an old and worn-out carcass, which no one wants whatever I do.”

  Priscilla shook her head and made a sign to Thoutmos to indicate that she wanted to remain alone with old Khepra.

  “Death is easier to transmit than amour,” said Khepra, when they were alone. “Speak, Whose do you want?”

  No, it was not that, yet. Death was perhaps a great good. It was to favor a man who had been evil to deliver him from life.

  “I want him to suffer as much as the suffering he has caused,” Priscilla murmured, her eyes fixed.

  “I can do anything, thanks to them. They will aid us with their strength.” Khepra pointed to the low door at the back, framed by canopic jars covered in hieroglyphs.

  “Who?”

  “You’re lucky,” Khepra went on. “The embalmed are numerous at the moment. Men want to live the life of their double, miserable as it might be. There are even Christians! Come and see—the room is full. I’ll make them work for you.”

  And Khepra drew Priscilla into the next room.

  She was struck by the same sensation of sad and stifling perfumes and occult life that she had experienced before. Here was a tremulous little oil lamp. To the right, the more recent dead were lying in stone sarcophagi and bathing in natron water. Those on the left has passed the forty days prescribed and were wrapped in bandages, covered in gold leaf, or already bore the mask with enamel eyes that was to be their face during eternity.

  And all of them, invisible, were there.

  “Have you any object belonging to the one you want to make suffer?” asked Khepra.

  Priscilla had heard mention of these magical practices, which the recent emperors had punished with so much severity and had been the pretext for cruel persecutions. Just in case, she had taken from her brother’s room a little sachet containing a fragment of the mantle of Saint Athanasius that Bishop Cyril had worn round his neck for a long time, and had given to Marcus at the moment of his father’s death.

  She handed it to Khepra.

  “I can distinguish a miter, a priestly costume, bulging eyes and a beard... It’s the Patriarch!”

  She picked up a piece of black wood that had a vaguely human outline and, with five nails in the form of a cross, she nailed the relic to the simulacrum of the head.

  “Don’t move,” she said to Priscilla, “and concentrate your life on this piece of wood. With the rhythm of the seven syllables that penetrate into the Amenti and command the invisible forms, I’m going to create the chain of the dead that will draw the man you hate in spite of himself and will make him penetrate this emblem by force.”

  Rapidly, she had set fire to blocks of charcoal on a little tripod and she poured a red powder over them that spread a suffocating odor.

  “It’s the same perfume that makes the doubles live next to mummies,” she said.

  Priscilla was about to ask what “concentrating her life” meant, but the witch began circling the piece of wood to which the sachet was nailed and cried: “See! It’s necessary to see!”

  Than Priscilla pictured the image of Cyril forcefully, and concentrated her mind upon it.

  From Khepra’s throat a bizarre modulation emerged, a series of sounds that did not form words and sometimes resembled a prayer and sometimes an imperious summons. Her huge belly agitated on her little legs, she threw her arms in the air, her wrinkled face took on an ecstatic expression, and she gave the impression of a caricature of a drunken frog.

  From time to time she shouted to Priscilla: “Look hard!” and she spun more rapidly. Sweat trickled from her brow.

  That went on for a long time. In the end, Khepra let herself fall on the ground. Her body was agitated by convulsive tremors. Her face had a terrible expression.

  “He’s entered into the chain of the dead. He’s resisting, but it’s necessary. The dead have taken him. Now he’s there. You can do whatever you wish to him.”

  She took several deep breaths, with difficulty. Then she wrapped the piece of black wood in a rag and handed it to Priscilla.

  “There are people on whom one can’t cast a spell, but very few. Those who are pure! Cyril isn’t one of those. And also those who are strong. He’s that even less. You can make him suffer as much as you want. You only have to pass the piece of wood over gold or ivory and put a mirror beside it. Then imagine what you want the man to experience and look, not at the piece of wood, but its image reflected in the mirror. You won’t have to make a great deal of effort. He’s caught in the chain of the dead. The others will come running. If you knew how rapidly the dead communicate with one another! And there are few of them who forgive!”

  Priscilla hid the object under her robe. She went out of the room of the sarcophagi. She summoned Thoutmos.

  Khepra was tottering. She seemed very weary. In her slack yellow cheeks there were two wrinkles more profound, more sorrowful.

  On the threshold, Priscilla took off one of her rings and handed it to her.

  Khepra hesitated. A flame passed through her eyes. She considered the ring, whose diamond flashed.

  “You’re not afraid?” she said.

  “Of what?”

  “There is in that ring a little of the fluid of your life, just as the sachet I pierced with nails contained Cyril’s.”

  Priscilla had come to consult Khepra at hazard. She only half-believed in the power of magic. Nevertheless, she regretted her imprudence, but it was too late.

  Suddenly, Khepra became furious.

  “Perhaps you think I love you,” she said, in a low and hoarse voice, “because you’re young and can have all the men you like. Well, you can do your utmost, but you’ll never have as many as me. I don’t want your ring. It will force me to torture you one day. In any case, you’ll grow old too. You’ll have a fat belly, a sagging chin and you’ll go to the cemetery to wallow on the tombstones among the beggars who stink of sweat.”

  She threw the diamond on the ground and shut the door behind her.

  XXII. At the Doors of the Tombs

  Socles was about to attain his goal. It was the final wall that he was attacking. He put down his pickax and sat down beside his lamp.

  For years he had been struggling in the dark to reach Alexander’s tomb. Everything had taken a long time. Menalchos had obstinately refused to sell his house. It had been necessary to wait for him to die and engage in interminable negotiations with his son in order to buy it, in exchange for a large sum of money.

  Then a subterranean life had commenced for Socles. Not wanting to confide his secret to anyone, he had resolved to accomplish by himself, all alone, the task he had set himself.

  But he had run into unexpected difficulties. He had indeed found in Menalchos’ cellars a corridor that connected them to an ancient aqueduct, disaffected for centuries. But, either by virtue of the effects of time or because of the earthquake that had ravaged Bruchium, roof-falls had been produced in the aqueduct and had obstructed it. Socles had undertaken the exhausting task of fraying a path through the middle of the rubble and following the aqueduct to the place that was parallel to Cleopatra’s Mausoleum.

  He had just reached that point. He had already attacked the large blocks linked by dense cement with his pickax. He knew that Cleopatra’s Mausoleum communicated with the tomb of Alexander. His dream was about to be realized.

  But that dream no longer had the same marvelous attraction that it had once had. For a long time, Socles had given no further thought to the papyrus that Alexander, the initiate of action, had received from his brothers in the temple of Ammon, in which human wisdom was written. The subterranean struggle against the collapses and the stone blo
cks of the ancient walls had become the true objective.

  He was no longer the same man. His muscles had developed; his chest had expanded; a long thick beard had sprung from his face. He ate abundantly the nourishment prepared very day by two faithful servants, he drank a great deal of wine, and when he stopped working, physical fatigue enabled him to fall into a dreamless sleep.

  He had difficulty resuming his old philosophical speculations. His brain became less active as his body was more so. He scarcely thought any longer. He dug, he carried stones, he filled in foundations, and he shored up the vaults behind him with pine logs in order not to be buried. He shifted the earth joyfully, but he had acquired a certain repulsion for shifting ideas.

  And gradually, in the darkness in which he lived perpetually, a secret amour for the sun was born in him. A new ideal had come to him, of which he was not yet conscious. In the heavy air charged with unhealthy exhalations, he dreamed of the pure light of the sky and, while gazing at the melancholy star of his lamp, he imagined the clarity of true stars.

  Now, he was sure of having reached the region of the royal tombs. The wall of the aqueduct no longer rendered the same full sound when it was struck. But he was surprised not to be in any hurry to finish, no joy in realizing a project meditated for so long.

  The sole desire that he experienced was to puncture the wall with great blows of the pickax, to make use of the new strength that he had in his body. But whether it was here or elsewhere was of scant importance! What he wanted was to make a breach in some wall or other, to transform matter by making the blows of his powerful arm fall upon it.

  He got up and took up his pickax.

  He thought about the convicts who were sent to the mines in Numidia and who, once they had entered a mine, never emerged again. Was he not like them?

  And why was he there, in sum? To reach a papyrus scroll hung around the neck of a mummy. Another few hours of effort and he would probably have broken through the wall, traversed the tombs, and be standing before Alexander’s coffin.