The Deadliest Lie

by June Trop

  We soon left behind the Bruchium Quarter’s marble, granite, and limestone townhouses, their pitched roofs tiled, their porticoes decorated with ornamental lamp stands, their gardens carpeted with rose petals, and their grand entrances perfumed with baskets of spices and freestanding pots of clipped rosemary. That neighborhood gave way to rows of claustrophobic buildings faced with faux marble, their roofs flat, their tawdry ground-floor shops shuttered against the pitiless sun, the smell of sewage, and the buzz of flies. Given the swelter of the nearly deserted backstreets and the bearers’ brisk rocking rhythm—the compact one had a rolling gait—I myself could have dozed had I not been so preoccupied with both the thrill of seeing Judah and the dread of finding Saul shrouded in pain. Images of the latter churned up a queasiness I could hardly suppress even with repeated swallows.

  The bearers, moons of sweat under their armpits, their bodies glossy, their faces flushed, their hair matted, and their veins thick as cables, set me down by the public fountain in front of Aspasia’s apothecary shop. This time I planted a large bronze coin in the lead bearer’s grime-scored palm as well as a smaller one in the other’s before asking them to wait for me no matter how long. If they would, I promised to pay them double the fare for my return home. Again the lead bearer—his name was Telamon—searched the sky for a sign but now only briefly before nodding, from which I inferred that I could expect them to wait an hour but no more.

  I turned around a few times to scan the neighborhood from a ground-level perspective. Shops and saloons, inns and restaurants, tenements and warehouses, lumberyards and stables, factories and grain bins all jostled for space along the shoulders of the narrow lanes. Here, in this the western end of the Bruchium Quarter, the brooding odors of the Rhakotis Quarter, especially those of the canal that connects the Kibotos to Lake Mareotis, permeate the invisible boundary between the quarters to compound the stench from the putrefying garbage heaped behind every saloon, inn, and restaurant along the waterfront.

  The muffled commotion of the harbor and the remote but steady rasp of soldiers’ hobnail boots were the only sounds to rupture the afternoon quiet until I heard an insistent hiss, the tone too harsh to be the wind rustling the dry grass and the pitch too high to be the slap of the tide. It was Drakon. He’d just staggered out of a saloon and must have spotted me about to cross his path. In the next instant, he was leaning into me, his head thrust forward, his pockmarked face twisted with hatred. As he pulled back his lips to speak, I saw only the peaks of his pointed gray teeth against the dark cavity that was his wicked mouth.

  “You imperious busybody.” His eyes glittered with fury as he sputtered out his words in a spray of yellow spittle that stung my face.

  “It was you, you spiteful Jew-bitch, who got your mealy-mouthed, foul-smelling boyfriend to fire me! But I’ll show you both. The Emperor himself has appointed me head scribe to the new prefect of Judea. So off to Caesarea I’ll go, where I’ll be glad to stir up trouble against the likes of you and your smarmy race.”

  With that and a smirk, he swept the air with his hand as if to show the world he’d gotten the better of me. Then he turned on his heel and stalked across the street, but not before knocking down a stack of wood in front of the lumberyard.

  As if I cared. As if no one had ever hurled an anti-Semitic insult at me before.

  I stood rooted for a few moments until the day’s second wave of queasiness subsided and then swiveled my head to see who might have overheard him. Not even the bearers were about. So, with a deep breath, I continued to survey the neighborhood. The other tenements clustered around the fountain were, like Saul’s, five or six stories high and fronted by shops. When I knocked on the closed shutters of the apothecary shop, a frail-boned old woman with a pleated mouth and liquid blue eyes squinted through the slats. Opening the shutters against the blazing daylight, she was still gripping the long wooden key she’d used to unlock the grille, perhaps to have it handy as a makeshift club.

  But she’d been expecting me. Stepping aside and ushering me in with a wave of her knotted hand and a sympathetic pat on my shoulder, she explained that she needed but a minute to belt her tunic—it was vermillion, probably dyed with red cinnabar—and exchange her slippers for sandals. Sidling past bundles of herbs that hung from her ceiling on ropes, she ducked behind the wicker screen at the back of her shop, giving me some time to appreciate the orderly arrangement of her inventory and test myself on the use of each herb and tonic, seed and powder, paste and unguent, preparation and mixture as Hector had taught me.

  A waist-high wooden bench spanned the warped floorboards at the center of her shop. I could see from the pyramid of crushed cannabis leaves on its marble top and an open scroll of De Medicina that she’d been compounding suppositories to relieve the pain of hemorrhoids. With the sunlight streaming through the open shutters, I could read on neatly printed labels the contents of each amphora, ceramic jar, and alabastron on the tower of shelves near her bench. She stocked the usual: castor oil, figs, and white hellebore for constipation; opium for pain, diarrhea, and insomnia; aloe for rashes; crocodile dung and sour milk to blend for a contraceptive; and various animal fats to combine for treating baldness. Those were just some of the remedies I recognized.

  And then, on a polished porphyry counter that spanned the front of the shop, she displayed racks of double-handled greenish glass vials containing her own formula for a mouth rinse and her own chewable breath sweetener, probably made from natron. I was tempted to buy the mouth rinse and breath sweetener for Noah, but I knew he’d be embarrassed so I didn’t.

  Aspasia emerged in a minute or two. Aside from having donned a pale blue silk belt and leather sandals tied with ribbons to match, she’d tucked in the unruly strands that had escaped from the yellowish-white braid that straggled down her back and painted her lips with an oil of red ochre. As a healer and businesswoman, she knew the importance of a vital appearance, but to me her reddened lips changed her from a healthful looking older woman into a sickly looking younger one.

  As I walked out to the street, she relocked the grille and closed the shutters. I followed her stooped shoulders and sweeping braid around the corner of the building through a walkway so narrow I instinctively turned sideways, until we reached a closed door toward the rear of the building. There she uttered a guttural rebuke to subdue the snarling mongrel that was chained to guard the entrance. Perhaps it was straining against its collar because it sensed the hammering of my heart and the quickening of my breath, but I was seized by only an unbearable longing to see Judah, an impatience that was flooding my chest like the incoming tide. The mangy beast kept glowering at me, but it hushed its bark and did little else to challenge me.

  Aspasia led me into a dark stairwell that reeked from its own ripe combination of urine, fried fish, henket, and something else I couldn’t identify. The smell intensified as I followed her hem up the steep, twisting staircase to the second-floor hallway, where she left me alone to knock on Saul’s door.

  Chapter 15

  Early Monday Evening

  I CALMED MYSELF with a few of my now-routine deep breaths before knocking on the door, but Judah opened it before I could touch my knuckles to the scarred wood.

  “Miriam, I knew you’d come.”

  For a moment nothing existed but his luminous green eyes.

  Then he beckoned me in and took my basket. If he was surprised I came alone, he didn’t show it.

  “I brought some food and a few medicines. I didn’t know what Aspasia would have in stock.”

  “Having you here gives me some hope, but I know he’s very sick.”

  I leaned forward to hear him. His words, thick with sadness, sounded as if they’d passed through a long, dry tube.

  When he reached for my himation to hang on a hook by the door, I wanted to press his hands in mine, but I checked the impulse. Later I was sorry. It would have seemed so natura
l.

  “Where is Saul now?”

  “He’s resting in his cubiculum.” Judah tilted his head toward the curtain. “The boy’s been watching him. At least for the moment, Saul can breathe lying down, and he’s not spattering so much blood when he coughs.”

  I knew that kind of cough could be symptomatic of acute mercury poisoning, that he’d inhaled the vapors from the mercury bath. Still, his breathing had improved. That was a good sign. Maybe his lungs were clearing.

  But after a pause, Judah added, “My biggest concern is his tremors. His hands shake and his face twitches, mostly at the corners of his mouth. The twitching has gotten worse, extending now to his eyelids, lips, and tongue. He can’t even feed himself. He can’t hold a spoon, and as if that weren’t bad enough, his mouth is so full of sores his teeth are falling out.”

  That’s when I knew Saul was teetering between life and death, that he was suffering as well from a chronic form of mercury poisoning, that he could die in the throes of a delirium like David and Uri.

  I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say, but I didn’t have to. After a shared silence, Judah continued.

  “Sometimes his face stiffens and reddens as if flooded by a fountain of lava. His nostrils flare in a fit of recollected rage directed at his son Eran, who disowned him years ago. After a series of rows, Eran stormed out of their house and left Alexandria for good. Saul howls as long as he can gasp for breath, and then a silence more frightening than his piteous wails settles over him like a dark gas.”

  Judah’s squint and hard blinks told me he was fighting back tears. So I shifted our conversation.

  “Has Saul’s physician been here today?”

  “He was here this morning. He recommends bloodletting. He says Saul’s been coughing up blood because there’s too much of it in his chest. But Saul’s already so weak from the tremors that I’m afraid to let the physician bleed him. That’s why I wanted your opinion.”

  “Well, bloodletting isn’t the only treatment for too much blood in his chest. Another is to use tourniquets to trap the blood in the extremities, to prevent the blood from flowing into the chest. The tourniquets should be tied—but not too tightly—around each arm near the shoulder and around each leg just below the groin. I’ll take a look at Saul to see whether I think he should be treated with tourniquets or bloodletting, and maybe we can relieve his other symptoms, at least temporarily.”

  The sound from Judah’s throat was so faint I couldn’t be sure he’d even spoken.

  Only then did I look around and realize we were still standing at the open door of Saul’s front room. Far from being dingy like the hallway, the room was clean, tidy, and comfortably furnished with a sideboard, two carved ebony dining couches, and a pair of well-worn occasional chairs that faced each other across a low mahogany table, its surface inlaid with ivory. Enough of the fading sunlight slanted through the window to polish the white tile floor and paint panels of afternoon light on the frescoed walls. Some flashes glanced off the silver, gold, and bronze bowls, pitchers, goblets, trays, and candelabra displayed about the room, all the work of a master craftsman in his prime.

  Judah closed the door and walked me past the kitchen toward Saul’s cubiculum, his hand following but not quite touching the small of my back. Here the odor of the dying overpowered the scent of sunlight, but I resisted the impulse to cover my nose. When Judah pulled aside the curtain, instead of Saul, I saw a translucent, barely breathing, rail-thin cadaver twitching on a sleeping couch covered with sour linen spattered with arcs of dried blood. His hairline had receded; even his reddish curls had thinned to a tangle of grayish tufts. His face was covered with a smear of stubble, and his eyes had sunken into dark rings. Strands of spittle trailed from the lipless hole that used to be his mouth but was now a toothless hollow lined with open sores, trickles of dried blood, and a crust of greenish mucous.

  Near him crouched a table jammed with the paraphernalia of the sick: vials of herbs, alabastra of scented oils, stacks of bandages to absorb his blood and spittle, and a copy of the Septuagint. I knelt at his bedside first with my lips to his forehead, next with my fingers on his pulse, and then with my ear to his chest. If he was aware of a consoling presence, his gave no sign. His red-lined lids would flutter open, but his face remained expressionless. When he’d utter a grunt, the sound was faint, like an echo from the World-to-Come.

  All the while Judah stood in the shadows with a haggard face, fingering his amulet, his other arm around an impossibly skinny boy with the beginnings of a mustache above his thick upper lip. I recited the Sh’ma, our declaration of faith in the One G-d, and then asked Him to accept my holiness and direct me to a treatment for Saul.

  When I asked for a basin of water and some fresh towels and bedding, Judah gave the boy a pat and off he went thumping down the steps two at a time.

  We waited, listening together to the quiet.

  I COVERED SAUL with a fresh sheet and washed him, taking care to remove the dried blood and mucous without opening the sores around his mouth. After that, Judah lifted and held him while I remade the bed. Finally, I massaged Saul’s back and elbows with a lavender-scented oil and gathered the soiled linen for the boy to take away.

  Then, after a nod toward Judah, we tiptoed back to the front room.

  “Yes, Judah,” I said after we’d taken seats across from each other on the occasional chairs. We were leaning toward one another, Judah’s elbows resting on his thighs, his hands dangling over his knees, his face numbed by sadness. “In my opinion, Saul’s too weak for a bloodletting. He has no fever, but his heartbeat is faint. The most we should do is use tourniquets to ease his cough.”

  Judah lowered his chin to his chest and raked his hands through his thicket of curls.

  “Still,” I said, “we can treat him with garlic to stabilize his breathing and cannabis tea to strengthen his heartbeat and relax his tremors.”

  He shrugged and then nodded, his palms curled open, his eyes closed.

  I walked to the window to verify that the bearers were still there. Then I turned to him. “Let’s be grateful that Saul is not suffering now. With the garlic and cannabis tea, we can keep him comfortable. I’ll leave the basket with you. Aspasia can bring you whatever else you need. Send for the physician to apply the tourniquets if Saul begins to cough up blood again. I must go now, but know that you’ll both be in my daily prayers.”

  Judah heaved a sigh, got up, and sighed again, this time with an even deeper sadness. He fetched my himation, walked me into the hallway, and led me down the steps and past the dog, who growled at me again but this time only softly. Guiding me with his arm draped lightly around my waist—I slowed my walk to ease into his embrace—he waited for Telamon to get up from his squat and claim me. Then he squared his shoulders and followed me with his eyes as he waved good-bye.

  Chapter 16

  Monday Night

  THE MIDNIGHT darkness was pressing against my sitting room windows with only the feeble light of a flickering candle drifting in from my cubiculum and a fragile moon printing the crowns of cypress trees on the mosaic floor. Phoebe had been pacing back and forth between the cushioned mahogany armchairs and the matching sofa where I sat. Then she’d loop around my marble-topped wicker writing desk and its armless chair, careful, of course, not to shift any of the perfectly aligned ovoid rocks I displayed there.

  Muttering through compressed lips, she’d been waggling her head, blinking furiously, and shaking an extended index finger as if upbraiding an intractable child when she stopped abruptly and turned to grasp my hands.

  “Please, Miriam. You must not go out tonight.”

  I was taken aback by the fierceness in her voice.

  “I have to go, Phoebe. I heard Papa tell his bearers to be ready with his sedan chair again tonight.”

  “But the streets are dangerous, Miriam. You hea
rd what happened to Levi’s neighbor when he went into the Rhakotis Quarter. He’s still in a coma, and he went there in broad daylight. You’re going out in the dead of night, and for all you know, you could end up there too.”

  My hands hurt, she was squeezing them so hard.

  “I suspect Papa’s been frequenting a pricey courtesan. So, I doubt if he’ll be haunting the slums.” If not to a courtesan, then where else could he be going so late at night and spending so much money?

  “You know there’s no safe place in Alexandria at night. At least take your father’s bodyguard.” She’d stepped back and dropped her chin, but too late to hide the color that was flooding her face and the tears that were welling up in her eyes. Still she kept her grip on my hands.