Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  Suddenly, to his great relief and partial exasperation, the girl rose and went out, leaving a slipper behind. He instantly rose once more, apologised, grew flustered, sat down, leaped up, and said that he’d come along with his wife first thing the next morning but one, gripped the horny hands of the bargemen, smiled at their cheery reassurances, and went out.

  He was free. He rushed down the road, divided between his regretful desire to hasten back to Daphne and an elated sense that he was free at last. He wanted to shout it out. The sunlight was richer-textured. The mud of the street was squelchier. The waters of the canal were turbid with new swirls and voices. Everything was freshly-born. Men and women passed, vocal with joy or silent with purpose. The sparrows were bastards of the eagle. Victor was returning to his beloved, and he was free. His life was in his modelling hands, a clean mass of clay; and the hands obeyed no will but his. He had never thought such joy possible, and Daphne was at the core of it, like embalmed Alexandros in his home of glass. Nothing could ever upset him again.

  He went stumbling up the stairs and burst into the room. Daphne had been asleep, and sat up in the bed with large scared eyes.

  “O what is it?” she asked, her hands over her heart. “Is it him?”

  Victor no longer feared Nicias. He feared no one. “I’ve found the boat, and two fine fellows to sail it. We’re leaving the day after tomorrow. You and me.” He kneeled beside the bed and took Daphne in his arms.

  “You smell of drink,” she said pettishly. “It’s beer. You’ve been drinking. And you said you’d come straight back to me.”

  “I had to have a drink. Only one. To seal the bargain. Don’t be angry. I love you. O we’ll be so happy.”

  She regarded him with a vague uncertainty. “How much did it cost?”

  “Five gold pieces,” he said, averting his eyes. “Because the times are bad. I couldn’t find anyone else.” He poured out the contents of his purse on the bed. “You couldn’t have done better...What does the money matter?”

  She separated the coins with her forefinger. “There ought to be another gold piece.”

  He counted. “So there ought,” he said angrily. “I must have lost it.” There wasn’t so much money left when it was set out; and without money one starved... ” Someone must have stolen it from me,” he insisted. He was about to go on when with a start he recalled the beer-waitress. So that was why she’d sat on his knee and gone away with such abrupt unconcern after kissing him. He flushed and said weakly, “I must have dropped it.”

  “You remembered something. What was it?”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Yes, it was. Tell me.”

  He couldn’t tell her, it would make her miserable, and there was nothing real behind it. So he knit his brows and said, “I thought I remembered one of the men pushing against me. He must have stolen it.”

  “But why did you stop like that instead of telling me?”

  “I didn’t want you to think we were going off with thieves—cut-throats.”

  “I won’t go with them,” she cried shrilly. “How could you want me to go in a boat with murderers?”

  “I don’t really think they stole it.” He felt that he’d tangled himself properly with his effort to smooth things out. “ I only thought one of them might have stolen it.”

  What a muddle his lie was producing, and he’d only told the lie in the first place so as not to give a false impression. “I’m sure we can trust them. More likely I dropped the piece while taking out the others. I paid for the beer.”

  “O you did, did you? I thought you said the men made you drink with them.”

  “They did. They insisted on the drink, and left me to pay.”

  “I’m sure they’re thieves. I won’t go with them.”

  He felt desperate. Daphne’s outcry awoke all his own qualms. The men did look rather ruffianly; they knew he had more money—what more likely than that they’d hit their passengers on the head one night? Or else they’d go off from Alexandria without waiting for their passengers at all. Victor didn’t know which prospect was worse. To crush his doubts he began arguing wildly.

  “We must go. It’s our only chance. They’ve been paid all that money. Don’t ruin things for us both...”

  “How can you say it’s me ruining them?”

  On and on went the whirl of words, pressing the life out of the arguers, dragging all the breath from their chests and bellies, weakening them, buffeting. Painfully Victor drifted back on fear and despair.

  Then, with an effort, he relaxed. He stayed quiet, listening to his excited heart, and clasped Daphne and kissed her gently; and wept. “Love...love...” She resisted, went on talking, pushed him away, succumbed. She was so sore still, so enclosed with nightmares.

  “You really love me?”

  “You, you, nothing but you in the whole world.”

  Close together, they found peace, and the warmth of oblivion. Tenderly, hardly moving. It was closeness, and surrender, the veiling of both their egoisms. Trust me, I trust you. Sweet, sweet, sweet. Bird-cry without the haunting cruelty of the bird. Peace of a kind, and a mounting sweetness. But not freedom, not the security of striding the streets of purpose. And yet a deeper purpose. And yet he wept, a little.

  *

  She would not let him go out again; and they sent the caretaker’s small son for food, and sent him with a note to Olympos, saying that a boat had been found. Olympos came a few hours later, gravely composed. He took Victor aside and told him of the death of Nicias, but said that Daphne had better not know as yet; and he bade him not to worry about his status, for he would be able to use his influence to have him entered on the list of slaves as freed a few weeks before the death of Antonius. Then he examined Daphne and saw that she was very near her time. He had not realised how near. Perhaps she had better stay in Alexandria.

  Victor listened in dismay, sure that she would take ad-vantage of this advice to refuse passage with the suspected bargemen; but she did no such thing. She refused to stay. She said that Victor had arranged everything for the passage and that the chance mustn’t be lost; she would die if anything went wrong and Victor was arrested after all as a fugitive slave. Olympos, who had been meditating whether to change his mind and tell her about Nicias, saw that she was resolved to leave Alexandria. He took Victor aside again, gave him more advice and another twenty pieces of gold, and made him promise to apply for any aid he and Daphne might ever need.

  Then he went out, after many kisses and oaths and thanks and embraces; went out, and never again saw the lovers; and knew that he would never see them again; and he felt happy in the scene of affection that he had left, and sorry—sorry for the youngsters who had yet to live their lives, and sorry for himself who had lived his life. He, whose days had always been filled with small interests, felt an immense blank, like the masterpiece of Nicias, as he faced the streets again.

  What was he to do with himself? Well, he could start writing the Memoranda on the Last Days of Cleopatra, which Octavianus had suggested. That was a simple matter. He had merely to find out the official account, and corroborate it, though he would gain pleasure in noting down some of the things about the Queen that had made him pity and like her. Antonius and Cleopatra were to be buried in the same tomb: that was good. And an old Macedonian, faithful to Cleopatra and the Ptolemaic line, had paid a large sum to have all her statues left undefaced: that was good also. There were still as many sick people in the world for a doctor to attend.

  But Olympos, who had always considered himself in-different to the world and interested only in his profession, felt that the thread of life had snapped. Snapped for him. Octavianus was already reorganising the Civil Service, reconstituting the bureaucracy which had ruled for so many centuries this Egypt with its state monopoly of production and distribution; he might scorn mummied corpses and bull-gods, but he was very concerned to master the Egyptian technique of economics. Cleopatra was gone, and the Dionusos-masquing Antonius; but the machi
ne remained. All no doubt for the best. The world must grow more sane, shedding the husk of its gods, the heritage of terror. But was terror any the less in the hidden heart? were there less people with ulcers or stones in the bladder or phthisis? Olympos the physician had the test, at least the only test he could accept.

  But there was beauty in the lovers. Only because they were young and didn’t understand. To an old man the kisses of lovers seemed only a dream—fumbling for the nipples of the mother. He had no wish for kisses. Yet he envied the dream of the lovers. There was a radiance under their skins, and their ignorance was also the shadow of an excess of knowledge.

  Still the thread was snapped. For Olympos the world would never be the same. Poor old Nicias. Olympos was sorry for the madman, in whose bed his sister had died. He decided to dedicate the medical memoranda on Cleopatra to his memory. “To Nicias a true devotee of the Muses...” No, something more original, a couplet Simonidean in style. Nicias had grasped at something too big for him. So had Antonius and Cleopatra. But they had not therefore failed. No one failed; no one succeeded. All did their part, and yet there was no purpose. There was only life.

  There was only life.

  Olympos halted in the street, unaware that he was jostled. He felt that he had grasped a great truth, but had no words for it; and he knew anyhow that words may grasp but cannot contain a truth. What was the truth? Life existed only as it existed, only at the moment of breathing, of expansion, of wonder. Here and now, life existed. Not with purpose; neither purposeless. But living, active, complete.

  The glow was passing from him; the truth was becoming meaningless words, a philosophical thesis. But something stayed to comfort, a wisp of light. It was less painful now that the thread had snapped for him; but painful enough. He must think only of Erasistratos and the theory of the arteries. There was nothing else left.

  *

  Victor and Daphne were now entirely happy, shut in their room with a subservient small boy as intermediary between them and the world (for they couldn’t see him poke out his tongue at them when the door was shut). Daphne was feeling better, nursed and fed by Victor; and nothing came to trouble their dreams and embraces, except that Victor occasionally worried lest the bargemen should slip away without their passengers, and Daphne occasionally worried lest the bargemen were anxious to lure them away and cut their throats. But neither spoke of these worries, and the time passed in dreams and embraces, and meals cooked by Victor. There was only one thing which Daphne was allowed to do: to sew the twenty gold pieces in the lining of a belt for Victor, which he agreed to keep on all the time of the journey, though he scoffed at the idea that there was any need for such precautions.

  Daphne woke first on the morning of departure, kissed Victor awake in turn, and then sat on the side of the bed, slowly dressing herself with aid every now and then from Victor, who was preparing the breakfast and collecting their few belongings. For even in the couple of days they had got some baggage together. Daphne had bought some clothes from the caretaker’s wife and a girl on the fourth floor, and had sent out for some others; and a man in the next room had been mentioned as ready to sell a baggage-chest. And Victor had sent out for another tunic; and there had been caps and shoes which they had bought from a travelling dealer introduced by the caretaker...When the time came to put the various purchases together, the lovers were surprised to find that they had two packages besides the chest. And the caretaker’s wife had given them half a long black sausage; and that had made them feel that food was necessary, so that they’d bought a large smoked ham wrapt in sacking.

  They were extremely pleased at the accumulated baggage; for it seemed to make them a truly and respectably married couple, not a mere pair of runaways. And when the time came to go, Victor enjoyed running out into the street for a porter, after having strained himself, despite Daphne’s protests, with trying to carry everything. Walking behind the porter, so that he shouldn’t abscond, they proceeded towards the spot on the canal where the barge was moored, exhilarated after farewells with the caretaker and his wife, the fourth-storey girl and various other unknown lodgers. Victor’s worry was now increased by the fact that he couldn’t remember exactly where the boat was. If he hadn’t recalled that there was a drawing of a phallos and a scorpion outside the beershop, he would have been without landmarks; but he didn’t like to mention the beershop to Daphne (and of course someone might have rubbed the drawings out), so he talked about his unerring sense of direction, and, trying to take a short cut, delayed the arrival by almost half an hour.

  But the beershop was found, with drawings intact, and, to Victor’s shattering pride and joy, there was the boat still hawsered to the stone on the bank. And there stood the two bargemen on its deck, with a third, coiling ropes. Victor shouted to them and turned to Daphne, “I told you what reliable fellows they were,” and she smiled, infected by his relief. Then he shepherded her to the steps, keen to get away as soon as possible from the roadway with its beershop. He was sure that the waitress was standing at the door (which was unlikely, as she’d fear the charge of theft), but he didn’t dare to look round; and at last Daphne was on board, despite slippery steps and no gangway, and the porter had deposited the chest and the two packages, giving an able representation of a man with a broken back as he stood up, in order to increase the tip; and on receiving the tip, which was larger than he’d expected, straightened his back and moved quickly across to the beershop, where it was a different waitress who stood yawning in the doorway, slapping herself on the stomach for no ascertainable reason (except perhaps that she liked the noise).

  Victor and Daphne were shown their quarters, amidships. A pile of sacking was lifted, and they were told to make themselves at home. The boat had only half a cargo, chiefly of furniture; and a space was made in the hold where the passengers could sleep on some carpet-bales. If it rained, they could pull the sacking and canvas over them. No fires were allowed on board, but usually every night they moored to the riverbank and cooking could be done ashore. The lovers were delighted with their hole, and went on arranging and rearranging it, moving the baggage round and trying to find which positions were least bumpy. The sailors retired for a round of beer, after Victor had refused the invitation to join them; but he sent a street-boy for a mug-full each for Daphne and himself, and they drank in their warm hole, pledging one another with whispering laughter.

  The sun was growing stronger, and they found their hole far too hot. Besides, there was a lot of chaff left in the sacking and their skin began to chafe; and the hold had an endless variety of smells from old cargoes. They sat on the deck; and soon the men returned and set to work, taking the ropes aboard and poling down the canal. Down the canal the boat slid easily, quietly; and life began to flow again. The lovers clasped, careless of the bargemen who took no notice of them, being simple fellows who considered an embrace the natural posture of man and woman. Past warehouses with huge timber-piles, old houses almost falling into the canal, overbuilt houses with trap-doors in their sinister rooms (though they never dropped anything out but sacks of flour), blank walls, offices with notices, more wharves. An exchange of curses as another boat passed. Then a smaller barge, ferry-boats, and some fishermen in skiffs. The officials hadn’t yet re-taken proper control of the canal. And all the while the bargemen sang.

  Then, round the curve, towered the walls and the arch of the water-gates. Would the gates be closed? would there be soldiers and an official demanding details of identity? The lovers were sorry that they’d left their hole, however prickly it was; but to retreat to it now would attract too much suspicion. They gripped hands and waited. The barge slid on, while the bargemen sang their river-songs in a language that neither of the lovers knew, and there was only a drowsy old man at the gates, who shouted something in a toothless voice and who almost fell into the water, being a beggar who was partly mad.

  Then the boat was out on the Lake, swinging away from the large dockyards there; and the lovers, tightening their em
brace, turned to the grove on the right where they had first met. It could be just seen beyond a cluster of summerhouses and a tongue of reedy land. Did other lovers now meet under its roof of green light? or was it only Victor’s and Daphne’s?

  The lovers felt the melancholy mood of farewell which melts into the dreamy hail of an other-shore. Out on to the waters of the broad Lake the boat swerved, and two of the bargemen ran to hoist the red sail that lay ready. The third man was at the single rudder.

  Again Victor felt the sense of freedom, but more calmly, more as something to be attained by effort; to be held, not as a clamouring pulse, but in acceptance of the test. He would work hard; he would toil at the farm.

  *

  It was the seventh night out, and they were near their place of disembarkation. Daphne was feeling ill. She refused to complain, but Victor knew. At times she turned pale and could not speak, holding her breath. The bargemen were kindly fellows who had seen at once her state and who respected as much as possible the wish of the lovers for privacy. They spent their days singing, steering and drinking beer from the supply they had brought aboard. At Sais and at other places they stopped to replenish the supply, but otherwise they did not loiter. They were good river-sailors, experts at making the most of the breeze as they tacked from side to side; and the northern wind wafted the boat with its lateen sail steadily up stream, for the boat’s draught was shallow and the wind was therefore strong enough to counteract the current. The flooding of the Nile was as its full, and on either side the lovers could now see inundated land, with cottages or small villages here and there raised dry out of the spreading waters and in the distance the brown hills of sand. They seemed to be entering a drowned world, and the sight depressed them, despite the assurances of the sailors that soon the waters would retreat and leave the ground fertile for the sowing. The little mud cottages with their grey grass-roofs seemed derelict shapes in a world whence human life had been expelled.