Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria

by Ki Longfellow

  We hear the displeasure of Theophilus shook the walls of his stolen Greek house.

  My new position suits me well. No longer considered Theon’s “man,” I am now the first friend of Hypatia. Funny this should come when I no longer care for status or power or money. Here I will speak a truth I have longed to speak aloud for years, and now do say: all that truly concerns me is Hypatia herself.

  And here is a thing that comes with loving and being loved by Hypatia of Alexandria. I speak my mind. I laugh when I wish to. I come and go as I please. I kiss no man’s ass. I kiss Hypatia wherever I like. Delicious.

  ~

  Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria

  As handmaid, I bring Cyril his letters and take away those he writes so they might be distributed to messengers. So many fly between Cyril and Pulcheria in Constantinople, and I try not to peek, but once in awhile—I fall into temptation. One more sin to pay penance for. But I cannot resist. Pulcheria sounds as one I would know. So young and yet so devout. If hero I have, it is Pulcheria, Empress of the East.

  Cyril, now as fat and as glossy as a river horse, took great pleasure in his uncle’s displeasure that the new prefect goes first to my sister and not to the Bishop of Alexandria. I take pleasure in Cyril’s pleasure. Pleasure must come from somewhere and other than in love of God, I have found it hard to find.

  As I wait for today’s letters, keeping the proper distance between Cyril and I (there is a mark on the floor, this is what I am told to stand behind), Theophania, his mother, thin as an ibis, has slunk up to her son, saying, “If all goes well, you will be bishop.” She must think me a slave, why else would she be indiscreet before me? What does “all goes well” mean? But I know what she does not say. What she does not say is how much better for her to have power held in the hands of a compliant and loving son, than held by an arrogant brother who barely tolerates her.

  This too I know. Cyril understands his mother as I understand her, but he thinks of Hypatia. I know this because he mutters. When I wait for a letter or do some other thing he wishes me too, it seems often he forgets I am there. I remain as quietly as I can so he does not remember too soon. His muttering shows me his mind. That he does not understand Hypatia disturbs him. He asks himself what attracts men to her and not to his uncle or even to Cyril himself? Are they not wise and powerful and do they not speak for Christ? Certainly Cyril does. He is as sure of this as I am. He also asks himself: how to manipulate that which is not understood?

  Three days later, I follow when he goes out. Cyril so seldom leaves his home now that his back and legs have begun to ache, I must know what could compel him. Cyril, in the company of his favorite Heirax, seeks out one of my sister’s lectures! They sit on a bench far up in the highest tier of her hall. Below them sits row after row of bent heads and scribbling hands, one of which is mine, my head and face covered in cloth, though what I scribble is nonsense. All are listening to Hypatia with all their faculties. I peek up at Cyril now and again who does not sit, but reclines on cold stone. Seated by him, Hierax is using the opportunity to read The Quest of the Golden Fleece by Apollonius of Rhodes. I wonder if he’s come to the good part about the Harpies? I know Hierax. Other than her beauty, which is too far away to be leered at, my sister holds no interest for him.

  Cyril is seven years younger than Hypatia, and though I revere him for his piety, his mind is no match for hers. She is now saying that though geometry had its origin in the physical world, weights and measures and such, it transcends the world by deriving not things but ideas from the physical. Mathematics turned the mind away from material and towards the abstract. Through mathematics, she says, one could reach the divine.

  At this I quickly turn to catch Cyril’s reaction to such blasphemy. He is as struck with as much horror as I am. Or so it seems to me.

  But if he is not?

  Impossible.

  Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria

  I pace my cell. I fall to my knees to kneel as long as I can. The pain makes me bite my lip. I bite it until I bleed.

  Only Jesus is perfect. Only Jesus is perfect. Only Jesus is perfect! Only Jesus is the Perfected Man. And only through Him do we reach God.

  Lais is in my head. I have tried and I have tried, but cannot remove her. All thought Lais was perfect. Hypatia is in my head. I have slammed my skull against the wall over and over, but still she remains. How many once called Lais “perfect”? Blasphemy and evil. Only Jesus, at one and the same time both man and God, was perfect. I rise only to pace some more.

  The small space allotted me is long since contained within the house of Cyril, which in truth is the house of the godless Theophania provided her by her brother Bishop Theophilus, but neither Cyril nor I think it the house of Theophania. He knows it to be his house. I think it “our” house, but would never say this, never. What should he say if I were to claim as mine any part of it? I should endure penance. I have endured a great deal from Cyril, all of it deserved. It is exceedingly hard to be good enough for Cyril and for God—and as for Theophania, impossible! I should not hate, but I do. Only Jesus is perfect.

  Seven years I have devoted to Cyril, and where does he go so soon as my sister returns? Even now, though I follow faithfully, he thinks no one knows, that no one sees him or judges him. But I do all of these things. God has never spoken to me. I do not deserve it. But if He did, I know in my heart He would want me to protect his favored Cyril. I have no other way than to make myself his guardian, a keeper of his every word and deed. As for his thoughts, even with his muttering, these I can only surmise…although it helps to read his letters, both sent and received. I admit I am often shocked. I think I shall never understand how God chooses who He would favor. In any case, each time Cyril returns from hearing Hypatia, I return with him, all unseen and unthought of. He is easy to follow. Those who bear his litter labor to bear his weight. He interrupts traffic.

  Once home, I see that under the sweat he mops from his face, his skin glows. His eyes are as the eyes of a black monk. They are eyes that seem to see more than my eyes. Does he see Hypatia is as all thought Lais to be: perfect? Has Satan taken root in my favorite’s soul? Only God knows what is perfect and what is not perfect for only God is perfect. And His Son Jesus Christ. Every other soul that has ever been born or will be born is imperfect. Each merits Hell unless it is saved by Jesus.

  I pace and I fall to my knees and I stand and I pace and I fall to my knees. What does God want of me, for even Jone is of use to God.

  Of a sudden I know! Knowing is as if night turned to day or day to night. It is as if the walls of my cell opened out into the stars and the largest of them grew larger, became so bright I was blind.

  Lais is gone. There is none she can hurt as once she did. Father is gone. Forgotten before his death, his work reaches fewer and fewer. If Hypatia were gone, who then could she tempt with her evil?

  The solution is simple. Theophania is as expert with poisons as was Livia, the deadly wife of Caesar Augustus. How often have I been ordered to shop or to mix or to bottle for her? I will remove Hypatia. Surely God wishes this, for why else would the art of Theophania become mine? And it can be done as easily as feeding fruit to Cyril. Of all that grows in his garden, Cyril loves best his pomegranate tree. He will not miss one, or even two, not if taken from high in the branches.

  ~

  Minkah the Egyptian

  On a day of fire and blood, I was saved by an Angel of angels come down from the stars, clothed only in soot and skin. On that day was Minkah the Egyptian truly born.

  And now I am reborn. To love and be loved by Hypatia, I ask no more than this. And if it should suddenly be taken away, even this I accept with a ravished heart. To have little of what is beyond wondrous far transcends an eternity of mere pleasure.

  More than ever an Egyptian is reviled in Egypt. For me, thrown at birth into a pit of filth, Alexandria was a city of bitter betrayal and helpless fear. But Hypatia’s Alexandria was as a city in
the clouds: fabulous, unreachable, unimaginable. As a Greek, her young life was spent in a place awake in spirit and free in speech just as mine was spent dead to spirit and alive to horror.

  Our worlds come together now. Mine will live on and on, for a few men, battling for great power, ever do great harm to all other men. But hers is dying. I rejoice that I live to see it even as it disappears before our eyes. It has done so for years, but now it fades so fast we must reach out to grasp what will be gone tomorrow. Once more, Christians walk the streets so they might do unto others as was done unto them, even though their Christ said: thou shalt not kill. These kill with a vengeance only the ignorant can feel. The bodies of their “enemies” fill a new section in the City of the Dead. My old friend, Theophilus, passes edicts daily. One week it is death to profess belief in the pre-existence of the soul. The next it is death to confess even ownership of a book penned by Origen. The following week one might die for the simple act of reading at all. This week it is for not believing Jesus entirely “God.”

  What face to wear? What skin? When will it be death to be Jewish or Egyptian?

  As once Parabalanoi, each new edict would have shriveled my sack, for as Parabalanoi, it is I who might well have been the weapon used. Now, I would not be surprised to find myself subject of an edict. Oddly, this pleases.

  But tonight I am wary unto deep suspicion. Jone visits. Jone who loves neither her sister nor me has come to our door after many long years living mere streets away, yet for all we see of her she might as well dwell in Gaul.

  She arrives without notice. No letter was written beforehand. We knew nothing until there came a knock on a door that has never been locked against the youngest daughter of Theon and Damara. My darling is disarmed. She displays her heart openly, a heart which has never been closed to this sister. And Jone? Grown thin, as ever short, and stinking with incense, she covers her head. In the heavy robe the women of Jesus wear, each calling themselves his “bride,” she is wed to her savior. Chaste, severe and humorless, sincere and horrifying—if her “husband” lived, I would pity him.

  “Panya!”

  I know what I see. Have I not been Parabalanoi long enough to smell rank deception? It takes an effort of will for Jone to remain where she is, looking down at the ground, yet it takes no effort at all to bring forth from one of her long wide sleeves a wooden bowl.

  Hypatia claps her hands. “Oh, Jone. Pomegranates!”

  “From the garden of Cyril. He loves them.”

  “And you brought them to me!” Hypatia is stepping back, making room for her sister to enter the house in which she was born. Her face is flushed with surprise and with pleasure, her eyes alight with hope. Jone’s eyes do not raise themselves from the tile of the courtyard. My love calls for wine. Jone will not have wine. She calls for water. Jone will not have water. She calls for a chair, a bench, pillows. Jone will not sit. She will not even cross the threshold of our house…her house.

  “I come to welcome you home, sister,” says she, and no one mentions that Hypatia has been home for two years and more. “I cannot stay. Cyril depends on me.” Here she thrusts forward the wooden bowl containing fruit grown in the garden of Cyril. “Take them. But I must bring back the bowl. No one knows I have it.”

  “You will come again?” Hypatia’s joy has fled her face, her sorrow has curved her back. In her left hand she holds a pomegranate, and in her right.

  Jone is quickly backing away. “I will come if I can.” She then turns and is gone into night. Not once did she raise her eyes.

  Only Nildjat Miw expresses herself. Her strange ringed tail twitches in irritation.

  ~

  Hypatia of Alexandria

  In the season of pomegranates, my sister has brought me the fruit of Persephone: Queen of the Underworld, the Iron Queen, unfathered maiden, mothered by Demeter, stolen away by Hades…and with her loss came the dying of the Earth. Hermes, sent to steal her back so that the world would not die, succeeded, but not before Hades tricked the daughter of the fruitful Demeter into eating seven seeds of the pomegranate. For this, Persephone would forever return to the land of the dead for four barren months of every twelve.

  Jone knows this story as well as I, just as she knows other tales of Persephone, for Jone was once a voracious reader of more than Christian theology. Persephone is the tale of Inanna retold. Inanna of Sumer came first, her story so old no one can say it has a beginning, just as no one knows if the world itself begins or ends. Inanna was not stolen away into the Dark World, but walked forward in full knowledge of what she risked, nor was she tricked into staying, but came forth brighter than before—for there she found Glory.

  Pomegranates, one in each hand. How heavy they are, as heavy as my heart as it mourns what I learn. Jone will not come in nor will she come back. As I did not know what Minkah thought of my father, I do know what he thinks of Jone—but Jone is blood of my blood. Surely these are not insults or warnings, but gifts? Jone is as Jone has ever been. She knows no other way of offering peace. As for love, how could she offer what has never been offered her? Save by me, but who am I?

  I place my red gifts in a blue ceramic bowl on my mother’s green table. In a day or two, they will ripen. Nildjat Miw sniffs them once, twice, but it seems they bore her.

  ~

  I, who attend so many dinners, am having a dinner! Mine is to welcome Orestes. What shall I serve? Who shall I invite? Romans choose guests numerically and so shall I. No fewer than the three Fates, nor more than the nine muses. In Constantinople, Orestes was a perfect host. I must return in kind. Who would he wish to meet? As Prefect, his life will be full of schemers. I invite those who do not scheme but think. Or laugh.

  Minkah and I plan the guest list, Ife, the menu.

  There will be eleven at table. Aside from Orestes and myself and Minkah…Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, and his wife Catherine. Olinda of Clarus. As a physician Olinda possesses little in social or political standing, but she is witty and wise. Pappas the astronomer, old of body, soft of heart, and acerbic of tongue. Meletus the Jew who is sure to add a level head. And of course, my houseguest Aelia Galla Placidia. The old will be leavened by the young. What the young will think is for Galla to feel. As the daughter of the dead Emperor Theodosius, she is surely used to tedium. But should laughter be wanted, Galla laughs as Didymus once laughed. And last I invite Felix Zoilus.

  “You do what!” says Minkah.

  “Invite your friend.” I see he cannot believe what I am saying. “I am serious, beloved.”

  “Zoilus is a lump. All we will add to our dinner will be bulk and a huge wine and beer bill.”

  “But would it not please him?”

  “To meet old men and the young daughter of a despot?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Be it on your head.”

  My household turned upside down, I hide away to prepare a class in optics. But in truth I turn instead to an alchemical process, a copy of the Divine Pymander open before me, an alembic at my elbow, and a crucible of heated silver under my nose. I am so immersed in what must be manifest not only in the physical world, but a hundred times more in the spiritual, that I would miss my own dinner party if not for a servant sent to fetch me. Unwashed, unpainted, uncoiffed, undressed, there are moments I annoy myself. Offering my home and my hospitality, and then to utterly forget about it—shades of Father.

  I do what I need do at top speed, helped by the kitchen maid. Out the door I would now go, but my eye strays back to my work with corrosive sublimate, red oxide of mercury, and nitrate of silver, and I struggle with the urge to stay and the urge to go, and there, by Hades, are my pomegranates.

  Shoving the blue bowl into the hands of my helper, I say, “Get cook to find a way to make these feed eleven.” And off I rush to greet my guests.

  How surprising. My dinner party goes well, twice as well as those I attend. Orestes is as ingenious at table as he is on parchment. Synesius does not sulk nor does he complai
n of his lot. Olinda fascinates with her talk of digestion. Catherine tells us a tale of Synesius as a child that makes Minkah weep with laughter. It makes Catherine weep with laughter. Augustine, Pappas and Meletus engage in a historical topic that engrosses us all. Felix Zoilus is subdued before royalty and prefect and the learned, though becomes less and less so as wine flows. Any minute I expect he will shout out some interesting word. I keep an eye on him. So far all he has done is pinch Olinda who slaps him, but discreetly. And Galla, lovely in her youth and her character, enthralls us entirely with her tales of the Visigoth king, Alaric, who died of fever attempting to cross the Great Green Sea. So loved was he by his men that they landed in some secret place, and there turned aside a river so they might bury him in its bed, then let loose the river again.

  Even I am acceptable, never once lost in speaking aloud some obscure concept only to look up and find all glazed over with ennui.

  Cook has made a splendid table…and such an assortment of dishes. In our house, only Nildjat Miw feasts, but now my small silver spike hovers over fish from the river, fish from the sea, fish from the lake, cold water oysters, eggs, fava beans, snails, nuts, cheese, a huge bowl of pungent garum, and wine, a great deal of the finest Egyptian wine. I know what it is to drink with Great Drunks, Minkah and Felix Zoilus; I know what it is to suffer. So I drink, but sparingly. More accurately, I drink less than everyone else save Galla. How enjoyable, this. How light my heart. A thought visits. Why not form a salon as did Aspasia of Miletus! As a woman, forbidden to learn, her father Axiochus, like my father Theon, taught her all he knew, which was a great deal indeed. In search of more, Aspasia traveled to the seat of all knowledge, shining Athens—only to find that as an educated unmarried woman, she was immediately assumed hetairai, a “paid companion to men.” Wise to the ways of the male, Apasia accepted their assumptions, then turned all on its head by coupling with Pericles, the most powerful man in Athens. She not only taught, but gave succor to other young women seeking knowledge. Anaxagoras who understood the moon shone by reflected light, understood this because of Aspasia. Socrates took instruction from her and was well pleased.