by Jack Lindsay
Then, since the rings were far too large, they joined the tips of their ring-fingers and shook the fingers till the rings slid down and knocked against one another; and that was a further matter for laughter. They laughed and leant their heads together, and felt weak with yearning, and yet strong enough to live for ever, in one another’s arms. They took no notice when a street-urchin mocked at them and asked if they were goats butting one another. They merely thought he was asking for alms, and Victor gave him a copper, to his astonishment; and they walked on, light-footed and happy.
Victor still felt ashamed about last night and wanted to explain that he had been very tired; but after the nuptials of the dawn he couldn’t approach the subject; perhaps it was unnecessary. It was only the dawn’s embrace and the following sweetness of communion that mattered, and the days of trustful and unjarring companionship that were to come.
*
They parted at last, each unable to tell how it had been done, so many strands of sense and emotion still enwebbed them. But the strands broke in the end, painfully, joyously, dazedly; and Victor found himself striding up the street towards the palace and his deserted duties, and Daphne slipped upstairs, feeling abruptly a weariness in her bones, and a bitter taste in her mouth. She answered the questions of Nicias dreamily; yes, she’d enjoyed herself, but she didn’t like Egyptians much after all; she was rather tired; an Egyptian meal didn’t agree with her, it tasted of soda or something.
Then she drew Simon aside in a corner of the kitchen where Nicias wouldn’t be able to hear; and told him that she’d had to tell the Manethos that Nicias was ill because they’d been insulted through his continued refusal to call on them—so, if they sent a messenger, Simon was to say that Nicias was ill but not in any danger.
Simon growled an assent; and in a short while Daphne found that she had guessed rightly. Sheftu-Teta sent a slave to inquire about Nicias. Simon said what he had been told to say; and Daphne hugged herself. That had settled poking-nosed Sheftu-Teta. A lot she cared about Nicias; she wanted to catch Daphne out. But Daphne was too wide-awake. She yawned and stretched herself, suddenly very drowsy and hungry. She didn’t know which was the stronger, the wish to sleep or the wish to eat.
But she soon solved the question; for, lying down on the bed to rest while she thought, she fell instantly asleep.
*
Victor also discovered how hungry he was as he walked back to the Palace, but he had no time to think about sleep. After begging at the kitchen, he obtained some food, bread, cheese and barley cakes; and ate ravenously. He was so late already that he felt reckless. It would be better to have a full stomach; otherwise he’d break down and cry. While eating the last crust, he entered the page’s wing, and met Eros, who went past with nose in air. Apparently Borios had been talking, or there had been some unobserved observer after all. Anyhow that didn’t matter. Daphne might have been one of the pantry-girls; and the eunuchs couldn’t order one of the pages of Antonius to be whipped without allowing an appeal to Antonius, who would be sure to pardon such a peccadillo, with jeers at the eunuch.
Boris appeared in the mess-room.
“Come along. You’re lucky.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The ships are burned.”
Victor helped him to get out a new tunic for Antonius from the chests.
“What happened?”
“He tore the one he was wearing. He looked as if he was going to kill the messenger. He swelled up inside. Then he ripped his tunic right off, in a rage.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She only looked away. I thought she’d flare out, but she didn’t.”
The pages hastened to the room where Antonius lay on the couch, his tunic tattered. He had called for some wine, but was drinking it weak with water. As the pages removed the old tunic, Cleopatra came across from her dressing-table, her eyes darkly ringed.
“You know who did it.”
“ The messenger said the Arabs from Petra.”
“Who controls the Arabs from Petra? who last collected the dues from them—against their will?”
The face of Antonius grew hideous with hatred. “Herodes.” He beat at the couch. “It’s all my fault for letting him go.”
Cleopatra said nothing. She scrutinised Antonius from under her lashes. Then she said, “It doesn’t matter. There are other ways.”
Antonius looked at her hopefully, afraid only of her anger, unable to think of the lost ships in which flight had been planned. Nowhere could he flee from Cleopatra. In India or Alexandria, it was all the same. He wanted to know if she blamed him.
She appeared to put the subject aside altogether. “The children were very naughty last night.” She came up and touched Antonius on the cheek, bent and kissed him.
“One can’t blame them. The noise and all those lights.”
He was now fully dressed again, and lay sipping his wine. The pages stood back. A eunuch entered and whispered with Cleopatra. She spoke sharply and then returned to Antonius.
“You really must speak to Antyllus. He encourages Iotapa to misbehave herself. She threw a lamp out of the window last night and hit one of the sweepers. Then she started a game of blindman’s-buff and pushed Alexandros over while he had his eyes bandaged. He cut his knee on the mosaic; and then she was found hiding under the bed in the next room with Antyllus. Alexandros is furious.”
“He’s only a child,” said Antonius with a contented smile. “He can’t be taken very seriously as a husband.” The thought of a small boy as cuckold pleased him and he laughed. “But I’ll speak to Antyllus.”
“Iotapa is the wife of Alexandros,” replied Cleopatra. “His wife, I say. I insist on decency and decorum in the matter. While she’s his wife, she must be true to him, whatever his age is. Why, the brat herself is only a child.”
“I’ll speak to Antyllus,” Antonius repeated, prudently trying to get rid of his smile. But the weakened muscles refused to change quickly; he felt the smile hardening into a fixed grin.
“With that smile on your face? That won’t do much good.”
“Of course I won’t smile then. I didn’t mean to smile at all.”
Cleopatra sat down on the ivory stool before her ebony toilet-table, turned away, and then turned back.
“Do you remember when you left me, years ago, only to arrange a few political matters—and stayed away three whole years—with the sweet-faced, long-suffering Octavia as your modest bride. Do you remember? Don’t you wish you’d stayed with her?”
Antonius stirred unhappily. “That’s all past...Political entanglements...you said you understood.”
“Political entanglements? When you came back, it was with a request for me to beggar Egypt on your behalf—to fit you out for the Parthian war that disgraced you. That sounds to me rather like a political entanglement. Now Egypt’s squeezed dry...and you’re drunk.”
“Don’t,” he pleaded. “I’ve never loved anyone but you. Why bring the past up?”
“Because the grin on your face just now was the grin you gave me as you left me. Consoled me with a kiss. Poor woman, with twins to keep her occupied, one for each breast. A lapful. Octavia had more room to spare. Go on. Grin again. I can see the grin you’re trying to hide. You were far happier with her. She never did unreasonable things. She believed everything you said. So did I for a while. She said: Yes, dear. She liked your grin. She’d forgive you still if you went back. Did you grin at her in Athens when you left—politically entangled—needing Egypt’s resources for your soldiers. You stayed three whole years with her. You’ve never spent more than a few months with me. Always going off to show that you could conquer the Parthians.”
He rose from the couch, muttering “I didn’t do so badly in Armenia,” and tried to take her in his arms. She beat him off.
“You husk of a man. You sogged bit of rind.” She hit him in the face. “I’m only a woman, the length of a bed. Grin at your whores, not at me.” She dropped from Greek
into Roman camp-slang. Padicator tu’s, aurum meum rapuisti, stercorem tibi dabo...
Victor had heard her swear before, but never so violently. She went on to call Antonius every filthy name that she had ever heard or imagined. He shrank back and sat with bowed head, tightening his lips and tapping his knee mechanically.
At last she rushed from the room. Antonius waited till she was gone, then shook his fist after her, and muttered. “You ruined me, you wolf-bitch. You ruined me. And you know it.”
His head fell heavily on his breast, and he wept.
Ghosts were clustering round him. Fulvia, his fierce wife, who had broken a blood-vessel when he laughed in her face after she had demanded to know what he’d done at Alexandria—his first stay with Cleopatra. Gaius, his brother, who had died in Macedonia, his throat wretchedly cut, with a jeer till the end. Lucius, his other brother, who had been ready to die for him, a wild fellow, gloomy sometimes, but staunch. All the friends of his youth, dead. Curio, Clodius...and most terrible of all, the murdered Caesar, whom Antonius had avenged and yet never placated. Still the ghost of Caesar walked the earth; and the world of men was cloven with strife; and somehow Antonius knew he had failed his master Caesar...Caesar who had become more terribly a master in his death...dust and ashes; and a woman with a foul mouth, desirable, blaming him...
He put his hands to his cars; but the voices of the past still rang eerily in his brain. He rose with a twinge of fear, to follow Cleopatra, to feel at least the strength and warmth of her angry body near...at the other side of the room perhaps, but still near; alive and promising life; silencing the ghosts.
He hurried out, spilling his wine.
“Would you let a woman hit you?” asked Borios.
Victor thought. “It all depends...but there isn’t any need to be hit.”
“You don’t know women,” said Borios with casual contempt. “No woman would hit me. Not twice.”
But Victor was secure in his memories. It was his turn to look at Borios with a pitying superiority. Daphne and he would never quarrel. They were different from other lovers, who did not love so completely.
ANOTHER YEAR COMES - MARCH-OCTOBER 30 B.C.
7 ON A HEIGHT
Spring had returned; and the lovers knew it, in their blood (which would however have made a nest of spring on any wintry bough), and because they were less drenched or cut about by the wind. They had no eyes for anything around, and even the rain or wind hardly awoke their perception. They spent together every moment possible, and yet felt themselves sadly cheated in every moment spent apart. They exercised all their ingenuity in trying to escape from people and to be alone, but with little success. Only the night was hospitable for lovers. The day spread out its myriad baits of colour, its bellying tent of blue air, the lovely frilling carpet of the sea (with the notice “Walking Forbidden”) perpetually unrolled right up to the feet of the gazers on the shore, the various trees and bushes, the manifold town; but it gave no seclusion. It plastered the wonderful scene with eyes. What was to be done? Daphne refused to visit a boarding-house where Victor could have taken rooms; and though he resented her refusal, he did not press her. For he was rather scared of the ordeal himself. She insisted that they’d be found out that way and her father would get to know. Yet she shamelessly let him kiss her on a garden seat. Kisses, only kisses.
But kisses were enough, almost enough. They kissed all the time. During the winter months there was less foliage and therefore less chance of hiding in the parks. They did their best but a gardener always noticed them. They searched every nook of the sea-front, every cranny of the occasional cul-de-sac in the town (of which there were few, for Alexandria was a town carefully laid out in streets crossing at right angles). Nowhere was there privacy out of doors. They even tried the Zoo; stared at sulky tigers and lions, leopards, panthers and lynxes; inspected, with thoughts elsewhere, the gazelles and antelopes with spiraling horns, the Indian and African buffaloes, the wild asses and giraffes; hated the chattering disgraceful monkeys, and then loved them; admired the parrots, peacocks, guinea-fowl, pheasants, and assorted African rareties, and lamented their imprisonment; and had to listen to a kindly official who told them all the names and differences; yawned at the bored hippopotamus and the rhinoceros with his slack skin (the mere sight of which made one’s clothes feel uncomfortable), and the annoying horn on his nose which must have given him a squint; shuddered and passed the snakes quickly, with a backward glance; wanted to pat the elephants brought from the South on huge rafts; gaped at the whitish long-haired polar bear enjoying the change in the weather and diving in his pool for fish; and found nowhere to hide. Even if they had found somewhere, they wouldn’t have hidden. The proximity of snakes and rhinoceroses was too distracting.
So they wandered back into the Meandros Park, and went into the Surinx Gallery with its special shrubs, and the basilica where they could pretend to look at works of art and see if there were any to remind them of themselves; but in the priceless collection there was none good enough, though one easel-picture by Apelles they found passable; and they sat on almost all the cold seats, leaving behind an ineffective replica in warmth of their rumps; and explored all the recesses, which seemed constructed to thwart lovers in a hurry; and went out again. And then at last Winter aided them.
A violent storm burst. They rushed under a thicket of myrtles and oleanders, from which they had twice been ousted by suspicious gardeners during more clement weather. But they didn’t mind the rain, and no gardener ventured out, no one was there to see them. Everyone else had fled shrieking for the covered walls of the Gallery. The thicket was free for the taking of lovers, and Daphne and Victor were the only lovers near.
The rain trickled down over their necks, their clothing was sodden, the wind howled and threw handfuls of leaves in their faces. But they didn’t care. They laughed. For the wind had blown the gardeners away. The wind had cleared the garden. The wind was their bellowing friend.
They were warm, part of them at least. They didn’t care. They hoped that there’d be a storm every day, but storms came seldom in Alexandria. They had leaves and mud in their hair, and when they reached home, they found leaves under their clothes, wet winter leaves, half-dried and sticking to the skin. But it was two hours before they went home; and it would have been longer if the storm hadn’t finished.
Daphne made Victor promise to change at once and have a warm bath, and he made her promise the same thing; and they both caught colds, but not bad colds, and sneezed together, kissing. For nobody minded kissing, they could kiss in the open.
Kisses. No lovers had ever kissed so much. They couldn’t understand why everyone else wasn’t kissing. Several pages saw Victor, and his life at the Palace became empested with incessant ribaldry; but he bore it all for love, and was flattered. Once a tradesman, who knew Daphne, saw them, and spoke to Simon; and once Simon saw them himself, but that time they weren’t kissing as they were walking along the street. Simon didn’t like to worry Nicias unless he had definite evidence of something wrong, for Nicias was so lax in his supervision of Daphne’s acquaintances.
But he spoke to Daphne. “I saw you with someone.”
“You did no such thing,” she replied, with such lofty assurance that she confounded him. She stared him out of countenance, and he felt that he must be more certain of his facts before he complained further, though he dropped a few hints which were entirely unnoticed by the preoccupied Nicias. But thenceforth Daphne took greater heed and met Victor only in the corner of the garden nearest to the Palace-entrance: which was the most suitable place, since it enabled him to spend the most time with her.
Once they had an idea. Why not hire a boat and row out into mid-harbour? No one would be able to see them there. So Victor hired a skiff, and with clumsy care rowed it out into the gently-rumbustious waters. But they never seemed to get away from the shore. It jutted out in so many more places than they’d thought; and they could always see people clearly somewhere, and so reasoned
that the people would be able to see them. Also there were more ships coming in and going out than they’d expected; even in the winter months, when deep-sea shipping was laid up, there was trade with the ports nearby such as Pelusion and Phoinicos. And there were fishermen everywhere, who didn’t show up particularly from the shore. In fact the harbour was almost as populated as the land, with the disadvantage that there was nothing to break the view. And then, when they decided to ignore the people on the Mole, the fishermen on the right, and the small cargo-ship swooping out from the Quay, they almost upset the boat. It rocked terrifyingly, and they had to grasp the sides to steady it. Then they found they had drifted till the cargo-ship was steering almost on top of them, and Victor only sculled the boat out of the way with a fearful effort, having had no time to calculate and thereby do the wrong thing. Also, it was very cold.
After that they decided to go back to land, and finished kissing gratefully in the garden; for they couldn’t even kiss in a boat without extreme danger of drowning.
*
Three months passed, and the winter was farewelled. In deeper Egypt there were feasts of Ptah and Horos, but Alexandria was cut away from the land which it ruled and which fed it with wealth. Most of the Egyptian rituals proper had failed to enter it. Still, the blessed Ship of Osiris was launched on the waters, and the Alexandrians signalised the opening of the trading months by noisy expeditions to the pleasure-resort of Canopos eastward of the city. In Canopos every kind of wine and woman in the world was buyable, the most precious scents and the most bestial vices. Every night was a night of lanterns. The nights were only louder than the days; and when a woman had once visited Canopos, so the saying went, she was like a sheep-dog who had had his taste of sheep-flesh—the wolf came out in the blood. The visitor was never a good housewife again she heard flutes in the night, and usually had a bad temper. To Canopos the revellers sailed along a canal in flower-wreathed barges, past the rich villas that littered the banks; and they sang all the while.