So Simeon’s rebuke had shaken him. Not because he saw in it an allusion to his birth that he could not understand, but because it seemed to widen the chasm, of which he was already only too aware, between the tasks fate held in store for him and his own unworthiness to fulfill them. Everyone about him was satisfied with familiar horizons, and wished for no others. They were sure of themselves and of the world they lived in. He alone suffered because of something he did not understand. And Simeon’s anger was a sharp reminder of his clumsiness, of his occasional sense of strangeness in the midst of an order whose laws and meaning he did not always comprehend. The boy Alexis was full of a vast eagerness—but he did not know for what. The world was a summons to an unknown future, full of questions, difficulties, trial and error, but also full of delights. Alexis, despite his uneasiness, was brimming with gaiety. The others were gloomy in a world without problems that suited them exactly; he, never quite at home in life, was always experiencing the joys of wonder. Existence troubled him, but he laughed at it. And now his brother’s roughness taught him once again that both his questioning and his cheerfulness were wrong, and that the thing to do was to submit silently to the exigencies of the world in which he felt at once so strange and so happy.
It was noon, toward the end of autumn. There had already been some snow, but the sun had come out again in a pale, cloud-driven sky. On and on they rode. One of the men sent in advance announced that there was a pack of wolves not far off to the east, near the gullies by the marshes. Simeon quickly consulted with the most experienced hunters, then ordered the company to divide into two. The first went off to the left. Simeon himself led the second toward the marshes. The first group, mostly on horseback, were to cut off the wolves’ retreat and drive them toward the gully where Simeon awaited them. The two brothers soon heard the distant sound of horns coming half muffled through the trees, on which the leaves were still thick and only just turning color. A few more moments went by. Then the wolves suddenly burst into a clearing only a few paces from the ravines. There were three big wolves, with thick coats and bright eyes. Simeon seized his pike and ax and spurred his horse toward them. The rest of the party rushed after, Alexis among them. It all happened very quickly. The wolves fell back and began to flee under the trees, by the ravines, hotly pursued by the horsemen. But the pursuit did not last long. The wolves soon came up against the line formed by the first group of hunters, deployed in a semicircle to bar their way. The three wolves hesitated, halted, then, with their backs to the ravine, stood at bay. Simeon selected the finest beast, and while five or six of his companions rushed on the other two to separate and strike them down, he lunged at it with his pike. As soon as the blow went home, he sprang from the saddle with a lightness astounding in a man of his weight, and attacked the wolf with his dagger. Man and wolf rolled over and over on the ground. A brief struggle, and Simeon stood up. He was covered in the blood that was spurting from the wolf’s throat.
The hounds, still in full cry, hurled themselves on the wolves and tore them to pieces with howls of joy and fury. They were mastiffs, just as savage as the wolves themselves, and rent their prey so furiously that the huntsmen had to shout and haul at them to control them. Simeon tossed his reeking dagger to the groom who had charge of his weapons, and went a little way off to enjoy a spectacle “rendered most noble and pleasant,” says the Ritter manuscript, “by the dusk and the blood.” Simeon adored the end of the chase, the phase that came after the effort and the struggle. He leaned against a tree, tired and happy, and looked on. Men and wolves had fought honorably, he thought, and the forest was beautiful. It was true—the forest was beautiful. Night began to fall. The trees made a dark background for the maddened hounds, the carcasses of the wolves, the outlines of the hunters gradually disappearing in the gathering dusk. A groom lit a torch. Then another. An improvised pyre began to burn. All that could be heard were the dogs and the crackling of the flames rising up into the night. Alexis felt mounting up in him a kind of tenderness toward the brother who did not love him. They were both standing a little way off from the pyre and the dogs, and the sound of the hounds at their quarry reached them but faintly.
At that moment Alexis saw two eyes gleaming in the now almost total darkness. It was a wolf, a monster—the three others seemed puny and weak beside it. It stood motionless, still half hidden by the thicket from which it had emerged. Simeon could not see it. Alexis stifled a cry, and grabbed his brother’s arm. Too late: the wolf had already sprung on Simeon, who had neither pike, ax, nor knife to defend himself. The animal knocked him sprawling, and he struggled under its claws and fangs, protecting his face with his arm and trying vainly to get at the wolf’s eyes or ears or throat. Alexis, speechless with terror, had jumped back under the trees. Thirty or forty years later he used to say that that backward spring was the greatest acrobatic feat of his life. Then, in a flash, he leaped on the beast. Simeon had by now swooned, and Alexis, imitating his brother’s and his brother’s huntsmen’s familiar gesture, plunged into the wolf’s throat the hunting knife Helen had given him for his tenth birthday. When the huntsmen and grooms came up, drawn by the muffled sound of the struggle, their torches lit up the senseless form of their master lying beneath the corpse of a gigantic wolf, and beside them, petrified, his knife in his hand, Alexis, scarcely trembling. He said he had been very frightened.
Simeon never forgave Alexis for having saved his life. His first words, when he regained consciousness, near a spring in the forest, were insults and abuse. It was then, in his wrath and humiliation, that he uttered in public, in his brother’s very presence, the word bastard. For Alexis, it was a thunderbolt. The day after the hunt, he asked his mother for permission to leave the forest. Helen thought about it for three days, and on the evening of the third day she sent for him. They had a conversation which went on into the night and of which we know nothing. Alexis left at dawn.
X
INITIATION
PHILOCRATES WAS A GREEK. HE WAS BORN IN MURSA, between Pergamum and Ephesus,[1] and he was ugly. His mother was a fishwife, and for thirty years she had cried her wares on the quays of the port—the catch of one or two dozen boats which set sail before sunrise to spend half a day, a week, even one or two months along the coast or out at sea. Some never came back. A few returned with miraculous hauls that made fortunes. But none of this ever did Alfrania any good—she was to remain poor the whole of her life. She did not even own the wooden stall from which she sold her fish, nor was it on her own account that she stood there in the wind and rain and scorching sun behind her reeking wares. The stall, the bench, the fish, she herself—all belonged to two or three wily merchants whom she had never seen and who doled out each month, from their carefully guarded profits, enough to keep body and soul together and go on. She had known little happiness, but she rarely complained. She was very pious and resigned to the will of the gods, and whenever there was a new moon, or at the beginning of every season, or after a storm, she would always go and burn rare herbs or sticks of incense outside the temples. Twice in her life, with terror and wonder, she had witnessed eclipses of the sun and moon and, when the planet of day or night made its blessed return, had gone with the rest of the faithful to give thanks to the gods who allowed the world to continue. She used to listen to the sailors talking of monsters and splendors, and would dream a little and sigh. And every day her customers would find her there selling her fish to the motley crowd, whose cheerful, noisy animation gave Mursa the reputation for energy and gaiety that drew travelers and merchants thither.
One evening when a storm was raging on the coast, a fishing boat from Delos came and took shelter in Mursa harbor, where for several days it waited for the weather to improve. The crew took advantage of their enforced leisure to caulk and repair their ship, which had been very much knocked about; they also spent their money gaming and drinking. They came from Syria, Phoenicia, and Crete, and had been to Cyprus and Rhodes. Some had gone as far as Malta and Carthage, or even Sardinia
and the Balearics. One, even rougher and gloomier than the others, was from Delphi. He was the son of a prophetess-cum-courtesan who had fallen on evil days. He had gone to sea at the age of nine, and for fifteen years now had been going about from one port and ocean to another. He believed in nothing and did not hope for much. He spoke little and seemed to be dreaming of distant seas and unknown shores. The mixture of rapture and bitterness that emanated from him dazzled Alfrania. She gave herself to him by the harbor because he was poor and lonely like herself. And she learned what passion was. They made love five or six times on the deck of the ship or in the country, behind the temples. And then the sun returned, the sea grew calm, and the man sailed away with his companions to new harbors and new tempests. Alfrania did not complain. He had made no promises, and she had known their happiness would be only a brief interval in their wretched lives. She went back to selling her fish; but now she had memories and vague and sunny dreams. She looked out to sea with patient resignation; she was scarcely sad; sometimes she was almost happy. One morning she felt faint and lost consciousness for a moment. A few months later she gave birth to a son.
From earliest infancy Philocrates was ugly and a dreamer. He was clumsy, his sight was not very good, and he did not worry about the future. Winning, being first, was a matter of indifference to him. He couldn’t swim or run as fast as the others; he wasn’t ashamed of being frightened; and even as a child he despised money and honors. A few priests who had a regard for his mother found him odd jobs around the temples that enabled him to earn his living. When he was six or seven, he tidied up after the faithful and lit the torches on evenings of special ceremony. He would sit for hours on the steps of the temples, motionless and staring into space. If a worshiper or passer-by asked what he was thinking about, he only smiled. Many supposed him backward or deficient, and it was easy to see why. His greatest pleasure was listening to the priests. Instead of going and playing with the other children, who were somewhat suspicious of him despite his gentleness, he would settle down in one of the holy places and listen, without moving or speaking, to endless discussions on the origin of the gods and the order governing the universe. By the age of eight he could already silently make distinctions between things and between men. He scorned many, but when he admired he did so with a fervor and constancy unusual for his age.
At that time Mursa, like many eastern and Mediterranean cities, was divided by a famous quarrel that went back to the days, distant even then, of Hermenides and Paraclitus. The reader will perhaps recall the part played by these two philosophers in the first golden age of the City. The schools they founded had gone through many vicissitudes and different incarnations and still survived; they had even developed and spread. Countless sects and schisms had complicated the relations between the various thinkers and systems involved, and their quarrels, their points of agreement and disagreement, and their doctrines on the history of the world and the relations between gods and men had given rise to a considerable body of literature. With the help of some of the priests, Philocrates had learned to read the texts that set out, with many and often contradictory arguments, the nature of things and the destiny of the soul. The ideas of free will, salvation, identity and otherness, the one and the many, the mixed, mediation, dialectic, and universal harmony were as familiar to him as knucklebones and mora were to the other boys. One summer morning when preparations were under way for some solemn ceremony, Philocrates, then aged twelve, managed to slip into a corner in the great hall where priests from all over the country were meeting in private before appearing to the people. He listened with passionate interest to one young priest sent by the Emperor Basil, who spoke of the destiny and dignity of man. The child’s face showed such attention, such intentness, that the priest was struck by it even as he spoke. As soon as he had finished he sent for the boy to question him. An aged priest from Mursa brought Philocrates to him, whispering that the boy was a kind of idiot whom they allowed into the temples out of pity. The young priest gave a gesture of impatience and asked that they be left alone.
“My child,” he said kindly, “you were listening to me, and I was looking at you. And I think your face said more than my speech.”
“My lord,” stammered the child, “I love words above all else, and yours were like music to me, like honey. You spoke, and I understood.”
“And what was it you understood?” asked the priest, smiling and stroking the lad’s hair.
“It seemed to me,” said the child, “that the skies opened and the order of things which is written there was unfolded before me, like stars around the sun. You spoke of beauty and the honor of men, and I wanted to weep.”
“How old are you?” said the priest.
“Twelve, my lord.”
“And what do you want to do when you grow up?”
“I want to learn, like you, and know, like you.”
“I know nothing,” said the priest. He was no longer smiling.
“I should like to learn,” said the child.
“Do you want to learn words, and how to hide that you know nothing? Do you want to be able to argue and convince and get the better of others? If you do, I will teach you.”
“Oh, no, my lord!” said the boy quickly, “I don’t want to convince or get the better of others. I just want to know how far it is possible to know.”
The priest looked at the boy and took his hands in his own.
“That is really what you want?” he said quietly.
“Just that,” answered the boy.
“It means suffering, too,” said the priest.
“Suffering?” said the boy. “Not knowing is suffering, too. And I would rather know and suffer than not know and not suffer.”
“You will know only one thing—that you know nothing.”
“That in itself is knowledge,” said the boy.
The priest was silent a moment.
“If I had a son,” he said, “I’d wish him to be like you.”
The boy looked at the priest. Both remained motionless, then the child threw himself into the priest’s arms and began to weep. The priest clasped to him the little body shaken with sobs, and stroked the dark, tousled head lifted toward him. From outside came the chanting of the faithful, making the rounds of the temples. The priest set the child on his feet and kissed his brow.
“Come,” he said.
And they went out together.
The crowd made way for them to pass, and when, hand in hand, they reached the front row of priests, they, too, made room for them both.
“I have a disciple,” laughed the young priest.
Philocrates felt joy explode within him. He held the priest’s hand tight, and looked up at the sun to stop himself from crying.
The procession continued, led by the chanting priests, whose song was echoed in chorus by their flock. They came to the altar, where a sacrifice to the gods celebrated both the solstice and a recent victory over a rebel city. A dazzling sun shone in an almost cloudless sky. The priests mounted a few steps. At the foot of the altar were a white heifer, a he-goat, and six prisoners in chains. Two of these were handsome, with a proud, bold bearing. The rest seemed overwhelmed by hardship and privation and cast terrified looks about them. The sacrificers arose, each robed half in white and half in red and with a knife in his hand. Beasts and men were slain together, and their blood mingled to run down the garments of executioners and priests. Philocrates was covered with it. He averted his head, and seized the hand of the young priest beside him. The crowd began to chant again.
“The blood . . .,” gasped the child.
“Courage . . .,” murmured the priest. And he clasped more tightly the little hand that trembled in his.
Eight priests, their faces hidden by masks and carrying knives hollowed out like spoons, had approached the corpses. As one, they tore out the eight hearts and threw them to the crowd, who began to clap their hands and shout with joy.
“Why?” said the child, looking up at the priest. �
��Why?”
“That is the secret of history,” said the priest, bending close to him. “Religion is the secret of history. The future will explain the present. But it will no longer understand it. Perhaps you will change all that. But later on others will come who will explain you in your turn. But they will no longer understand you either.”
Gradually the shouting and excitement died down. The eight hearts were passed from hand to hand, and traces of blood could be seen on breasts and brows.
Two old men came and bowed before the young priest sent by the emperor. He returned their greeting and stepped forward on the platform in response to the acclaim of the crowd, which was redoubled when he stood alone before the altar. He was the bearer of a message from Thaumas, whose reputation was as great in Mursa as in Ctesiphon or Alexandria, in Caesarea or Babylon. Men, women, and children all applauded, crying out “Thaumas . . . Thaumas . . .” Another name was intermingled with this—the name of the young priest. Philocrates, who had not quite been able to make it out, strained his ears to hear and to remember. It was thus he learned, from the countless throats of the faithful, intoxicated by sun and blood, the name of his new friend and protector. The crowd was calling: “Thaumas . . . Thaumas . . .” and “Fabrician . . . Fabrician . . .”
The Glory of the Empire Page 14