Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  He looked at her penetratingly.

  “Is there any young fellow that you fancy? I really think Nicias ought to give you a chance to see more company. There are several of the students in his class that he might ask home for a meal occasionally. Good young fellows.”

  “Don’t you dare to suggest it,” she answered fiercely. “I’ll bolt my room and stay in it all the while. I won’t be put on show. I won’t.”

  Olympos looked at her in amazement, her burst of anger had been so obviously sincere. Once before he’d made the suggestion, and she’d been more than ready to see it carried out. But it was so hard to remember his own youth, to judge from the right standpoint. Besides, a young growing girl...

  “All right, little hermitess,” he said at last, taking her hand. “You shall have your Egyptian outing. They look good girls, quiet and homely.”

  Daphne wanted to say, “So is my broom-handle,” but corrected herself in time. “They keep a pet ibis,” she said instead, and giggled, and couldn’t stop giggling till she coughed and went red in the face.

  *

  When next Daphne and Victor met, in the Meandros Park, she told him that he must at all costs get away on the night of the solstice and keep to the left hand of the door of the Sarapeion, as close as he could; she would be there with some friends, Egyptian nobles.

  “But I won’t be able to speak to you,” said Victor bitterly. “You’ll be able to see me, won’t you?” she asked in indignation.

  He ached to reply that he had no wish to see her with people who would look down on him as dirt, that he’d suffer horribly all the while he watched her, that she was requesting him to undergo meaningless self-torment. But he said nothing. Besides, he was jealous and wanted to make sure that no young men were in the party, or to see how Daphne behaved if any were present.

  “I’ll be there,” he said sullenly.

  Things had settled down to a humdrum routine in the Palace, and he’d be able to get away. At the worst he’d have to sacrifice some pocket-money among the eunuchs and other pages. Antonius still followed Cleopatra about wherever she went; agreeing with all she said or did; a pathetic nuisance, trying to touch and caress her, regardless of the audience. He’d recovered from his drinking-bout, but his nerves were still frayed. Victor, however, had so completely lost his slave-devotion that he rejoiced in this impotence of Antonius because it meant that the work of the pages was light and Antonius did not note which of them waited on him.

  “Dress your best,” said Daphne, resisting an impulse to rearrange the fall of his short cloak, which, as it happened, needed no rearrangement.

  “I always do.” He hated her taking this proprietary air, which should have overjoyed him.

  “No, you don’t. You ought to oil your hair more, and watch the way the courtiers wear their cloaks—”

  “You want to get me whipped. I’m a slave.”

  But he had so often referred to his servitude that now the words had scarcely any meaning for either of them.

  “So am I—to father. We both have trouble to get out. But at least you can get out at night sometimes. I can’t.”

  He was terrified she would accuse him of using his night-freedoms to meet somebody else. One night he had gone out and walked the streets and halted for an hour opposite her window; and he had longed for the next meeting so that he could tell her all about it. Then, when they met, he hadn’t dared to say a word, for fear that she would accuse him of something of which he was guiltless but which he couldn’t disprove.

  “But you’re able to get out to see this ceremony at night.”

  “You haven’t any idea what difficulties I’ve had. You’d be better-tempered if you had.”

  He turned pleading eyes to her. “Don’t be angry. I love you so much.”

  She stroked his cheek gently with her crook’d forefinger and leant nearer, and he flushed with pleasure, but she repeated, “So you’ll dress your best, won’t you?”

  *

  All the houses in the western area were illuminated as soon as the Night of the Solstice fell. Oil-lamps had been prepared and hung at the doors or on poles from windows; and the children sat on the door-steps impatiently waiting for the sunset, continually pestering their parents with false alarms. “The Sun’s gone, he’s dead now.” But at last the sun was truly gone, down through the desert, into the ocean, beyond which he became Osiris fighting his way across the underworld of terrors in order to ascend once more as Sun, as Ra, in the east. The houses in the Greek quarters had also put lamps out, if only toy lamps, partly out of the tolerant acceptance of Osiris as Dionusos, partly from a fear of annoying one who was at least a powerful local daimon—emotions which had merged to create the Osirian figure of Sarapis, Judge of the Dead and Sun-giver of sustenance. But in the Delta, the Jewish quarter below the Brucheion, there were no lamps. Indeed the Jews shrouded every door and window lest a crack of light might appear a homage to the unclean. They sat inside and talked of Jerusalem and the rites of the Dedication, for which they had lately sent their subscriptions. And Egyptian and Greek noted this lack of illumination, and, when next something went wrong, they would know whom to blame. Whom but the Jews who, by refusing to join in the succouring jubilation of light, had declared their adherence to the enemy of man, Set, who tore the divine body into bleeding shreds?

  In every temple of Isis throughout Egypt the gilt cow with the sun-disc between its horns had been carried out and conducted seven times round the temple, then put back in the holy place where it would remain for the rest of the year. Seven to express the seven more months needed to bring the sun to the height of summer; seven for the months of woman’s labouring, the teen of the unborn babe, the quartering of the moon-period, the woman-phase.

  Nicias had stoutly refused to let Daphne go to the Sarapeion; although it was a Greek temple architecturally, it represented a tampering with what was for him the Greek truth, it was a mongrelising of Greek and Egyptian in its cult.

  Olympos listened to the diatribe. He had lost all belief in race-purities, though he had found no belief to put in the place of the arrogant Greek dream. Unless a mild acquiescence could be called a belief. Something of the Stoical teaching had touched him, though he applied the teaching in his own fashion. Interbreeding couldn’t be stopped, though there was a charm in the Egyptian hope to purify the blood-stream by mating brother and sister. Perhaps there would be no end to the world’s discords till what Nicias called “mongrelising” was complete, till the vision of Alexandros, a common race-brotherhood of east and west, was realised in the marriage bed.

  But he said nothing of these uncoordinated thoughts of his, which certainly gave no clue in the present tangle of the world. And it was with Daphne’s whim, not the world’s strife, that he was concerned. He talked amiably to Nicias of Daphne’s need for companionship with girls of her own age, her health, and so, until, grumbling, Nicias assented to her outing.

  “I don’t like Egyptians. I object to this nonsense about the secrets of their antiquity. The only good thing they ever did was to let Alexandros conquer them. Not that it would have made any difference if they’d resisted. I only hope that she doesn’t catch eye-trouble from them.”

  “But, father, it’s the poor children that have sore eyes. It’s the heat and the sand, and the flies that bite them.”

  “Is it likely I thought it was the crocodiles, huh?”

  His joke mollified him, though he showed no smile and neither Daphne nor Olympos seemed to notice it. He withdrew within himself once more, sure of approbation from some hidden source—not from the tomb of Callirhoe, though she had always smiled at his jokes and said, “O you men”: which had pleased him, though it was rather point-less—it suggested that he might have been a riproaring kind of a fellow if he’d let himself go, if he had...

  He looked up with a frown. “All right, she can go.” He addressed Olympos and would not glance at Daphne. “Now don’t let’s have a lot of noise about it.” He waved Daphne from
the room.

  Olympos rose to go. His conscience awoke and he felt uncertain whether he had done the right thing in obtaining Daphne her permission; but the Manethos girls were the last girls in the world to lead anyone astray. A suspicion jolted his heart.

  “Send Simon along with Daphne to the Manethos-house. It will look better than if she arrives alone.”

  Nicias grunted. “All right.”

  *

  The children in the Palace had refused to obey the orders to go to bed. So Cleopatra had said that they could stay up to watch from a tower-window. The Sun, the Moon, and little Philadelphos, with Iotapa, wife of the Sun, had been sitting for hours in gilt chairs, yawning and playing tricks on one another, staring out of the window at the upbeating glow over the city, listening to the distant hubbub, surrounded by the eunuchs and nurses of their retinues who jealously watched for any infringement of their respective rights. Coesarion and Antyllus were there, too. Czesarion wanted to leave; but Antyllus wouldn’t go, and so aesarion stayed, trying to remember not to bite his finger-nails. His mother had taken so much trouble to cure him of the habit, and he’d thought himself cured; but during the last few days he’d begun it again. He must stop; his mother would be so distressed.

  Iotapa asked for all the lamps to be put out; there was enough light from the votive illuminations. But the chief eunuch refused to have the largest lamp extinguished, and the children were all sulky, for they championed Iotapa’s idea.

  Iotapa saw Antyllus looking at her. She jumped up took the lamp from its tripod-stand, and threw it out of the window. Antyllus clapped his hands lightly. Some-body howled below, and the children eagerly crowded to the window-sill.

  *

  Cleopatra was undecided. A public performance would be fitting; it would help to silence rumours. But there was the problem of Antonius. He still looked so very broken; his face was mottled; he walked unsteadily, though he was drinking little. What he did drink he took as a kind of medicine, cursing it. If Cleopatra were to appear she would have to go as the new Isis; she couldn’t abdicate her godhead on such an occasion without an admission of defeat and fear; and tonight she didn’t feel capable of the ordeal. If she had had confidence, it would have been pleasant to appear as the goddess of continuing life, perhaps with Philadelphos at her side, chubbily half-naked; he was really getting too fat, she must speak to Olympos about it, but probably it was only a passing phase of childhood. If ever she was to vindicate herself as the new Isis, now was the moment, at the midwinter of her fortunes, baring her breasts to the world. But she did not feel strong enough. It was Antonius who drained her strength.

  He came into the room, pretending to look for something.

  “O yes...no...I don’t think so,” he muttered to himself, staring round and blinking. Then he pretended to notice her for the first time, though he thought he had only then noticed her as he had thought he was looking for something; sincere, like an actor who gives himself up to his part, though he knows that every word and gesture of the part is dictated to him by another will and intelligence.

  “You...Spirit of the Earth.” It seemed that he was quoting someone, trying to remember the context, waiting for the rustle of attention from an audience who had come to see him act, to hear him out. He could recall no more of the words, but that also was dictated by his part. The words, the forgetting, were alike not his, yet made his by the performance.

  He came uneasily closer. “The Moon.” And looked out of the window. “There is no moon. But too much light. I don’t like it. As if the city were on fire. The earth on fire. That is what they say. But nothing’s crackling. I’ve heard a whole hillside on fire. It rushes and pounds like water. The noise that the people are making isn’t loud enough.”

  He came up and took her in his arms, as he had been wanting to do ever since he entered. Once again he was relieved that she didn’t repulse him. He let her go, and then at once clasped her again. Only while he held her did he feel master of himself; if he could embrace her while he led an army, he would be invincible—if she could melt into his body, absorbed, eaten, digested into blood and yet enveloping him with her character, her loins...He realised that she had said nothing.

  “No word at all...”

  She pulled away and went towards the window. No, she wouldn’t go out. At once the tensity of her feeling against Antonius passed, and she was sorry for him. He had followed her to the window, blinking, dismayed, fumbling with his hands.

  “You’re not angry, are you? What is there to be angry about? Life isn’t worth living unless we’re friends...”

  “I’m not angry. Let us go to bed. I’m tired.”

  “Yes, yes,” he answered, speaking energetically at last. “Where...Come on.”

  With an effort he remembered that both of them must submit to the ceremony of royal undressing. But why? A flush of his old strength returned. To hell with all pages, chamberlains, and tire-maids. Smiling, he picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the room and along the corridor, disregarding the appalled eunuchs who stood back against the wall to escape being hit in the chest by her trailing sandals.

  She held him tight around the neck. It was pleasant to have him acting like a boisterous boy again, pleasant and sadly futile, but pleasant while it lasted. She laid her head on his shoulder. It was better to go to bed. After Antonius had fallen asleep, she would be able to think. There was so much to think about. But she smiled to herself, with her face nestling into his strong neck. She could put the thinking aside for a while; she would have to put it aside, in his arms recovering their lost strength, in his eyes losing their fear, in this brief summer conjured upon the bed of winter.

  *

  There was no people so excitable as the Alexandrians. All that was most volatile, genial, and unstable in Egyptian, Greek, and Jew had met to produce the atmosphere of their community; and almost every nation of the known world had contributed something. Phoinician traders, Roman outlaws, northern slaves, Celts from the cavalry left behind as a garrison-force some years before, Arabs and Syrians, negroes, even a few Persians and Hindus. A mere horse-race in the Hippodrome would send the city seething with excitement for days; and an audience emerging from the Theatre looked drunken, swaying and gesticulating, drugged with their participation in a world of fantasy. The great religious rites swept them off their feet, like a tidal wave pouring upon the city from the blue Mediterranean, spun them giddy, drowned them in a turmoil of heady images and evangels.

  Now they were flocking through the illuminated streets, gazing at the lights till their eyes were sore and their brains filled with swirling pictures of the life unloosed for one night on their city of travailing earth. But they restrained their emotions. The hour was not yet. The sense of waiting smote them at times, hurt them physically, and they howled or searched for yet another lamp. Every light was needed to help the dying Sun, to carry him round the corner of the year, to scare away the devils with which he was fighting in Amenti at this very moment. They listened for noises underground, for the strokes of the battle in the darkness, the harrowing of hell. Some lay with ears to the pavement and were trampled on, and began fighting—fighting for the Lord in His struggles to slay Death. Fear increased. Could Osiris quail? Listen to my heart, where the strokes of the battle are echoes, where heaven and hell and earth are gathered. Bring more lamps!

  Manethos and his family, with Daphne between the girls, set off early in the evening. Manethos, as chief priest of an important temple, would be admitted into the inner sanctuary; but he wished to avoid the crush in the streets. He disliked Alexandria, for very much the same reasons of disapproval as Nicias; but it was the race-purity of Egyptian, at least of the noble families, about which he felt concerned, whereas to Nicias the cosmopolitan city represented the downfall of Greek independence, the curse of promiscuity induced by the vaunting insolence of the god-masque of Alexandros. Manethos sorrowed for his people who in the city were shown at their worst; the Egyptian polity had always
decentralised. In the country now the natives might be trampled on, driven, toiling; but they were still Egyptians, vaguely aware of the heritage that they might yet claim. In Alexandria they were slaves indeed, locked up in factories by day, debauching by night, learning all the dirty crafts of the townsman, the lust for useless possessions, the lust for amusements provided by others, the degradation of sport. Yet Ra lived in the disc of the Sun by day, visible to all; and the power of light lived in the spirit of the unrebellious seeker. Egypt had swallowed invaders before; and Alexandria, which had been purely a Greek city 30o years ago, was daily becoming more Egyptianised.

  He was robed in his pure linen vestments, shod in papyrus-fibre; no filth of dead animal life, wool or skin, might touch his flesh. The people made way for him in reverence; and Daphne, in her saffron dress, felt abashed with the Egyptian women, who, however, had added to their usual toilet wigs with fine dark ringlets squarely massed.

  They turned off from the Canopic Street to the left and began to ascend the slope towards the Sarapeion. The huge temple rose out of the diffused flood of lamplight like a strong rock, a splendid ark of God floating amid the dawn-mists of creation, ignoring the furious life of the city, the animalcules of the waters. It stood on a rugged hill, a pile of syenite, red granite and marble, composed of endless colonnades and cells, the whole vast rectangle dominated by the lofty dome. Under the temple proper was a basement of vaulted cells and sanctuaries, into which light came from gratings and embrasures, and where the profane were not admitted.

  Up the long approach went the Manethos party, up the shelving hundred steps. Daphne had visited the temple several times, but not at such a time of festival or at night; and she seemed to be seeing it all for the first time. In the day the temple had been a fine sight, but merely the largest and richest building in Alexandria. The night, the floating illuminations, made everything different, gave the whole scene, the whole earth, an unsubstantiality, a plastic and fragile beauty that seemed to dare the beholder to make of life and the world only what the heart desired. The temple was serenely alone, rising above earth and sky alike, a refuge and a palace of realisations.