by Jack Lindsay
Or was she a wanton? had she come out only to be given another excuse for maidenly horror? He’d be damned if he’d give her the excuse. That must be what she wanted, or she would have complained.
He wouldn’t touch her, not even if she offered herself. He’d wait till she offered herself, and then he’d walk off.
They passed a soldier beside a brazier of wrought iron. Three girls, arm in arm, were standing before the soldier, giggling and poking him with their fingers. Then, with a last joke, they turned away, one of them flouncing up her skirt backwards. Victor was looking at her, and knew that Daphne knew he was looking; and he blushed. It was so hard to walk straight in the darkness. He and Daphne kept bumping one another.
“Won’t you take my arm?” he said involuntarily, and added, “I’m frightened we might slip into the water.”
She took his arm without a word, and they went on.
Scents from the palace-gardens mingled with the cool keen sea-smell. Afar, a caged lion roared. The stars had thickened their embroideries on the encrusted sky. The crooning waters lulled the mind, and resentment faded. A dim phosphorescence, or was it flotsam of starlight, fluttered over the lazily turning waves.
“You haven’t told me where you live?” he asked at length, weakening into hope.
She still said nothing; and he, torn between anger and fear, tried to go on lightly:
“You haven’t lost your voice, have you?”
Self-pity flooded him, and he remembered the social gulf between them.
“You aren’t sorry you’ve come?”
She shook her head, afraid to speak lest she burst into tears. What was the use of having worn her best saffron dress? There was no light to show it, and things would have been worse if there had been light; she wouldn’t have been able to hide her face. Now Victor would never ask her to meet him again. Life wasn’t worth living. She had never been able to make friends, to find out how other people made them. She would have liked to follow the three girls who were teasing the soldier, to find out what they meant to do. How was it that people enjoyed themselves? She had almost forgotten Victor, except as vaguely focussing part of her irritation against life’s insufficiency, her own ignorance.
They reached the end of the walk. A palace-wall beetled up over them, with a drift of light over the top; but underneath it was pleasantly dim, sheltered from starlight and the distant beacon and the seaward-piercing beams of the Pharos. As they turned, he took her in his arms. The embrace came easily out of the movement of turning, and he did not have to think. She let him kiss her, then struggled away.
“Why do you want to spoil things?”
“I don’t.” He wanted scornfully to ask what it was he was spoiling—surely not their crabbed silence? But his panic was too great. He sought for the exculpatory phrase, knew what it was, yet couldn’t say it. “ Please...”
“Don’t try that stuff again,” she said in a cold harsh voice. “It got me once— -but not a second time.”
“What do you mean?” He truly was puzzled.
“O that whining. You said: Don’t laugh at me. You remember perfectly well. I suppose you thought it out beforehand. Thought you were clever.”
He felt stabbed to the heart, embittered, yet somehow sorry—for both her and himself. He hated her voice, felt himself hating her also, and fought to hide from the emotion.
“I love you.”
He had to say it, though it should burst the veins throbbing in his forehead, close for ever his constricting throat, let his galloping heart loose in his strangled breast.
She ceased her denunciations and stared at him through the shadows with widening eyes.
“Do you really?”
Her voice was sweet again, too sweet, childishly questioning. It offered more than he could take, asked more than he could give.
“I love you, I love you,” he answered, tearing the words out in bitter joy. “Now you know. You can go now. I won’t say ever again: Don’t laugh at me.” He parodied her parody of his appeal. “I don’t care.”
She clung to him, almost whispering, “I couldn’t laugh at you...whatever you did. Dear Victor...forgive me.”
But he wouldn’t leave his bitter advantage. “You said I was as bad as him. The man. You know.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“Why did you let me...if you didn’t want me to?”
It was she who pleaded now, leaning against him, woman-breasted.
“I wanted to thank you...There wasn’t any other way...Only, afterwards I felt different. I thought you didn’t love me.”
“You still think it; and I love you so, it hurts.”
“I don’t. Would I be here with you if I did?”
That gave him the reassurance he wanted, and they clung together in a long kiss. He threw his cloak on the ground and drew her down. But she sat up against the wall, stubborn-backed.
“If you loved me, you’d only want to see me and talk with me. Why don’t you go with one of those other girls if you want something else? The one who kicked up her skirt. I saw you peeping.”
“I didn’t peep. I mean, I only looked before she did it, so how did I know she was going to do it? I looked away at once.”
“Go on after her.”
“I won’t. How can you say such things? You’re the only one I love.”
They wrangled on, not very pleased when another couple climbed up from some steps at the side, laughed, and called out obscene advice, having heard the whole conversation. After that they sat in aggrieved silence, feeling fools and growing angrier. At last Daphne rose.
“I must go home.”
Victor picked up his cloak, his best cloak, which was wet with sea-water and muddied. The dye would run. Daphne settled her saffron dress, wondering if the pleats were crumpled badly, and adjusted her shawl. She might as well have worn the shabby dress that he’d seen her wearing at the market.
Silent once more, they walked hack along the sea-front, each enclosed in an irritable confusion of ideas and fancies. Victor had decided not to ask Daphne where she lived; unless she told him of her own accord, he’d never see her again. He expected her to dismiss him at the head of the Street of the Sema, but she turned and walked on down the street, again taking his arm. He softened and pressed her hand against his side. Both of them felt easier now that they had entered a street where despite the night-hour there was a stream of people.
“You don’t love me now,” she said, a little sadly.
“Yes, I do,” he answered dully, and then, dismayed at his own voice, tumbled out words haphazardly. “Dearest. If you love me at all. Even the least bit. I don’t mind as long as I can still see you. That’s all I really want. And to know you love me, even the least bit. I can’t keep on living unless I see you sometimes. Please don’t be cruel. I love you.”
She hung warmly on his arm and raised softly-lighted eyes to his face.
“I’ll show you where I live.” Suddenly she too became talkative. “Father’s out. I knew he wouldn’t be back for hours, as there was someone special to meet at dinner at the Museion. So I told Simon to go and stay for the night with his brother who lives near the Necropolis. We’ve got the first-floor over a glass-shop. It’s the only place I can remember. He wouldn’t leave when mother died. And then there was my aunt. But I told you about her. She died too. One day when I was out. I didn’t like her much. She used to drink, though father never guessed it.”
A foolish gaiety seized them both. They had never felt so light-hearted before. They laughed at everything they said, and clasped hands, sweating slightly after the quick walk; clasped hands till they were afraid of hurting one another, and laughed again, and were a little self-conscious because of the sweat of their meeting palms, but liked it, liked everything; laughed and wanted to run and shout; said whatever came into their heads; made loud remarks about the people passing, then were lost in themselves once more, laughing for no reason, clasping hands.
There was nothing wrong
with the world, nothing, except that the Street of the Sema didn’t stretch on for ever.
It had to end. They reached the glass-shop; but to delay the parting, Daphne took Victor two shops further down, and pointed to the perfume-shop, where he could leave notes if necessary; for she was good friends with the girl-attendant and could trust her. Then they walked back to the glass-shop, and Victor explained how he’d searched for the shop but had thought he’d seen Daphne slip into one further up the street. They couldn’t bear to part, and then grew scared at the same moment, thinking that a man coming towards them might be Nicias. She unlocked the door after some awful seconds when it seemed that the wards wouldn’t move; and then as he stood trying to drag himself away, she beckoned him into the passage, half-closed the door, and kissed him with lingering surrender, hanging with all her supple weight from his shoulders. Then she pushed him out with a low satisfied laugh, and closed the door.
Distracted with happiness, he stood looking at the door which had slid like a veil across his beloved, hiding her away in unimaginable sanctities, in a world where his thoughts could not follow her. It seemed to him that she was still standing behind the door, would be standing there till in the fullness of time the door opened and she emerged once more upon his senses, touched, heard, seen, smelt, tasted, adored.
He rushed away, then returned slowly, made a tiny scratch on the pillar facing the door in an unformulated fear that he wouldn’t be able to identify the place again, though it was indelibly impressed on his memory; walked up and down, trying to loiter casually. While he was passing the perfume-shop, wondering what the girl was like who was Daphne’s friend, he saw a bearded man appear, dressed in a long cloak, coming down the street from the other direction. The bearded man stopped before Daphne’s door, opened it, and entered. Nicias, her father.
With a start Victor realised that the night was growing late. There were hardly any people left in the street. Yet he seemed to have been only a few moments with Daphne. And it must have been hours.
The thought disturbed his overbrimming happiness, and, losing all wish to dawdle before the door enlairing the beloved, he hastened up the street.
*
At the head of the causeway stood a soldier, clearly on guard. Victor tried to walk airily past; but the soldier barred the way and demanded his business. On hearing that Victor belonged to the villa household, he said that he’d take him up to the door and inquire. Victor at once retreated into the shadows, acting on impulse; and when he stopped to consider the situation, he felt that he’d been unnecessarily fearful, though the soldier might have roused the whole villa by banging loudly on the door. The hour was certainly later than he’d realised. The soldier must be one of the quay-sentries, told by Cleopatra to keep an eye on the villa. But now, after once running away, Victor could hardly approach the soldier again. It would look too suspicious and the soldier would be sure to make a lot of noise.
There was only one course left. Victor went off along the quayside towards the dockyards, knowing that the boatmen had skiffs for hire and that on such a calm night many couples would have gone for a row. Most of the boatmen had gone home, but Victor found one man who was still there, tying up his boat and cursing to himself. A couple had hired his boat for an hour, and then stayed away over three hours; and he’d expected to discover his boat lost and two worthless corpses washed ashore somewhere for others to rob. But the couple hadn’t been drowned; they’d come back, the man with a swollen eye and a different girl.
Isis alone knew what had happened. Without a doubt the girl was different. Moreover the returning couple were both drunk, yet hadn’t taken any liquor with them. A most irregular proceeding. There was also a fresh leak in the boat; and the couple had had only enough money to pay for one and a half hours’ hiring.
After a while Victor made the man listen, and after an even longer while made him agree to row out to the villa. He had brought most of his money with him in case Daphne might want to be bought something, and the chinkle of the coins overcame the man’s hesitation. The skiff set off, skimming through the water with only a slight gurgle from the prow and the dipping oars, a slight creak from the seats. The boatman’s wheezing pants were louder than the noise of the sliding boat. Victor baled with a large oyster-shell. Taking a curve out and in, the boat approached the causeway a few paces down from the villa-door, and the man pushed Victor up the face of slippery stone. The boat rocked, threatening to sheer off and drop Victor into the dark waters; then he found himself stumbling on the causeway, with torn knuckles. He watched till the boatman had disappeared into the swaying gloom, and then walked on tiptoe to the door, knocking lightly with the bent little-finger of his right hand. To his joy he saw one side of the double-doors instantly open, and he stepped in, ready with excuses and a tip. He was as glad to be back safely in the island-house of slavery as he had been to step safely on the shores of freedom earlier in the evening.
The door shut again, and he was in darkness. Two powerful hairy hands closed round his throat and shook him violently. A voice hissed “Traitor!”
He gasped, but could not speak. His hands plucked vainly at the sinewy wrists of his attacker. Hopelessly he fought for breath. Daphne! Palely she floated before his eyes on the swirling dark, beseechingly, raising bare arms, and sucked into a turmoil of grotesque faces that darted menacingly down, like a rush of fishes underwater about some dropped bait. Tell Daphne.
Then the pressure slackened, and he was dragged along the hallway, flung through a curtained door, bringing the curtains down with him. Before he could rise, the curtains were wrenched away, turning him over, and again he was seized, pulled from the floor, throttled. But now he could see. Antonius was glaring at him with mad eyes.
“Tell me where you’ve been, before I kill you. Who’s paying you?”
He looked round cunningly, licked his lips, and went on in a low voice:
“Is it—she?”
Victor shook his head weakly and opened his mouth, lolling his tongue. Antonius understood and released him. “Speak first, you carrion, you spy.”
“I was seeing a girl,” moaned Victor, holding his bruised throat.
“A girl!” shouted Antonius. “A two-legged girl! Every-thing’s double about them!”
He leaned over and stared at Victor, shifting his glance from one eye to the other, as if to intercept a message between them. Victor could think of nothing except the necessity of not blinking. He stared back, unquivering.
“You poor lad.” Antonius shut his eyes and nodded his head meditatively. “Fancy a woman getting you down too. We’re comrades in misery.” He lurched nearer and breathed over Victor his stale drunken breath. “There’s only one thing to do. Shave them all. No man could lose his wits over a bald woman. You poor lad. Do you feel as if red-hot pincers were tearing at your navel? Of course you do. It’s lucky for you I saw that you were telling me the truth. I knew it by the fear in your eyes. I saw you’d come from a woman, as sure as if I’d been looking in a mirror. Come on, let’s make a night of it.”
He picked up a flagon and filled two glass-goblets with unmixed wine. Victor did not dare to refuse, though used only to wine much watered.
They drank, and warmth surged through the reluctant veins of Victor. Antonius blustered on, as if stating his case before a court; and gradually Victor listened, compelled by the brooding intensity of the rambling voice.
“Political entanglements. No love in it. S— to love, I say. It’s all lies that I ran off. Retreated for more strategic position. Empire of the East. Caesar’s plan. Alexander’s too. Merge East and West. Capital for commerce...”
He stopped, and his eyes wrinkled again with an insane cunning.
“She tried to poison me, but I let her see I knew. She carried it off finely. Say the worst about her, she’s got style. A wonderful woman, but a bitch. Poured out wine for us both from the same beaker, then dipped a rose-wreath into my cup. Handed me the cup. Knocked it out of my hand. You see how eas
ily I could poison you,’ she said; the roses were poisoned. But she’d seen that I guessed. There was goose-flesh on her teats. Anyhow, she hoped to use me still. We’d have won if it hadn’t been for her. What’s this snake-eyed Queen of Egypt got to do with restoring the liberty of Rome?’ said Domitius. Liberty!’ said I. She’s Isis; thinks she is; and don’t you think otherwise.’ Domitius didn’t understand. A chap with a hatchet for a head. Deserted. Caught camp-fever. Died. Perhaps I struck him dead. Destroyer and Preserver. ‘Anyhow, she’s frightened of me. That’s the only reason why she didn’t poison me. Is she dead yet?”
He stared fiercely at Victor, accusingly.
“I don’t know,” Victor managed to say, not knowing what reply was wanted.
Antonius nodded.
“No. I thought not. You’ll see now why I had to make this place my home. Water all around. Too many cats in Alexandria, but they don’t like swimming. You’re a lad after my own heart. Have another drink.”
Victor felt drowsily excited by the wine, and as often as Antonius filled the cups he drank. The warmth of the wine had clouded fear away, and he knew only a tremendous wish to help Antonius, to talk with him until at last life’s flaw was discovered.
“I don’t believe in anything. That’s what’s wrong with me. As soon as they started making a god of me, I found it harder to go on believing. Till it all went. Like having a ghost for a wife. I thought I might as well have a good time. And everyone else. I had some fine times here with her, and she got in the family-way. Twins. The first for me and the second for my other-self. But it was always my ambition to leave bastards everywhere. I went off and married Octavia, for a quiet life. But it got too quiet, and Octavianus was always up to some dodge or other. He got on my nerves, and I kept on hearing the voice of Caesar. I’d got him into my bones when the people rose up and shouted for righteousness. I kept on feeling that I ought to be doing something. Tackle Parthia, the voice kept saying. East and West must be one. So I sent word to Cleopatra. After three years of married felicity. Fe-lic-ity! I thought I might as well have a good time as well. Then matters went bad in Armenia, and I took to drinking here. But things were worse than they used to be.”