“There is a lesson here for me,” he said one morning to the ants, clutching the thin woolen blanket that had been slipped through the hole in the door with his food, a much-treasured new possession in the cold winter tower that was once a prison of heat in the summer months. “You are trying to teach me about my thoughts,” he said to them, sitting cross-legged before the hole of shit as they marched in erratic, aimless circles before him. “Perhaps if I observe my mind more closely, I will learn to handle the thoughts that sting,” he said. And so he sat diligently beside the ants, watching his thoughts for many hours. He ceased killing them, although there had been a remarkably large satisfaction in the tiny crunching sound their bodies had made as he crushed them, and he missed the game of their deaths and how it had passed so many hours of imprisonment.
The ants also gradually ceased their attacks on him. He began to feed them whatever precious breadcrumbs were left over from his supper, and they in turn left him alone. And feeding the ants, to his surprise, became an activity he relished far more than killing them. He also appreciated how such tiny beings expressed the intelligence of recognizing his change in attitude toward them enough to, in turn, change their attitudes toward him. The ants became to Alizar intimately cherished friends in so many hours of solitude.
But as the months grew colder, the ants retired to the garden and ceased to come. For many days, Alizar missed them, his tiny companions.
Some weeks later, a raven came to the window, and Alizar sat perfectly still, hoping the bird would stay for even a few minutes. But upon seeing him, the glossy black bird departed, cawing out across the city. Alizar went to the window and set a curl of crust from his bread where the raven had been. The following day, the raven returned, and then the following, and each day thereafter.
Alizar came to call the sententious bird “Caesar”, not after the Roman emperors, but after his beloved hound killed by the Parabolans. Eventually, Caesar would take the crust from Alizar’s fingers, and come to sit with him in the window by the hour. Alizar would ask him all that had happened in the city that day and imagine the bird’s responses, playing them out in his mind. But one day he did not return, and Alizar waited beside the window from dawn to dusk, calling out with the flawless, raspy vocal imitation of a raven that he had mastered over the months. The raven never returned. What Alizar never knew was that the bird had become too familiar with human companionship, and had flown over the necropolis where some boys were playing among the crypts. It had landed on a nearby obelisk that marked a grave, and one of the boys had hoisted a stone and struck it in the throat, and the raven had fallen to the ground dead, red blood soaking the black glossy feathers as the boys laughed and clapped each other on the back, never realizing they had murdered a lonely prisoner’s beloved friend.
Alizar thought of the raven as he sat upon his stone in the floor for most of the day, his heart plagued by loneliness, empty. It was then that a new visitor arrived.
“Regret is a dangerous companion,” said the voice.
Alizar did not even look up. “Yes, so they say.”
“I tried to warn you,” said the voice, coming nearer.
“Yes. You did,” said Alizar. “I was wrong to not heed your warning.” He spoke without looking up. He had long been speaking to the many voices that came into his small stone world, and so this one was no different.
“Not so wrong,” said the voice.
Alizar lifted his head and peered sideways at the shimmering figure of Master Savitur illuminating the room, the particles of his body dancing like dust motes, and a smile lifted his lips. He was so unpracticed at smiling that he felt he was discovering the gesture for the first time. “And so you have come at last,” said Alizar, his voice deadened as a drum skin soaked in the rain.
Savitur settled on the floor beside Alizar and stretched his legs as though they had both been imprisoned together for years. “You look as if you should already be drawing flies,” he said. “But I like the length of your beard.”
Alizar laughed, stroking his beard. “Yes, I suppose I am back in fashion.” He waited then, for the vision to fade, for Savitur to simply shimmer and disappear, but it did not. Instead, his body became all the more flesh, even exuding heat upon the stone where he sat. Alizar waited for his old master to say something more, and so when he did not, he ventured a conversation. “Tell me, how is the world?”
Savitur smiled. “The world is well enough. I would think that it misses you as you miss it.”
“Yes, I had thought there might be an appeal of Cyril’s actions in the senate, but I suppose I am not as important as I imagined myself to be.” Alizar laughed unconvincingly, as if he were an inexperienced actor practicing laughter. “Naomi would have prevented me from going out with Gideon that morning, you know. She was my wise restraint. Without her, look where I have fallen.”
“He is not dead,” said Savitur, his eyes glinting like coins in the bottom of a well.
Alizar wrinkled his brow in an effort to understand. “Not dead? Orestes not dead?”
“No.”
“But I saw his wounds. How could anyone have survived? I just assumed…”
“Ah, but you did not see him die,” said Savitur.
“No, I did not.”
“And so he lives.”
“How many years has it been?”
Savitur sighed, the weight of air leaving his lungs saying more than any number could.
Now feeling aventine Alizar quickly harnessed the opportunity to learn more of what had been happening in Alexandria, since he had not yet given himself over to the temptation to think Savitur’s appearance was merely the imagined apparition of a madman in prison.
“And Sofia? Have you seen my daughter?”
“She is married to Synesius, and with child. They are waiting for your release for the full celebration, I understand.”
Alizar smiled again, little pools welling at the bottom of his eyes. “Is that so?”
Savitur nodded.
Alizar gazed out the window, longing to see her heart-shaped face, summoning it with the strength of his heart’s memory until it floated before him, and he could almost touch her soft black hair.
Savitur let Alizar sit with his thoughts; a long time passed before he spoke again. He responded to each of Alizar’s questions respectfully, as though the information were nourishment for a starving man. Eventually, Alizar was satiated, and thankful, and sitting in a whole new world of knowing that let him feel again connected to those he loved.
Savitur stood then, as if ready to depart. “The city has called a meeting on Antirrhodus next week. All the council members and magistrates will be there.”
Alizar shook his head to dispel the settling flies that always came that time of day, drawn to the lumps of shit in the hole. “Is that so? Then it must be Lent. They always meet at this time. Then this is my third year. I think they have forgotten I am here.” Alizar stood and accidentally kicked the empty wooden bowl across the room where it hit the stone wall and clattered to the floor. “Why bring me this news? What of it? Has Hypatia managed to bring me a pardon?”
Savitur said nothing, his eyes full of firelight.
Alizar pursued the fading figure of his master across the room. “What will happen? Savitur?” But the particles faded, snatching away the last remaining light from the room in a quick flash that left a footprint of emptiness behind, cold and silent.
Alizar strode to the east window that overlooked the little island of Antirrhodus in the harbor across from Pharos where the royal palace still stood, mostly unused except for the city’s political affairs, the perimeter scintillating with torches as the sunset hues were eclipsed by darkness. What would the meeting of the council bring? Alizar dared, for the first time in years, hope for his release.
And so he walked to the north window, and let his gaze fall across the grey rooftops
to his own beloved tower perched above his house where he had enjoyed so many hours of reverie. It was dark, as it had been whenever he looked at it. He pulled the dirty, fraying blanket around his shoulders, wishing Savitur had stayed to bring him more news. There were so many unanswered questions.
Alas.
Alizar had learned to live with them all.
34
Hannah stroked Gideon’s hand. “So you will be there?”
“Have I ever missed one of your performances?” Gideon rolled his eyes playfully and pulled his hand free so that he could prop himself up on his elbows, digging his toes into the cool sand as the church bells rang over the city, calling the hour at the day’s end. Hannah lifted her finger to trace the dark scar that ran down his cheek from the edge of his eye to where it tapered off at his jaw. “How did this happen?”
Gideon closed his eyes. “It was a long time ago.”
“And?”
“There is a pirate I fought for my second ship, the Persephone. He came for gold, and he took it. Ares Danzante. He is the greatest knife fighter in the Mediterranean. It is how I lost my ship and came to sail for Alizar.”
Gideon shifted in the sand so he could hold her. “But let me ask you in return, then. What about this scar here?” His fingers traced her breast. He had never asked her, and she had never offered.
Hannah’s fingers brushed her sternum and found the spot there where the skin had healed, glossy and smooth as the inside of a conch shell.
Gideon touched her hand, sensing she had become uncomfortable. “You do not have to tell me.”
Hannah let her eyes drift across the sea to where she imagined Julian was sitting in meditation on the isle of Pharos. It would be unfair of her to keep anything from Gideon now.
But before she could speak, a familiar cry pierced the air.
Hannah instinctively swept the seashore with her eyes. Then she quickly stood up, her heart beginning to pound.
“Mama?” said a little voice behind her.
Hannah laughed with relief. “Alaya, you scared me. Why did you cry?”
The little girl twisted a toe into the sand and fluttered her eyelashes, a new talent for flirtation she was practicing. “I hurt my knee, see?” She pointed at nothing.
Gideon smiled and then suddenly grabbed Alaya and stood up, hoisting her up onto his shoulders. “I think it is your turn for a spinning!” he said, as he began to turn circles while Alaya shrieked and giggled happily. Then he stopped, flipped Alaya backwards onto the sand and tickled her. Alaya shrieked with glee, and Gideon growled like a terrible lion and pretended to haul Alaya off to his cave in the direction of the waves, her little feet kicking against the sand.
Hannah closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief at the passing of time. How was it that Alaya was already nearly three years old? So much had happened in those three years, and yet time had rocked to a stop for most of them since Alizar had been imprisoned. Whenever Hannah went to visit Jemir, Tarek, Sofia and Synesius she saw that Alizar’s household managed to function without him as though he was still there, much like the organs of a body during sleep. No one was there to use them, yet they managed without pause.
Things in the Great Library, however, seemed to be changing at a more significant pace. Since Orestes’s recovery, Hypatia had disbanded her public lecture platform to focus her attention upon the core group of students that had been with her for the bulk of her career, formalizing the esoteric teachings of Platonism for them as she interpreted it. She became selective about who she taught or saw socially, even foregoing walks in the city, preferring the company of the library’s elite and the quiet hours of her own study where she could meditate, write and practice yoga. This meant that Hannah was not performing as often, and so she became entirely devoted to cataloguing music. Through the many hours of the day she sat inventing a musical language that could be used to notate the songs and melodies she knew, and that others brought to her. Often she went walking through Alexandria with a notepad and a stylus to sit beside the fountains where the women sang and told their stories so that she could find a way to re-create them later on back at the library. It was tedious work, and often she found that her notations were still too unrefined to capture the songs she encountered. The sailor songs on the wharf, however, were occasionally simple enough that her basic notation would do, and so after many weeks of work, when she found she could reproduce even a few lines from a song, she was ecstatic. But more often than not, there were many frustrating hours of time lost and notes still too unclear to musically reproduce. Hannah began to wonder if Hypatia had known what a Sisyphusian task a music scholar endured.
During those weeks when frustration was her only companion, Hannah sometimes fantasized she had a tent in the hawker’s bazaar to sell jewelry instead: beaded necklaces, anklets, hair adornments, and other things she made herself, maybe even giving palm readings. Perhaps as the women of the bazaar became acquainted with her fine taste, Hannah’s little business would grow. She could acquire rare Indian silks for veils and headdresses and stitch lovely designs with dangling glass beads along the fine gossamer fabrics. In her mind she would create glorious costumes for dance that the women haggled over endlessly. But back in the library, Hannah bent over dozens of scrolls with her lyre, attempting to make sense of a language that simply did not lend itself well to being captured on paper.
How could she notate emotion? Notes were simple, as were lyrics, but emotion was something she began to feel more and more would never find an expression in words or symbols. She began to wonder if perhaps it would even be better that way. The notation would leave the interpretation up to the musician, and so in that way the songs would be the same yet always re-invent themselves. Hannah often worked well into the night, seated on the balcony of her upstairs bedroom overlooking the Caesarium gardens, attempting to make some sense of all her scribble. Sometimes Gideon came to sit with her, but more and more often as she spoke, his eyes leaned toward the sea, and his ship in the harbor that had not sailed in many seasons. At first she had minded this new longing that had separated him from her, but quite soon, she became at peace with it, as it left room for longings of her own.
Hannah smiled, watching her daughter and Gideon playing on the beach. He had been out riding with friends visiting from Cyprus the day her daughter was born, spiraling from her womb into the world. She had danced naked in the room through her early labor, her belly full as the harvest moon, turning her hips, her wrists, listening intently to the drum the midwife played to call the child into the world. Eventually, she had settled upon the blankets on the floor, satisfied that the birth would be in the company of women. The child came without pain.
The angel had found flesh. The doorway had been promised. The warrior had come. Now she would know the heaviness of earth, the beauty of sky and sea. Waiting had transformed into this.
Deep creases of regret had appeared around Gideon’s eyes when he found that he had missed the birth, but he had been there every day thereafter. Their wedding had been set for early spring, but with Alizar imprisoned, three springs had come and gone. A time of celebration felt impossible without him.
As Hannah watched her daughter at play on the sand, she marveled at the differences between them. Where Hannah had always perceived herself as shy and reserved, Alaya had no inhibitions whatsoever. She constantly entertained anyone who would watch her, singing little songs that she made up, or dancing with one of the veils Hannah created, flirtatiously batting her long dark lashes in a way that no one had needed to teach her. She had a natural capacity for theatrics and impersonations, always pretending to be outrageous personalities: the empress of an island in the sun, a gypsy with magical potions to cure snakebite, and goddesses like Isis or Aphrodite. Her impersonation of Jemir had been so accurate, lifting one eyebrow in his characteristic manner with her arms folded over a pillow she had stuffed under her shirt to be his
belly, that Jemir and Tarek had nearly pissed themselves they laughed so hard the first time they saw it.
“Mama, can I go in the water?” Alaya wrapped her sandy arms around Hannah’s neck, pressing her cheek to her mother’s.
“No, love. We are going home now.”
Alaya nodded and dashed off to chase the sand plovers that skittered at the water’s edge as Hannah collected their things. Alaya had stepped out of the womb with a passion for the sea. Every time Hannah looked at her, she saw that passion mirrored back to her in Alaya’s enormous eyes, eyes that sparkled like emeralds in certain light, chimerical eyes that danced like waves on the surface of the sea on a clear day. They were more colorful than Julian’s, and even larger than her own, always looking into the world with a sparkle of joy. Just after Alaya was born, Hannah had caressed her baby’s hands and feet and the soft down on the crown of her head, finding all the little details of her daughter. Alaya had Julian’s golden skin, her own wide brow and pouty lips, and though it was impossible, her grandfather Kaleb’s dented chin.
Gideon had embraced his role as Alaya’s father even though he knew the child was not his, and so she called Gideon her “Papo”, a name she invented for him all on her own, a name he treasured hearing more than any other word.
Alaya had only asked about her Abba, her father, once. Hannah had been planning for years what she would say if that day came, but in the moment, all her carefully rehearsed answers had evaporated.
They had just awakened, and Hannah was stroking the long curls back from her daughter’s dolphin forehead when Alaya had turned to look into her mother’s eyes and asked sweetly, “Mama, is Papo my Abba?”
Written in the Ashes Page 37
