Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  He thought that it might be the middle of the day.

  Then he saw, clearly, one of those the vast farmhouses, with its flat blue-panted roof, and the immense spray of a palm tree outside the door, unusual in its regularity, which expanded and spread a broad shadow. He saw the transparency of the water of canals coming from Lake Mareotis, the narcissi and the violets that grew on the banks, the slender boats on which people traversed them, the fields of barley and rice alternating with fields of clover. It was the time when the lemon-trees were heavy with lemons, when the acacia and the henna were in flower, when the dates fell, when the carobs formed bloodstains. He was gripped by an immeasurable desire to see the color of things, to contemplate the light of the sun.

  He owned large plantations, vast fields of all sorts, and this labor, from which he could derive bodily joy, he could do in the light. Why not admit it to himself? He had found happiness in his ardent labor. He would continue, but up above, beside the water, among the plants, in the midst of what was beautiful and alive.

  He would not see Alexander’s glass coffin. The papyrus on which the great verity of the world was written was not worth an hour of darkness.

  He picked up his lamp. He marched along the aqueduct. He was tranquil and joyful. He knew what he ought to do. He would sow, he would labor, and he would carry large baskets of oranges on his back. He would still lift up stones, in order to build a house, but in the sun! In the sun!

  He had found the truth.

  On the far side of the royal tombs, in the crypt of Saint Mark’s Church, Bishop Cyril was standing in front of the door that Peter had once closed behind him, and which no one had opened since.

  At the time when the church was closed to the faithful he had dismissed the caretaker and had descended alone by the stone stairway behind the altar with a torch and an iron implement for opening the door.

  He had decided to verify the confidences that Peter had made to him when he had left Alexandria precipitately in order to flee reprisals after the death of Hypatia. Since then, the struggle against the pagans, the heretics and the Jews had absorbed his life. Councils had summoned him to distant places. It had been necessary to appear personally in all the greatest cites of the empire in order to combat Nestorius. Then the Emperor had imprisoned him in Constantinople. But now he was victorious, he was triumphant. His religious authority was greater than before. He was the master of Alexandria. He was about to be able to satisfy the passion by which he was dominated, the love of riches.

  And as he raised his lighted torch in the crypt, he suddenly stood still. He had felt a hand pulling him gently by the sleeve.

  It was almost nothing. He looked. There was no one there.

  “Come this way. Come with me,” whispered a voice in his ear.

  And he thought he saw, for a second, the transparent form of an old man to whom he had given extreme unction a few days before and who belonged to an ancient Egyptian family. He had had occasion to think about him several times because he had been informed by his police that after his death, his son, although a pious Christian in appearance, had secretly transported him to the Necropolis quarter in order for him to be embalmed there.

  It’s an illusion, he thought.

  But he felt dizzy and he leaned against the wall.

  “I’m being devoured by the natron water. I no longer have my brain or my eyes,” said another victim, very softly. “Come, come!”

  And Cyril perceived around him other light, desolate forms, which were passing through the walls and were pushing him, and lifting him up.

  He had the sensation that he was transported into another place unknown to him, where he saw with clarity a strange caricature of a woman who was dancing among aligned sarcophagi. A detestable face was staring at him. It was that of Priscilla, the daughter of his friend Diodorus.

  She had refused to see him a few days before. He knew from the steward Majorin that she had profaned images of the saints, that she had lost the faith, that she was avowed to evil. He intended to have her imprisoned soon, under an accusation of sacrilege.

  Priscilla’s face was immediately effaced, and Cyril passed a trembling hand over his brow. He thought he had divined what was happening. He was the victim of some diabolical practice organized by that Priscilla. It was necessary to defeat it. But he felt singularly weak. He had difficulty gathering his ideas. He would visit the royal tombs another day.

  Slowly, he went back up the stairway of the crypt, traversed the church, and extinguished the torch.

  He had he sensation that something had happened to him, but he did not know what it was. He started walking toward the Serapeum. The street of the Sema was full of people. He pulled the hood of his monk’s robe over his eyes in order not to be recognized.

  Sometimes, he stopped. He sensed that he was in danger. He murmured to himself: “Magical practices! The pagans have always had terrible secrets in their possession! It’s not in vain that Valens and Valentinian pursued so rigorously the execrable ceremonies and he infernal rites to which they devoted themselves. Death can be sent from afar!”

  He remembered certain inexplicable deaths. He frightened himself. And suddenly, he was struck by an idea. The nightmare was about to disappear.

  “Adamantius! Adamantius has studied all these questions. Only Adamantius can deliver me from this.”

  Adamantius was a celebrated Jewish physician. At the moment when his forty thousand coreligionists had been expelled, he had been the only one to accept baptism in order to escape the expulsion, and Cyril had protected that unique renegade, whose great medical science had rendered him illustrious.40

  The Bishop felt better when he had reached the Serapeum. He had scarcely opened the door than he shouted to the first servant he perceived: “Adamantius! Go fetch Adamantius immediately!”

  And in her closed room, where there was no longer any sacred image on the walls, Priscilla had placed the piece of black wood in human form, bewitched by Khepra, on a gold plate.

  She took a bronze mirror and wiped it carefully, in order that it would be as pure as her will.

  Then articulating each syllable forcefully, because thought takes its impetus from sound, she said: “Let him suffer as he has made others suffer!

  “Let the demons in which he believes terrify him!

  “Let him see the evil he has done and let remorse devour his heart in this existence as well as after death!”

  XXIII. Distance Does Not Exist For Them

  Oh, quicker still! The wind was not inflating the triangular sails strongly enough, the oars were striking the water too slowly!

  Sitting on the deck, Aurelius gazed at the banks of coral, the sandy creeks bordered by red reefs of the Arabic coast, and in front of him, the horizon of the sea, where the two white columns ought to appear that stood at the entrance to the port of Arsinoe.

  His journey had lasted even longer than he had expected. He had had great difficulties in making his way through Nepal and the land of the Seven Rivers. Among the monks of Palibothra he had learned the Sanskrit language in order to converse with them about matters of science and philosophy, but that language was no longer spoken by the Brahmins in the cities he had traversed, so he had had great deal of trouble reaching Taxila. There he had fallen ill. A Buddhist priest had taken him in and cared for him in a small pagoda in the pariahs’ quarter. Scarcely had he recovered than he had set forth again, descending the Indus to reach the sea.

  He had contemplated things so extraordinary that now he was sitting among men expressing themselves in the Greek language he wondered whether he had not dreamed them.

  From the height of a ridge, in a gigantic valley open at his feet, he had seen by the light of the rising sun hundreds of motionless elephants raising their trunks toward the sky, as if to address a mute invocation to the dawn.

  Once, he had penetrated into a forest whose trees were as straight as pillars and so tall that they seemed to rise all the way to the sky. The trunks of those trees
, the soil from which they emerged, and the foliage that formed their distant vault, were a despairingly uniform red. Overwhelmed by the sentiment of his smallness, Aurelius had had a desire to lie down and await death. Then a white deer had advanced with majesty, had stared at him with its moist eyes and had passed on. And his courage had returned.

  Another time, he had seen an immense city surge forth in the middle of the jungle. He had walked over the paving stones of its avenues, past palaces bordered by pilasters and temples with jade cupolas, and descended staircases that led to series of superimposed basins in which, in increasingly blue waters, lotus flowers abounded. But no human being inhabited that city, doubtless abandoned as a result of some religious malediction, for there was no trace of pillage or conflagration there. The open doors allowed the sight of beds of repose in teak wood, and tables made with sheets of ivory and bearing the story of Rama engraved in Sanskrit characters.

  The statues of the gods were in the temples, and in one palace, more splendid in its architecture than the others, Aurelius had seen a golden throne surrounded by other, less elevated thrones, as if for the assembly of a king and his councilors. But a monkey with a tuft on its head was sitting on the throne, another was playing with a scepter of sculpted bronze, a symbol of royal power, and others were suspended by the tail from the arms of an immense stone Brahma. Tree branches had sprouted in the enameled faiences of the walls, lianas had invaded the porches, climbed around the balustrades and overburdened the monolithic columns at the crossroads, on which royal edicts were traced. Crocodiles were basking in the sun alongside the basins. Snakes were glistening on the marbles.

  And Aurelius had continued on his way.

  After a great deal of time and difficulty, and after going astray frequently, he had reached Caumara. But there was no longer a single foreigner in that city. The Jewish trading posts that Nanda had mentioned no longer existed; there was no commerce with the Occident.

  Fortunately, a ship coming from Taprobane and carrying a cargo of ivory was obliged, after a tempest, to put in to Caumara in order to renew its supplies of food and water. It belonged to Greeks who had established a trading post at Arsinoe and carried out a considerable commerce via the Red Sea with the cities of India, those of Taprobane and even those of Serica.

  Aurelius had embarked on that ship, and now he was waiting anxiously for the moment when he would set foot once again on Egyptian soil.

  He had changed. He resembled an old man. His eyes sparkled. A breath of sanctity was disengaged from his person. Although he did not wear a cross on his breast and did not murmur prayers of any sort, the Christian sailors on the ship solicited his blessing and kissed the hem of his torn robe respectfully.

  But he sounded the horizon anxiously. When would this interminable voyage end? When would he finally be able to meet his daughter Priscilla?

  Every day, every hour was developing the force of evil in her. He knew that by virtue of the image that Nanda had caused to appear to his eyes. She had devoted herself to a task of vengeance, and every action that she accomplished to punish someone would strike her in her turn, either in this life or another.

  It was necessary to reach her, to explain to her the immutable law, which is modified neither by prayer, nor by remorse, nor the desire for justice. It was necessary to tell her that evil engenders evil, that the suffering caused to someone gives rise to suffering that they cause, and that that was determined, unchangeable and inexorable, like the figures in a book of accounts. Evil is perpetuated endlessly in the same proportion, until the moment when the will of a good and clear-sighted human being intervenes, which breaks the chain with a deliberate thought. The desire for vengeance was the most solid bond attaching the spirit to matter and thus condemning it to successive incarnations, in order that it can receive once again the dolor it has caused. The goal of the universe, which was the liberation of the spirit, could only be attained by the knowledge of the Law.

  Finally, the white columns of Arsinoe appeared on the horizon. The ship penetrated into the port.

  The captain and several ivory merchants who had spent many hours listening to Aurelius’ stories and had developed an amity for him, insisted that he ought to come and rest for a few days in their house before going on to Alexandria.

  He refused. He took his leave of his companions. He did not want to lose an hour. He set out in quest of a boat to descend Ptolemy’s canal.

  He perceived then that the gold coins that Nanda had given him were exhausted, and that what remained was not sufficient for him to reach Alexandria either via the Nile and the Canopic branch or by buying a camel and joining a caravan.

  He went to the trapezites of the port. They all knew his name and that of Mucius, the Alexandrian trapezite who was managing his fortune, but in the presence of the ascetic with the shining eyes and the wretched clothes, none of them was prepared to believe that they were dealing with Aurelius, the rich Alexandrian who had departed on a voyage a long time ago.

  Aurelius feared being imprisoned as an impostor and thought that it was better to go to Heliopolis, where he could have himself recognized by several of his old friends who lived in that city.

  The boatman to whom he addressed himself displayed amazement when he learned the objective of the voyage. Aurelius was obliged to give him everything he possessed in order to persuade him. It was also necessary to agree that they would not go as far as the city but that the journey would conclude when they perceived the high walls in the distance.

  Scarcely had the boat set off than Aurelius experienced the afflictions of the illness that had struck him in Taxila. He was cold in spite of the stifling heat. The waters of the canal seemed to rise up in front of him and he was precipitated as if from the top of a waterfall. He felt exhausted. He remained speechless and ate almost nothing during the several days that the descent of Ptolemy’s canal, and that of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, lasted.

  Night had fallen when the rowers stopped abruptly. A series of fires was perceptible in the distance that succeeded one another and formed a circle. On a hill, a somber mass dotted with lights had to be Heliopolis.

  Aurelius questioned the owner of the boat about the road he had to follow to reach one of the city’s gates and the significance of the fires visible in the distance. Only then did he learn in what accursed place he had arrived.

  A large number of the Jews expelled from Alexandria had come to swell a Jewish community installed alongside Heliopolis and had formed a city there. Thanks to the tolerance of the Prefect Orestes, the Alexandrian Jews had obtained the reopening of a temple once constructed by Onias, on the model of the one in Jerusalem, which had been closed for a long time by imperial order. Scarcely had that temple been reopened, however, than the plague had become manifest in the new Jewish city. It had made terrible ravages.

  Many of the Jews had loaded their possessions on to donkeys and camels and had fled along the roads. But the epistratege of Nome, attributing the origin of the disease to the detestable Jewish blood and wanting to prevent contagion, had sent legionaries to surround the Jewish city and to kill any inhabitants who attempted to get out of that circle of death. They only attempted it by night, so the legionaries built great fires, and patrols of cavaliers traveled the intervals incessantly.

  The high city, the ancient Heliopolis, where the Christians lived, was closed as if for a siege. There were watchers on the towers and guards at the gates, who launched stones and arrows at any stranger who approached it.

  The boat that had bought Aurelius disappeared into the darkness, and the latter started waking painfully along a road leading north, leaving behind the two cities of Heliopolis inexorably closed by terror, contagion and death.

  He only stopped when he could no longer see the legionaries’ fires when he turned round. He was exhausted by fatigue. He looked for a place to sleep. Near the road he perceived sections of the walls of a destroyed and abandoned house. He went there to look for a shelter. He passed under a p
orch that was still standing, walked over paving stones where grass had grown and lay down, using a stone for a pillow.

  But he could not sleep. He was tormented by too great an anxiety. He told himself that Alexandria was still a long way off and that his strength might perhaps betray him before he arrived here.

  Fatigue and fever excited his mind. He recalled Nanda’s words: “Distance does not exist for them.”

  He sat up and formulated an ardent prayer: Wise men, lights of the spirit, doubtless you can read my thoughts and you have witnessed my ordeals from the depths of the Gobi desert where you live. I believe in you, I have searched for you, I have loved you. If I commenced in error, I have striven afterwards toward the truth. Bring me the aid of which I have need, for in the extreme misery where I am, an evil greater than the others has just descended upon me. I doubt your existence, I doubt the wisdom that I learned in India, and I am wondering whether the goal that I am pursuing is not a worthless chimera. Give me a visible sign, give me real evidence. If only for a second, appear, in order to console someone who has appealed to you so often.

  Aurelius heard groans around him and opened his eyes wide in order to see by the faint light of the stars whether an unexpected apparition was about to surge forth.

  And he perceived a low voice nearby, which said to him: “Are you there, my son?”

  “I’m here,” he replied.

  “Are you suffering?” said the voice.

  “I have suffered, but I’m no longer suffering at present,” he replied again, and he felt a profound joy animating him.

  And the voice spoke again, in a tone of delight. “Perhaps God wishes you to escape! May he be praised! Would you like to recite aloud the Schemoneh Esrei, for your brothers and sisters?”

  Hen Aurelius, on hearing those incomprehensible words, remained mute with astonishment. Someone dragged himself over the ground, there was the frisson that hands make running over a face, and a loud cry resounded, “My son is dead!”