The Deadliest Lie

by June Trop

  And he chides me for going to the agora. “When you’re my wife,” he says in his flinty tone, “our servants will go so you can stay safely at home.” I’m tempted to remind him that his mother and sisters were killed while staying safely at home, but I hold my tongue. He’s not the only man to insist on his own way.

  “And another thing—”

  I shuddered but continued to listen to him.

  “We’ll never control the street crime in Alexandria until we rein in our entertainers. Whether in the theater or the hippodrome, they cater to the idle and feed the addictions of the morally feeble.”

  “We have laws in Alexandria, Noah. Isn’t it a crime to swear oaths in the agora, and isn’t the penalty doubled when the crime is committed by a drunk?”

  Didn’t I tell you Binyamin knows how to bait and snare?

  But Noah ignored him, aiming his criticism next at the religious cults for their extravagant festivals, processions, and games. All spectacles, he was saying, all promoting waste, all fostering greed.

  My throat began to tighten. Now Noah was sounding like Philo, who harps on Alexandrians for their unrestrained public behavior and lambastes the city for its garish festivals, calling them excuses for overindulgence, wantonness, and drunken carousing. He says they disgrace their gods and “pander to the belly and the organs below it.”

  But then the direction of my disgust shifted inward. After all, I, not Noah, was the one evading our long-overdue commitment. So I disliked him even more.

  I tuned my ear instead to my father, but that wasn’t much better. I could see he was goading Amram.

  “So, what did Philo have to say?”

  Papa, even more than most Jews, enjoys belittling Philo.

  “In many ways his usual, an eloquent justification of biblical teachings using the concepts of Greek philosophy to elucidate their hidden meanings.” Once again, Amram’s voice was fueled with a high-pitched energy.

  “By eloquent, I take it he rambled for hours about a single phrase.”

  “Now, Isaac, you know our sages bring fresh meaning to a text that way. Tonight he warned us against placing too high a value on wealth and the pleasures it can bring.”

  “Easy for him to say! He was born into his fortune. Remember Amram, wealth can buy many things, but clean hands aren’t one of them.”

  Another of Papa’s clichés.

  Amram twined a wisp of his beard and then combed it with his fingers.

  “Still, Isaac, remember that story about his wife? She must feel the same way he does. When they were at a banquet where the women were bejeweled from head to toe and someone asked her why she wasn’t adorned with ornaments like the other women, she answered, ‘The virtue of a husband is a sufficient ornament for his wife.’”

  “Sorry, Amram. To listen to Philo you’d think Socrates or Aristotle wrote the Torah.” Papa dismissed Philo with a flip of his spoon-held hand and a spatter of mustard vinaigrette across the floor.

  No surprise there. Papa would never change his opinion about anything, let alone to side with Philo. Anyway, I’d heard enough about Philo so I turned again to Noah. He was still moralizing, but now his target was political corruption.

  “The rampant bribery and extortion in Alexandria—”

  I turned my head toward Aunt Hannah so he wouldn’t see my face redden with reproach, but he must have, because in the corner of my eye, I saw his own face harden into a look that gave me the chills.

  “Sometimes, Isaac, Noah sounds like a prig.” That was Aunt Hannah in an undertone. As I said, she sees a lot.

  Papa flinched, but then his shoulders relaxed, his face softened, and he said, “Of course, Hannah,” before turning toward Amram to continue his carping.

  “With all the legionnaires roaming the streets and scores of their auxiliary units billeted everywhere carousing and eating like locusts in a field of barley, the streets are still not safe.”

  “Speaking of the streets, Isaac, you should have seen the Way tonight. Throngs of Greeks and Romans, Egyptians and Arabians, Asians and Afrasians, Iberians and Indians—”

  Amram was droning again, counting the ethnic groups on his fingers, a fool’s task, given the constant influx of immigrants and the steady flow of up-country Egyptians. Drawn to the venality and riches of this city, all are keen on making their own shrewd fortune here.

  “—Carthaginians and Babylonians, Syrians and Assyrians, strolling about, the ladies studded with gems, their graceful necks wreathed in silver and gold, the breeze peppered with their foreign tongues, flashing the colors of their silky robes, everyone celebrating the spicy coolness of the evening in the day-like radiance of the Way’s oil-fed torches.”

  Amram was referring to the Canopic Way, the city’s longest and most impressive boulevard, running five miles east to west, from the Gate of the Sun to the Gate of the Moon. He would have had to edge along the Way’s marble colonnades, past its stone sphinxes and the polished facades of our most imposing buildings. And sidestep the multitude of soldiers, their faces carved in stone, their red-crested helmets an ever-present symbol of the power of Rome. And elude camel caravans, chariots, mule-drawn wagons, groaning oxcarts, and rumbling drays. And dodge the bearers of sedan chairs and curtained liters, their long, torch-cast shadows hardly a speck on the hundred-foot-wide pavement of granite rectangles. I could picture him zigzagging through a drove of pigs or around a crowd of woolen cloaks. All the while as he crossed the grid of side streets, he’d be embraced by a Shabbat sky smeared with stars, safe from the thugs and thieves who’d be inheriting the narrow, twisting alleys of the remote neighborhoods.

  “Lots of laborers in the textile factories are getting sick. It’s like a death sentence to work there. My Mimi thinks the metallic vapors could be making them sick.”

  “Binyamin, I always wanted to be a musician, to play the cithara professionally like the citharists do today, but your grandparents thought being an entertainer was too degrading, especially for a woman, even if she was blind.”

  Enough! I was hungrier than I realized. My stomach was gurgling, and the fat was fast congealing on the roast duck. I took my place next to Aunt Hannah anticipating a savory dinner. I started with the cucumbers, but they were warm and limp. Even the duck was dry. Its cherry glaze had turned to paste, and its stringy fibers kept getting caught between my teeth.

  I was sucking them out when Noah stumbled across the room toward me, grasping the back of the couches for balance.

  “I don’t feel well, Mimi.”

  I sprang to my feet, instinctively recoiling from his rancid breath. Then, to cover my embarrassment, I shooed an imaginary fly as if it had been the one to provoke my start.

  Awash in perspiration, his shoulders more stooped than usual, he didn’t have to tell me he wasn’t feeling well.

  “I have a headache. I want to go home.”

  “Oh, Noah. Can I get you something? A hot compress? Some lavender tea? A dose of hellebore? Would you like to rest?” Why was I talking so fast? “You’re more than welcome to stay over. After Shabbat, Papa can send you home in his sedan chair.” Wasn’t it because I really wanted him to leave?

  “No, Mimi. It’s only a few blocks. I want to go home, to sleep in my own bed. Please don’t be annoyed with me. I don’t want to put you out. Besides, it’s only a headache.”

  But the tremor in his upper lip told me it was more. I just didn’t know what it was. Not then.

  “Binyamin would be glad to accompany you, Noah.”

  He dropped his eyes and waggled his head.

  “All right. While you’re saying good-bye, I’ll fetch your himation and pack you some food to take home.”

  I found him leaning against the teak bench among the planters in the atrium. I handed him his himation and helped him wrap it around his body, swathing it over his le
ft arm while picking off a few stray threads. Next I handed him a basket of grilled lamb, rice balls, and sesame cakes and escorted him to our porticoed entrance. Bidding him a peaceful Shabbat while he lurched down the stone steps, I slapped the doors closed as he disappeared around the corner of our two streets. But I could still smell his foulness clinging to the plants around the pool as I crossed the atrium to return to the dining room.

  And I shuddered.

  Chapter 5

  Late Friday (Shabbat) Night

  PAPA, AUNT HANNAH, and Binyamin had each retired to their own suite as soon as dessert was over and Amram had left. Still, the moon was well past its zenith by the time Phoebe and I began a hasty cleanup of the dining room, discarding the food scraps and the puddles of wine left in the goblets and arranging the cutlery and crockery for the maids to wash after Shabbat. Phoebe and I would look forward to this time each week as an opportunity to discuss the evening and, for that matter, everything else in our lives.

  Once the dining room was tidy, we’d continue our talks in my cubiculum, often past the predawn glow until one of us was overcome by sleep or the fragrant light of the Shabbat morning began spinning gold on the folds of our bedding. Phoebe would spend the night on the pallet beside my sleeping couch rather than in her own cubiculum on the second floor, often dozing well into the morning, filling the air with her sweet breath while I’d gather the wisps of my dreams and comb them for meaning.

  Townhouses like ours have their kitchen, public rooms, and the family’s private suites on the first floor, the domestic servants’ quarters on the second, and an Egyptian-style roof garden on the third. The only difference between ours and others is that we have an exterior rather than an interior courtyard. Papa wanted an unfettered Etesian wind sweeping the scent of roses into our house. Also on the second floor are the guest rooms and the loggia. Overlooking the courtyard and facing north to capture the ocean breeze, the loggia is a favorite spot for Phoebe and me on a summer evening. On a summer morning, our favorite spot is under the roof garden’s linen canopy before a breakfast of dates, goat cheese, and muffins flavored with coriander seeds.

  Aside from our Phoebe, we have two maids, a cook, a barber for Papa and Binyamin, and a valet and two secretaries for Papa. Like most businessmen, Papa also has two bearers and a sedan chair. Used for transporting himself in style around the city, his is a leather-cushioned chair supported between two carved, polished mahogany poles. His two bearers, along with our gardener and the bodyguard Papa keeps for any of us going out at night or carrying valuables, lodge in the outbuilding where the bearers keep his chair waxed and buffed. But Phoebe is the constant among our staff, my trusted assistant in managing the household.

  The only light was the metallic moonlight trickling through the cypress trees outside my sitting room windows and seeping into my cubiculum, dappling Phoebe’s profile and the mural on the far wall of Homer’s Sirens on the rocky coast of their island. This particular morning, she’d climbed onto my sleeping couch so we could lie side by side, embraced by the shadows, gazing at the marble ceiling, watching its tiles change shape.

  “Do you ever think about being free, Phoebe? Of Papa’s paying the tax for your manumission and setting you up in a business in the agora, like a perfumery? We have the connections for you to import aromatic gums from Somalia, Arabia, and India, and I could show you how to distill them so you could blend and market an exclusive scent.”

  As I listened to myself, I realized that we’d had this conversation many times before, that I was the one who wanted to be free.

  “Why would I want to do that?” She’d drawn her eyebrows together and narrowed her eyes in a slight squint. “To leave the family? You are my family. Your mother saved my life, your father gave me an education, and you’re a sister to me. My joy is here, taking care of you like Iphigenia did and being a part of this family and its traditions.”

  “But you could have your own life, Phoebe.”

  “I like this life.”

  “But didn’t you ever want to get married? You could if you were free, and then the children you’d have would also be free.”

  “Well, several years ago I had a crush on a public slave named Bion, a craftsman who repaired scrolls for the Great Library. I met him when I brought our own scrolls to his workshop. As a sideline, he’d repair ones that were privately owned to earn the money to buy his freedom. True, he wasn’t the kind of man you’d be likely to notice, but if you did, you’d see that he was handsome in a cherubic sort of way, with rosebud lips and an easy smile that would turn his gold-flecked eyes into fringed slits and his chubby cheeks into pomegranates.

  “I’d meet him afternoons under a portico in the central plaza of the agora. We’d share a platter of fruit and pastries at a kapeleion, walk along the Great Harbor past the warehouses, cross the Heptastadion sometimes all the way to Pharos Island, and then take a litter back. Behind the curtains, he’d pour his heart out to me in a voice trembling with passion. Then he’d cover me with gentle kisses and hold my hand as if he’d never let it go.”

  “Phoebe, you never told me this! So, what happened?”

  “Before he could save the money to buy his freedom, the director sold him to a Jewish craftsman, a sandal-maker from Caesarea, who needed someone both literate and skilled with his hands. Despite our tearful parting, I assured him that he’d be treated well. ‘Jews treat their servants with kindness,’ I told him. ‘Their ethical precepts are grounded in the spiritual elements of their religion. They too are a gentle people repulsed by the harshness of Roman slavery.’ And most of all, I assured him that regardless of the price the artisan had to pay for him, which would have been high, he’d still have the opportunity to repair scrolls and earn the money to buy his freedom.

  “At first he sent me letters. In his last one, he told me he was saving to buy my freedom as well, but when I told him I’d never leave this household, his letters stopped. That was the last time I heard from him, and that was already a few years ago.”

  “Do you want to go to Caesarea to see him?”

  Phoebe paused to chew on her lower lip. “What is it that you want, Miriam?”

  “Well, I know what I don’t want, and that’s to marry Noah. But it’s not just Noah. It’s true that I’m not in love with him, but I do trust him and feel connected to him and his father.”

  “What it is then? He’s a good man, and he loves you more than his own life.”

  I found myself nodding.

  “Remember Hector, our tutor?” I asked.

  Mirth twinkled in Phoebe’s eyes at the mention of Hector’s name.

  Who could forget Hector, our lovable gorilla, his black hair sprouting everywhere, peeking above his tunic; climbing up his neck, chin, and cheeks all the way to his eyes; spilling out of his nostrils and ears; tumbling down his arms; spreading across the backs of his hands; and cascading down each finger. When Phoebe would botch a recitation of Homer, which she often did, the veins on his forehead would stand out like the tributaries of the Nile. He would stab the air with his cane while the iris of his right eye would spin in an orbit of its own, and she would collapse in a fit of contagious giggles. But Hector did more than make us laugh. He knew everything, not just the language and literature of Homer, but everything else, from Aristotle’s natural philosophy to Theophrastus’s treatise On Sense Perception. Hector described it all, every detail in a patient baritone that could make even a stone cry.

  But my favorite subject was anatomy. Hector would tell us about Herophilos of Chalcedon, one of the founders of our great medical school. Herophilos spent most of his life in Alexandria, one of the few cities that permitted the dissection of human cadavers. Because of the tradition of Egyptian mummification, which entails eviscerating the body, the practice was acceptable here until the Romans banned it.

  The early Ptolomies would send Herophilos the corpses of
their criminals. As if that didn’t horrify people enough, some accused him of performing hundreds of vivisections as well. Phoebe’s face would pucker when Hector explained what Herophilos learned about the brain and heart, the arteries and veins, and the eyes and intestines, but I was fascinated by his notion that the soul resides in a ventricle of the brain.

  That’s when I first became interested in alchemy, although I didn’t have a name for it then. Once I learned that the soul resides in the body, I knew that the soul of a metal must reside somewhere in its body too, for didn’t Aristotle tell us that all things are composed of the same vital substance? I realized that as long as an imperfect human body can be perfected by the addition of some extract of this vital substance, then an imperfect metal body can be perfected the same way. So instead of studying the healing of humans, I could experiment like Herophilos to study the healing of metals. Then I’d know how to perfect them into silver or gold. That’s when I made up my mind that, more than being a wife, I wanted to be an alchemist.

  But there was another layer as well, one that would be easier to explain to Phoebe. I didn’t want to be a mother and die like mine did.

  “Well, Phoebe, Hector told me about mayflies. There are millions upon millions of them living in the Nile, these graceful insects that fold their large, delicately-veined wings together behind their back when they rest. But the adults live only a day or two, not long enough even to eat. They simply reproduce and die. Mayflies remind me of my mother, Phoebe. She was a mayfly. I don’t want to be a mayfly too.”

  “Miriam, your mother wasn’t a mayfly. Like Isis (meaning She of the Throne), she was a tender and compassionate wife and mother.”