by Jack Lindsay
“It was far longer than I thought,” said Daphne. “We could have got to the Lake in less time. And we’ll have to go back through those stuffy docks again.”
“It was you that suggested coming here,” said Victor, replying to the discontented blame in her voice. She hadn’t thought how much his head was throbbing.
“O how can you say such things.”
He tried to remember exactly. “Well, I saw you looking at it, and that made me suggest coming.”
“It isn’t the same thing at all...”
The height was much hotter than they’d expected. Even by day a fire was kept going, so that there would be a smoke-column visible miles away at sea. But from the shore the breezy height of stone against the blue had delusively promised a cool retreat.
“Don’t let’s quarrel.” Victor took Daphne’s hand. “I only want to be alone with you.”
At least they were alone, or so they thought. It was too hot in the front where the fire-opening faced the sea with the large convex metal mirrors that intensified the flame. The lovers had edged round to the back, where none of the stokers could see them; and now, looking round, they were disgusted to see that they weren’t even alone. An old man was leaning over the parapet at one of the corners, a wandering Cynic preacher he looked with his worn cloak, charity-scrip, and long thin beard.
Victor was enraged. He’d felt sure that after all the racking journey he’d be able to embrace Daphne, close under the sky. That had been the attraction of the tower. Daphne glanced at the man and then back at Victor.
“He doesn’t matter.”
Victor was enraged more than ever. The man mattered terribly; he was a curse and a blight and an abomination, and Daphne said that he didn’t matter! That was to say that love didn’t matter, and the secrets of the unuttered body. It was all her fault for having looked at the tower when she did; they could have been down by the cool Lake, amid lilies of coolness and little water-noises.
He looked at her irritably and saw that she was plucking at her sleeve, tearing at a thread, her head bent. Surely she wasn’t crying. He forgot his irritation and touched her hand softly.
“Dearest...”
She looked up, wide-eyed, wet-eyed, his darling; and he whispered to her, “We’re alone wherever we are, only the other people don’t know it....I’m thinking of you. Can you guess what I’m thinking?”
“Don’t,” she said, and grasped the sooted parapet, then recoiled and held up her hands helplessly. “O what shall I do?”
He had been hurt by her lack of response, but, magnanimously touched by her gesture, opened his tunic.
“Rub your hands in here. The dirt won’t show.” She rubbed her hands on his shift, and he thrust them in against his bare breast. “Feel my heart.”
She smiled, winced, frowned, smiled again, and withdrew her hands.
“What is it?’ he asked anxiously. “Tell me.”
For a moment he feared that she was going to say she loved someone else—Borios. Then that fear seemed mad, and he was merely perplexed. “What is it?”
“I can’t,” she answered, still hanging her head. “But I’ll have to. Victor...” She began weeping again. “Why doesn’t that old man go away?”
“He doesn’t matter. He isn’t looking at us. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Hold me,” she murmured. “Hold me so I can’t see anything.”
He put his arm round her and pressed her face against his breast.
“Victor,” she went on in a voice that he could scarcely catch. “Victor...I’m...I’m going to have a baby.”
He was so astonished that he relaxed his hold and tried to look at her face, but she struggled and pressed her face against him.
“Surely not,” he said pleadingly. “After only two times.” That was all he could think of at the moment. It was unfair. Only twice. It seemed a mockery of the scores of times they’d been thwarted of embracing one another. Borios had been meeting one of the scullery-girls on and off for three years, and nothing had happened. “Only two times.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” she replied angrily. “O how beastly you are. I’ll throw myself over.”
He grasped her again tightly, and tried to think. Like Daphne he knew that it was really three times they’d embraced, but didn’t like to include the first time, the day of their meeting. Even Daphne, who wanted to rebut as much as possible his unfeeling emphasis on the arithmetic of the problem, didn’t like to mention it. Instead she recommenced to weep, dimly comforted by his strong clasp.
“I’d be so glad,” he muttered, trying to get at grips with the situation, “if only we were married.”
“But we are married,” sobbed Daphne. “Don’t say you’ve lost your ring.”
“Of course I haven’t,” he answered in annoyance. “I meant: married before the world.”
“You didn’t. You meant what you said. You meant that you don’t really look on our love as marriage, you don’t really love me. Now you’re giving yourself away.”
“I love you more than ever.”
He produced the ring from under his shift where it hung on a cord round his neck, and felt hers through her blouse, a knot between her breasts. He blurted out phrase after phrase of compassionate affection, until both of them felt soothed. But all the time he was aware that he didn’t, couldn’t, truly grasp the fact that she was with child. It wasn’t that he loved her any the less. He simply couldn’t conceive the meaning of her words. She looked precisely the same Daphne as of old. He wanted to let things go on as they were going, and it seemed that she expected her words to make things tremendously different. But what could he do? A slave...
At last she spoke in a muffled voice.
“You said that he’d free you...”
“So he will. Later on.”
“You must ask him now. At once.”
“And spoil everything!”
He objected intensely to her suggestion. Of course he’d ask Antonius; but he couldn’t be hurried about it; he must wait and find the right moment. But she couldn’t understand that. She wanted to push him.
She felt his body growing rigid, and said nothing more, desolated at the selfishness of his heart. Couldn’t he understand what had happened? There was no time to wait. Everything must be settled, here and now, or awful things would come upon them.
She temporised. “As soon as you can.”
“Of course. What do you think of me?” he answered fervently. Now that she had surrendered and slackened her insistence, he grew easier; he would ask Antonius soon—perhaps next week; but he must have time to nerve himself first.
The wandering preacher, whom the lovers had wholly forgotten, had risen from his crouching posture, and now approached. He stared at the shrinking pair from under his bushy brows.
“There is no love,” he said austerely. “There is only lust. When will you attain the directness of animals and the purity of human beings undeceived by words? Love is no more than a distortion of the mind, the evil of hungry words, words that merge into one another, distorting meanings, eating away the whole face of life with their mange. In sheer lust there is meaning. But love is entirely evil, the child and the begetter of suffering! spawn of the prying, dissatisfied mind! Be humble and learn wisdom!”
“Go away!” cried Daphne shrilly.
“I am going,” the preacher said, and went.
Victor looked after him pugnaciously. “I would have hit him, but he was too old. And mad, I think.”
Now the lovers had the whole top-platform to themselves. The stokers in the circular tower were hidden. But Victor didn’t feel as he had felt. Perhaps it was the mad speech of the preacher; perhaps it was the revelation made by Daphne. He seemed outside his body, without desire; but as he stood there gripped by his revulsion, he felt a vast pity and tenderness moving within him, voiceless, coming from depth beyond depth unknown; and he took Daphne in his arms. She yielded with a happy sigh, glad that she had unburdened herself
, so very glad that she was able to forget, at least for a moment, the insufficiencies of his response.
Locked closely but gently, they stood looking over the parapet, at the world of waters below and the swarming city beyond, at the lumbering merchant-ship with stern towers that swung past the Pharos. But they saw nothing, content to stand there motionlessly clasped. Slowly, peacefully, proudly there emerged into Victor’s brain the consciousness that Daphne was with child, that the child was his, that they were truly wedded, that their blood had kindled and united in the Mysterion of love.
They said nothing, but Daphne was aware of the change in him. She sighed with increasing happiness and rested her head more easily on his shoulder. She was sure at last that he really loved her, because he hadn’t tried to take her after they were left alone.
Both were happy. They wanted to stand there, motionless, merely absorbing one another’s breathing presence, for ever.
8 COMING OF AGE
Though Victor was spending most of his time away from the Palace, he heard the gossiping among the pages and other body-slaves. Bad news kept coming from Greece and Asia, though Cleopatra did her best to stop it from spreading. Octavianus had been greeted with triumphal acclamations everywhere, honours were showering upon him, all the cities and princes of Asia were competing to gain his pardon and favour. Cleopatra had sent agents, but they reported failure. Antonius, once the man to whom all the states looked, was discredited.
She withheld from him as much of the news as possible, but he knew what was going on. Though afraid of relapsing yet again into heavy drinking, he had become morose again, but with a tincture of gay devilry rather forced and uneasy. Victor could see that he was hiding from the facts behind a weak hope that everything would turn out all right after all. Once he said: “Well, at the worst I’ll have to retire and become a private citizen, like Lepidus. I hope they give me a good pension as I haven’t any fortune left to be confiscated.”
He had got together his old boon-companions, the Inimitables; but now he had named them “Fellows-in- Death.” The dinner-parties began anew, but without the old zest. There were thirty-five Fellows, and Borios said he’d heard one of them say, in laughing at the motto: United we stand, divided we fall. “As one we drink, in twos we make love, and in thirty-five different directions we run at the sight of the foe.” The richer Greek families, those who still affected the broad Macedonian accent, visited the Palace; for though they objected strongly to the tactics of Cleopatra, they preferred her rule to the rule of Rome.
Victor felt quite recovered, though he still had to wear a bandage; but he called on Olympos in his palace-study and asked to be further excused from work, smiling with a feeble conspiratorial air and shifting on his feet.
“Very well,” said Olympos. “Take another fortnight.” He turned away; then, compelled, looked into Victor’s eyes solemnly. “Never forget to love, my boy. Life comes so easily between us and the thing we love; and it’s only afterwards we learn what we’ve done.”
He spoke from his heart and then wondered. How was he so sure? He had never loved and lost, loved and betrayed. Yet his heart felt bursting with unshed tears for irreparable loss. He was getting old; it must be the nearing of death. The lad seemed a nice lad.
“I’ll never forget,” said Victor passionately. “Never.” He wanted to go on talking, but Olympos closed his eyes and waved him out.
*
At the end of the corridor Victor found a hubbubing group, and at last learned what had happened. Iotapa had tried to stab Cleopatra, but had only succeeded in scratching her down one side of her face. Her young husband she had stabbed in the arm. One of the eunuchs in rebuking her for tantrums had unwarily mentioned that her father had been put to death a few months earlier at Cleopatra’s orders. Iotapa had thought he was still in prison, as Cleopatra had bidden the truth to be kept from her. The Armenian king has been too unwelcome a guest after Actium; besides he had insulted Cleopatra by refusing to bow to her at the Triumph which Antonius had held three years before at Alexandria in defiance of all Roman precedent. The king, a cultured man who had spent his time in jail in writing a tragedy and in teaching birds to sing tunes of his own composition, had asked the assassins for an hour’s grace while he worked at the tragedy’s concluding lines; but his request had not been granted. He had been strangled while his birds chattered angrily and his tragedy lay unfinished.
When Iotapa heard, she lay on the floor, then waited till Cleopatra was receiving the princes.
Victor tiptoed to the door and peeped through the line of guards.
Cleopatra was holding a fine-linen kerchief to her cheek, and young Alexandros was having his arm bound up. Olympos came pushing through the guards without recognising Victor; entered, and took charge of the bandaging, and sent for some ointment for Cleopatra’s face. Cleopatra was tense with fury. She turned with slitted eyes to the unrepentant Iotapa who was held by a eunuch and a male nurse. Victor waited to hear a death-sentence or something worse, all his sympathy for Iotapa because she was young and brave.
Cleopatra opened her mouth, but said nothing. She seemed to become weary, perhaps remembering her sister Berenice who had been put to death for usurping her father’s throne, her two brother-husbands who had died young, and her sister Arsinoe who had been strangled at Ephesos at the orders of Antonius (who acted at the orders of Cleopatra...who acted at the orders of whom? The daimon of family-hate, the will to power, which creates the hell of the lonely insatiable heart, desiring to give in generosity a gift greater than life...) Had it really been necessary to kill the Armenian king with his poems and his birds, so that he might not survive her that had imprisoned him? What had this young fool Iotapa to do with the stars in their courses and Isis lonely suckling the world? Stand out of my way.
“You have disfigured me,” said Cleopatra quietly, “at least for a short while. So I shall treat you likewise.” She looked at the eunuch. “Take her away and shave all her hair off.”
Iotapa tossed her head. “That is as I should wish. I shall lay my hair on the tomb of my father.” She glanced round. “Will you love me,” she asked Alexandros, “when I’m bald?”
“I hate you anyhow,” howled Alexandros, blubbering. “Will you love me?” she turned to Antyllus.
He shuffled and mumbled. Iotapa pulled away from her guards, ran at him, and smacked his face.
“Take her away,” said Cleopatra, unmoved; and Iotapa was led out. Cleopatra went on, carelessly, “I almost like her now.” She changed the cloth round, against her burning bloodstained cheek.
“So do I,” shouted Alexandros, not to be outdone, pleased because his wife had smacked Antyllus and because Cleopatra had praised her publicly. “She didn’t hurt me much. After all, she’s married to me.”
Caesarion approached Cleopatra with the ointment which had arrived. “Mother, let me.”
She inclined her head, smiling, and he began to rub gently on her cheek.
“Spit’s the best thing for a wound,” whispered the soldier who stood at the door next to Victor. “But I don’t suppose she’d take it kindly if I went and spat on her.”
*
It was early April, and Cleopatra had issued a proclamation that her son Caesarion, son of Ra, would finally receive adult status on his birthday in a fortnight’s time. The tidings were highly popular, despite the political uncertainty and the fact that Caesarion was on the whole disliked by the Alexandrians, who had not forgotten how his father had invaded and disturbed their city. But a show was a show. This coming-of-age was a Greek rather than an Egyptian ceremony, and Antonius complicated the matter by declaring that he would invest Antyllus with the toga of manhood on the same day. So a Roman variation was added.
“She means it to create confidence,” said Olympos, meeting Nicias in one of the colonnades of the Museion. “To have a real son of Caesar to set up against Octavianus, the mere adopted son.”
Nicias had just left the basilica where he had taken a class in
Homeric grammar, and felt shaken, as he always did after teaching. For him the grammar was only a kind of veil over the precious reality, the heroic world; and the students were so fatuously superficial, his only defence was a pedantic obscurantism.
“Confidence!” he echoed with a dim sneer, and then forgot Cleopatra. “There are some more medical tracts turned up among the Pergamene books. They might interest you. I can never make up my mind whether I like Pergamene sculpture or not. Though I don’t suppose that has anything to do with medicine.”
“Perhaps it has,” answered Olympos. “Anatomy links sculpture and the healing art. But I don’t think I like those bellowing stone giants, those flamboyant gods. They’re over-life-size.”
“All art should be over-life-size.” Nicias decided at last that he liked the Pergamene school, even though their style lacked the simplicity of his tragic poets.
It was down a cloister lined with the statues of dead poets that the two men were walking—dead poets and gilt Muses, with a fountain at the end, a replica of Hippocrene, with a winged horse modelled springing overhead. It might be a replica as it was claimed, but its waters certainly did not make poets of those who drank them. The pupils of Nicias often quenched their thirst there, with no appreciable results. The great hall of the Library opened before the two professors, a tall dome of space and light. Slaves were busy cleaning and dusting, keeping the cases free from worms with cypress-oil.
Olympos didn’t like the Library. It reminded him of a tomb: men’s efforts neatly sorted, dead men who spoke. All men sought to speak to the future instead of living in the sweetness and the structure of the hour. That was what was wrong with life. Time was jangled—past and future writhing across the present, cutting it into a myriad planes of light and darkness, dead men crying, living men who were not yet alive, all striving into dimensions other than the present. It seemed almost that time went backward while space went forward...