Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  “Borios said you were in love with Charmion, and she told you to come to her room, and gave you directions for the room of that baggy-eyed old eunuch Mardian. And you went there in the dark and kissed him, and didn’t know your mistake till he woke up and squeaked out: Thanks be to Aphrodite Arsinoe Zephyritis!”

  “That’s a vile lie!” cries Eros. “Wait till we get back. O what a lie. How preposterous.”

  But Victor still felt disturbed by what Eros had said. He tried to argue the feeling away. Surely Daphne wouldn’t have been so jealous if she’d had anything to hide, but perhaps her jealousy was only worked up to hide a bad conscience. Either argument seemed correct, but neither satisfied. Victor longed to be back in Alexandria. How could he wait? Probably the war would go on for months, for years, for ever. He looked at Eros malevolently and wondered if he could push him overboard without being noticed. He must do something!

  But he did nothing. He and Eros were supposed to sleep on the small floor-space beside the bunk in the cabin of Antonius. But on such a night as this they could sleep on deck. Victor got his rug and lay on the planks, smelling brine and pitch, and unable to rest. The darkness gurgled about him, heavy with stars. Mosquitoes buzzed hungrily, a deceptive croon, till the star-swarm seemed hungry too, wild for blood, shaking their stings of silver. And Daphne was many miles away. Crying in bed. Victor didn’t want her to be miserable, but if she wasn’t miserable it would mean that she didn’t love him—that she had been kissed by Borios, was perhaps being kissed by him now, for Borios had been left behind.

  Victor rose and prowled up and down the deck; stumbled over a late-drinker. Lucilius.

  “Sit down and have some wine,” said a friendly voice; and Victor obeyed, so glad at anything friendly and wondering why he hadn’t sought out Lucilius with his confidences before.

  Lucilius did not seem talkative tonight. He handed Victor a cup of wine, and then sat hugging his knees, staring up into the rich sky. Victor drank for a while, and then felt that he must talk.

  “I love a girl,” he said, “and she’s a bitch.”

  Lucilius accepted the statement without question. Then he leaned over.

  “I love nobody. And I’m a beast.”

  Having explained himself, he sat back, satisfied.

  “She’s a wonderful girl,” continued Victor, who had been appalled by the rush of bitterness which had made him libel Daphne, and who now felt that she was the most blameless girl ever born. “I’ll die without her. I wish you knew her.”

  “I know them all,” answered Lucilius, flatly. “You’re a good young fellow. I told you that before. Why don’t you come away with me?”

  Victor stood up joyously. “Now? Straight back to Alexandria? Let’s go ashore and walk back.”

  “No, no,” said Lucilius, with patient scorn. “Later on. I’ve got a farm in the Arsinoite Nome. He gave it to me two years ago. I’ve always had a hankering for a farmer’s life. My last illusion. Come along with me.”

  “But what about Antonius...?”

  “O he’s done-for.” Lucilius brooded, and then spoke more soberly. “I’ve been a fool, lad. I followed Brutus who you may or may not know said he was going to make the world free. It was he that killed Caesar. He had a snappish temper, but I loved him for what he saw in life, Freedom. He didn’t see it at all, but he thought he did. I’ve never been able to make out what freedom is, but I’ve always lived to find out. Is that clear?”

  He paused and spat over the side, then resumed:

  “Antonius beat Brutus at Philippi, perhaps you know. They were chasing Brutus. So I stood in the way and swore that I was Brutus. He was an ugly-looking fellow, so they believed me. They led me off to Antonius and gave Brutus the chance to escape if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t want to. He stuck his sword in his navel, saying that Virtue had let him down. Which was a rather mean complaint I’ve never made. Is that clear?”

  “Did they cut your head off?” asked Victor, who was growing more confused with the wine and the heat, and had dissociated Lucilius from the “I” in the story.

  “Antonius stared me up and down. A noble-looking fellow he was then, and he’s not too bad now. ‘I’ve come to die for Brutus,’ I said. Ah, I was young then. ‘You’re a friend worth having,’ said Antonius; ‘I’m certainly not going to kill you, lad.’ So I followed him instead of Brutus. Is that clear?”

  Nothing was clear to Victor. The star-drifts were floating closer, spikes of irritating heat, and there was sweat in his eyes, starry blindness. Lucilius was talking.

  “I saw Freedom in Antonius. The complete man. Not regulations and stern conscience as in Brutus. But joy. A dance of immortal gladiators. Things like that. I thought he’d free the world by letting everyone live his own life. No work and all play. Bodies mating or standing alone. Spring-water for wine, and a lettuce for dinner. No more need for wine. So I’m drunk now, to show I was all wrong. Dionusos is a dark god and eats raw flesh. Lad, I’ve killed a lot of men. Twenty-three, to be exact. And all because I wanted them to be free. But I’m not free. Antonius is done for. But I can’t desert to Octavianus and say: I’ve come to die for Antonius. A man can’t do things like that twice any more than a girl has two maidenheads. I’d be a fraud and the girl a whore. The next time, I’ll simply go out of the back door and retire to my farm, to live on cabbages. Is that clear?”

  He poured out some more wine, and drank, and wept.

  “But I love him. More than I did Brutus. But I can’t do anything for him. I’ve got to look for Freedom somewhere else, and I’m afraid of being alone, so I’ll never be free. But I must try. Will you come along?”

  “Would you mind if I brought a girl too?” asked Victor, feeling that he was being very shrewd. “She’s not very big. She wouldn’t take up much room. I mean we’d only want one bed. And she doesn’t eat much.”

  “Bring her by all means,” answered Lucilius, benevolently.

  “As long as she doesn’t play a musical instrument. I’d like her to come, as long as she isn’t ugly or talkative or anything of that sort.”

  “O no, she isn’t anything of that sort. You’ll like her all right,” exclaimed Victor, overjoyed at this discovery of a friend-in-need and sure that somehow his diplomacy had arranged the whole thing.

  *

  Sure that a storm had arrived to blow the unprepared ships on the rocks of the coast, he awoke out of sleep with knocking heart, his blood sour with the oppression of doom which was recognised at the next moment as the sickness of a stomach unaccustomed to much wine. There was no evil shape leaning over him, only the dull before-dawn sky and a smear of black cloud caught in the moving mast-top. And Lucilius lying nearby, snoring. The night paled away beneath the imperceptibly encroaching dawn; the wilted stars were brushed out. Where was Daphne? In almost the same pulse of thought Victor was sure that she had played him false and equally sure that she was untouchable, his alone. He sighed and settled back into an imagined embrace. His only fear was that Lucilius had been so drunk he would fail to recall his offer.

  But Lucilius recalled it. He blinked his eyes, reached for the flask, washed out his mouth with wine, and spat the wine out.

  “I’m not quite sure, lad, what I said last night. But I think I asked you to come down to my farm with me if I ever go there. I meant it. If I was as whole-hearted as I once was, I’d have a try at freedom all alone. But I’ve lost my first zest, and I’d like company. If anything goes wrong,” he paused, meaningly, “then off I go. And you’ll know where to find me.”

  “But where?”

  “In the Heracleides district. Just outside Socnopaios Nesos. I’ve been down there twice to inspect. The steward needs some jogging.”

  Victor made him repeat the address, and memorised it. Dawn was rising, an intense orange glow that slowly coarsened with red and fused the low-lying slaty-blue clouds. Then the sun cleared the horizon. The ships were already echoing with the sounds of breakfast, oaths, and orders. In half an hour the flee
t was on its way again.

  Tiring of the race of foam restless in its monotony, Victor left the deck and descended to the covered gallery that ran above the rowers. This gallery projected over the waters, supported by brackets of which the lower ends rested on the waling-pieces that bound the ship lengthways. Leaning on one of the curving rib-timbers that met the crossbeams of the deck-flooring overhead, he watched the rowers.

  They sat about three feet apart in each bank. The second bank were two feet below the first, and the third two feet below the second. The men in the second or third bank were seated a foot ahead of the men above, and the men in the upper banks had to sit with knees open to give space for the movements of those below. There wasn’t indeed room for much movement of the body. At each stroke the men stretched forward a little, extended their arms, and then put their weight on the oars. The arm-muscles took most of the strain. “O-op op!” called the boatswain, and the musician walked up and down the middle space, fluting in time. One man to an oar: as always—the shipwrights had no thought of widening and flattening their ships into ungainly barges. As a result only the rowers of the top-bank could pull with both hands over the oar; the others had to grasp with one hand over and one hand under, and take care not to dip the oars too deeply.

  Victor, somewhat seasick, stood and watched the men at work. Never had he seen anything so mechanical, so expertly timed; and the sight fascinated, disgusted. The skill with which the two hundred odd men were packed into the space, draped on the walls of the ship’s inside, made the effect of their regular movements all the more perturbing. The lines of their ascending series swung forward, intersecting the rigid structure of seats and stays, counteracting the pull of the backward-leaning supports; then with the cry “Op!” the resilient thrusting lines sagged, failed back to the first rigidity...It was inhuman. Yet the human mind had invented it, and human beings were carrying it out. Victor longed for the cabbage-garden of Lucilius, for work where men could see what they were doing, knew what they were tackling, were intimately contesting and yet friendly with the earth, because after all they were serving her purposes, quickening, modifying, yet still serving. But this mechanical action was real slavery.

  He merely knew that the sight of the rowers somehow horrified him and that his thoughts turned desirously to toil in a garden.

  He staggered back on deck.

  That night they slept ashore, at Catabathinos the Lesser; for Antonius landed with soldiers to guard the circuit of the township and ensure that no one rode out towards Paraitonion. He stayed in the house of the president of the local Council, and the pages slept in an anteroom on rugs full of fleas, disturbed at midnight by a fat girl who said she’d left a brooch in one of the rugs, which had been taken from her bed. Eros insulted her, and she slapped him; but Victor, scarcely half-awake, recalled dimly what had happened, and swore next morning that Eros had made a tryst with a tub-shaped slave-girl. Bubbling over with an uncontrollable lightness of spirit, he felt that the joke was marvellously good, and told everyone, even Antonius; and Eros sulked. Antonius, now in the heartiest of moods, laughed loudly and went on sketching out his future campaign in Syria. Victor was glad to listen to what was said; for in his frothy optimism of the moment he was satisfied, because to reach Syria they would have to pass through Alexandria again and he felt that to see Daphne, if only for a day, would solve everything.

  *

  With the break of day they embarked and put to sea, and three hours later sighted Paraitonion. Antonius had already issued full instructions. Followed closely by ten ships, the flagship sailed into the harbour. The ten ships beached. The soldiers leaped over the sides or scrambled down the ladders, forming on the shore. The flagship was steered under the walls of the fortress. Antonius bade the trumpet sound.

  “Open your gates,” he cried, standing in the prow. “I am Marcus Antonius, come to claim his own.”

  A Roman officer, also wearing a scarlet cloak, stood out from behind the buttress of a tower.

  “And I am Gaius Cornelius Gallus, Governor of Cyrene and master of Paraitonion in the name of Octavianus Caesar.”

  Antonius groaned and almost fell. Foam flecked his lips. He had never thought that so swift an advance would be made along the coast.

  “Listen to me, Romans, fellow-soldiers,” he began; but Gallus stepped back into shelter. At once a din of trumpets broke out all along the walls, drowning the powerful voice of Antonius. For a moment he still stood in the prow, shouting against the trumpets, appealing to the hidden legions. Then the hopelessness of pitching his voice against the trumpet-blare of hostility struck him. He staggered and would have fallen, but Lucilius took him by the upper-arm, moving forwards quickly. An arrow hissed and stuck quivering in the ship’s side, near the large eye painted over the hawse-hole. It was the signal for a shower of arrows, most of which fell short. One arrow hit Lucilius in the arm, but most of its strength had been spent. He pulled it out with a curse, and pushed the dazed Antonius down the steps. Victor, seeing that Lucilius bled, ran for lint, and bandaged up the wound, while Lucilius muttered to himself, “I said I couldn’t play the fool twice, and I almost did it again. A man never learns....” Victor was anguished lest Lucilius should die and cancel with his death the invitation to the farm.

  Out of the side-gate of the fortress soldiers had streamed, and from behind a hillock on the further end of the beach came a shouting band of cavalry. The legionaries who had disembarked from the ships were caught while still in dis-order, and flung back on to the shallows. The sailors tried to launch the ships, but in their eagerness they had run them too far ashore. There were men with torches among the charging cavalry. They tossed their torches aboard the stranded ships, and the few soldiers who managed to climb back on board found that they had gained a refuge aflame. Torn between the efforts to push out into deeper water and to quench the fires, most of the men did nothing at all except get in one another’s way; and the fires steadily grew stronger. Antonius watched in impotent misery.

  More soldiers were pouring from the fort. There was no hope of rescuing the grounded ships. Catapults began shooting, and lumps of stone fell splashing in the water or thudding on the sides of the flagship or the other ships that had now come up. Oars were smashed. Then came a discharge of fire-bombs. Antonius ordered the ships to withdraw out of range.

  Paraitonion was lost, and ten ships with it.

  *

  Next day, after they left Catabathinos, the wind freshened and the rowers had difficulty in keeping time. Their arms ached, and they cried out for a respite. Water was coming in, despite the leather shields through which the looms of the oars passed; and each time that the oars knocked against the thongs fastening them to the wooden thowls, the rowers were jarred. But Antonius was madly anxious to get back to Alexandria; he refused to beach the ships, and Victor to his joy realised that all thought of the Syrian campaign had now been abandoned. Antonius wished only to get back to Alexandria, to Cleopatra; and it was strange to Victor that Antonius could thus be lured on by despair to the woman whom he blamed in his weakness for his misfortunes, whereas he, Victor, was lured on with an equal compulsion, but joy not despair, to the woman in whom he reposed all his hopes. Cleopatra and Daphne were equally the goal of this ship straining through the sundering space of waters, through time’s denials. Victor swore to himself that as soon as they were back in Alexandria he would beg Antonius for his freedom. Delay was too dangerous. He mustn’t put off asking a moment longer. He must ask.

  Antonius was still stunned by the sound of trumpets, silenced before the world. Gallus, who was this Gallus? Antonius recalled the gossip about him. A poet. Yes, Antonius had met him once, some dozen years ago, after the death of Caesar. Cytheris the actress had recited some of his poems and then gone off with him. Ah, to be back in the past with knowledge of the future—to be able to tear that conceited youth limb from limb, to teach him his place and the place of his rotten poems. Cytheris, you big-breasted girl with a fine laugh, why
did you let such a pest come near you? Yet you took him home, the rat.

  Antonius sat with his head between his hands, staring into the past.

  Caesar, where have I failed? Caesar, your power moved in my hands when I led the army across the Alps, and we all shouted with laughter. “Death to the murderers and a righteous world at last!” What had happened?

  “Who is this Gallus?” Antonius asked raspingly at last, but no one heard him.

  Victor fascinated by the clash of the oars, the cry “O-op op” with its flute-accompaniment, went down into the parodos and was commandeered by the purser, who had discovered a leak. One of the catapult-shots appeared to have opened a seam. The sailors had lifted the cover from the hole into the hold and were passing down buckets. Victor could hear the swash of the bilge-water, slimily glistening in the lantern-light, washing around the legs of the sailors. The purser asked him to go back and tell Antonius.

  The rowers could do no more. Antonius gave orders for the sails to be hoisted and the oars drawn in. He refused to beach. The ships must run all night if any stars were visible; he would hoist up the admiral’s lantern, and the others could steer by it. He wanted to be back in Alexandria.

  Early next morning the ships reached Alexandria, and Antonius hurried ashore to the Lochias Promontory in a dinghy, leaving no orders and unable to wait for the docking of the ships. He took the two pages and Lucilius with him. and Victor leaped with a joyous heart on to the small landing-stage adorned with a stone Nereid. He was even more joyous when he heard the latest news. Octavianus was in Syria, threatening to march through Iudxa, where Herodes had made terms. There was no time for a move in Syria, even if Antonius had still wished to make it. Victor would be able to stay in Alexandria. But he hid his joy, ashamed of it when he saw the stricken look on the face of Antonius and afraid that Antonius would order the impossible campaign merely to spite him if he saw that joy, So hard is it to keep a sense of proportion when in love.