by Rice, Anne
“You must be like Mother Isis. Depend on no one. You don’t have the burden of recovering a lost husband or father. You are free. Receive into your house men with love as you choose. You belong to no one but Mother Isis. Remember, Isis is the goddess who loves, the goddess who forgives, the goddess of infinite undemanding because she herself has suffered!”
“Suffered!” I gasped. I moaned, a very uncommon sound for me, most of my life. But I saw the weeping Queen of my nightmares, bound to her throne.
“Listen to this,” I said, “the dreams I will now recount, and then tell me why it is happening.” I knew my voice sounded angry. I was sorry for it. “These dreams don’t come from wine or potions, or after long periods of wakefulness that twist the mind.”
Then I launched into another totally unplanned confession.
I told this woman of the blood dreams, the dreams of ancient Egypt in which I had drunk blood—the altar, the Temple, the desert, the sun rising.
“Amon Ra!” I said. This was the Egyptian name for the sun god, but I had never spoken it to my knowledge. I said it now. “Yes, Isis tricked him into revealing his name, but he killed me and I was her blood drinker, do you hear me, a thirsty god!”
“No!” said the Priestess. She sat motionless.
She thought for a long while. I had scared her and now this scared me all the more.
“Can you read the ancient picture writing of Egypt?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
Then she said, in a more relaxed and vulnerable tone:
“You speak of very old legends, legends buried in the history of our worship of Isis and Osiris; that they once did indeed take the blood of their victims as sacrifice. There are scrolls here that tell of this. But nobody can really decipher them, except for one …”
Her voice trailed off.
“Who is the one?” I asked. I sat up on my elbows. I realized the plaits of my hair had come undone. Good. It felt good because it was free now and clean. I raked my hair with both hands.
What did it feel like to be entombed in paint and wig like this Priestess?
“Tell me,” I said, “who is the one who can read these legends. Tell me!”
“These are evil tales,” she said, “that Isis herself and Osiris live on, somewhere, in material form, taking blood even now.” She made an expression of denial and disgust. “But this is not our worship! We sacrifice no humans here! Egypt was old and wise before Rome was born!”
Who was she trying to convince? Me?
“I’ve never had such dreams, in a string like this, with the same theme.”
She became very worked up with her declarations.
“Our Mother Isis has no taste for blood. She has conquered death and set her husband Osiris as King of the Dead, but for us, she is life itself. She didn’t send you these dreams.”
“Probably not! I agree with you. But then who did? Where do they come from? Why did they pursue me at sea? Who is this one who can read the old writing?”
She was shaken. She had let go of me and she stared off, her eyes taking on a deceptive ferocity due to the black lining.
“Perhaps somewhere in childhood you heard an old tale, maybe an old Egyptian Priest told it to you. You forgot it, and now it flames in your tortured mind. It feeds on fires to which it has no right—your Father’s death.”
“Yes, well, I certainly hope so, but I’ve never known an old Egyptian. At the Temple, the Priests were Roman. Besides, if we take the dreams and lay them out, what is the pattern there? Why is the Queen weeping? Why does the sun kill me? The Queen is in fetters. The Queen is a prisoner. The Queen is in agony!”
“Stop.” The Priestess shuddered. Then she put her arms around me, as if it was she who needed me. I felt her stiff linen and the thick hair of her wig, and beneath it the hurried pounding of her heart. “No,” she said. “You’re possessed of a demon, and we can drive this demon out of you! Maybe the way was opened for this wretched demon when your Father was attacked at his own Hearth.”
“You really believe it’s possible?” I asked.
“Listen,” she said as casually now as one of the women outside. “I want you to be bathed, to have fresh garments. This money, what portion can you give me? If none, we will provide all for you. We are rich here.”
“Here’s plenty. I don’t care.” I pulled the purse loose from my girdle.
“I will have everything done for you. Fresh clothes. This silk is too fragile.”
“You are telling me!” I said.
“This mantle is torn. Your hair is uncombed.”
I spilled out a dozen or so gold coins, more than I had paid for Flavius.
It shocked her, but she covered up the shock very quickly. Suddenly she stared at me, and her painted mask managed to make a flexible expression, a frown. I thought it might crack.
I thought she might weep. I was becoming a regular expert in making people weep. Mia and Lia had wept. Flavius had wept. Now she was going to cry. The Queen in the dream was crying!
I laughed in madness, throwing back my head, but then I saw the Queen! I saw her in distant wavery recollection, and I felt such sorrow that I too could have cried. My mockery was blasphemy. It was a lie unto myself.
“Take the gold for the Temple,” I said. “Take it for new clothes, for all I need. But my offering to the goddess, I want it to be flowers, and bread, warm from the oven, a small loaf.”
“Very good,” she said with an eager nod. “That is what Isis wants. She wants no blood. No! No blood!”
She started to help me up.
I paused. “In the dream, you understand that she weeps. She is not happy with these blood drinkers, she protests, she objects. She herself is not the one who drinks blood.”
The Priestess was confounded, and then she nodded. “Yes, that is obvious, is it not?”
“I too protest and suffer,” I said.
“Yes, come,” she said leading me through a thick tall door. She left me in the hands of the Temple slaves. I was relieved. I was weary.
I was taken into the ceremonial bath, cleansed by Temple maidens and re-dressed carefully by Temple maidens.
What a pleasure to have it all done right.
For a little while I wondered helplessly if they would frame me in white pleats and black plaits but they used the Roman style.
My hair was properly done by these girls in a correct circlet that would hold, leaving a generous frame of ringlets around the face.
The clothes given me were new and made of fine linen. Flowers had been stitched along the borders. This finery, so precise, so minute, seemed more valuable than gold.
It certainty gave more joy to me than gold.
I felt so tired! I was so grateful.
The girls then made up my face more artfully than I could have done it, and more in the Egyptian style, and I flinched when I saw myself in the mirror. Flinched. It wasn’t the full paint of the Priestess, but my eyes were rimmed with black.
“How dare I complain?” I whispered.
I put down the mirror. One doesn’t have to see oneself, fortunately.
I emerged into the great hall of the Temple, a proper Roman woman, with the extravagant face paint of the East. A common sight in Antioch.
I found the Priestess with two others, as formally dressed as she, and a Priest who wore the same old-fashioned Egyptian headdress, only he wore no wig, just a striped hood. His tunic was short, pleated. He turned and glared at me as I came forward.
Fear. Crushing fear. Flee this place! Forget about the offering, or have them make it for you. Go home. Flavius is waiting. Get out!
I was struck dumb. I let the Priest draw me aside.
“Pay attention,” he said to me gently. “I will take you now into the holy place. I will let you talk to the Mother. But when you come out, you must come to me! Don’t leave without coming to me. You must promise me, you will return each day, and if you have more of these dreams, you will lay them before us. There is one to
whom they should be told, that is, unless the goddess drives them from your mind.”
“Of course I will tell anyone who can help,” I said. “I hate these dreams. But why are you so anxious? Are you afraid of me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t fear you, but there is something I must confide to you. I must talk to you either today or tomorrow. I must speak with you. Go now to the Mother, then come to me.”
The others led me to the chamber of the Sanctuary; there were white linen curtains before the shrine. I saw my sacrifice lying there, a great garland of sweet-smelling white flowers, and the warm loaf of bread. I knelt. The curtains were pulled back by unseen hands and I found myself alone in the chamber kneeling before the Regina Caeli, the Queen of Heaven. Another shock.
This was an ancient Egyptian statue of our Isis, carved from dark basalt. Her headdress was long, narrow, pushed behind her ears. On her head she wore a great disk between horns. Her breasts were bare. On her lap sat the adult Pharaoh, her son Horus. She held her left breast to offer him her milk.
I was struck with despair! This image meant nothing to me! I groped for the essence of Isis in this image.
“Did you send me the dreams, Mother!” I whispered.
I laid out the flowers. I broke the bread.
I heard nothing in the silence from the serene and ancient statue.
I prostrated myself on the floor, stretching out my arms. And from the depths of my soul, I struggled to say, I accept, I believe, I am yours, I need you, I need you!
But I wept. All was lost to me. Not merely Rome and my family, but even my Isis. This goddess was the embodiment of the faith of another nation, another people.
Very slowly a calm settled over me.
Is it so, I thought. The Cult of my Mother is in all places, North and South and East and West. It is the spirit of this Cult which gives it power. I need not literally kiss the feet of this effigy. That is not the point.
I raised my head slowly, then sat back on my heels. A real revelation came upon me. I cannot fully record it. I knew it, fully, in an instant.
I knew that all things were symbols of other things! I knew that all rituals were enactments of other happenings! I knew that out of our practical human minds we devised these things with an immensity of soul that would not allow the world to be devoid of meaning.
And this statue represented love. Love above cruelty. Love above injustice. Love above loneliness and condemnation.
That was what mattered, that single thing. I stared up at the face of the goddess and I knew her! I stared at the little Pharaoh, the proffered breast.
“I am yours!” I said coldly.
Her stark primitive Egyptian features were no obstacle to my heart; I looked at the right hand which held her breast.
Love. This requires strength from us; this requires endurance; this requires an acceptance of all that is unknown.
“Take the dreams away from me, Heavenly Mother,” I said. “Or reveal their purpose. And the path I must follow. Please.”
Then in Latin I said an old litany:
You are she who has separated the Heavens and the Earth.
You are she who rises in the Dog Star.
You are she who makes strong the right.
You are she who makes the children to love their parents.
You are she who decreed mercy for all who ask for it.
I believed these words, but in a wholly profane way. I believed them because I saw her worship as having collected together from the minds of men and women the best ideas of which men and women were capable. That was the function for which a goddess existed; that was the spirit from which she drew her vitality.
The lost phallus of Osiris exists in the Nile. And the Nile inseminates the fields. Oh, it was so lovely.
The trick was not to reject it, as Lucretius might have suggested, but to realize what her image meant. To extract from that image the best in my own soul.
And when I looked down at the beautiful white flowers, I thought, “It is your wisdom, Mother, that these bloom.” And I meant by that only that the world itself was filled with so much to be cherished, preserved, honored, that pleasure itself was resplendent—and she, Isis, embodied these concepts that were too deep to be called ideas.
I loved her—this expression of goodness which was Isis.
The longer I looked at her stone face, the more it seemed she saw me. An old trick. The more I knelt there, the more it seemed she spoke to me. I allowed this to happen, fully aware that it meant nothing. The dreams were remote. They seemed a puzzle which would find its idiot resolution.
Then with true fervor, I crawled towards her and kissed her feet.
My worship was over.
I went out refreshed, jubilant.
I wasn’t going to have those dreams anymore. There was still daylight. I was happy.
I found many friends in the courtyard of the Temple, and sitting down with them under the olive trees, I drew out of them all the information I needed for practical life, how to get caterers, hairdressers, all that. Where to buy this thing and the other.
In other words, I was armed by my rich friends with full equipment to run a fine house without actually cluttering it up with slaves I didn’t want. I could stick with Flavius and the two girls. Excellent. Anything else could be hired or bought.
Finally, very tired, with my head full of names to remember and directions to recall, and very amused with the jokes and stories of these women, delighted by their ease in speaking Greek—which I had always loved—I sat back and thought, I can go home now.
I can begin.
The Temple was still very busy. I looked at the doors. Where was the Priest? Well, I would come back tomorrow. I didn’t want to revive those dreams now, that was certain. Many people were coming and going with flowers and bread and some with birds to be set free for the goddess, birds that would take wing out of the high window of her Sanctuary.
How warm it was here. What a blaze of flowers covered the wall! I had never thought there could be a place as beautiful as Tuscany, but maybe this place was beautiful too.
I went out of the courtyard, before the steps, and into the Forum.
I approached a man under the arches who was teaching a group of young boys all of what Diogenes has espoused, that we give up the flesh and all its pleasures, that we live pure lives in denial of the senses.
It was so much as Flavius had described it. But the man meant his words, and was well versed. He spoke of a liberating resignation. He caught my fancy. For this is what I thought had come to me in the Temple, a liberating resignation.
The boys who listened were too young to know this. But I knew it. I liked him. He had gray hair and wore a simple long tunic. He was not ostentatiously in rags.
I at once interrupted. With a humble smile I offered the counsel of Epicurus, that the senses wouldn’t have been given us were they not good Wasn’t this so? “Must we deny ourselves? Look, back at the courtyard of the Temple of Isis, look at the flowers covering the top of the wall! Is this not something to savor? Look at the roaring red of those flowers! Those flowers are in themselves enough to lift a person out of sorrow. Who is to say that eyes are wiser than hands or lips?”
The young men turned to me. I fell into discussions with several of them. How fresh and pretty they were. There were long-haired men from Babylon and even highborn Hebrews here, all with very hairy arms and chests, and many colonial Romans who were dazzled by the points I made, that in the flesh and in the wine, we find the truth of life.
“The flowers, the stars, the wine, the kisses of one’s lover, all is part of Nature, surely,” I said. I was of course on fire, having just come from the Temple, having just unburdened all fears and having resolved all doubts. I was for the moment invincible. The world was new.
The Teacher, whose name was Marcellus, came from under the arch to greet me.
“Ah, Gracious Lady, you amaze me,” he said. “But from whom did you really learn what you bel
ieve? Was it from Lucretius? Or was it from experience? You realize that we must not ever encourage people to abandon themselves to the senses!”
“Have I said anything about abandon?” I asked. “To yield is not to abandon. It is to honor. I speak of a prudent life; I speak of listening to the wisdom of our bodies. I speak of the ultimate intelligence of kindness, and enjoyment. And if you will know, Lucretius didn’t teach me as much as one might think. He was always too dry for me, you know. I learned to embrace the glory of life from poets like Ovid.”
The crowd of boys cheered.
“I learnt from Ovid” came shout after shout.
“Well, that’s fine, but remember your manners as well as your lessons,” I said firmly.
More cheering. Then the young men began tossing out verses from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
“That’s splendid,” I declared “How many here? Fifteen. Why don’t you come to my house for a supper?” I asked. “Five nights from now, all of you. I need the time to prepare. I have many books I want to show you. I promise you, I will show you what a delicious feast can do for the soul!”
My invitation was accepted with amusement and laughter. I disclosed the location of my house.
“I am a widow. My name is Pandora. I invite you with all propriety, and the feast awaits you. Don’t expect dancing boys and girls, for you will not find them under my roof. Expect delicious food. Expect poetry. Which of you can sing the verses of Homer? Truly sing them? Which of you sings them now from memory for pleasure!”
Laughter, conviviality. Victory. It seemed everybody could do this, and welcomed the opportunity. Someone made a soft mention of another Roman woman who would be most jealous when she discovered she had competition in Antioch.
“Nonsense,” said another, “her table is overcrowded Lady, may I kiss your hand?”
“You must tell me who she is,” I said. “I’ll welcome her. I want to know her, and what I can learn from her.”
The Teacher was smiling. I slipped him some money.
It was getting dusk. I sighed. Look. The rising stars of the tinted evening that precedes blackness.
I received the boys’ chaste kisses and confirmed our feast.