by Jack Lindsay
He slept deeply, dreamlessly, living for the dawn in which the city gave up its secret and his body grew assured. Peace was in the dawn, and the certainty of finding what was sought. The body was poised, high over the unresting waters.
And the sea-gulls dipped and swung past, sometimes perching for a while on the parapet of the tower, near to the motionless lad.
*
Antonius found good reasons for cursing. News came that the four legions in Cyrene had revolted, and the three in Syria. Egypt was open to attack on both sides from land.
Victor grew to be profoundly scared of his master. To go into his presence was like entering the cage of a lion. Eros had come to feel otherwise. He hung about Antonius, trying to find something to do for him, at times infuriating him, at times earning a maudlin gratitude. He slept on a couch at the foot of the bed of Antonius, adoringly serving him. Lucilius had tried to stop Antonius from continuous drinking, and then retired to a corner of the house and himself drank. Aristocrates moped in a balcony-room over the waters. And no word came from Cleopatra.
It was difficult for Victor to find excuses for absence. Antonius had grown perversely exacting, at whiles he would leave Victor alone for almost the whole day; then would insist on his attendance, talking angrily of defaulting friends, drinking, or merely lying with his head in his hands, his eyes on the wall.
At last Victor managed to go ashore in control of the slaves deputed to do the shopping. All market-shopping was done in the morning; and immediately after breakfast he led the way to the market-place behind the dock-ware-houses. He strode impatiently ahead, trying to decide on the best method of using the brief time. He had no hopes of meeting Daphne in the market, for free women never did their shopping—unless extremely poor, and then they haunted the small lane-marts rather than the central Agora. The only women likely to be found in the Agora were peasantesses in charge of vegetables, slave-girls on errands, and an assortment of prostitutes. Shopping was usually done by male slaves.
Victor made up his mind that the best thing to do would be to put the slaves to their jobs, and then to go in search of the house into which he imagined he had seen Daphne disappear. Surely if he closed his eyes, he would be drawn straight thither. How could he then fail to find the door on which the image of Daphne was imprinted— despite the noisy world that hampered the clear instinct of desire?
The approach to the market was littered with cabbage-stalks and ass-dung, which enterprising children, at risk of their lives, were collecting in hand-harrows or baskets, intent on leaving as little as possible of such valuables for the sweepers of the afternoon. The market itself, presided over by loud-voiced officials at their work of keeping order and levying tolls official or otherwise, was divided into sections. On the side of the entrance which Victor passed there sat the money-changers, moving little piles of coins about with rapid dexterity, grimly silent in their determination not to be badgered into a false count, but voluble enough if they considered that they had detected a cheat. They sat crouched before wooden tables, but now and then rapped a coin on the stone pavement. In a corner were collected the specialists, experts with specular stones and various secret chemical means of testing the fake-gems that abounded.
The market was surrounded and crossed by columns. Long past the morning-bell had sounded, announcing that business was to begin; and the peasants, who had driven into the city from their allotments, had instantly started jabbering at the top of their voices and laying out more attractively their poultry, joints, or greens. In one section loaves, flat and round, were heaped on trays, attended by women-slaves skilled in abusive repartee; elsewhere was the myrtle-section where flowers, loose or wreathed, were sold by girls selected for their good looks and therefore detested by the bread-women who were ready to throw stale loaves at their heads if the wary police officials slackened in attention. The wine-section displayed large amphora, sticky with pitch and painted in red with the name of the producer. Some peasants were still filling amphora with wine that they had brought in skins in the waggons. Nearby congregated the unemployed cooks, each man jealously guarding his collection of utensils. In other parts were tables and stalls for garlic, nuts, apples, fresh cheeses, oils, perfumes, frankincense, spices, furniture, and new or old clothes; while fish, onion-ropes, wild fowl were draped from ropes slung between two pillars. The slave-market was held in another square, as also the gunakeia, the mart for more particular feminine luxuries.
After a glance round to make sure that his party were busy at their bargaining, Victor withdrew and hastened down the street towards the Museion. He passed the Museion without daring to look at its decorated door-way, and commenced his search for the house into which the wraith of Daphne had faded. He was sure that it was only a few doors before the Street of the Sema met the Canopic Way, and that she had said she lived over a shop, but what kind of a shop he couldn’t recall. After roaming up and down the Way he went into a shop at random and asked where Nicias of the Museion lived. This time he had prepared his story.
“I was sent with a gift for him, and I’ve forgotten the address.”
The shopkeeper was very obliging and kept Victor on tenterhooks while he explained that, though he didn’t know where Nicias lodged, it was a matter of no moment, since every professor had rooms in the Museion, whether or not he slept out.
Nobody knew. Victor tried several shops, and then gave up in despair, beginning to believe that Daphne had lied to him. Perhaps she was only a slave as he was, daring a lake-holiday. The thought kindled him, and then made things blanker still. Besides, his pride wanted her to be free, however the difference between their statuses depressed him.
Dejectedly he walked along the street, pleased that so many people were bumping into him. Let the body be as sore as the mind. If only he could do as he liked with his time. Everyone passed the Sema-corner of the Canopic Way some time or other. If he were able to stand for a few days, he’d certainly meet Daphne. But he wasn’t able to stand there. He could only regret.
Ah, the city of his dawn-vision, it seemed a city of the dead, smoking with the last exhalations of pallid life. The city was deserted, because Daphne had vanished. No matter how many people bumped into him.
He arrived back at the Market and found that the pantry-slaves had almost completed the purchases. He stood beside the wine-section, watching the wine drawn from the waggons into the amphorai, flowing through the narrow skin-pipe which had once been a bullock’s leg. The huge skin-tank, made from several skins sewn together with pitch on the seams, gradually subsided as the dark red juice flowed out; it flopped and it gasped like a monster in death-agonies.
A girl came sidling up, with ruddled face; but, seeing a market-official, she changed her mind, grimaced, and wandered off, swaying with a caricature of voluptuousness.
Victor turned back to watching the wine flow away.
The dark red wine. It was so like blood. He felt hopeless and hated the girl who fatly swayed her hips, bobbing like a buoy amid the waves, amid the smells and noise of the market-place where vermilioned girls and wild fowl rouged with blood on the soft breast-feathers were for sale. Take your choice.
I stand alone in a tower of the dawn, tingling alive, breathing deeply. My body is washed clean by the fresh light.
He tried to conjure up Daphne, to blot out the chaffering world. She was slim. He couldn’t remember how she walked, but was sure that it was with gentle grace, with a slow undulation, not a slipslop sway. She was slim, but not gawky. She was perfect. She was lost.
He had been watching, he realised, a girl whose back was turned. She was about Daphne’s height, and her hair was the same colour. Almost the same colour. Of course Daphne walked more gracefully; there was more of a glow about her, a richer sheen in the hair. But the girl wasn’t bad. She had scratched her left ankle.
She turned, and was Daphne.
They stared at one another, dubious for a moment. Then they were certain. They flushed and half turned away, then m
oved quickly together.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said Victor, and then quailed, remembering how furiously she had left him and how he’d worked out numberless excuses, appeals, justifications. His heart leaped.
“I knew you’d find me,” she answered, with a quiet smile; and he was convinced. She spoke so simply, so sincerely. He was daunted by her depths of female confidence, himself clumsily unsure.
She smiled, and he asked nothing better than to die at her feet.
“I was frightened. I couldn’t help it...We’re living out in the harbour...I knew it too.”
She stood unmoving, proud-breasted, maintaining the benign smile of her silence. Seemed to be aloofly pitying, waiting. He didn’t know what to say. Neither did she. She hoped that there were no tear-stains on her cheeks.
“Can’t we go somewhere?”
He looked feebly round the market and caught the eye of one of his fellow-slaves (menials in comparison to himself), flinched, and threw back his shoulders, standing his full height.
“Yes...where?” She spoke nonchalantly.
They stood looking at one another, unable to think, drowned in the moment, only wanting to be drowned.
“I have to go back now.” He was terrified that she would refuse another tryst. “Can I see you some other time?”
She knitted her brows, pondering what time would be best for the meeting; and he waited in patient misery, thinking she was unsure whether she would meet him.
“Tomorrow night.”
“But I can’t,” he stammered. “We’re not in the Palace. We’re on that rock. He calls it the Timonion because no women are allowed.”
She made no answer, unable to think of another suitable occasion, happy at least that all women were excluded from the house where Victor lived; but he took her silence to express a contemptuous refusal to deal with such a coward.
“All right.” He gulped. “I’ll get ashore somehow. I’ll meet you behind the new temple they’re building.”
“Half an hour after sundown.”
“I’ll be there.”
He spoke with heroic calm, but she merely smiled, afraid that he would think her reluctant to meet him.
“I’m so glad. I’ll see you then.”
The other slaves were mustered at the street-entrance, beckoning to Victor. He waved to them masterfully, looked at Daphne, smiled, almost wept, envied and hated her unmoved benignity (her chilling heart, her love), hungrily stared at her, couldn’t leave her desired presence, wanted to go away quickly for fear that he’d do something wrong.
With a wrench he went, turned at the gate (a smile, a sad appeal, a promise, a gaze unending), and was gone.
Daphne looked after him with eyes already dimmed. If only he’d met her somewhere else. She shouldn’t have visited the Market, but there were so many things that she shouldn’t do, and she was alone all day. She visited the Market occasionally, in her shabbiest clothes, not to buy (Simon did all the shopping for the household), but to look on, to find out how people lived (and never to find it out), to feel disgusted at the coarse-voiced stall-women, the painted girls. Why hadn’t Victor asked her what she was doing there? He hadn’t seemed very surprised; he couldn’t respect her. She wouldn’t meet him.
Her saffron dress had luckily been washed yesterday.
She wouldn’t meet him; he took her for granted.
The girl with the swinging hips had edged up, curious about such an obvious intruder.
“ Come and have a drink, dearie,” she said in a cracked whisper.
Daphne gave her a startled glance and hurried across the market, colliding with a pillar and then almost falling under a donkey. The donkey bared its teeth viciously and snapped, grazing her arm. The farmer cursed. A bread-woman threw a mouldy biscuit, which struck Daphne behind. A decayed raddish, missed by the sweepers of yesterday, squashed under her foot. She felt degraded, her flesh crawling with obnoxious contacts; and it all served her right for speaking to a mere slave, allowing him to touch her, to presume. It all served her right.
She would wear her saffron dress.
*
Lucilius and Aristocrates assembled for dinner, unless Antonius gave orders that he wanted to be left alone; and when the three men dined together, Victor, in attendance with Eros to keep the cup of Antonius filled with wine, listened eagerly to whatever scraps of conversation arose. He wanted to hear more of the opinions of Aristocrates. But there was little general discussion. The two men seemed afraid of Antonius. They had tried consolation, and he had bellowed at them.
Tonight he turned on them with his usual cry, “Why don’t you go too?”
He had become submerged in wine, flabbily drunk, but without losing the apparent control of his wits. He seemed rotting away, like a body corrupted in water-depths, smeared with a growing vagueness of lineament. The lines of his face had grown more crudely scored; and at times he lay gasping, trying to spit up phlegm that had lodged in his throat.
Aristocrates, a thin man with aquiline nose and sensual mouth, looked up from his dish of spiced greens. He contracted his brows. “I am a seeker after knowledge.”
Lucilius said nothing. He lay heavily, his plain honest face clouded. Then he tossed off a goblet of wine.
“Because I won’t go. It doesn’t suit me. My life’s yours.”
“You’ll soon be your own master then,” said Antonius, dropping his head with a jerk. He pulled himself together again. “The chain’s snapping.” He cracked the joints of his fingers. “Listen to the skeleton. The immortal man.”
That was his despair, closing on him as he drowned deeper. Why had things so changed? All the soldiers of Rome had set him up as champion, and he had trodden the murderers of Caesar underfoot. The cities of Asia had hailed him as Dionusos the Deliverer. Still the shouts rang in his ears, the processions danced before him, the women naked in their fawn-skins, the lads in satyr-dress, brandishing ivy and pine-tipped thyrsus-rods by day, and swinging with torches through the night. “Giver of Joy!” they cried. “Preserver of the Earth” Where was the pageant now? Was it all a fancy of wine’s delirium? God, god...
“I won’t be taken alive,” he yelled, and threw his cup at the ceiling.
What had failed? why was he a dying man?
When Cleopatra visited him at Tarsos, the world had cried out, “Here is Aphrodite come from the sea to look upon her brother-god Dionusos!”
The world had lied.
But why had the virtue passed out of him? He must learn the reason.
He called for an image of Dionusos, a small terra-cotta statue, which he had borne about as a luck. Eros set it on the table.
“Hey, brother,” said Antonius, and belched. “Look at me now.” His two brothers were dead, good fellows, his only friends; ash and burnt bone. O god, what was a man given a brain for, to think such thoughts, to know himself damned? He laughed. “That was a fine joke. When the Athenians made me a god and married me to their Athena, I asked for a stiff dowry. In cash. How much was it?” He hammered on the table. “How much ?”
“I wasn’t there,” said Aristocrates, and drank quietly.
“I don’t take note of such things,” growled Lucilius.
“How much?” roared Antonius. He picked up the statue and flung it on the floor, shivering it.
“It was a million drachmai,” said Eros humbly.
“You’re right.” Antonius looked up, tearing his eyes from the shattered god. “Come here.” He made room for Eros at the end of his couch. “I’m the god now. The only god left. And a stinking god too.” He hooted with laughter. “Pity the earth. But it doesn’t deserve anything better. By God, I’d like to trample on it.”
Earth of his victory, earth of his love. He had meant to do so much for humankind, and now he was shattered on the floor. To make the world a dream of ecstasy and power; to drive to the uttermost end beyond which even an Alexandros died; to bless all women with beauty and the earth with unfailing harvests. In the nam
e of Justice, of Caesar who had died in horror and shame, to prove that men wouldn’t stand for treachery. Fair play all round. There shouldn’t be any money.
He turned to Aristocrates. “You were saying something.”
“No.”
He raised his voice. “You were saying something. Tell me what a god is.”
Aristocrates nervously raised himself, but, seeing that Antonius was no longer listening, he remained silent.
Antonius was back in Athens again. Hardly six months ago. They had hailed him as Dionusos and set a statue of Cleopatra-Aphrodite on the Acropolis. On the day of festival a lattice-roof had been rigged all over the great Theatre on the hillside, entwined with green branches, vines, and garlands, as if the Theatre were one of the caverns sacred to the god. From this roof were hung hundreds of drums, fawn-skins, cymbals, pipes; and there in the middle of the Theatre had Antonius-Dionusos sat, splashed with the afternoon sun through the enormous lattice of greenery—he and his boozing friends. And the night had been a revelry of torches. O love, suddenly naked in the wild blaze.
He upset the table, anything to make a noise, back in the little room on the sea-bound rock. Stamp it out.
Why had he failed? giving too much, nothing. He had meant to govern the world with justice and comradeship, and he’d ended drunk in the enormous cavern of leaves and flowers on the hill of Athens, drunk in this dingy little room. There was no difference. Drunk. Where was the new order that had burned in splendour in his triumphing mind? He had ended by wanting it all for himself, greedy underneath Cleopatra’s milky breasts.
“Say something, you fool!” he shouted at Lucilius.
“I don’t know anything about gods and suchlike vermin,” said Lucilius, hunching up his shoulders. “I met a Jew once who was sure about God. So after that I had a drink and washed God out of my system. But you know I’d die for you, if that would do any good. That’s all. I’ve got to keep my conscience clear.”