Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria

by Ki Longfellow

  Heart racing, I push my way across the street to enter a world clamorous with heat and stench and noise, and so much darker than the night. How do they see what they drink and with whom? There is only a lamp on a hook near the door, a second by a staircase seeming unattached to its wall, a guttering candle on the one stone counter behind which moves what I think a woman. Humpbacked under the great jug balanced on a muscled arm, slopping drink into cups, “she” is as dark as the room, as twisted as its staircase. Staring, I am pushed aside by a naked boy whose lips are bright red. Where did I read that lips painted red advertize fellatio? Is it true? An image rises of Theophania, sister to Theophilus. Turning, I would ask the lupa, but my feet, for once shod, slip on the wet uneven floor and I seek balance against a fellow whose nose is as a falcon’s beak and whose eye is single. I stare into his one eye. The other is a socket, brown and puckered. His one eye stares into mine. Our gaze unlocks at a bray come from the deepest reach of this cave of drink. Shadowed against a shadowed wall leans a man of enormous girth. If bear became man, it would look as this man. In his paw of a hand, he holds a drinking cup, dwarfed by his grip. In a place where all shout, he is clearly heard. “Alexander was a drunk! I am a drunk! Does this make me great?”

  Another voice is raised, its owner obscured by the man like a bear. “None greater, Felix Zoilus!”

  I know the voice I hear. Even slurred, I know the voice. And from some recess in my mind, I know the name Felix Zoilus.

  Minkah is as drunk as Alexander the Great. I have never seen him drunk. But drunk or sober, calm or angry, it is my Egyptian and, trembling with both fear and eagerness, I will speak to him. Though first I must get to, and then around, Felix Zoilus the Great Drunk. To do so, I must push and shove. Not known to any, I am elbowed. I am called cunnus. Stumbled against, muni is hissed in my face. My breasts gripped, and my ass, I am called kenes. A blue-eyed man who reeks of fresh shit grabs at my crotch while he offers a cup for a nek. No need to rent a crib, he says, no need for even an alley. He would have me on the slime of the floor. What? No? Then two cups! I decline, sweetly I think. My answer earns me a cup of wine dumped down my back.

  My Alexandria is a place of privilege. There, I live as a creature of the air lives, sipping thought for sustenance. But in Rome and in Athens and Antioch and Constantinople, I have walked the streets, picking my way through offal and slop, swatting away flies. In Constantinople I reclined on silk in the inner chambers of a palace as the fetor of corruption overpowered my senses. I sailed for months in huge ships with crews of all nations and stations. After such places, this place is no more than is found anywhere. If these are those who would inherit the earth, then should the books that are “lost” be found, who would read them? Who would Lais be to any of these? And who am I? The answer comes so quickly I cannot silence it. Here, I am no one and I am alone and I stand after so many years before Minkah, clutching my borrowed cloak, my hair dripping with the poorest wine. And yet, when I speak I speak as if I sat above all in a tribon white as a wall in the sun. “Companion! Would you hear me?”

  The bear on its back legs looks down from a great height. I do know this one. Once, long ago, stopped by the drawbridge between the two harbors, he would kill Augustine and then he would kill me. I understand much now. He did not kill us because my Egyptian asked him not to. Beside him sags Minkah, one arm propping up his head, the other around the slim waist of a girl whose lips are red. She too is naked and she too is drunk. Her body is soiled with sweat and with grease and with the bites of fleas, yet remains enticing. “Who is this?” she says, “I am not paid yet. Tell the slut to fuck off.”

  Returning stare for stare, I will not fuck off. “I ask only a moment.”

  Minkah has raised his face from his cup, and his eyes to mine. Certainly I am not one, but two, even three…but his voice is steady enough. “A moment? How long is a moment? Felix! Fetch a cup. For a moment, I would drink with my sister.”

  As would a bear, Felix Zoilus shakes his huge shaggy head. “Sister? You have no sister.”

  “A cup, Felix. We shall both drink with my sister. Excuse me, but who are you?” This is said to the girl whose waist he still holds.

  “Money.”

  “Fair enough. Felix. I need a cup and a coin. As for you…” This is said to me. “Tell him, Sage! Tell my friend who you are.”

  I look up at his friend, a giant, a man whose brain would not threaten a cow, yet whose hairy arms and hairy legs and hairier back could lift a bullock and its wagon. I do not say, but shout, “I am the sister of Minkah the Egyptian.”

  Holding up his cup, the giant shouts back. “Well then! Here’s to the ship-owners. To own a ship is to plunder the world!”

  Two hours later, I am as drunk as the drunkest man here. I have never been drunk before and I may never be drunk again, but for now I revel in its loose-limbed loose-lipped freedom. Felix is delightful. The man who smells of shit is delightful. All those with red lips are delightful. Even I am delightful. But most delightful of all is Minkah, my brother, who forgives me. I sink into his forgiveness as I would sink into the sea, down and down and down…and I tell him so. I admit my faults, my errors, my sins. I am cleansed in a hole as fetid as sewage.

  The whole world, and all that lives in it or on it or over it, is—delightful.

  ~

  By Isis and Osiris, what pain is this? In my head beats a hundred broken hearts. My eyes. I cannot open my eyes. If I open my eyes they will burst into flame. And my tongue. What has become of my tongue? It seems a lizard in my mouth, dry and cracked and swollen with rot. I stink. I have made my bedding stink.

  Help. Did I say that aloud? I say it again. Help.

  “Here, drink this.”

  A cup is placed in my hand, but too unsteady, I cannot raise it. The cup and my hand are raised for me, placed against my lips, tipped. Water spills over my lizard of a tongue, dribbles down my chin. More. I am given more.

  “Keep drinking.”

  “Minkah?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where am I?”

  “Home.”

  “My home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are home too.”

  I sleep the rest of the night and half the following day. Miw sleeps with me. Now and again I awake so I might vomit. No matter the time, Minkah is there with a bowl. The ache in my head is monstrous. But I am content. Unless I die, all this will pass.

  Minkah is home.

  And when I am well and when I am ready, I go to him. And he takes me as others have done, but not as others have done. I know now I love Minkah as I have never loved any. Through the flesh of my Egyptian I am made to feel pure, for the flesh is innocent when touched with love. And we touch in this way. In the dark I whisper the words of Medea’s love for Jason into his ear: “…a dark mist came over her eyes, and a hot blush covered her cheeks…so they stood face to face without a sound, like oaks or lofty pines, which stand quietly side by side on the mountains when the wind is still…and murmur ceaselessly, destined to tell out their tale, stirred by the breath of Love.”

  Before Minkah, I have had no lovers. I have been as a virgin. But now I am what I have thought I might never be, a woman, whole. I will have no other lover.

  As for Ia’eh, yet young in her huge black eye, in the arch of her white neck, in the lift of her white foot, she has pressed her forehead against Minkah’s chest, and spoken in her own tongue. I knew what she said to him. Master, you have come back. I, Ia’eh, never doubted you.

  Wherever Minkah is, I am. If sailing the Irisi or at table with Miw in her own place listening, or in the midst of an alchemical interlude, or on the backs of Ia’eh and Bia, we talk. Or I do, my thoughts tumbling forth as springs in the desert, sharing what I have shared with no one else: the thoughts I now think, the books I no longer need read but know by heart, the book I myself write. I neglect the practice of mathematics. I have no time to disprove Ptolemy’s earth-centered system.

  Listening
, he has said this, “Your Magdalene sounds as Lais, knowing because she knew. She sounds also as you.”

  “Me?”

  “An asker of questions.”

  “But not cruel? Not arrogant?”

  His answer, quick and ready, shocks me. “Hypatia is cruel and her cruelty is vast.”

  “Minkah! How so?”

  “She frightens those who cannot understand her.”

  “I am frightened by some I understand.”

  Minkah laughs. To make Minkah laugh is as honey to me. But to hear I am cruel is like reading a poem by Enheduanna, Sumerian priestess, daughter of the Akkadian Sargon of Kish. Two and a half thousand years ago, she spoke of the Goddess Inanna: “…Woman, most driven, clothed in frightening radiance.”

  Minkah does not choose Father’s old room, but instead takes that which was mine so Father’s is again what it was when he lived, a gathering place for all those who come. If a man of stature arrives from some other city, I am first he pays court to. If a meeting is planned by Alexandrian powers, it is my house that hosts it. If students would debate, they do so in the House of Hypatia. If poetry is read, or a new work of philosophy or mathematics is introduced, it is done in the House of Hypatia. When Augustine allows himself a reprieve from Hippo, he comes here.

  But if not one were ever to visit again, I should not care. I have my work. I have Minkah.

  But to say all who visit benign would be false. Minkah is still Parabalanoi. We find marks on our walls. I do not understand them. But I see Minkah does.

  Each night when I enter his bed, he holds me. He bids me not to worry. His strength is mine.

  ~

  Minkah the Egyptian

  I swear off drink. I walk away from the Parabalanoi, followed by the threats of Theophilus. Let him pound his table and stamp his foot. Let him rant of the wrath of his god. Who gives a pig’s bollocks for wrath of god or man when I am free and my darling is mine!

  In darkness I trace the form of her sleeping arm, cup her breast, lick the salt from her belly. She is like iron and my phallus like lodestone. It stirs at the sound of her voice a room away, hardens at her smell, would find release at only the sight of her. But to touch her! To give her pleasure! To bury myself to the root in my own true home, ah! This I would not trade for life everlasting. If I should die tomorrow, let it be with the taste of her salt on my lips.

  ~

  One year later, 412

  Hypatia of Alexandria

  How changed is Augustine. But then, how changed am I, no longer a girl but a woman whose years number one and forty. Forty-one years! What would Father, who so loved numbers, have said of this? Four is the Tetrad. Three points define a flat surface, but when a fourth is added, depth is born. I think I once said that numbers were sly. In Father’s perfect world, age brings experience and experience is rewarded with wisdom. I will never be perfect.

  Aelia Galla Placidia is not changed at all, save to glow all the rosier now she is “captive of Athaulf,” new King of the Visigoths with the death of Alaric. Athaulf trusts her to accompany his envoy to Alexandria requesting grain. He is not wrong in his trust. She is besotted. She is also my guest and no happier guest has ever disturbed our neighbors with her laughter.

  Minkah, Augustine, Galla and I visit the Eleusis Plain near the rising walls of Theophilus. Both Augustine and Galla have seen at a glance how it is with Minkah and me. By expressing nothing, Augustine expresses his acceptance. Galla grips my hand when no one sees. “You see, my friend! Love knows nothing but love.” I see.

  Minkah sweats. Augustine sweats. In the last of this year’s summer, without motion, heat lies across the city like a body lies on a slab. Galla’s fine skin has a sheen. I do not sweat. Why my own body keeps its moisture, why I might eat beyond hunger and yet not thicken in waist or thigh, I do not know. Of my body I know only what I have learned entangled in the body of another. Of my mind I know a great deal. Of my heart, I only now begin to learn.

  Theophilus uses slaves to construct his city walls. But we four have not come to see hungry men beaten. Augustine makes no comment on the methods of his fellow bishop…wise but disappointing. With the last and deadliest siege of Rome and the violent deaths of her guardians, Galla has seen too much to find more astonishing. We have come to visit the Hypogea, an ancient underground temple to the Iron Queen, white-armed Persephone, for some reason untouched by Theophilus. As yet. Her gifts are long since stolen but the Queen of the Underworld remains. What does she see as she herself slowly fades from sight?

  Minkah stands close to the pink marble goddess as Augustine circles her and Galla seeks other sights. He has read Augustine’s “Confessions.” “Confess it, old fellow, you were never as vile as you write of yourself.”

  “I was worse.”

  Minkah laughs. “I do not believe you.”

  “And what would you, an innocent, know of such things?”

  My love knows such evil as Augustine has only shuddered at. He catches my eye as he answers. “No one can claim sole possession of what is vile. In each heart lives a wolf. We might feed it or we might let it go hungry. The choice is ours.”

  Augustine turns to me, smiling. “Only with Hypatia could I find such discourse as this. Here the wolf in my heart starves.”

  Is it because his heart starves that I confess to Augustine that I have books his church would destroy, that it thinks it has destroyed? I tell him that in these books I have learned a great deal about his Christ.

  Augustine’s brilliance gives him wings, but his fear tethers him, as a leash bound to his jesses tethers a hawk. His eyes do not move from mine. He will listen, but he listens as carefully as I speak.

  “Augustine, as I love you, I believe the faith you profess lost its way so long ago, few if any remember or even know where once lay its wisdom. I believe you have made a god of a man who would have made gods of us all. By which I do not mean gods as Romans mean gods, or as symbols of natural forces or human abilities, or even as your god, called Infinite Love yet feared as a Being of infinite demands. Christ knew true divinity—the Force driving All—and he died desiring that all would know what he knew. I believe you have denied the one he called ‘Beloved,’ Mariamne Magdal-eder, she who tempered and taught him. Tell me, dearest friend, as a once lover of women, what possesses men that they should so hate and fear she who bears you, nurtures you, loves you when all others revile you? I am a woman. I would understand your mind.”

  My love has closed his eyes. But a small smile sweetens his lips.

  We have talked like this before, Augustine and I, but never before have I been armed with such proof of his faith’s demise. He touches the cold lips of still-living Persephone. “I have not read these books you mention. Like others, I thought them destroyed. But there is truth in what you say and I grieve this is so. You do not, but I do believe our Christ is God on earth and in Heaven, but that does not mean I do not know what man has made of God or of Heaven—or that I am blind to what he has made of woman. I would say this only to you, and I would not have it repeated of me, but man has come to fear woman’s sexual power before which he is helpless, so turns it back on her, making her the one who is helpless. Being stronger in body, and more capable of violence, he tramples what is so deeply desired beneath his feet. I watch this happen and I weep for my mother, for my lovers. My love for women does not grow less but my love of God grows greater. I cannot have both.”

  To tell him that he might have both would fall on the alabaster tiles beneath our feet and grow cold.

  Even so, as once with Didymus, through Augustine I am allowed a taste of Christian beauty.

  ~

  Minkah the Egyptian

  Alexandria’s weak Augustal Prefect, Lucius Marius, is replaced by one all know to be strong. The Companions can speak of nothing else. I am not the Minkah of old. I do not spy here but am one of these. And what should Theon say if he knew? He would be proud. He would raise his head an inch from his pillow and call me “son.” Without wa
rning, I suddenly miss the old fool.

  Our house—I call it our house!—is yet again filled with men of importance talking of important things. Endlessly. And though they talk round and round a thing, and no action is planned, still I am not bored.

  In the fifth consulate of the Christian reign of the Emperor Theodosius II, the city of Alexandria is sent Orestes of Constantinople. Flavius Anthemius not only wrote to discuss his decision with Hypatia, she has suggested the choice.

  I discover now what it is Egypt’s prefect actually does. As the most important imperial official in the Empire of the East, he rules on taxes, estates, civic obligations, the propriety of secular activity, the confiscation of all that is gained by subversive or criminal activity, protects the imperial mint, and pronounces on religious opinions.

  By Hermes, god of thieves—a larcenist’s dream! No wonder so many seek public office.

  But most important of all his duties is the collection and distribution of Egyptian wheat. Egypt feeds both Empires. If I were Prefect, in no time I should be rich as Croesus.

  Hypatia tells us that upon his appointment, Orestes was baptized by Constantinople’s bishop, the dimly devoted Atticus. Such pretense was the only sensible position to take, one that men—and women—have taken from time beyond remembering.

  Alexandria crowded the docks to watch the arrival of the Imperial fleet: its pennants flying, horns sounding, men of all stations scurrying to be first to greet the new Prefect and his new Military Commander, the exceedingly tall and well named Abundantius. What it saw was that the moment Orestes arrived, he directed his goods be unloaded and delivered to his home, wherever that might be. It saw him greet with all due reverence Bishop Theophilus and one or two others, then turn away to demand a litter take him directly to the House of Hypatia. That neither he nor his bearers knew the city mattered in the least. The first man he asked knew where Hypatia lived. My darling is Alexandria.