Ghost Empire

by Richard Fidler

  Then we see her as the Galaktotrophousa, the Nursing Madonna who serenely breastfeeds her child.

  The icons are heavily stylised, otherworldly. The Orthodox faithful use them to open a tiny crack in the world, to let the radiance of the heavenly kingdom shine through. But these images also warm the soul as very human portraits of a mortal woman and her infant. Her arms and robes form a throne for the object of her adoration.

  The Eldest Son of the Eldest Son

  JOE WAS OUR FIRST CHILD. Khym and I had been married for five years and we were in our mid-thirties. We decided it was time to start trying before we embarked on a long trip together through France, Spain and Morocco. We suspected something was up in Madrid. By the time we got to Marrakesh, Khym was uncharacteristically queasy around the spicy food. The day we returned home to our little flat in Sydney, she took the test and came out of the bathroom giggling, fatalistically.

  I was a little apprehensive about becoming a father. I had wanted this baby and we had agreed now would be a good time. And I was happy Khym was pregnant. But a new person was about to enter our lives, whom we didn’t know, who was going to be with us forever. In my mind, the child was an abstraction, like a baby-shaped silhouette with an ‘X’ in the middle of it.

  I thought Khym was remarkably relaxed about the whole thing. As her belly swelled she became radiant. The remaining seven months of her pregnancy passed quickly.

  Khym likes to prepare herself for the worst. When we decided to try for a baby, she warned it might not happen for years, if at all. Now that she was pregnant, she suggested we should be prepared in case she somehow didn’t form that instant mother–child attachment. So much of our future happiness rested on those critical few seconds after the birth. We were counting on love at first sight. It sounded like witchcraft.

  Halfway through her pregnancy, Khym woke up one morning and told me the baby had introduced himself to her in a dream: she had walked into the bedroom and there he was, a baby boy in a cradle, wearing a tight blue jumpsuit. He was standing up with his hands on the rail, looking up at her, bewildered. He said he wanted to know who he was. She said, ‘Well, you’re my son.’ She picked him up and took him to a mirror where they stared into their reflections. He seemed shocked by what he was seeing. He told Khym his name was Joe, and that he was an artist.

  ONE SATURDAY MORNING in late June, Khym came out of the bath and told me the contractions had started. The midwives cared for Khym with calm efficiency, like a guild of expert priestesses. Our friend Sally stayed close to Khym, whispering encouragement. Every woman in the room knew exactly what she was doing there.

  No one will come right out and say it, but the presence in that room of the father-to-be is utterly superfluous. During antenatal classes, the instructor flattered the anxious dads-in-waiting, telling us we could help during labour by giving our partners a loving shoulder massage. Now, as I dutifully rubbed my wife’s shoulders, I realised that no amount of massage was going to ameliorate the pain of passing a small human from your body. It was a deft act of misdirection: keep the man out of the way so the professionals can get on with the job.

  I was still happy to be there. I could see that the men of my father’s generation, who were discouraged from being present for the birth of their children, missed out. It’s a kindness for us to be admitted into that room, to see how heroically women labour and suffer to bring life into the world. In that room we are properly reacquainted with our mammalian selves.

  It was dawn the next day when Khym entered the second stage of labour, and the midwife told us the baby would be with us in an hour. I drew a deep breath and looked at the clock. As Khym began to bear down, a surge of adrenaline coursed through me. Soon, I thought, there will be a new person in the room.

  An hour later that baby boy arrived. Khym was utterly spent, but triumphant. I exploded into tears, weeping in joy and relief and wonder. I was completely undone, sobbing, as I looked upon this strange thing, and I was instantly in love. I pulled myself together long enough to cut the cord. The midwife handed our newborn son to Khym, who held him to her breast and beamed, and said, ‘Joe’.

  THE HOSPITAL STAFF gave us an hour to be a new family together. I was in awe of Khym, who was relaxed and happy as she nursed Joe, even though she hadn’t slept for the better part of three days. Late-morning sunshine streamed into the room and onto her hair. She was the Galaktotrophousa, the Nursing Madonna. She said she was looking forward to eating oysters and goat’s cheese again.

  I came home and sent out a mass email announcing the arrival of a healthy baby boy. Alone in the flat, I reviewed the events of the past three days in my mind and marvelled at my emotional outburst at the moment of birth. Where had that come from? I hadn’t cried like that since I was a child. I called two friends who had recently become fathers and told them I’d just been though the most moving experience of my life.

  ‘The feeling changes you forever,’ one of them confessed quietly.

  The other said, ‘It gives you an entirely new idea of love.’

  Until that moment, every new dad I’d met had said something glib about the change in life that was coming. They would chuckle and tell me to prepare for Phase Two: a life of no sleep, shitty nappies and not hanging out with the guys anymore. I think this banter is an act of concealment, a way of papering over the powerful and unsettling surge of love that fatherhood brings.

  A few days later it was time for Khym and Joe to come home. I called a cab to pick us up at the hospital. The driver was from Pakistan and wearing traditional Muslim dress. He was grinning widely, delighted to be bringing a new family home for the first time. He drove ten kilometres per hour below the speed limit all the way through Sydney traffic. We got talking about kids. He had three under five.

  ‘And what have you named your son?’ he asked.

  ‘His name is Joe,’ Khym replied from the back seat, where she sat next to the baby capsule.

  ‘Is that short for Joseph?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘It is a Muslim name as well. Only we will call him Yusuf.’

  He turned and looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Children are the best pleasure in life.’

  A week later I received a warm letter from my Uncle Brian. He wrote that he was deeply moved that we had named our son Joseph. I assumed he was pleased that we hadn’t called him ‘Jayydyn’ or ‘Seven’.

  OUR DAUGHTER EMMA was born three-and-a-half years later.

  Her birth was more straightforward. She came into the world pain-free and beautiful, and fell asleep in the arms of her mother. Eleousa, the Lady of Loving Kindness.

  There it was again, the same surge of love and tenderness.

  Emma had penetrating, dark eyes. She was a calmer, more placid baby than Joe, which might have been because we were calmer and more confident parents. Her hair was tufty and black, and her eyes were dark and beguiling.

  WHEN JOE WAS FIVE and Emma was two, Khym and I took them to a family function and I got talking with my Uncle Brian. I was very fond of him and hadn’t seen him in years. Again, he told me he was touched by our choice of name for Joe. I asked him why. He raised his eyebrows and said he thought I knew about the family tradition.

  ‘Ever since our ancestors came to Australia in the 1840s,’ he explained, ‘the eldest son of the eldest son had always been named Joseph.’

  ‘But I’m the eldest son of the eldest son, and I’m a Richard.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Your great-grandfather was a Joseph, but his son Joe died without children. Then your grandfather George took on the mantle. His eldest son was your dad, Alan. But I thought you knew all about this. I thought you’d named your boy Joe to re-establish the tradition.’

  ‘It’s the first I ever heard about it.’

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a dog-eared, hand-drawn family tree, which he unfolded on the table. He pointed to the names of our ancestors, who had migrated to Australia from England and Ireland. Then his finger traced
the line down to their first two children, the first natural-born Australians in the family.

  Their names were Joseph and Emma.

  We looked at each other and heard the peal of a distant ship’s bell resounding across 160 years. This was nothing more than a coincidence, but the symmetry of the past and present names pleased my uncle, who was a religious man, very much, and it pleased me too.

  The Death of Andronicus

  EMPEROR MANUEL I – the grandson of Alexius – was twenty-five when he ascended to the throne of Constantinople. He was a tall, slightly stooped young man, with a dark complexion and a pleasant smile. His coronation was greeted enthusiastically within the city, but on the empire’s borders, the strategic outlook was deteriorating: the Normans had taken all of the imperial lands in Italy, and were planning an attack on Greece; the Seljuks were firmly in control of large swathes of Asia Minor.

  Fortunately for Manuel, trade was booming. Constantinople was perfectly positioned as a thriving entrepôt between the rising powers of Venice and Genoa to the west, Fatamid Egypt to the south, and the new Crusader states in the east. With a treasury fattened with tax revenue, Manuel was able to spend lavishly on his army and navy.

  Manuel inspired intense loyalty among his courtiers, but he never quite looked the part of emperor, not as much, at least, as his cousin Andronicus, who even his enemies had to concede was an impressive figure. Andronicus was tall, absurdly handsome, quick-witted and charming. He was physically powerful and his sexual appetite was said to be ‘like a horse in heat, covering mare after mare beyond reason’. Andronicus’s roguish, manly nature endeared him to Manuel and he became a great favourite at court, until he took his niece Eudoxia as his mistress. Whenever he was upbraided for forming an incestuous relationship, Andronicus laughed and quipped that he was from the same mould as the emperor – who happened to be sleeping with his own brother’s daughter.

  Falling out of favour in Constantinople, Andronicus was appointed to a military command in Cilicia in Asia Minor, and in 1152, he set out with Eudoxia to take up his post. One night, she entered his tent to warn him that her kinsmen were waiting outside, ready to assassinate him. Eudoxia suggested he call the maid in, switch garments with her, and sneak out in disguise. Andronicus dreaded the thought of being captured in such a demeaning manner; instead, he slashed an opening at the rear of the tent with his sword, leapt over a fence and escaped.

  ANDRONICUS’S CASUAL disregard for propriety had earned him many enemies at court, who began to assail Manuel with tales of his disloyalty. The stories wore away at Manuel’s affection for Andronicus, and he was recalled to Constantinople, and thrown into a prison within the Great Palace.

  Andronicus started removing bricks from his cell floor, and spied an ancient underground passage. He pulled out some more bricks, making an opening wide enough to squeeze through, then put the bricks back in place as he exited. When the guards came to serve him his dinner, they were astonished to find the cell empty, with no apparent sign of entry or exit.

  In retaliation, Manuel ordered that Andronicus’s wife (who, needless to say, was not Eudoxia) be held captive as a hostage, placing her in the same cell that had held Andronicus. Using the same tunnel, Andronicus entered her cell, led her out and sex with her against the prison wall. She would later give birth to a son, John. Adronicus’s wife’s name is not recorded, and it is not known what became of her.

  Andronicus was soon caught and placed in heavy iron fetters. But he persuaded a young boy in the prison to make a wax impression of the key to his cell. The boy then took the wax to Andronicus’s brother, who forged a new key and dropped it into an amphora of wine, which was brought in with Andronicus’s midday meal. He slipped away again.

  It was now too dangerous to remain in Constantinople, so Andronicus made his way north, towards the Danube, but was caught again by a party of Vlach warriors on the lookout for him. As they made their way back to Constantinople, Andronicus told his captors he had gastroenteritis. His disgusted captors allowed him to duck away to the side of the road to relieve himself. Taking his walking stick with him, he crouched down a little way from the camp. With his back to the guards, Andronicus draped his cloak around the stick and placed his hat on top; in the darkness, his clothing could pass as a man on his haunches. Leaving this scarecrow behind, Andronicus took off into the woods.

  Heading north, he reached Galicia, ruled by yet another cousin, Yaroslav, who welcomed him with open arms. Emperor Manuel, worried that Andronicus might raise an army to usurp him, decided it was time to patch things up with his wayward cousin, and Andronicus was allowed to return to Constantinople in 1168.

  ANDRONICUS LASTED for only a year before he fell out of favour again, by complaining noisily about the emperor’s selection of his Hungarian son-in-law as his successor. Andronicus had given voice to grumblings of discontent in the capital. Manuel, who had married a blonde Norman princess, was increasingly seen as too close to foreigners from the west.

  Infuriated, Manuel expelled Andronicus from the court, and sent him back to the front in Cilicia, probably hoping he’d die in combat. Andronicus’s second stint proved even more disastrous than his first: he allowed himself to be drawn into a pointless battle against Thoros of Armenia, and his forces were badly beaten.

  As he retreated from the battlefield, Andronicus looked over his shoulder and saw Thoros preparing to launch a final assault on his men. Overcome with the anguish of defeat, Andronicus turned his horse around and charged towards Thoros. As he neared the startled Armenian king, Andronicus flung his lance, which clanged into Thoros’s shield and knocked him off his horse. In the confusion, Andronicus was able to turn around and race away.

  WITH THAT, HE WAS DONE with campaigning. Andronicus laid down his armour and shield and rode south to the court of Raymond of Antioch where, it was recorded, he ‘gave himself over to wanton pleasures, adorned himself like a fop, and paraded in the streets escorted by bodyguards bearing silver bows’. He seduced another beautiful Norman princess – Philippa, the sister of Empress Maria. On receiving the news back in Constantinople, Manuel was ‘thunderstruck’. Still furious over Andronicus’s idiotic attack on the Armenians, he demanded Andronicus be brought back to Constantinople in chains. In fear of his safety, Adronicus abandoned Philippa, and fled south, into the Holy Land, where he found refuge in the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, under the protection of King Almaric.

  At fifty-six, Andronicus began the greatest love affair of his life, with Theodora Comnena, Manuel’s niece and widow of King Baldwin III of Jerusalem. Manuel sent a letter to Almaric, pointing out that Andronicus was a rebel and guilty of incest. He demanded that Almaric put out his eyes. The letter was passed to Theodora, who showed it to Andronicus. Choosing to share the burden of exile, they departed Jerusalem together.

  The couple travelled east into the Muslim lands to the court of Nur ad-Din, the sultan of Damascus, where Theodora gave birth to two children. After several years, they resumed their wanderings, eventually settling in a castle on the shores of the Black Sea.

  One day, while Andronicus was away from home, their castle was captured by the Duke of Trebizond. Theodora and the children were taken into custody and brought to Constantinople. Andronicus, in great distress, agreed to exchange their captivity for his, and he returned to Constantinople in early 1180.

  THE TWO FORMER FRIENDS had not seen each other for years, and Manuel was shocked at his cousin’s ragged appearance. Andronicus looked up at the emperor soulfully and shrugged off his cloak, dramatically revealing a heavy chain he had fastened from his neck to his ankles. Then he stretched out on the floor in front of the emperor, tearfully begging his pardon. The emperor was moved to see such a mighty man brought so low. He ordered his attendants to raise Andronicus to his feet, but Andronicus said he would not rise until someone had dragged him by his chain over the path to the throne, and then dashed him against it. It was no less than he deserved, he said. The emperor commanded that this be done an
d pardoned Andronicus. He was allowed to retire with Theodora on their estate on the Black Sea.

  LATER THAT YEAR, Manuel’s health declined and he died after a long fever. He was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Alexius II, under the guardianship of his mother, Empress Maria. Popular discontent with western influence in the court was now focused on the foreign-born empress-regent.

  Manuel had recognised the growing wealth and power of the Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa by granting them generous trade concessions in Constantinople. The presence of these rich Italians on the streets of the city was deeply resented. Their wealth had made them arrogant, and their Catholicism made them ungodly in the eyes of the Orthodox faithful.

  Andronicus, hearing reports of discontent in the capital, raised a band of followers and marched on Constantinople. A contingent of soldiers was sent out to intercept him. Instead, they defected to Andronicus’s side, along with the commander of the imperial navy. The gates of the city were opened, and Andronicus entered Constantinople unchallenged, to an emotional, almost hysterical, welcome.

  Something ugly was unleashed on the capital that day. Long-festering resentment against wealthy westerners erupted into street violence. Thousands of Latin Catholics were murdered, women and children along with them. John, the papal legate, was killed and his severed head was tied to the tail of a dog and dragged through the city streets.