By a miracle, their arrival first in the garden, then in the hall, caused no particular stir. Even in the best society in Alexandria, manners were very free, and the judge’s guests, too, had already partaken not wisely but too well of the wines and fermented liquors poured without stint by enormous Negroes from the Sudan, clad in short jackets and red trousers. Alexis started to drink again and to divert himself by introducing the courtesans under assumed names to all the tipsy Alexandrian dignitaries, pretending they were foreign ladies visiting the city. The local worthies took great pleasure in discussing the weightiest subjects with such charming creatures; some of them even remarked on the visitors’ elegance and distinction.
The night was drawing to a close, and the young Alexis felt himself beginning to be overwhelmed by the familiar depression and lassitude. He went out alone into the garden. It was a spring night. He lifted his head and inhaled the scents of jasmine and honeysuckle that floated everywhere. The stars were still shining. He tried to recognize those he used to see in his childhood above the oaks and birches. He often used to think of the forest, of his mother, and of the dark shapes of the wolves gliding over the snow. What a strange world it was that contained wolves and honeysuckle, death and priests, pleasure and the sea and prostitutes! He felt rising in him once more that strong and mysterious sense at once of the diversity of the world and of its unity. In that feeling were intermingled anguish and happiness together with a kind of insatiable thirst for all that was to be done in space and time—a space to be abolished, a time so brief before death. He suddenly felt as if he were simultaneously in the gardens in Alexandria, in the forest of his childhood, in the fields and cities through which he had traveled with Philocrates, in storms at sea, in deserts and harbors. What was suddenly missing, as if the ground had disappeared from under his feet, was the time to grasp everything, do everything, know everything. Twenty, he was twenty, and then he would be twenty-one or twenty-two—and he was shaving the bushes of Alexandrian harlots dressed up as Athenian ladies at a gathering of magistrates in a suburb in Lower Egypt. Why? Why? And all these men and women everywhere. And this need for happiness, money, love, and glory. And history marching on, with its victories and its ruins. The sun came into view over the orchard wall, and Alexis had to lean for support against some statue or tree. He passed a hand over his brow, overcome with the vertigo of the world. It was then he saw a white shape moving at the bottom of the garden. It was the seventh maiden of the night of his initiation, she whom he was forbidden to love.
He loved her. All his life Alexis was to drag behind him a weight of darkness and secrecy: the dual scandal of the nights of debauchery in Alexandria and the forbidden love. Not least among the paradoxes of abasement and crime is that they bring into great lives a trace of the human mystery that seems more akin to weakness and sin than to power and glory. Vanessa was the great-niece of the high priest of the sun who had presided over Alexis’s initiation. She belonged to the caste, still shrouded in mystery even today, of the “guardians of the flame,” whose links with parallel institutions in India or Rome have been the subject of many studies. Savage, and what seem to us now obscure, rules forbade the guardians of the flame, on pain of death, to have sexual or emotional relations with men, especially the neophytes with whose initiation they were entrusted. According to certain scholars they had to remain virgin until their thirty-seventh year; according to others they were deflowered by the high priest in person on the day of their own initiation, usually their fifteenth birthday. At all events, they were dedicated to the sun, and all defilement was forbidden them between the ages of sixteen and thirty-six. They washed in rain water only, ate nothing but food prepared according to the strictest rules, wove their own garments, and were not allowed to touch pigs or oxen or reptiles or amber or corpses or unweaned infants. In exchange for having to observe these restrictions, they were surrounded by universal consideration and respect, and upon retiring, often to marry, when their period of service ended, they were given enough in presents and gold to live thereafter in comfort and almost wealth.
Vanessa was eighteen. She was beautiful, and famed especially for her green eyes, long fair hair, and an incomparably noble mien. Alexis’s reputation had naturally both horrified and attracted her. As for him, the idea that a woman, one woman, was forbidden to him was enough to make him decide secretly to abandon everything for her and for what was an impossible dream. But he made it possible. As may be imagined, we know very little of the story of this love, at least from direct sources. But legend took up the tale with delight. The poem Alexis and Vanessa, by an unknown author who mysteriously signs himself Turolde and ends his work with the famous and mysterious line, “Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet”; the well-known romance by Demetrios de Jamblée; the discreet and respectful allusions made by Valerius in several of his works, in particular The Birth of the Empire—all these have made the love of Alexis and Vanessa one of the most familiar examples of the “romance” common to almost all the world’s cultures. One finds traces of it in many Indian and Arabic texts, and one of the most frequently performed Nō plays today is a Japanese version of the story dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century. Mystery, secrecy, prohibition, the frenzy of the lovers, the revelation of passion to one who knows nothing of love and to the other who knows too much, the story’s tragic end—all called forth many interpreters as well as many readers and spectators. The story has been set to music more than a score of times, by artists from Lorenzo de’ Medici (whose version was performed in Florence in 1492 before a dazzling audience that included Pope Alexander Borgia, his son Cesare, his daughter Lucrezia, Marsilio Ficino, Politian, and Cardinal della Rovere, later Julius II) down to Erik Satie and Georges Auric.
The counting rhyme
One and two and three
Alexander and Venishee
And out goes she,
which has presented linguistics experts and sociologists, misled by the modification of the names, with so many problems, obviously derives from the source we are discussing. Like the loves of Arsaphes and Heloise, Basil and Ingeburgh, Fabrician and Helen, the passion of Alexis for Vanessa is linked to the history of the Empire, and so to the whole aggregate of masterpieces, anecdotes, and traditions that makes up a culture and belongs not merely to an individual civilization but to the common memory of mankind.
Let us try to imagine the meetings between Alexis and Vanessa in that wild city of Alexandria. Into the midst of tolerated debauchery and established disorder, crime and sin brought a little silence and beauty. It all happened very quickly, that night at the banquet when he saw her again, that night to the bitter, dazzling memory of which he was so often to refer, obliquely, all his life. He was drunk, filthy, haggard. He saw her, and from then on he loved her. Perhaps he had loved her ever since his ordeal in the cave. Probably there was the sound of music in the distance, and the coolness of the fountains soothed senses irritated by the crowd, the wine, the noise, the glare of the torches, the violence of the perfumes. Under the fading moon and stars, the rising sun spread a single scent of jasmine and honeysuckle mingled. It was the hour when despair and self-contempt always seized Alexis. He would feel weak and wretched, and suffer intensely from the three diseases that rarely relent, and accompany man to his grave: dissatisfaction with himself, a sense of the passing of time, and a vague lack of which he knows neither the meaning nor the name. For a moment he thought he saw his mother’s shadow passing far off through the garden. He ran toward it, but the shadow had already disappeared. He stood there motionless, arms dangling, hesitant, as if something was missing from his life. He could not bring himself to leave the garden. The sun was rising and it was almost light. Day shed on Alexandria, on Egypt, and on the world a pale and silent menace. It was at this moment that the shadow reappeared in the garden. The sun and the light brought out its youth, its beauty, its calm and noble mien. Alexis realized that, through the illusion that it was his mother, he had already recognized her
before in the darkness now fading. It was Vanessa, and he loved her.
Not all the resources of science and history, nor all the treasure of folklore and popular tales will ever tell us why Vanessa came back into the garden to meet passion, endless anguish, and death. Some will say chance, others fate, others that she was already a prey to the most ordinary and violent of passions and had returned to the garden to see if the debauchee she had heard so much about was still wandering there in the dawn. Yes, he was there. He went toward her and greeted her in a voice that was indistinct, even thick, but burning with anticipation and anxiety. Words launch men on terrible paths where they sometimes meet their end. They send them to death, madness, glory, despair. Alexis and Vanessa did not say especially fine things to each other. They had very little time. They only exchanged the simple words that make possible exquisitely organized catastrophes. He asked if he could see her again. She said yes. When? Tomorrow. Where? Behind the temple at the city gate, on the road to Saïs, just to the right of the copse, at sunset. Everything was already in place for a most cruel end.
They met, and met again. Of course, she thought at first that her only object was to help him escape, in secret, from the depraved world that so shocked her innocence. He was attracted by her—but it was something more. He told himself he was attracted by her, but he had only to hear her name or think of her for his heart to be shaken by a strange tempest that astonished even himself. He went through all the anguish and exasperation of waiting. He would watch the sun go down, and count the moments that still separated him from that fair hair, that clear soft skin, that form only guessed at through the long robe that fell to her feet. It was no longer even desire, but almost painful impatience, apprehension. At last he would see her, she was there, and calm, a deep delight, peace, would take the place of torment. She was there, he would speak to her, their hands would meet and touch and remain clasped one within the other. And it was as if each recognized at last in the other that other half of their self for which they had been searching.
She knew already what was at the end of this love. Perhaps he knew, too. They struggled, but reluctantly and feebly, against themselves. He had taken her, and she had given herself to him, as a sacrifice to a forbidden god, adored no matter what the cost. He would say to her:
“We’ll go away. To Carthage, Syracuse, Onessa, the City, or to the forest of my mother.”
And she would answer gently:
“I shall stay here, with my temple and my gods.”
Then he would take her by the wrists, angrily, and all the lovers in the world would speak their eternal chorus through his lips. He would say she did not love him, that he needed her, that she was playing with him and did not understand him . . . She would look at him and listen without speaking. He would fall down and embrace her knees, and lie there motionless, his head buried in her, breathing in the scent that obsessed him all day and intoxicated him all night. She would slowly stroke his hair, looking far away and sad. She would bend over him and brush his brow with her lips.
“I do love you,” she would say. “But I shall stay.”
They loved each other in the city, the night after the feast. In the fields; by the temples; in the forest; on the moss; on the sand; by the sea. In spring; in the heat of summer; in the cool evenings of autumn. Wealth, birth, their position in society were all at once a hindrance and a help. A help because they had spare time, servants, the means of buying silence and assistance. A hindrance, because they were spied on by the whole city and were so well known they were recognized everywhere. Through pleasure and danger, the nights, the months, the seasons, the years flowed by, given over to delights and to that elevation of the soul which despite sin or even crime belongs to passion.
To avoid causing suspicion, Alexis did not entirely stop seeing his old friends. He still went to feasts, banquets, orgies, but taking with him only the shadow of his former frenzy. He would absentmindedly stroke someone’s hair or wrist, or drink priceless wines from golden goblets, and all the while be thinking of Vanessa waiting for him on the beach or among the trees at the gates of the city. Several people noticed his weariness and apathy, interrupted by flashes of joy and transports of happiness he could not always hide. They put his oddity down to dissolute living, exhaustion, or perhaps some secret malady. He, tired of these vanities and follies and the play-acting involved, would sometimes indulge in acts of cruelty or brutality which his friends and guests had never seen in him before. He would break valuable objects, beat prostitutes till he drew blood (though, as a matter of fact, they asked nothing better), or, among his familiars, lose the sang-froid that should be preserved even in the deepest abysses of pleasure and debauchery. The smallest events of his secret life with Vanessa were translated, magnified, in his public life: when she had been tender, he became almost cheerful again; but if he had found her elusive and preoccupied, he would fall back into the depression that spread questions and idle speculation all over the city.
Things remained like this for some time. Secret meetings in the forest or behind the temples alternated with suppers and masquerades. From time to time the two lovers would both be present at official ceremonies. They would go with mixed feelings, in which the happiness of seeing one another was inextricably entangled with the almost unbearable irksomeness of social and religious duty. They felt the madness of their love all the more keenly when they saw one another decked in ceremonial robes, surrounded by a respectful crowd, encased in ritual and tradition, and playing their assumed parts. How joyfully they would meet again on the morrow of feasts and sacrifices, alone, naked, far away from everything and everybody, drunk with freedom, drunk with love and pleasure, forgetful of the city and the gods, each present only to the other, body, lips, and hands, and to the low murmur in which a whole world vanished! Remorse, quarrels, the uncertainty of hour and place, were only a spur inciting them to love one another more and more so as to escape from the world and other people with their rules and their laws, and to put off the mysterious reckoning they dimly feared.
At last, one morning beside a brook in a little wood near the sea, Alexis was told by his mistress, at the end of her tether, that the high priest suspected something and was having her watched. She could not endure all these dangers and lies any longer, and in a broken, almost inaudible voice, interrupting herself with kisses and tears, she asked Alexis if they should not end their relationship. It was like the blow of a whip to Alexis, like a red-hot iron on his heart. He leaped to his feet, staggered for a moment as if he could not breathe, came back, stood there pale as death before his mistress, and began to revile her. She didn’t love him any more. Why didn’t she say so instead of looking for pretexts to get out of an affair that was beginning to bore her? Let her speak out and dismiss him. He would go back to his low life and his masquerades. Perhaps he would kill himself. He loved her and would never forget her. He would think of her in his promiscuity as he had thought of her in his passion. She wept without a word. Tears ran down her cheeks and wetted her white robe. She stood there without stirring. He seized her, twisted her arms, all but struck her. Speak! Say something! She stood there silent, weeping. A fine time to weep! What was she crying for? Herself? Their love that she was condemning to death? The end of their happiness? But she could hardly be crying for him, since it was she who was rejecting him. No doubt she didn’t love him any more and could do without him. Let her forget him then and be happy.
“Forget you!”
That was all she said through her tears.
“Forget you!”
He looked at her. She wept. She raised her eyes and looked at him, still weeping. Then he fell at her feet, brought her down into his arms, and asked her forgiveness. In tears both lay on the ground.
“I shall die,” she said. “I shall die. But I shall die happy.”
He put his hand over her mouth, already soothed by his victory. She took his hand and kissed it, and he watched her. They smiled. Above her, beyond the body of the love
r lying gently over her, she saw the sky. He blocked out her view of the sky, but she could still glimpse it, all blue, there on the right, there on the left. And the sun, already high in the heavens. She clasped him in her arms, she could scarcely breathe, she uttered a cry. What does the price of happiness matter when one can taste it on one’s lips!
The love of Alexis and Vanessa had all the bitter strength of passion in jeopardy. Vanessa could feel the suspicion of the high priest lurking around her. Alexis had conceived a hatred for the old man who opposed their happiness and hopes. He had gradually taken again to drinking, to occupy the endless waiting, to forget the obstacles bristling in their path. On the pretext of misleading the high priest’s spies he started to frequent bacchanals and orgies again, and if necessary to sponsor them. It was during a night of unbridled drinking that the disaster happened.
Alexis’s friends and admirers, clients and parasites, were wearying him with their questions and sympathizing. Did he not feel well? Had he reason to complain of his fortune or his fate? Was he worried about something? He looked tired, not well. Why did he not give more of those feasts at which he used to be so brilliant? To cut short gossip and cross-questioning, to mislead people, to distract himself, perhaps also, deep down, to avenge himself for the tears of Vanessa and the harshness of fate, Alexis decided one day to give a banquet in his old style. It was a big party and a great success. The women were pretty. Everyone drank a good deal. The high priest was there, and so was his great-niece Vanessa. Alexis and Vanessa did not exchange one look. It was torture. Vanessa bore it in silence, speaking just a word to this person or that, standing motionless most of the time beside the high priest. But Alexis fought against pain with drink and excitement. He seemed to suffer less when he saw Vanessa suffer. So he went on drinking, and caressing young women, and roaring with laughter at the coarse pleasantries of his reeling hangers-on. In the middle of the night there was a general cry for a lottery like the ones that had caused such scandal before. Alexis resisted at first, then began to yield. In his drunkenness and exasperation a terrible idea had come to him. He suddenly made up his mind, called for scribes and slaves, and issued whispered orders. From the guests who had already understood, there were cries of joy and frenzied activity, and the servants set about organizing the lottery, preparing the prizes and the bits of parchment or hide that were to serve as tickets.
The Glory of the Empire Page 17