Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  “I bet it was only an accident,” she said in a voice that he couldn’t understand. “Anyway I didn’t take aim.”

  “Neither did I,” he protested, and ended feebly. “I mean, it was only an accident.” So it was; he’d meant to hit the apple-core; but if he explained, she’d think he was only trying to ingratiate himself with lies, and he’d wanted to appear a clever shot. Something to make up for not being able to swim.

  “Don’t tell lies.” She jumped up. “I’ll tell them myself if I want to. But I won’t have other people telling them for me. You’re like all men. You think you’re the only one who can do anything.”

  He was pleased to see her angry, pleased that she, a free person, could be upset by the same things as upset him, a slave; but he feared her anger.

  “I can hardly ever hit anything. Eros always beats me at throwing.”

  “Then you ought to try harder,” she answered crossly. “Who’s Eros? I hate him.”

  “He’s another page.”

  “Who gave him his name?”

  She spoke placidly once more, smoothing out her dress. Victor was overjoyed at her expression of hatred for Eros; nothing else ever said had given him such joy; there seemed so many meanings in her words.

  They walked along the roadway towards the city, and Victor told Daphne about himself. Antonius had given him the name of Victor instead of Narcissos, the name given him by the merchant at Antioch. Antonius had said: “I’ve got a page called Love, now I’ll have one named after Victory in war. Love in Greek and Victory in Latin.” That was how the name Victor came about. In Italy, on the farm (before Antioch), he’d been called Gaipor; but the master went bankrupt, and Victor was sold at the age of ten to the merchant going east. The merchant had been very kind, and had had him taught to read Latin and Greek correctly, to recite poems at dinner-time, to play on the harp, and to do geometry. Then he’d been killed in an Arab riot, and Antonius had bought Victor while passing through from Armenia two years ago, or rather, the steward had bought him, but Antonius had liked the look of him and promoted him to the pages.

  “I’m going to call you Narcissos,” said Daphne teasingly. “You’re a dear young flower-boy.”

  “Don’t,” he pleaded. “ I like Victor better.”

  “I won’t call you Victor. I’m named after a tree, so you must be a flower. It isn’t fair to be called Victor, as if you only had to ask, to get anything.”

  “I’ve got nothing...” he said passionately, and paused. Then, without looking at her, tried to explain. “I hate having my name changed. You couldn’t know. You’ve only had one name all your life.”

  But she wouldn’t relent, though she spoke lightly. “I shan’t like you if you’re called Victor.”

  What did it matter? who cared for his feelings? “All right. Call me what you like—as long as I can go on seeing you.” He was frightened to have come so near a declaration. But she kept to the issue of names.

  “Very well. I’ll call you Victor then. Because you gave in. Now you’re only Victor because I let you be. It’s different.”

  Both were pleased. (She must be meaning to meet him, or why would she care what he was called?) They walked on, afraid of saying something that would destroy the friendliness of the moment.

  *

  It was dusk when they reached the Canopic Way. People were knotted about, discussing something in low heated voices. A raucous remark invaded the preoccupied contentment of Victor and made him realise that news of the lost legions was now common property despite the strict orders which would have been given. Cleopatra wasn’t popular, but no Alexandrian wanted Egypt to come under Roman rule. The people were puzzled, hostile, scared.

  Every step nearer to the Museion made Victor more un-decided. With one part of his being Victor was enjoying the girl’s companionship with blessed absorption; with another part he was aware only of the remorseless lapse of time. The blood seemed draining out of him. He would never be able to suggest another meeting; he would be too concerned that she might laugh and sneer. “A slave!” And yet she was so easy-mannered now, with no touch of patronage. But was that because she was grateful and trained to dissemble courtesies, wanted to leave a good impression, knew that in a few moments she would successfully slip out of his life, a dream that evaded the fumbling fingers of dawn? A dream she was, growing stranger in the dusk, coming closer in the companionable approach of darkness, biding the pulse when she would fade back into his blood. He couldn’t believe her real, though she walked at his side, occasionally pressed against him. In a few moments she would have passed out of his life; condescendingly thankful, in order that she might forget him with the quieter conscience. He couldn’t bear it.

  They were passing through a deserted colonnade. There were no lights near. Further along was a clearer space, and excited voices could be heard. A clatter of hooves. Shouts at the lower end of the street. But no one in the colonnade at this moment of dusk while lovers passed. Chance the dream. Between two shops an embrasure appeared, darkly inviting. A smell of crushed flowers, and the stones of evening. Decay and the night of freedom starry. Desperation flurried in the blood of Victor, tormenting his hands, lending him an irresolute courage.

  He caught Daphne in his arms, forgetting all lesser fears before the one great fear of losing her for ever.

  “I won’t let you go. I love you,” he whispered, himself the eavesdropper. His knees were giving way. “You mustn’t...mustn’t laugh at me.”

  Her body tautened for a moment; she seemed about to say something. But he found her mouth, and kissed her; and she said nothing. She sighed and wilted inside his arms, as if by some mysterious chemistry her bones had dissolved into the honeyed blood of desire. He couldn’t believe what was happening, and yet it was happening. Isis, make it true. Space narrowed, with a swirl of stars. Someone had hung flowers across the shop-front, over the embrasure, where goods had been displayed. The lovers were resting in a niche of flowers. The earth was after all a small space, a tryst for two lovers. All other things were subordinate, dismissed now that their purpose had been fulfilled. The lovers had met. For this had his mother been torn from her peaceful village somewhere beside a reedy river-course in Gaul; for this an unknown man had put his hand over her mouth and laughed brutally. (It was all forgiven now, all was good.) For this the armies of Rome had swept over land and sea, burning, plundering, murdering. (All that is, is good, for out of it has come our meeting, fused in our blood of acceptance.) For this had Daphne waited in her secure home, coming out of a past equally clouded, equally meaningless, to touch the moment when all was explained, all was sanctified.

  The stars thickened, the glitter on marble-ornamentations from the torch down the road, dimming the eyelashes with wetted radiance. He too was crying, gently, happily, sub-merged. The world flashed, trembled, subsided to flanks of warmth. He heard his heart, and then the low breathing of Daphne. The world of flowers had become a single flower, heavy with perfume, and he and Daphne were lying in it, in the heart of the lotus. Someone passed, lurching, unheard. Then two men arguing. The niche of dark flowers kept its secret. The stars dripped into the blood. Suddenly the starlight gushed through him, a crystal panic of surrender

  *.

  Daphne beat at him, pushed away, rose.

  “I hate you.”

  He was entirely lost. “What do you mean? Please...”

  “You’re as bad as the other. I hate you.”

  He tried to grasp what she was saying. “Then why did you...”

  But she wouldn’t answer. She tore away from his half-hearted embrace, and ran up the road. He stood still for a moment of blind despair, unable to understand why life had given him so much, only to mock the next pulse by withdrawing the gift. Then he recovered himself enough to run after her.

  He would have missed her if he hadn’t known the direction she would take. He ran into a crowd holding a political debate, with a fringe of mere drunkards; the police were issuing orders, and no one was
obeying. But he thought he saw Daphne flitting away on the other side. She would be going home; she lived somewhere near the Museion, she had said, over a shop; her father had preferred to live out while his wife was alive, and then refused to move.

  Victor managed to squeeze through the crowd, and thought he again saw Daphne dodging ahead. But it was only a tipsy woman, who tried to hang round his neck, saying: “Who cares about bugs?” Then he reached the Street of the Sema. Again the fading figure of flight. Surely Daphne. But he couldn’t tell which house the shape entered. He was defeated, unutterably miserable, and yet glowing with the memory of her responsive kisses in the niche of dark flowers.

  She couldn’t take that back whatever she did. He would find her again. She couldn’t mean to shut him out of her life. What was her father’s name? Nicias.

  A second time he felt his knees giving way under him, and steadied himself against a pillar. O night soaked in blue.

  In his mind he had seen her again as she was, Daphne stained golden with the sun, Daphne and no other. Beauty was a form, a single form, a body without substitute, Daphne. She was beautiful. The thought sent a shock through his blood, a terrifying awareness, as if he, and he alone, were responsible for her beauty, her individual body. He had never really seen anything at all but her. Now she was everything. She was only herself. She was beautiful.

  *

  The guard grinned as he let Victor through, and made a joke about wenching. Victor reddened, joked back, and tipped the man twice as much as was expected; then went on his way to the pages’ quarters, worried that somehow Daphne would hear of the joke he’d made and would refuse to see him again. For she couldn’t have meant it this time; she had merely been overcome by emotion, by the strangeness of what had happened. She was naturally a modest young girl. She must have loved him. Her very flight proved it, by showing how much she had given. Despite all his anxieties Victor felt his heart growing lighter.

  Eros was in the room that the two shared, sitting on the bed and looking at himself in a hand-mirror. Before him on a stool was placed a bowl bearing a yellow concoction.

  “You’re late,” he said, without taking his eyes from the mirror. “Lucky for you that we haven’t been called. Things are in a dreadful state. Antonius said he was going to Spain; and she said that she hoped he’d sink on the way, if he hadn’t already drowned himself in wine. There’s a loving bitch for you. I’d like to paint her long nose with resin and set it alight.”

  He laid his head on one side and then on the other, studying his face in the mirror.

  “What’s that? a soup?” Victor pointed to the bowl, discovering how hungry he was. There’d been nothing to eat except the stolen apples.

  “It’s a hair-wash,” Eros frowned. “Take care you don’t spill it. Eiras gave it to me. It’s the same stuff as the old lady uses.”

  Victor saw that the head of Eros was wet.

  “I’ve been with a girl,” he said maliciously. “The most beautiful girl in the world.” Eros sniffed. Victor threw himself at Eros, bowled him over on the bed, and rubbed his face on the coverlet.

  “Take care,” groaned Eros, surprised at this unusual horseplay from Victor. “Don’t knock the bowl over.”

  “Say that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world.”

  “I won’t. I’m surprised at you. I’m sure she’s a Jewess with hair growing out of her nose. I don’t believe she’s anyone at all. You’re jealous because Eiras gave me the henna-wash. You ought to know me better.”

  Victor let him go, and himself lay back on the bed, deadly afraid. He couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to do what he’d done in the colonnade. He’d never be able to do it again. It would be best to let Daphne go. How hungry he was, and too wretched to go and bribe someone in the pantry; there was always someone there in case a midnight-supper was demanded.

  Angrily he stretched out his foot, and, to the indignant despair of Eros, knocked over the bowl of henna-dye, sopping the carpet.

  *

  Daphne too lay in her bed, fully dressed. Fortunately her father had been detained in the mess-room of the Museion by some discussion. She sat up, her mouth open, and stared in front of her at the brown hangings on the wall. She plucked at her dress gingerly, shutting her mouth. Where was the body, elementally fresh, that has been hers as she slid out of the lake into the cosseting sunlight? Simon, the slave, had stared at her. She said that she’d lost her way down by the lake. Now she was trying to resume the will-power to order Simon to heat some water, so that she could bathe herself. She could say that she’d slipped in a puddle.

  Her thoughts died as soon as born, little flickering thoughts struck from the flint. She felt strange to herself, and it hurt her to move. All her bones had suddenly become sore. She tried to think clearly, but couldn’t. All her energies were concentrated on gaining the will to call out to Simon. If she didn’t do it before her father came back, she wouldn’t be able to do it.

  She was glad her aunt was dead; but wasn’t able to think as far back as her mother.

  She heard her father’s footsteps below. Hastily, clumsily, she put out the lamp, burning her fingers on the tow-wick, for she couldn’t delay to use the snuffer. Then she lay back in the darkness. He would think her asleep, and not say anything. Fully dressed, she propped herself up on the pillow and sat open-eyed in the darkness. She heard her father going to bed, Simon going to bed, some late-passers shouting outside, the house settling down for the night like someone old, wheezing slowly and faintly. She couldn’t ask Simon till the morning now. She would have to wait all that while.

  She was sure that she would never see Victor again.

  2 ALONE

  Before dawn Victor stirred with a sense of danger and distress. His brain was still drowsed with uncertain dream-fears, and he could not awaken fully. There was someone in the room looking at him, an escaped animal from the zoo on the further side of the Gardens, a woman with an animal-head like one of the Egyptian goddesses. Cat-headed Bast. The fever in his head was the hot breath of the cat. Then he threw off the weight of dreams, and felt Eros twitching, making grumbling noises in his sleep. The two pages slept in the one bed.

  “Wake up,” said Victor, roughly. He kicked the coverlet away, and rolled from bed. Then, standing on the damp carpet, he rubbed his naked body vigorously and stared with distaste at Eros stretching himself.

  “What a bully you’re getting,” said Eros, opening his pale blue eyes.

  It was true, but Victor didn’t care. For the first time he was domineering over someone, and it pleased him to hear the complaints of Eros: “I’ll believe about that hairy-nostrilled girl of yours soon, your manners are so bad.” He dressed quickly, ate the breakfast of cakes and watered wine that an attendant had laid outside the door on a tray, and set off for the apartment of Antonius, followed by Eros protesting that he hadn’t had time to do up his shoelaces.

  Antonius was awake, gulping wine from a silver flagon. He looked haggard. For months now his large, commandingly handsome face had been sagging; his eyes bloodshot; the streaks of grey increasing in his hair. But overnight he seemed to have grown older still. He was in his fifty-second year, and he looked far more, though only two years ago, Victor recalled, he had still seemed sinewed with youthful energy. His hand was shaky.

  Victor and Eros exchanged glances. Cleopatra had slept elsewhere.

  Slaves had laid out clothes for the day, a gown of purple with gold braid, and gilt slippers of papyrus.

  “Take the muck away,” said Antonius, twisting his lips and giving a short hiccup of a laugh. “Bring me a cheap cloak and tunic, and a pair of soldiers-boots. Boots with three soles of leather, and hobnails.”

  He turned to the boys, and his eyes lightened for a moment with a mock of his self-pity, the twist that accentuated the thinness of his lips disappeared.

  “I’m clearing out. Will you go with me?”

  His darkened eyes searched their faces, as if he was putting them to a real te
st. Victor’s heart pounded. They were going to be taken away from Alexandria. At the worst he hadn’t dreaded anything so bad.

  “We’ll go with you, anywhere,” said Eros fervently, and Victor managed to nod his head in loyal accord, as if his emotion went beyond words.

  “Not so very far,” replied Antonius, scratching his chest. “Out into the waters, my lads. Away from the world.” He gulped at the wine, and his face set. “And if that stuck-up whore tries to interfere, we’ll feed her to the fishes, a bit at a time. By the god.” He lay back and groaned. “All traitors. Blood-suckers. I ought to have known it. Caesar, Caesar...” His voice muttered away, and a blank look came into his eyes that terrified Victor.

  No sound, save far away something cranking, in the Royal Docks.

  The flagon fell to the floor, but neither page liked to run forward and pick it up.

  Eyes of stone.

  “Where did he say he was going?” whispered Victor to Eros, unable to bear the silence and the opaque suffering in the eyes.

  But Antonius had heard, had seen the lips moving. He leaped from the bed, unclad, and strode across the room, still a sturdy hulk of a man. He gripped Victor by the shoulders.

  “What was that you said? Speak up—”

  His voice was stifled with fury, his eyes protruded, his grip hurt.

  “I only...asked...where we were going.”

  Antonius stared at Victor with wild roving eyes, and then released him.

  “I believe you. But don’t whisper in front of me again. Don’t whisper anywhere. I can’t endure it. Do you hear?” He shook Victor without knowing what he was doing. “Hell, do you think I don’t know what everyone’s saying? If they’d only say it out in front of me, I wouldn’t mind. Treacherous swine that they are. Hercules, I’d like to sink the pack in mid-sea, the lousy mob of backbiting murderers...”