by Anne Rice
Nothing to do but wait, he figured. And do what he could to protect Alex, his poor vulnerable Alex, who had failed so miserably at dinner to conceal his growing hurt. He had to help Alex through this, make it clear to his son that he was going to lose his childhood sweetheart, for there was no longer the slightest doubt of that.
But oh, how he himself was loving this. How secretly and completely it thrilled him. The truth was, no matter what the outcome, he was experiencing a rejuvenation because of this mystery. He was having the best time he'd had in years and years.
If he leafed back through the happy memories of his life, there had been one tune only, when simply being alive had been this wondrous and strange. He'd been at Oxford then; he'd been only twenty; and he'd been in love with Lawrence Stratford, and Lawrence Stratford had been in love with him.
The thought of Lawrence now destroyed everything. It was as if the icy wind off the sea had frozen his heart. Something had happened in that tomb, something Henry did not dare to confess to him. And Ramsey knew it. And no matter what else happened in this dangerous little venture, Elliott was going to discover the truth of the matter.
12
ON THE fourth day out, Elliott realized that Julie would not dine again in the public rooms; that she would take all her meals in her stateroom from now on, and realized that Ramsey was probably dining with her.
Henry had also disappeared from view altogether. Sullen, drunk, he remained in his room round the clock, seldom wearing anything other than trousers, a shirt and a smoking jacket. However, this did not prevent him from running a fairly steady card game with members of the crew, who were not anxious to be discovered gambling with a first-class passenger. The gossip was that Henry was winning quite a lot. But that had always been the gossip about Henry. He would lose sooner or later, and probably everything that he had made; that had been the rhythm of his descent since the beginning.
Elliott could also see that Julie was going out of her way to be gentle with Alex. She and Alex took their afternoon walk on the deck, rain or shine. She and Alex danced now and then in the ballroom after supper. Ramsey was always there, watching with surprising equanimity, and ready at any moment to step in and become Julie's partner. But clearly it had been agreed that Alex should not be neglected by Julie.
On brief shore excursions, which Elliott could not physically endure, Julie, Samir, Ramsey and Alex always traveled together. Alex invariably came back faintly repelled. He didn't like foreigners very much; Julie and Samir had been thoroughly entertained; and Ramsey was overwhelmed with enthusiasm for the things he'd seen, especially if he'd been able to find a cinema or an English-language bookshop.
Elliott appreciated Julie's kindness to Alex. After all, this ship was no place for Alex to understand the full truth, and clearly Julie realized it. On the other hand, perhaps Alex already sensed that he'd lost the first major battle of his life; the truth was Alex was too pleasant and agreeable a person to reveal what he was feeling. Probably he did not know himself, Elliott figured.
The real adventure of the voyage for Elliott was getting to know Ramsey, and watching Ramsey from afar, and realizing things about Ramsey which others didn't appear to notice. It helped immensely that Ramsey was a ferociously social being.
By the hour Ramsey, Elliott, Samir and Alex played billiards together, during which time Ramsey discoursed on all manner of subjects and asked all kinds of questions.
Modern science in particular interested him, and Elliott found himself rambling on by the hour about theories of the cell, the circulatory system, germs and other causes of disease. The whole concept of inoculation fascinated Ramsey.
Almost every night Ramsey was in the library, poring over Darwin and Malthus or popular compendiums on electricity, the telegraph, the automobile and astronomy.
Modem art was also of more than passing interest. He was powerfully intrigued by the Pointillists and the Impressionists, and the novels of the Russians-Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, only newly translated into English-swept him up utterly. Clearly the speed of his reading and absorption was magical.
About the sixth day out, Ramsey acquired a typewriter. With the captain's permission he borrowed it from the ship's offices and thereafter he typed by the hour lists of what he meant to do, some of which Elliott managed to glimpse on trips to Ramsey's cabin. Common enough were entries such as "Visit the Prado in Madrid; ride in an airplane as soon as possible."
Elliott finally realized something. This man never slept. He didn't have to. At any hour of the night Elliott could find Ramsey doing something somewhere. If he was not in the cinema or in the library-or typing away in his room-then he was with the crew in the map room or the radio room. They had not been on board two days before Ramsey knew all the crew by name; and most of the staff as well. His capacity to seduce people into almost anything could not be overestimated.
On one very eerie morning, Elliott entered the ballroom to see a handful of musicians playing steadily for Ramsey, who danced alone, a curious slow and primitive dance much like that of Greek men today in their seaside tavernas. The figure of the lone dancing man, his white long-sleeve shirt open to the waist, had torn at Elliott's heart. It seemed a crime to spy on such a thing which came so totally from the soul. Elliott had turned away, going out on the deck to smoke in his own solitude.
That Ramsey was so accessible, that was a great surprise. But the oddest part of the whole exhilarating affair was how much Elliott was coming to like this mysterious creature.
In fact, if he dwelt on that aspect of it, he would feel real pain. He thought back many times on his hasty words before they'd left-"I want to know you." How true that had been. How tantalizing all this; how wondrously satisfying.
And then the agony; the fear: something beyond all imagining is here! Elliott did not wish to be closed off from it.
And how remarkable that his son, Alex, found Ramsey only peculiar and "funny" and not at all genuinely intriguing. But then what did Alex find intriguing? He'd made fast friends of the type of fast friends he always made with dozens of other passengers. He was having a good time, it seemed, as he always did, no matter what else was happening. And that will be his salvation, Elliott thought. That he feels nothing too deeply.
As for Samir, he was silent by nature; and he never said much no matter how the conversation raged between Elliott and Ramsey. But there was an almost religious quality about his attitude towards Ramsey. And he had become a complete servant to the man, that was obvious. He became agitated only when Elliott pressed Ramsey for opinions on the subject of history. And so did Julie.
"Explain what you mean," Elliott asked when Ramsey said that Latin made possible a whole new kind of thinking. "Surely the ideas came first and then the language to express them."
"No, that's not true. Even in Italy itself where the tongue was born, the language made possible the evolution of ideas which would have been impossible otherwise. Same partnership of languages and ideas in Greece as well, undoubtedly.
"But I shall tell you the strange thing about Italy. It is that culture developed there at all, for the climate is so pleasant. One must usually have a radical change of weather during the year for civilization to progress. Look at the people of the jungles and the far north, utterly limited, because the climate is the same all year round- . . ."
Julie would almost invariably interrupt these lectures. Elliott could hardly bear it.
Julie and Samir also became uneasy when Ramsey burst out with statements from the heart, such as' 'Julie, we must be done with the past as quickly as we can. There is so much to be discovered. X-rays, Julie, do you know what they are! And we must go to the North Pole in an airplane."
These remarks amused other people mightily. In fact, other passengers, charmed and seduced to a one, seemed to regard Ramsey as not a super intelligent being so much as one who was slightly retarded. Overly sophisticated themselves, never guessing the reason behind his odd exclamations, they treated him tenderly and indulgen
tly, never availing themselves of the information he would give out at a moment's provocation.
Not so with Elliott, who pumped him mercilessly. "Ancient battle. What was it really like! I mean, we've seen the great reliefs on the temple of Ramses the Third. ..."
"Ah, now that was a brilliant man, a worthy namesake. . . ."
"What did you say?"
"A worthy namesake of Ramses the Second, that's all, go on."
"But did a Pharaoh himself truly fight!"
"Oh, yes, of course. Why, he rode at the head of his troops; he was symbol in action. Why, in one battle, the Pharaoh himself might crush two hundred skulls with his bludgeon; he might make his way across the battlefield, executing the wounded and dying in the same manner. When he retired to his tent, his arms would be drenched in blood to the elbows. But remember, it was expected, you see. If the Pharaoh fell . . . well, the battle would be over."
Silence.
Ramsey: "You don't want to know these things, do you? And yet modern warfare is ghastly. That recent war in Africa; men were blown apart by gunpowder. And the Civil War in the United States, what a horror. Things change, but they do not change. ..."
"Exactly. Could you yourself do such a thing? Crush skulls one after another?"
Ramsey smiled. "You are a brave man, aren't you, Lord Elliott, Earl of Rutherford. Yes, I could do it. So could you, if you were there, and you were Pharaoh; you could do it."
The ship plowed on through the gray sea. The coast of Africa loomed. The party was almost over.
It had been another perfect night. Alex had retired early, and Julie had been left alone to dance with Ramses for hours. She'd drunk a little too much wine.
And now as they stood in the tiny low-ceilinged passage outside her stateroom, she felt as always the wrenching, the temptation and the desperation that she mustn't give in to it.
It caught her utterly off guard when Ramses spun her around, crushed her to his chest and kissed her more roughly than usual. There was a painful urgency to it. She found herself fighting, then drawing back on the edge of tears, her hand raised to hit him. She didn't.
"Why do you try to force me?" she said.
The look in his eyes frightened her.
"I'm hungry," he said, all semblance of courtesy lost, "hungry for you, for everything. For food and drink and sunshine and life itself. But above all, for you. It is a pain in me! I grow weary of it."
"God!" she whispered. She put her hands up delicately to cover her face. Why was she resisting? For the moment, she didn't know.
"It's what it does to me, the potion in my veins," he said. "I need nothing, yet nothing fills me. Only love, perhaps. And so I wait." His voice grew quieter, "I wait for you to love me. If that is what is required."
She laughed suddenly. How clear it all was.
"Ah, but with all your wisdom, you have it backwards," she said. "What is required is that you love me."
His face went blank. Then slowly he nodded. He seemed utterly at a loss for words. She could not guess what he was really thinking.
Quickly she opened the door and went inside and sat down alone on the sofa. She put her face in her hands. How childish it had sounded. And yet it was true, it was heartbreakingly true. And she began to cry softly, hoping Rita would not hear her.
Twenty-four hours, the navigator had told him, and we shall dock in Alexandria.
He leaned on the railing of the deck. And peered into the thick mist which covered the water completely.
It was four o'clock. Not even the Earl of Rutherford was about. Samir had been fast asleep when last Ramses visited their rooms. And so he had the deck to himself.
He loved it. He loved the deep rumble of the engines through the great steel hull. He loved the ship's pure power. Ah, the paradox of twentieth-century man amid his great machines and inventions, for he was the same two-legged creature he had ever been, and yet his inventions were begetting inventions.
He drew out a cheroot-one of the sweet, mild smokes which the Earl of Rutherford had given him, and cupping his hand around the match carefully lighted it. He could not see the smoke as it disappeared, yet the thing tasted divine. He closed his eyes and savored the wind, and let himself think of Julie Stratford again now that she was safely barricaded in her little bedchamber.
But Julie Stratford faded. It was Cleopatra he saw. Twenty-four hours and we shall be in Alexandria.
He saw the conference room in the palace of long ago, the long marble table, and she the young Queen-young as Julie Stratford was now-conversing with her ambassadors and advisers.
He watched from an antechamber. He had been gone for a long time, wandering far to the north and to the east, into kingdoms that had not been known to him at all in earlier centuries. And returning the night before, had gone directly to her bedchamber.
All night long they'd made love; the windows had been open to the sea; she had been as hungry for him as he had been for her; for though he had had a hundred women in the preceding months, he loved only Cleopatra. So feverish his lovemaking had been that finally he had almost hurt her; yet she had invited him to go on, her arms holding him tight, her body again and again receiving him.
The audience was over. He watched her dismiss her courtiers. He watched her rise from her chair and come towards him-a tall woman with magnificent bones, and a long slender neck beautifully exposed, her rippling black hair swept back from her face into a circle on the back of her head in the Roman manner.
There was a vaguely defiant expression on her face, and a lift to her chin which accentuated it. It gave an immediate impression of strength, badly needed to temper innate seductiveness.
Only when she had drawn the curtain did she turn to him and smite, her dark eyes firing beautifully.
There had been a time in his life when dark-eyed beings were all he knew; he alone was the blue-eyed one because he had drunk the elixir. Then he traveled to distant lands, lands of which Egyptians knew nothing; and he met pale-eyed mortal men and women. And dazzling though these things were, brown eyes for him remained the true eyes, the eyes he could fathom instantly.
Julie Stratford's eyes were deep brown, and large, and full of easy affection and response, as Cleopatra's eyes had been that day when she embraced him.
"Now, what are my lessons for this afternoon?" she'd asked in Greek, the only language they spoke to each other, something in her gaze acknowledging the long night of intimacy.
"Simple," he said. "Disguise yourself and come with me and walk among your people. To see what no Queen can ever see. That is what I want of you.''
Alexandria. What would it be tomorrow? It had been a Greek city then of stone streets and whitewashed walls, and merchants who sold to all the world-a port full of weavers, jewelers, glass blowers, makers of papyri. In a thousand marketplace shops they worked above the crowded harbor.
Through the bazaar they had walked together, both of them in the shapeless cloaks all men and women wore who did not wish to be recognized. Two travelers through time. And he had spoken to her of so many things-of his wanderings north into Gaul, of his long trek to India. He had ridden elephants and seen the great tiger with his own eyes. He had come back to Athens to listen to the philosophers.
And what had he learned? That Julius Caesar, the Roman general, would conquer the world; that he would take Egypt if Cleopatra did not stop him.
What had her thoughts been that day? Had she let him ramble on without absorbing all the desperate advice he gave her? What had she seen of the common men about her? The women and children hard at work at the laundry tubs and the looms? Of the sailors of all nations searching for the brothels?
To the great university they had wandered, to listen to the teachers under the porticoes.
Finally in a dirt square they'd stopped. From the common well Cleopatra had drunk, from the common cup on its rope.
"It tastes the same," she had said with a playful smile.
He remembered so clearly the cup dropped down int
o the deep cool water. The sound echoing up the stone walls; the hammering that came from the docks, and the vision through the narrow street to his right of the masts of the ships, a leafless forest there.
"What is it you really want of me, Ramses?" she had asked.
"That you be a good and wise Queen of Egypt. I've told you."
She'd taken his arm, forced him to look at her.
"You want more than that. You're preparing me for something much more important."
"No," he said, but that had been a lie, the first lie he had ever told her. The pain in him had been sharp, almost unbearable. / am lonely, my beloved. I am lonely beyond mortal endurance. But he didn't say that to her. He only stood there, knowing that he, an immortal man, could not live without her.
What had happened after that? Another evening of lovemaking, with the sea beyond turning slowly from azure to silver, and finally black beneath a heavy full moon. And all around her the gilded furnishings, the hanging lamps and the fragrance of scented oil, and somewhere in an alcove just far enough away, a young boy playing a harp and singing a mournful song of ancient Egyptian words that the boy himself did not understand, but which Ramses understood perfectly.