Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  Victor couldn’t go back to the Palace. Growing upon him was the wish to become a free man, despite his fears. Daphne was lost. Now he was sure of it. But even if the scent-girl hadn’t long ago closed her shop, he wouldn’t have gone to her; the consolation that had seemed so luring to his wavering state, was now of no account. The sense of dreadful finality burdened him, destroying all lesser thoughts or emotions; and yet he felt something new and hopeful within his heart. He could bear loneliness; he was free.

  Only a few slinking figures showed in the streets. There was a slip of a moon; no lights in the city. He moved towards the quay. The weather was warm, rather damp and oppressive, rusting the iron of the nerves till suddenly they jangled and the head grew hot. He sat on a block of granite, and stared at the waves slowly heaving, oily spotted with moonlight. Peace on the city, preluding what? Peace on Victor, an unimportant slave...The fear of death gripped him. Antonius dead, Eros dead, Daphne lost. He thought he saw a corpse rolling in the waves, a dead man’s greeny face, the flesh dripping from the bone.

  He too would die. He had never known it before. The turf was growing green over the darkness of rot. He would feed the grass that a goat-bitch chewed, and the grass would turn to milk and feed other men and women. The world was pastured on his flesh. Death everywhere. The dust of the dead blew in our eyes. Daphne was lost, a ghost of sweetness, a voice singing sadly across the waters, someone beckoning in a maze of flowers. Victor wept. He was alone, in a city of the dead. Tomorrow he would go to Lucilius.

  He huddled himself in a corner of the wall, and slept.

  *

  Hungry at dawn, with pain in his bones, he crept out and looked on the flashing waters, and the world was beautiful beyond words, beyond the comprehension of tardy senses. A world of light that ached against his eyelids, searing his blood with loss. The flashing water went flowing, and left only the pang of its passing, its unpossessed beauty. Was the only wisdom to want nothing, to look in upon oneself, stripped of the world’s raiment, defying the leeches of the blood? That course was nothing but an anticipation of death; and he was hungry.

  The little purse in his belt had a few coins, and he wandered down the road till he found a cookshop with door ajar, pushed in, and spoke to a scared proprietor who after a while produced some boiled lentils. Warm heartening food. Victor ate, and then, leaving the cookshop, walked into the centre of the town. People were venturing out; they looked round curiously, as if in a strange locality, then rushed back indoors. To the sound of trumpets a detachment of Roman legionaries had been seen advancing. Legionaries were coming down every street, converging on the Brucheion. Victor huddled with other fugitives inside the first door that would open. It was the house of a shopkeeper, who complained in a dull voice that his small son was ill and that he objected to strangers in his home. No one stirred, and the man took no steps to turn the intruders out. “Father,” cried the boy from upstairs. It was the only voice in the city. “Father.”

  Father, echoed Victor. Who was his father? The bluff Roman who had gone bankrupt and sold him with the other chattels? One of the kitchen-slaves had told Victor that he was the son of the master, but how could one be sure with a war-slave like his mother? He shivered impotently, hating everyone. He wanted to question the bluff Roman, his master, who was now probably dead of gout and apoplexy; wanted to strike him down and beat him. Why had he been born? His poor mother. She died.

  “Father.”

  The man couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t even turn strangers out of his own house. How could he help his ailing son? There was no difference. All men were as bad. And Daphne would bear a child, unless she died, she and the child died; and the child would never know its father. Thus life repeated its evil, never breaking the bonds of suffering. Victor hated the child, glad that it would never know its father. There was no difference, knowing or not knowing. He hoped that he’d been a good child, making his mother happy and proud; he couldn’t remember. She shouldn’t have died. They were all as bad as one another.

  The soldiers had gone past, and the man succeeded in clearing his house. Victor went away the first. A proclamation had been affixed to a pillar. No disorder was to be shown, and there was to be no looting; the Alexandrians were graciously pardoned.

  Victor strayed up and down the street dazedly, watching the people cluster at the corners with more confidence, looking at the detachments of legionaries with less alarm. News passed from lip to lip. Octavianus was to enter shortly, and he expected the citizens to welcome him. The streets were soon lined with Alexandrians keen to show their allegiance to the conqueror.

  Victor leaned against a pillar, his mind void. He was hungry again, but did not feel capable of looking for food, though he had some coppers left. At last he noticed a small boy.

  “Go and get me some food,” he said, “and keep a copper for yourself.”

  The boy sped off, and Victor wondered why he’d been so foolish as to trust him; the money, all that he had, was lost. But the boy returned with some sausage and a hunk of bread. Victor ate slowly, with enormous effort mumbling the food and forcing it down his throat, watched by the entranced small boy who between whiles tried to balance on his nose the copper he’d earned. His jaws pained as if he’d exercised them for hours; but he swallowed every crumb, except the sausage-skin, which the small boy begged from him.

  Then the conqueror came. Soldiers. More soldiers. Glittering standards with eagles and bulls and figured medallions; men with bears’ heads drawn over their helmets. More soldiers, marching tirelessly, the victors. Gallic cavalry with enamelled traces. Ensigns silken, tasselled. Veterans with large round medals and many scars, on horseback, followed by a baggage-slave. Centurions with vine-staffs. So many men, where did they all come from? Then an empty space. A rippling murmur, and silence. A young man walking carelessly along, clad in light chased armour, with a scarlet cloak of the finest wool, unhelmeted; and at his side an old man in a philosopher’s dark cloak. The two passed on, talking amiably, entirely disregarding the awed and inquisitive tens of thousands of Alexandrians. The crowd began to cheer weakly; then, stirred by its own noise, cheered with ringing applause, cheered the magnificent conqueror.

  “He’s the son of Caesar,” someone said.

  “Hail, Caesar,” they shouted.

  Octavianus, with scornful negligence, went on talking to his old master Areios and discussing the value of the Alexandrian science-school. Areios had been educated at Alexandria.

  The crowd cheered. Victor cheered too.

  *

  He discovered that he had been walking towards the palace-gardens. The unfed animals of the Zoo were hideously bellowing. Without thinking, he entered the Palace, relieved to see that no sentries were yet placed, and regained his old room. It was no use. He couldn’t run away. He didn’t want to be free. There was no cause to be free, no recompense for freedom. Borios came in, and from him Victor learned that Cleopatra had been captured. The officer in command of the advance-troops, Gallus, had held her in conversation from below, while another officer climbed up a ladder and got through a rear-window. She had been threatening to set fire to the Mausoleum and burn herself and all her treasure. Now she was in the upper room of the Mausoleum under guard, and the treasure was removed.

  Victor grew restless again. He went out, and approached the Mausoleum, which stood a short way north of the

  Palace, near to the promontory. The sea wind blew there more freshly, kindling the stars. The world grew a better place, baring fangs of rock, but cleanly. Sound and men of the sea in the darkness made life worth living, purified the blood; but yearning went deeper, down to the silence of memory, where all the phantoms had the vanishing face of Daphne, with eyes like burning flowers, flowers burning with their own intensity of colour. The curtains of the wind rustled.

  Soldiers were squatting round a camp fire, saying how sorry they were to win without striking a blow, bragging about what they would have done if Egypt had put up a fight; it woul
d have been pleasant to storm such a rich city, to make the Egyptians jump off the roofs of their tenements. One of the soldiers was hiccuping, saying something about a Jewess on the banks of the Jordan; he hadn’t noticed that she had her head under the water. “You might as well say she drowned herself.” Torches were fixed in the doorway of the Mausoleum, blackening the stone; and the building hunched its back, a dark mass, against the tinsel-stars.

  In the doorway stood an officer. Victor heard a soldier address him and knew that it was the Gallus whom Borios had mentioned. A handsome man in the early thirties, more showily dressed than the other officers, his face rather puffy, and his eyes with a hard brightness.

  Someone came down the stairs. Olympos. Victor drew nearer. They were talking about the Queen’s health. Olympos assured Gallus that she was in no danger, but was going through a nervous crisis.

  “No need to explain,” said Gallus with a short laugh. “I know all about women.”

  Victor disliked him intensely, but was pleased to have seen Olympos. He had forgotten Olympos, who had once been so friendly. He had then almost told Olympos all about Daphne; perhaps Olympos would listen now. Victor decided to stop him when he left the lighted area.

  But when he saw him coming, he took to his heels and ran. It was all no use.

  *

  Olympos was thinking about Daphne. Cleopatra was a woman who had lived her life and chosen her course: let her suffer. He could attend her without feeling more than a wish to do his best for her. But increasingly he felt sure that Daphne was more involved and troubled than she’d admitted. She hadn’t come to him with any further statements of her position, and he had yesterday learned that Nicias hadn’t been seen for some time at the Museion. He had called this morning on Nicias, and after much knocking succeeded in getting the door opened. Nicias had answered, but said that he was extremely busy and that Daphne was staying with friends at Canopos, and Olympos hadn’t been asked inside the door.

  Olympos had been shocked at the appearance of Nicias. Nicias was unkempt and unwashed, with head and beard untrimmed; his face had shrunk and darkened patchily; his eyes were wild and roving, under jutting brows; and he kept wiping his mouth with his left forefinger. He was in a state of fever of some kind. But when Olympos asked him if he felt ill, he merely repeated a line from Aischulos:

  This very day the Achaians enter Troy.

  The line delighted him. He chuckled and recited it again, and looked up and down the street.

  “Can’t you see? It’s all coming true. The pattern of the tragic dance. The deliberate repetitions of the choric burden. Sin and purification. I shall write my book now. I’ve almost finished it. I promise you that you shall be the first to see it. I have made you my executor. I’ve learned a lot the last few days. I’ve learned how Alkestis died for her man and how Orestes was purified. It’s all so simple when one sees it.”

  He glanced up and down the street, reciting anew the line:

  This very day the Achaians enter Troy—and then shouted angrily, “I never felt better in my life.” He shut the door in the face of Olympos, who knocked again, but failed to bring Nicias back.

  The only pleasant part of an unfortunate situation was the news that Daphne was at Canopos. If it hadn’t been for that, Olympos would have felt forced to take some action. Probably the fever would leave Nicias in a few days. He ought to have proper attention; but if he was in a condition of cantankerous semi-delirium, he was doubt-less best left alone. After all there was Simon to look after him, and Simon would run for Olympos if Nicias became really ill. The fever would pass away.

  Olympos forced himself to feel easier. He had the Queen to consider; she was ill enough.

  *

  She was too ill for several days to see any visitors. The life of the Palace was suspended; the house-servants did nothing except bicker in the kitchen where the cooks had refused to cook for any but themselves. Victor took some bread and cheese whenever he felt hungry, and brooded in the towers, trying to gain sufficient will-power to leave Alexandria and go south to the farm of Lucilius. But he dreaded the journey. Lucilius might have died on the way, and Victor knew no one else. In the villages before he reached the Arsinoite Nome there would be natives hostile to the Greeks and unruly in these unsettled times. But most paralysing of all was his inability to leave Daphne. He felt that she was lost for ever, and had no hope, until he rose to go. Then he found that he could not go.

  Olympos was tending Cleopatra, all his time taken up with calming her. Antyllus had been put to death as an adult rebel; but the younger children, who had not yet come of age, were merely under guard, and it seemed that no harm was to come to them. But what of Caesarion? Cleopatra tossed in her bed, but could get no news. Octavianus had bidden Antonius be embalmed with all speed and given a burial-place in the Sema. There his sarcophagus was placed among those of the Ptolemaic Kings. Thus Octavianus could not be blamed for severity, while he censured his rival even in death for desertion of Roman ideals. Cleopatra, supported by her girls, had attended the funeral-service, weeping bitterly, clad in black. She had a relapse.

  Octavianus was doing his best to appear brusque, brutally Roman. He gave out that he had spared Alexandria only through consideration for his old master Areios. When the tutor of Antyllus, Theodoros, who had betrayed his charge, was found to have stolen a valuable jewel from the boy’s neck, Octavianus ordered him to be crucified. He insulted the Egyptian priests by showing scorn for their animal gods, acted the stoic rationalist, visited the Sema and refused to look at the tombs of Ptolemaic kings and queens. “I have come to see a King, not corpses.” He looked only at the embalmed body of Alexandros, which was now enclosed in a glass-coffin—the gold covering having been plundered some years before. Alexandros he scrutinised with reverent but brotherly interest. Alexandros had been a man worthy of respect, but superstitious foolery and would-be god-kings were a different matter. Octavianus scattered flowers over Alexandros and placed on his head a gold circlet, touched his face and damaged the embalmed nose. But what was a broken nose between two men who understood one another?

  He had so far refused to visit Cleopatra, lodging in one of the older palace-wings; but now she grew insistent and he agreed to grant a single interview. Clad in full field-uniform, he entered her room awkwardly, and Cleopatra waved out all her attendants, but told Olympos to wait within call. She had been bathed carefully and anointed with the perfume Kyphi, which was made of blended honey, wine, raisins, galengal, resin, myrrh, aspalathos, seseli, lemon-grass, asphalt, fig and sorrel-leaves, two sorts of juniper, cardamon and sweet rush. But in her distempered state she smelt nothing but the blood of death. Her face had been skilfully washed and painted with tactful cosmetics, but she felt an old woman, though she was only thirty-eight years. She lay in bed, feeling very weak, dressed in a semitransparent gown of byssus, with no ornament except a gold serpent wound round her left upper-arm.

  He halted six paces from her bed and spoke in a pointedly formal manner.

  “You wished to see me.”

  “Naturally,” she answered, surprised to hear the old tones of persuasive huskiness, the rich warmth in which was uttered her love of life, the purring warmth of her belly.

  He bowed again. “The chances of war have made me master of Egypt, and necessitate me paying my respects to the Queen who is the last of the Ptolemaic line, descendant of that worthy general of the great Alexandros.”

  She winced at “ the last.” Was that a hidden threat against Czesarion?

  “You are master of Egypt and of the world,” she said slowly and quietly, knowing that her voice then thrilled most warmly. “And I have lost the world.”

  She sobbed, raised herself suddenly, threw off the coverlet, slid bare-footed from the bed, and fell at his feet, his crudely military-booted feet. He drew back, but she clasped his knees. He saw the bruises on her breasts where she had beaten herself in grief, her eyes painfully staring up under her long lashes; he felt her body pressed agai
nst his legs, filled with deep resources of resilient energy despite her present weakness.

  “Please control your emotion and get back into bed,” he said sharply, and helped her back. She lay for a while huddled, with no effort to straighten out or push the fallen hair from her face. He addressed her again. “I trust that all your requirements are attended to, and that you will soon recover yourself.” He turned to go. “I will burden you no further with my presence.”

  “Don’t go.” She sat up and reached out a hand to him. “Indulge the conquered.”

  “It is painful for me...” he began, and stopped short. “And for me.”

  “Then again let me bid you good-bye.” He bowed.

  “Don’t go. When one has been beaten in a game for such stakes, surely one can at least claim the right to learn something of one’s conqueror?”

  “There is nothing to know about me,” he answered doggedly. “I am merely a soldier. A Roman patriot. I do my duty, and there’s an end of it. I have a bad constitution, and catch colds easily. There is nothing more to know about me.”

  She thought: He has spent the night with at least three girls, this cautious man. She said, “You remind me of your uncle—your adoptive father.”

  He laughed harshly. “I am entirely unlike him. I have no ambition.”

  She countered with a light laugh. “A man without ambition never yet led an army.”

  He made no reply, angry at the way she leaned forwards, exposing her breasts. She was a fool. Did she want him to seduce her? If he took her, things would be exactly the same. Couldn’t she see that? He was telling her the truth, and she thought he was fencing with her, playing with words.

  She went on, “Also, the citizens of Asia are raising altars to you as the Saviour of the World. The citizens at Rome will do the same when you return. Can a man without ambition be worshipped? “

  “I am sorry for the suffering of the world,” he answered coldly, “which makes men so delude themselves. But it is not my fault. I would crush all such manifestations of servility if I could.”