“It’s perfect,” I said.
“You don’t look like you at all,” groaned Thorion. “I’ll kill that Festinus.”
“He’ll probably die of apoplexy,” I said. “He has a choleric disposition and he drinks too much.” I smiled at Thorion. “I’ll be all right.”
Maia shook her head. Carefully she gathered up my discarded clothes — the long white and yellow tunic, and the long white and green cloak with its purple stripe. She folded them and put them in the little clothes chest. “It’s sandalwood,” she told me. “They should still be here when you come back.” She picked up a lock of my hair and stroked it, then put it on top of the clothes. Thorion shoved the chest back into the crevice and pulled some rocks down over it so that it wouldn’t show. Maia tidied up the shears and the pitcher of water. “Let us pray for your swift return,” she said.
We joined hands, standing cramped in the cave, and Maia prayed. My head felt light and empty, and her words meant nothing. A swift return? Not too swift. Chariton, I felt, had a more interesting life before him than Charis did.
We went back out into the sunlight and walked together around the side of the hill. Ephesus lay at our feet. The green dome of our own banqueting hall stood out nearby, the red sands of the hippodrome to its left. Below us to our right was the theater, with the white paved Harbor Street, fringed with colorful shop hangings, running from it to the sea. Ships were tied up at the docks, and we could see the bustle about one of the vessels, a large ship with orange and yellow sails. The Halcyon. The water of the harbor showed brown and muddy from this height, but beyond it the sea shimmered with light, dissolving into the sun.
“Well,” said Thorion, and swallowed. “Farewell.”
“Farewell.” I hugged him, and then Maia. “I will write. I’ll have to wait a little while, but I can write when you’re in Constantinople.”
They each hugged me back, Maia letting go of me very reluctantly, and then I started down the hill. I would go in by the main gate and so down to the harbor; Thorion and Maia would go back through the postern and try to establish that they’d been in all afternoon. I walked on a hundred paces and then looked back, but they had already turned, and all I saw was their backs walking slowly home. I looked at the orange-sailed ship in the harbor. “The Greek ships wait,” I thought. But no, that was wrong; what I wanted was another chorus from another play:
. . . on the wide surge
The halyards wing out the sails to the wind
by the prow of the swift ship.
Flashing like couriers I’d go
where sunshine comes afire.
Because I was going not to slavery but to freedom.
THE HALCYON ARRIVED in Alexandria on the first of May. We’d had a smooth voyage, sailing by way of Cyprus but not stopping anywhere apart from that until we saw the light of the Pharos ahead of us. The ship’s master sailed all that night, with the beacon of the lighthouse before the bow, and I stayed up as well, too excited to sleep. In the morning we saw the smoke rising thick and black as the fire was extinguished. The tower itself stood out on a promontory, white and tall, decorated with bronze statues of sea gods and dolphins; the mirrors on its summit were blinding in the early sunlight. Beyond it, across the vivid blue of the sea, lay the city: a jumble of red tiled roofs, domes and gardens, walled and gated and magnificently huge. From a hill in the middle came a glint of gold where the light caught some gilded monument; it looked like the catch of a treasure chest.
Alexandria has two harbors, divided by the Pharos promontory: the Eastern, or Great, Harbor, and the harbor called Eunostos, “of happy return.” As we approached I expected to go into the Great Harbor, which was embraced by the Pharos and a smaller lighthouse and which was ringed by splendid stone fortifications, palaces, and gardens. But instead the ship turned right, into the Eunostos Harbor. This was much less impressive: the buildings ringing it were warehouses and dockyards; fishing boats were drawn up on the beaches, stinking of offal. Beyond the docks were streets of narrow houses, very tall, all built of a dirty gray brick. I found out afterward that all the merchant shipping used this harbor; the Great Harbor was reserved for the government.
While the Halcyon was waiting to dock, I asked the shipmaster where the Museum was, and he laughed. “Under three feet of earth,” he told me. “It was destroyed in the old wars, or in some rebellion. Nobody’s ever rebuilt it.” I learned later that it had been in the Broucheion quarter, which was once the best part of the city: it had held the imperial palaces, some of the temples, the Museum, and the library. All was gone now; a field of willow herb and acanthus covered the broken stones, and children chased rats over the ruins. What was left of the library was now at the Temple of Serapis in the Rhakotis quarter, which led to the Eunostos Harbor. The city wall had been rebuilt, and rebuilt around a smaller city after the wars. The Delta quarter, which used to be a Jewish city within the city, was gone altogether. The only new buildings were the churches.
When the Halcyon docked, the master gave me some advice. “Leave your valuables at a bank,” he said. “Isisdoros son of Heron is reliable, and won’t ask too much in interest; you’ll find him at the second warehouse on your left as you leave the harbor. The city is full of pickpockets and thieves, so never carry much money around. Stay out of back streets, especially in the Rhakotis quarter. The Egyptians don’t like foreigners, particularly eunuchs. What’s your religion? Yes, you said Christian, but are you Arian or Nicene?”
I said I was a moderate homoiousian, neither Arian nor Nicene; but I didn’t know much about theology. The dispute has to do with the nature of Christ: the Arians say that he was created by the Father, while the Nicenes say that he is “coessential” with the Father, a term that other Christians dislike. Arianism is favored by the emperors but not by the bishops, who’ve never accepted it in any synod, and Grandfather thought it a bit risky.
“Well, then, say that you’re Nicene,” said the master of the Halcyon. “It’s better to be a Manichee than an Arian here. The people are all madly in love with their archbishop, and he’s an arch-Nicene and has been exiled five times because of it. Arians aren’t popular. Stay away from the public baths: pretty boys aren’t safe in this city.”
“I’m older than I look,” I protested.
“Very well, but it’s looks that count with those buggers! You seem a pleasant young man, for a eunuch; I’d be sad to hear that you came to grief. Good luck, and look after yourself!”
The city was not what I expected. Leaving the ship, I walked through the narrow streets of the Rhakotis quarter, frowned over by the dingy narrow-fronted houses and two churches, the old small one of Theonas and the new big one of the popular archbishop, Athanasios. I found the banker the shipmaster had recommended and left my jewels with him, then started out to find the scholars at the Temple of Serapis. A ship canal connects the harbor with Lake Mareotis, and I walked beside it up to the Canopic Way, avoiding the back streets as I’d been advised. The people looked very foreign — darker than people in Asia. “Honey-colored,” the census always puts it. Some of them were speaking in another language, not Greek. Coptic, I supposed. These were the Egyptians, who didn’t like foreigners. It seemed very strange.
The Canopic Way was more like the Alexandria I had imagined: a great street wide enough to drive four chariots along abreast, and teeming with people, with loaded donkeys and camels, and with cats — animals that are rare outside of Egypt but very common in it. On either side ran a double colonnade of shops, which the Alexandrians call the Tetrapylon. Street criers were hawking candied citron, dates, fresh hot cumin bread, sausages, and sesame cakes. I passed shops selling wine from all over the empire, selling woolen and linen clothes and yarns dyed unfamiliar bright colors, selling magic charms, selling books, selling glass, selling gold from Nubia and pearls from Britain, selling carved furniture and terra-cotta images of a hundred different gods. Beggars pleaded for alms. I passed a young eunuch in a Phrygian hat, sitting in front of a bro
nze begging bowl and singing a hymn to the goddess Kybele in a reedy voice; he glanced at me, then looked away again without interest. A tall bearded man in a black cloak stood on a wall, preaching Stoic philosophy to a few attentive pupils. On the other side of the road a hairy peasant in a homespun tunic was preaching some variety of Gnosticism; “The world was made by the Devil!” he shouted (he had to shout to be heard at all). People were all shouting as they bargained, and jostling each other, singing, swearing. I passed a shop full of caged birds, piping away like a chorus of bacchanals. There was a succession of smells: of honey, of dung, of unwashed flesh, of perfumes, of fresh bread, of sewage, of spices. Everywhere there was sound and color and life, and it stunned me.
Even as a stranger, though, I could tell that the city was not what it had been. When I reached the central square, where the Canopic Way crosses the other great thoroughfare, the Soma Street, I saw the first of many ruins. The mausoleum of the great Alexander, the son of Philip of Macedon, the man who conquered the world: a ring of broken columns and a bit of wall. The embalmed body was gone, and so, of course, were the golden coffin and the treasure that had surrounded it. Well, the empire he had founded went long before his tomb did, so I don’t suppose he can complain. I turned right on the Soma Street and went up toward the Temple of Serapis, where the fragments of the library and the Museum were still preserved.
The Temple stands on an artificial hill in the southwest part of the city, near the stadium. It wasn’t hard to find it: as soon as I left Soma Square I saw it floating over the roofs of the nearby houses. The gilded column I had noticed from the ship stood in its grounds. The turning from the Soma Street was clearly marked with a white marble slab, engraved with the image of the god, set into the road. I followed this Sacred Way to the Temple: it wound up the face of the artificial hill, flanked by date palms and bushes of purple cistus flowers. The Temple complex itself was walled off from the rest of the city, but the gate was open and unguarded; I went through into a paved courtyard. It was now nearly noon, and the sun glared painfully bright from the white paving. Among more date palms a fountain played, cool and sweet. Beyond stood the Temple, its columns painted and gilded, its façade decorated with images of Serapis, Isis, and their son Harpokrates, chief among the old gods of the Egyptians.
I didn’t go into the Temple; as a Christian, I had no business there. But it was surrounded by buildings — lecture halls, residences, the library, cloisters and gardens — and most of these were owned by what the Alexandrians still call the Museum. I had some letters of reference that Thorion and I had drafted, addressed to some of the leading doctors of the medical faculty, and I looked for someone to give them to.
I wandered into one of the larger and more public-seeming annexes. It was a library, the walls lined with book racks. A thin, dark Alexandrian was sitting at a desk in the middle of the room. He had a bronze writing case slung around his neck, together with an official looking signet, and he was writing carefully on a sheet of papyrus; he had to be a scribe, an official. Nervously I went up and asked if I might arrange to see the most esteemed Adamantios (he was the head of the medical faculty).
“What do you want him for?” the scribe demanded irritably, putting his pen down and glaring at me. Then he gave me a second look, noticing my appearance and smooth face, and his mouth set in distaste. I grew to know that look well: it was the one that followed the decision that I was probably a eunuch. I hadn’t realized how much eunuchs are hated. Everyone blames them for all the ills of the empire, saying that they are just imported slaves but they have the emperor’s ear and won’t let honest men get to him. Greedy and corrupt half-men, they call them — they want a bribe for telling you the time of day. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t an imperial chamberlain; I was hated as though I were, and sneered at for my lack of virility, as though I might have chosen to castrate myself simply to take bribes.
I explained, a bit nervously, what I wanted to see Adamantios about. The scribe snorted, sneered a bit, but directed me to an office off one of the library courts. It was a small, dark room with stone walls, pleasantly cool. A writing desk stood by one wall, with a bookcase next to it. There was nobody there, so I sat down and waited.
After about an hour a tall, dark man in a fringed cloak and a small hat came in, talking loudly to two well-dressed attendants. I stood respectfully, and he asked me what I wanted.
“Esteemed sir,” I said, “I am Chariton, a eunuch from Ephesus, and I am waiting to speak with the most excellent Adamantios. I wish to apply to train in medicine here.”
“I’m Adamantios,” said the man, looking at me suspiciously. “Have I heard of you? I don’t recall the name . . .”
“I have some letters,” I said eagerly, and offered them to him. He took them and glanced through them, frowning down his nose.
“Why didn’t your patron arrange something in advance?” he asked me. “We are very busy this season, very busy. And I wouldn’t have thought that you were, um, suitable material for a doctor. It is not a luxurious life, you know. I would have thought that an, um, eunuch was better off in an administrative post.”
“I don’t mind hard work,” I told him. “And I am very eager to learn the art of healing. I have the money to pay for my teaching.”
“We-ell . . .” said Adamantios. He shuffled through the letters and handed them back to me. “You are of course free to try any of the doctors associated with the Museum. You will need someone to take you on as an assistant. Then you can attend any of the lectures, for payment of a fee to the teacher, of course. It is up to you to find a master, really.”
“I thought perhaps Your Prudence . . . that is, I thought you might know of someone who wanted an assistant.”
“Oh.” He contemplated me for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I can’t think of anyone. Can you, Timias?” he said, turning to one of his companions.
The companion laughed. “Not an assistant like that!”
Adamantios gave a smug smile. “No, I can’t think of anyone. You are of course free to ask around. Is that all?”
I spent my first week in the city lodging in a flea-ridden tenement near the ship canal and knocking on doors near the Temple of Serapis, being laughed at while I trudged from one to the other. My letters of recommendation, so carefully prepared, were useless. Such letters should be sent before the person they recommend arrives; they should not be thrust at their recipients by an unknown eunuch in shabby clothes. Nobody trusted me: either I wouldn’t work hard enough, or I was probably unreliable, and I was probably a runaway slave. My scheme, which had seemed so good in Ephesus, looked half-baked and impossible in Alexandria. I wasn’t prepared for the refusals, the sneers, the distaste and outright hatred that met me, and I was quite wretched.
It was also assumed that I was on the lookout for more virile men, since eunuchs are a luxury-loving species. I lost track of the number of times I was approached with offers of money, of how many groping hands I eluded. I was still inexperienced enough to be shaken by this, though it was easier than it had been with Festinus. These people didn’t know who I was. If they’d succeeded in groping, they would have had a surprise. But no one seemed to suspect that I was anything other than what I claimed to be. At first I was nervous, prepared to answer accusations, but eventually I grew used to it. People rely so much on clothing, on all the signs of one’s sex and rank one gives them in dressing. I could almost have dispensed with the corset; short hair and a short tunic made all the difference. People looked at me and thought “girlish boy — a eunuch?” rather than “dressed-up girl.” Of course I’d had the sea voyage to accustom myself to the change in sex before I plunged into the city; I no longer found it such an effort to refer to myself as masculine, and it had been surprisingly easy to drop all the manners of a noble maiden. But I still had endless difficulty. It was hard, trying to remember that I was a man, trying to put on my own clothes and tie them properly, walking on foot about a strange great city when before I’d a
lways had a litter or carriage to ride in. My feet hurt. I couldn’t wash properly, either: there wasn’t enough privacy at the inn. I lived on cheap bread rolls bought from corner vendors. I didn’t have much money, as I had not yet been able to sell any of the jewels. The banker wouldn’t change them, so I took them to an expensive shop on the Canopic Way, but the owner pretended to believe that they were glass, and when I insisted that they were my mother’s, and real, he said that I had stolen them and threatened to tell the magistrates. I walked out with them, then spent a miserable day wondering whether he would carry out his threat. He didn’t, but I was afraid to try somewhere else. If I’d been more familiar with the city, I’d have realized that he was simply trying to drive the price down. Alexandrians are aggressive people, irritable, and collectively turbulent, violent, and dangerous.
After ten days I was wondering whether I should go back to Ephesus and marry Festinus. I looked around at some of the Alexandrian doctors who weren’t affiliated with the Museum; most of them were superstitious quacks, the sort of men who tell their patients to roll in the mud, run three times round the temple invoking the god, and then go swim in the ship canal — a course that will kill all but the healthiest. But then I met Philon.
It was a chance meeting, in the library of the Temple. I was recovering from my latest rejection by reading Krateuas’ Herbal when a middle-aged man with a beard came up and asked if he could see it, “when you’ve finished with it, esteemed sir.” It was pleasant to be called “esteemed sir” after the sneering, so I put the book down.
The Beacon at Alexandria Page 8
