by Jack Lindsay
10 BETRAYAL
When Victor saw Daphne he forgot all about his doubts. He knew at once that Borios had lied. He felt that he could already note a broadening of her body with the child that she was bearing, his child. But when she asked him if anything showed, he swore that she looked as slim as ever; and meant what he said. For nobody else would notice it; he noticed because he knew what he wanted to see. He clasped her reverently, and sometimes they sat silently enclasped, how long they did not know till they saw how the shadows had changed. But at other times she grew reckless, and that led him on. He wanted her more than ever he had wanted her. In the dusk they leant against the palace-wall, frantically embraced; or below bushes, regardless of discovery. She bit his lower-lip, and her eyes were mistily bright, scaring him a little, making him let loose too strongly the vague images of cruder desire that fluttered through his brain. They hardly spoke, and to his relief she said nothing more about asking Antonius for freedom. He was keen to ask, but felt again that the time was unpropitious. Antonius was so depressed.
Daily there were quarrels in the Palace. Antonius and Cleopatra no longer slept together, and both were continually dispatching messages to Octavianus, who was nearing the frontier. His advance-troops were almost in sight of Pelusion. His ships had occupied all the Palestine ports without meeting any resistance. Herodes had supplied a contingent of soldiers. Antonius alternated between defiant outbursts and wheedling efforts to placate Octavianus, which were alike ignored. What Cleopatra was doing was kept more decently shrouded. One day the Palace rang with the tale that Antonius had caught an envoy from Octavianus kissing the Queen’s hand and had knocked him down. Rumours of betrayal were heard on all sides. Antonius was supposed to have bartered Cleopatra’s life for his own safety, and she to have bartered his life. Steadily Octavianus advanced.
Cleopatra had sent Caesarion south with his tutor Rhodon after a night of tears. Mother and son spent a sleepless night together on a balcony looking over the sea, twined in one another’s arms; and at daybreak Caesarion fainted and had to be restored by Olympos, pale and complaining of pains across his back. Then he went off to Coptos far down the Nile, where the land-track branched off at right angles for the port on the Red Sea whence India or Southern Arabia could be reached. The civil service was speedily falling into a demoralised state, reporting the collapse of communications and the failure of supplies. The Harbour was closed, and stores of food collected throughout the city, soldiers being sent to scare the officials of the nome-capitals. Inland the peasants were awaiting the rise of the Nile with the awe and rapture of worship; but Alexandria was never much concerned with agricultural rites, and now it was entirely taken up by its own problem. But the shops were all open; well-dressed women paraded the streets; the factories hummed with activity; the civil-service officers signed and countersigned their innumerable dockets, receipts and reports; the professors gave their lectures; and patients even arrived from Greece or Asia to be treated for rheumatism or to be cut for stone in the spacious medical wing of the University.
The discipline of the Palace servants had grown so lax that Victor was able to meet Daphne often. There were thirty pages, and Antonius was too preoccupied with his despairs to notice who served him. Eros was the only page whom he recognised nowadays.
*
Daphne had good news, behind a rose-bush. Victor dropped petals down her shift and kissed her over her shoulder. Nicias was going to Canopos for a day and a night, to judge with two other professors in some declamation-contest at a festival; and Daphne had worked out how to get rid of Simon. It was no trouble at all. She would merely tell him to spend the night with his brother. He’d be only too glad; he was always trying to get away and spend some time with his brother in the Rhakotis quarter; and Nicias seldom gave him leave. So Victor was to be waiting at dusk outside the door of the flat; Daphne would open and beckon him in as soon as the road was clear.
Long before dusk he was lurking behind the pillars; but it was not till the silent shuttles of darkness had spun their thickening web that Daphne opened the door, hardly visible, but unmistakeable. Daphne. He raced across the pavement, though he’d meant to go slowly in order to attract no attention. Closing the door with an unintentional bang, he took her in his arms. Then they went arm in arm up stairs, gradually growing more distinct as they neared the lamplight (for it was a lengthy ascent, not many steps but many kisses), and at last stood in the living-room, wondering how they’d reached it, for they only remembered the kisses. They moved excitedly about, clasping a moment and then unclasping to walk round the room again, taking up something and putting it down without even noticing what it was. As if they knew privacy for the first time, pretending to be in their own house. They went into the kitchen and ate some bacon, merely to show how much they were at home, kissed with greasy mouths, then wiped their mouths with the back of their hands and the back of the hands with their palms and (in desperation) their palms with the napkins they should have used at first. Daphne said she’d make some special pastry, and Victor said he’d longed to taste some of her pastry, and then they forgot about pastry.
Daphne showed him her room, blushing a little, and then hastily led him back into the general room, though he wanted to linger over every article that was impressed with her peculiar presence: the little table with its bit of an Indian coverlet; the narrow bed neatly made with mosquito-net already down, so that Daphne, slipping from her outer-clothes, could plunge beneath and shed her shift from the net’s covert of safety; the brown rug; the cupboard; the chest of papier-mdche; the three-legged stool worn smooth by use—dear stool.
Suddenly she was shy, bent her head, wouldn’t be kissed.
She insisted on getting some more food, chatting all the while over-brightly. They ate bread and cheese, and a lettuce, and a honey-cake, and drank some watered wine. Victor wanted her to sit on his knee, but she said that she was too heavy, and twisted away, to get some more bread which neither of them ate.
Then she said, “I’ll show you father’s room,” and led the way into the study with its couch at the end in a curtained recess, showing a torn mosquito-net tucked carelessly over the frame. Nicias always tore it, however much it was mended, and said his skin had grown as tough as the rolls he handled; mosquitoes didn’t worry him.
“This is where father works and sleeps,” said Daphne in a failing little voice. Victor felt embarrassed also, and then saw that there were tears in her eyes. He held her in his arms, and this time she didn’t push him away. Her hair fell over her eyes.
“Victor,” she said, and her voice still sounded strange, queerly far-away and small. “That’s the same name as father’s. Funny, isn’t it. Nice and Victoria...the same meaning...one Greek and one Latin....What makes different languages? Babies can’t talk at all...”
She ceased speaking, accepting his kiss; then came to life and kissed him back, startling him. This was the first time she’d kissed him thus of her own accord, a real kiss. He felt falling, dizzy, closed under, happy, wanting to fight for air and to drown. To drown.
“Victor...Victor...” she repeated. “Say you love me. Say you love me. Say it.”
And she did not seem to hear, no matter how often he said it. He said it, all hers. “I love you. Can’t you see? See...”
She moaned, “Say you love me or I’ll die. Go on. Say it.”
*
In Rhakoti the streets were crowded with labourers, mostly Egyptians, lounging after the day’s work. Every few yards there was a beershop, around which a thirsty jolly crowd was gathered, men, women and children—all more or less on an equality. At other doors painted girls lolled or sat on damaged chairs with their dresses girt round their waists.
Simon, the slave of Nicias, was short of hearing and strict of morals, but he liked to see what other folk were doing. After deliberating through five streets he decided to have a mug of beer and entered the next beershop; for beer was the national drink of Egypt, brewed from barley steeped in a vat
filled with water and leavened with fermented bread-crumbs.
After drinking the beer, Simon felt easier and less deaf, though noises sang pleasantly in his head and made the outside world even less intelligible. Halting beside a window, he lifted the curtain of matting and looked in. A girl, bare and dyed all over with henna, was squatting with crossed knees on a mat of palm-leaves and playing a mandore, a kind of lute with long thin neck and three strings ornamented at the end with red tufts. The hennaed body glowed a deep rich gold in the light of the uncertain boat-shaped lamp. The girl’s face was round, the veins on her brow carefully pencilled with blue, and her long-lashed eyelids were tinged with green. On her head was a tousled blue wig, obviously second-hand. Simon perceived by the colour-effect that the girl was of a class superior to those who lolled on the doorsteps; doubtless she was awaiting someone. But she noticed his peering face, chattered angrily in a language that Simon thought was Persian (though he didn’t know a word of Persian), and swung the mandore by its long thin neck which looked so liable to snap—unlike the girl, who was strongly built.
Simon removed with a chuckle, then composed his face into solemn condemnation of a lewd world.
He entered a street of houses several storeys high, tenements sublet to labourers at heavy rentals. Simon’s brother (also a slave) had the coveted position of caretaker to one of these tenement-houses; he collected the rents, saw to evictions and leases, and cleaned the passages whenever the pressure of other duties slackened (which wasn’t often) or some official sought to apply the sanitation bye-laws.
Simon walked faster as he neared his brother’s house, wondering how close to her time was Tesenouphis; for his brother, though a Carian Greek, had obeyed his master’s order and taken to board and bed a fellow-slave, native by birth. Tesenouphis, when Simon last heard, was expecting a child in a few weeks.
As Simon approached the house, he saw outside a crowd larger than usual; and hastening up, he discovered that one of the tenants had gone mad and tried to burn the house down, to escape paying his rent. That was the general explanation; and Simon was only in time to see the man being led away by the police, yelling that he wouldn’t be made a laughing-stock and have his wages stolen.
Simon was interested to find out the inner story of the tenant’s outburst; and after pushing his way through the crowd, he discovered his brother leaning against the doorpost and dusting his hands. Questioned, the brother replied that the imbecilities and villainies of tenants were without number, but that the serious event of the day was the confinement of Tesenouphis which had arrived earlier than expected. He led Simon down into the basement by a side-door that let them straight into the kitchen. Then, pointing to a door already ajar, he bade Simon see for himself.
In the hot smoke-dim room about a dozen women were collected, all giving advice. Tesenouphis was seated in a large-brimmed vessel of baked clay, while a midwife held her forehead between her hands and made encouraging noises. Tesenouphis gripped the sides of the vessel and groaned, unencouraged. At intervals the midwife anointed her joints with a stinking unguent made from magical ingredients. Then, noticing that one of the women had dared to clasp her hands together, she darted across, tore the woman’s hands apart, and insisted that she be turned out at once. All the other women agreed, shouting down the offender’s excuses. Everyone knew that to clasp hands in front of a woman in childbirth was a magic potent to stop the child’s emergence.
Indeed, to prevent as much as possible such evil-eye influences, the husband (so he whispered to Simon) had been sent earlier to ask all the tenants in the building to leave their doors ajar, since any closed door in the house where a woman was in her throes would also hinder the birth. But there were so many doors in a tenement-block; it wasn’t like a private house; and the caretaker had had an uneasy sense that as soon as he turned his back the tenants would be having their revenge on him by closing their doors, barring and bolting them. But he’d done his best; he was a good husband. He might beat Tesenouphis at times (and she herself was the first to admit afterwards that she deserved it — sometimes anyway), but he never looked at another woman except when considering her as a prospective tenant. In fact there were two girls on the top-storey who’d tried to inveigle him only last week into condoning the unpaid rent, and he had sternly refused. Doubtless now they had closed their door, and even gone so far as to sit in the house of birth with legs crossed!
In front of the travailing wife was placed on a stool an image of the baby Horos, called Harpocrates in such representations. With one hand he pressed a finger on his lip; the other hand he placed behind his back (to silence the god-voice of the belly that had its egress there). The entrance and the exit of breath, the spirit of life; and silence. The thundrous silence of Mystery, the rites which may not be divulged because they cannot be divulged, the incommunicability of Faith. A man may tell about a kiss, but he cannot tell the kiss itself; a man may look on a god revealed, but he cannot utter the god. The woman in the earthen bowl was in the throes of a Mystery, and Harpocrates (also the baby of release) invested the act with the ineffability of its nature.
But though there might be the pang of meaning beyond words in the convulsed woman, the Mysterion of change, there was noise enough in the room. The women were chanting something in low shrill voices, the wife was wailing, the midwife was loud-voiced with instructions.
The brothers went outside into the street, where the caretaker could speak more comfortably into Simon’s ear.
“I’m afraid I can’t put you up for the night,” he said, opening his arms apologetically and cocking his head on one side. “It isn’t a time for men to have a quiet chat together. Women like these things of course. But you and me” He broke off and spat, then added in a tone of aggrieved calculation. “I hope it’s a boy. Times are too hard for a poor man to rear a girl. If it’s a girl, I’ll have to drop it into the canal.”
Simon nodded his head, agreeing with the sentiment. His brother went on:
“I won’t say it doesn’t get on my nerves to see the wife suffering. She doesn’t take it easily, like some women can. And it makes the lodgers restless.”
He was silent, thinking of the boy-child who had been born dead two years ago. The world was a hard place, perplexing for a poor man. He felt that he must blame something, but what? He could only think of the lodgers. Things must be different in the country; a man could afford to bring up a daughter there—or where did all the women come from? After all it would be nice to have a daughter. But somehow a city presupposed lodging-houses, and lodging-houses the necessity to do away with girl-babies, because if a man didn’t feed himself no one else would. Suddenly he felt very tenderly disposed towards his wife and wanted to do something to help her. He decided to make another tour of the building and open all the doors again.
Simon was nodding to himself, glad that his lot had kept him from marriage. The noise of the woman was growing worse, penetrating his deaf skull and troubling him obscurely, so that he forgot his resentment because his brother wasn’t offering him for the night the room vacated by the mad lodger. He wanted to go. Achieving a nod longer than the others, he shook his hand in a repetition of the gesture of his head, and set off down the street.
“Come to the naming-day—if it’s a boy,” shouted his brother; and Simon nodded vaguely without looking round.
*
On the way back he looked out for the window through which he’d seen the hennaed girl, but couldn’t find it. He peered through various pieces of matting, and saw many things but not a girl of gold with a blue wig. He saw several families residing in a single room in different stages of nudity and animosity; gamblers; bare boards; a small man all alone eating a whole sucking-pig; a sailor and two girls; a girl and two sailors; several girls; darkness; a fat old woman with three babies; and a small boy standing on his head. Then he was punched in the face, and he gave up looking through mat-curtains. He didn’t know why he’d looked again for the hennaed girl; he had no intere
st in her that he could analyse.
He had another mug of beer, and listened to the crowd as well as he could. They were singing and clapping hands, asking riddles and making bets which would beggar them. At times the voices dropped and Simon couldn’t hear what was being said. He feared then that he himself was the subject of discussion, though he had done nothing to attract comment except spit by mistake on a sailor’s girl. But the others were speaking of the prophecy that a Saviour would come out of the South, a prince of the Pharaonic line, a child of Ra with the true blood of the Sun in his veins, to save Egypt. Stimulated by the beer, Simon lost two coppers at pitch-and-toss; and, sad at heart, decided to go home. He was free to spend the night as he liked, and there was nothing he wanted to do. For a moment he realised that he’d meant to speak seriously to the hennaed girl, and wondered if he’d look for another such—not that there was any need to look, for, while he thought, a girl who had seen him playing pitch-and-toss pushed her elbow in his ribs and bared her teeth in a hungry smile. Simon shrank away. Years ago he might have done otherwise, but he couldn’t remember that time very well; he’d had rheumatic fever; and somehow or other the girl reminded him of his past and of rheumatic fever; which made his bones burn inside him with streaks of pain. He didn’t like her teeth; he grew afraid of her, muttered a fascination-charm against the squint in her eye, and shoved through the crowd.
When he reached the door of home, he took out the key that he had been given on account of marketing; and raised the latch with it, very quietly. He was always quiet, to explain away to himself why he couldn’t hear his own movements; and at this moment he didn’t want to rouse Daphne, who would be sleeping. He tiptoed up the stairs, guided by the lamp that had been left in spendthrift fashion on the table at the top-landing. As he crossed the main-room, he noticed the two plates on the table but took them to be a further instance of Daphne’s lack of any sense of economy. Then he was sure that he heard voices and laughter, and shook his head, fearing that a spell was descending on him, a spell cast by the beershop girl’s gleaming squint, her dark eyes of kohl. But there was a burst of loud laughter. Simon’s knees gave way, and his lips quavered. Then he . grew suspicious and tiptoed to the door of his master’s room. It was half open. Cautiously he peered round, and saw Daphne and a young stranger—no, not a stranger, but the youth that Simon had seen hanging round the place.