“I think so,” I told her. “Let him sleep as long as he likes; if he’s thirsty, give him some honeywater. He can have some barley broth in the morning if he likes, and I’ll come visit then. If his condition changes during the night, call me.”
She nodded. “I don’t know what we’d do if he died,” she confided.
“I think that, barring a relapse, he’ll live,” I said, after weighing her need for reassurance against the danger of creating false hopes. But privately I was sure he would live: he was strong, and the worst was over.
The woman’s tears started, and she pressed my hand again. “Thank you! Oh, may God reward you!”
“Go and sleep while you can,” I advised her, and set off home.
I arrived at Philon’s to find the family at supper, and Theogenes with them. He was sitting next to Theophila, leaning toward her and smiling, while she smiled back with lowered eyes. Very well, I thought to myself, and I was glad.
“How’s the patient?” Philon asked immediately.
“I think he’ll live,” I replied happily, and went upstairs to wash.
One night that spring, when we had just returned from our rounds and the women were preparing the evening meal, there was a knock at the door. Harpokration went to open it. Philon sat down opposite me at the dinner table, listening. It had been a long day’s work. I’d left him in the morning to attend another dissection at the Museum and joined him after lunch to find him frantically busy patching up burns and broken limbs from some fire, too busy to eat or think, and it had gone on like that all the afternoon. Philon was looking a bit gray, and knocks on the door at night usually meant somebody had suddenly fallen ill. “Would you trust me to take it?” I asked, as Harpokration let in whoever it was.
Philon grunted, smiled. “Trust you, yes, but let’s see what it is first.”
It was a woman with a childbed fever. The caller was her husband, a small, dark, hairy man in a tattered and filthy linen tunic and camel-hair cloak. He recited his story in a rapid singsong, shuffling his feet, nervously avoiding our eyes. He worked as a mule driver, he said. He was very poor, and he had to leave the city with a mule team the next day or they’d have no money for food; he had not been in the city long, and had no bread ticket for the public dole. His wife had given birth to their first child the previous week, and she had initially been fine but was now ill, very ill. He had given most of his savings to a priest, and the rest to a sorcerer, to cure her, but the cures hadn’t worked. He and his wife had no family in the city. They were more or less Christians (that is, they were some kind of Gnostics), and what the man really wanted was for his wife to be admitted to the hospital. He was suspicious of Jewish doctors and had less faith in the Hippocratic tradition than in priestly prayers and magic spells, but he had heard that Philon helped the poor out of charity, and was trying his luck.
There are many varieties of childbirth complications, and it was impossible to tell which this was from the man’s ramblings (“Very bad she is, burning” was all he said when we asked about her symptoms). Philon nodded, sighed, then smiled at me. “She’ll need two opinions,” he said. So Philon and I both went to see the woman; at least she was quite nearby, just across the Canopic Way near the shipyards.
We found the woman lying in a filthy bed in a tiny room on the top floor of a tenement. The room was hot, and must have been like an oven during the heat of the day: it was directly under the roof. Plaster was cracking from the walls; it covered the floor with a fine white dust, and dimmed the garish colors of the cheap terra-cotta statues of Christ and Wisdom that stood behind the lamp in one wall. The woman was holding the new baby when we entered. It was crying loudly, and its swaddling clothes were caked with excrement. The mother was rocking it and talking loudly and incoherently and singing bits of lullabies and Gnostic hymns, which mixed with her speeches to the empty air.
Philon picked up the baby and handed it to me; the woman screamed and tried to take it back. “Shhh,” Philon said gently, taking her pulse. “We’re just changing the swaddling clothes; you’ll see . . . there.” He handed her a cushion, and she fell back into the bed, cradling that. Philon went on with his examination while I saw to the baby. It was desperately hungry, but exhausted; it was crying because the filth had given it sores on its backside. I cleaned it up, anointed it with lanolin and cedar oil, and gave it to its father, telling him to rock it and let it suck on his finger. It soon went to sleep.
The woman was not so easily dealt with. She had a high fever and was delirious, with frequent attacks of shivering; she had been vomiting and passing small amounts of bloody urine; she complained of thirst. She was about seventeen. There was not much we could do, and we both judged it likely that she would die. But you never could tell; she was young and quite strong, and might survive if she had careful nursing and rest. The family had no clean linen, but we boiled some water and cleaned the woman up, and agreed with the man that we would try to get her into a hospital.
Philon set the man to find someone to care for the child. “You must have some neighbor who’s nursing a child,” he said. “Take the baby round to her and explain; she can hardly refuse to feed it until you get back to the city.” The man muttered something, staring anxiously at his wife, and Philon said impatiently, “She has a better chance of recovery if she’s allowed to rest! And she doesn’t have any milk for the baby now; he’ll die too if you can’t find someone to feed him.” The mule driver shuffled, nodded, and took the baby out. In Ephesus a child like that would probably have been exposed to die, but the Egyptians like children. Even as a stranger to the city, the man could probably find someone to nurse the baby for him.
Philon stayed to try a few drugs to lower the fever and make the woman more comfortable, and I set out for the hospital. I privately resolved to buy some bread and wine for Philon as well. It is hard to work properly on an empty stomach after a long day.
The street was narrow, dark, and empty when I hurried into it. The hospital we normally used was to the west, near the promontory of the Pharos, which divides the Great Harbor from the Eunostos. I paused before the door of the tenement, wondering whether to go up to the Canopic Way or to cut through the back streets down to the harbor. Then a sharp gust of wind carried the sound of something like a fight from the eastern end of the shipyards, near the citadel: indistinct chanting, shouts, the crash of something breaking. I wondered what it was about — religious differences or just a drunken brawl? Whatever it was, it settled the way I should go: back up to the Canopic Way. I was going to stay well clear of that.
I ran up the street, trying not to look over my shoulder; experience of the city had only increased my nervousness in the back streets, particularly at night. But the Canopic Way was safe; you might have your pocket picked there during the day, but you were unlikely to be assaulted, even at night — it was too public. I reached it with a sigh of relief, and slowed my pace to a brisk walk. A party of revelers stumbled along the other side of the street, looking for a brothel, but otherwise the road was strangely empty, occupied by only a few stray cats. The commotion must be keeping people home. I hurried up to Soma Square, then down the Soma Street to the harbor. There was more noise from the waterfront, but I saw no one, only the light of torches along the curve of water and lamplight in rooms above the black bulk of the citadel walls, deep gold against the haze-shrouded night sky.
The hospital was a large building of grayish brick with a tiled roof. It was built around an open square; it had a garden with a fountain in the middle, and three long corridors where the patients lay. On the fourth side of the square, the entranceway, was a large common room used by the attendants. It was a big, plain room with bare walls of whitewashed plaster; it opened onto the garden and was always unlocked. The monks ate and prayed and slept there, rolling their sleeping mats up against the walls during the day. When I arrived at the hospital it was brightly lit and packed with people: it seemed that all the attendants and their brothers were there. They were s
tanding about in a circle, talking and praying excitedly in Coptic. No one had answered my knock, so I waited just inside the door, trying to catch someone’s attention. Presently a monk whom I’d never seen before noticed me, stopped praying, and stared furiously, and the others stopped as well, looking alarmed.
“Who is that idolator?” asked the strange monk. He was wearing a rough woolen tunic, a long one that reached to his feet, and no cloak; he was barefoot, bearded, hairy, and very dirty.
“Sir,” I said to him as politely as I could, “I am Chariton, an assistant to Philon the doctor; I have come about a patient. The brethren here know me.”
“You are a eunuch,” said the strange monk. He spoke in the nasal, singsong accent of the upper Nile. “The Arian heresy, which denies the Son of God, receives its support from eunuchs, who, since their bodies are fruitless and their souls barren of virtue, cannot abide to hear the word son! What do you want here among the virtuous, son of perdition?”
Oh Lord, I thought, has the archbishop died? “Sir,” I said, remembering Philon’s counsel of patience, “I am no Arian; I reverence the truth as you do. I am not a eunuch through any choice of my own. And I have come about a patient, a woman sick with a childbed fever. She has no family here, her husband must leave the city tomorrow to earn bread, and we wished to commend her to the care of your charity.”
“He is no Arian,” agreed one of the monks I knew, who called himself Mark, after the apostle. “He is the assistant to Philon the Jew, but a good Nicene Christian.”
“A eunuch assisting a Jew?” roared the stranger. “A demon assisting a devil! What good can come out of a partnership like that? He has come to spy upon the faithful, and has lied to you to win your trust and betray you to the governor or the duke of Egypt!”
At this there was an uproar. The monks all jumped up and stood facing me, wild-eyed, and suddenly I saw that it was serious, not just talk. I became afraid. “Sir,” I repeated, very slowly, trying to hold my hands still at my sides, “I have come about a patient. The brethren here know me. I have come often about patients. Never about anything else. You are mistaken, sir.”
The glare faded from the eyes of a few of the monks. Mark nodded. “He’s a good doctor,” he told the stranger. “He and his master will treat the sick for nothing. We have no reason to believe he’s our enemy.”
“That is the subtlety of the devil!” said the stranger. “We have just heard that that false god, the emperor of the heretics, wishes to depose and exile our lord and father, Bishop Athanasios; we meet to pray and to decide what to do about it, and lo! A eunuch like a court eunuch comes in and stands listening to us, ready, no doubt, to go back and report all he has heard! He is a spy!”
I did not move; I knew that if I did at least some of the monks would set on me at once. They were frightened, I saw now, badly frightened. I wondered what they had been saying so excitedly in their native tongue — something to earn them the death penalty, perhaps. Was it true that the archbishop was to be exiled again? I remembered the fighting at the shipyards I had heard; presumably that was over the same rumor. But it could be no more than a rumor; there had been no proclamation; I would have heard it that morning at the Temple.
“I haven’t heard anything,” I said, “and I don’t know anything about any exile. I doubt, friends, that it is true. I am not a spy. I don’t even understand Coptic.” I stopped, trying desperately to think of something else to say.
The strange monk spat and shouted, “Lies!”
“Don’t believe me, then!” I snapped back, forgetting to be patient. “It’s true, just the same. And I would have thought that these brethren here would know more about it than you do; you’re a stranger here, aren’t you?”
There was a rustling of feet about the room. The monks looked at each other, at the stranger, at me. Still no one moved to attack me. I doubted they would kill me even if they did. The discovery that I was really a woman, which they inevitably would make, would stop them short. The thought made me more confident. “Where did you hear about this exile?” I asked the stranger, pressing into the silence before he could denounce me again. “It hasn’t been proclaimed in the city.”
“They are moving troops down the Nile,” the stranger told me, giving me a malevolent glare. “And the troops say that they are to keep order in the city, because rioting is expected. As you know, son of perdition. I have come down the Nile to warn the brethren of these things — you see, I am not afraid of you! I am Archaph, a servant of God and of the archbishop, and I will maintain my service to the death!”
“And these brethren here,” I told him sharply, “are also in the service of God and the archbishop, and their service consists of looking after the sick, from which service, it seems to me, Archaph, you are distracting them with unconfirmed rumors about troop movements. My patient is really ill; she is very young, in pain, alone, with a new baby that no one is looking after — and what’s happening to the rest of the sick here, while we stand about shouting? They could be dying, with no one left to attend them!”
At this Mark and some of the other monks looked worried. But Archaph said, “They will all die, if the heretics have their way. We will all be put in prison, persecuted for our service, and they will all be left to die. Do not listen to this creature, brothers, this spying halfman with his words set to create strife between us. Any patient of a Jew and a eunuch must be a heretic. You should take no patients from such people; they will merely turn, like dogs, to tear the hands of those who healed them.” He lifted his thin old arms toward Heaven, and I saw across his shoulders and upper arms the white scars of a whip, and noticed for the first time the calluses left by old shackles around his wrists. The other monks saw them too, gave a sort of growling sigh. “Remember how Gregorios beat us with thorns!” shouted Archaph. “Remember how Georgos racked and flogged the faithful! Remember the lists of the prefect Philagrios, which he compiled from the reports of his spies, and the torments he inflicted upon us when our lord Athanasios was exiled!”
The monks remembered and began to move toward me.
“I appeal to the archbishop!” I shouted, raising my voice to be heard over the clamor with which the attendants had greeted Archaph's words. It worked: at the mention of their precious Athanasios, they all fell silent. “If you really believe I am a spy,” I went on, “you can tell His Holiness and have me sent out of the city. But in the meantime, will somebody please attend to the sick?”
For a moment there was silence. They all watched me, their eyes gleaming wildly in the lamplight. Then: “It is a good idea,” declared Mark decisively. “Let us go to see our lord the archbishop. He will tell us what to do, whether this rumor is true or not. And we can ask him whether it is right to take patients from a eunuch and a Jew.”
They all shouted and cheered, thronging around me suddenly as though I were a prisoner they had taken captive in some war and wished to lead in triumph to their leader. Some of them lit torches; Archaph and a few enthusiasts began to sing a psalm. So I was going to meet the archbishop. Well, he was at least a powerful man, and an experienced one. That ought to mean that he was less excitable than his followers. I thought it very likely that he’d acquit me at once and tell his followers to calm down. I just wished I could send a note to Philon and tell him what was happening. I was afraid he might try to come to the hospital himself if I didn’t come back soon, and it would be worse for a Jew than for a eunuch. But there was no one to take any letter, so I contented myself with pointing out that someone should stay behind to look after the sick. A few of the monks agreed to do this, and the rest set off, jostling me into the middle, waving their torches and singing.
The episcopal palace was by the Eunostos Harbor on the west side of the city, near the Gate of the Moon. We marched along the waterfront, past the big church of Athanasios, across the ship canal, past the church of Theonas, and everywhere people ran out to join the monks. The rumor had spread throughout the city already, and the air was heavy wit
h expectation of blood. Dock workers, shopkeepers, landless peasants who lived on odd jobs and the public dole all filed into line, waving clubs and knives, clapping their hands to the beat of the psalm, chanting and shouting. “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good!” sang the monks, and the people shouted, “For his mercy endures forever!”
“It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man!”
“For his mercy endures forever!”
“It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes!”
“For his mercy endures forever!”
“All nations compassed me about, but in the name of the Lord will I destroy them!”
“For his mercy endures forever, forever!”
“They compassed me about like bees; they are quenched as the fire of thorns: for in the name of the Lord will I destroy them! The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation!”
“For his mercy endures forever!”
We came to the episcopal palace at the head of a huge crowd, a mob that danced along the black edge of the harbor, its torches reflected in the eddies of the sea. At this, the far end of the harbor, there was a beach of stinking mud where the fishing boats were drawn up, bulked black against the dark sheen of the water. The palace was actually a far smaller house than my father’s, with little to show whom it belonged to. I would have walked right past it, but the crowd knew who lived there; the people stopped short outside it, pouring over the low wall that divided the street from the sea, stamping their feet against the muddy beach, slapping the sides of the fishing boats, singing and chanting.
Some men in dark cloaks — monks or priests — came to the door and looked at us, then went back in. After a moment a small, dark old man came to the door and stood there, and the whole crowd shouted, “Athanasios! Athanasios! Athanasios!” I thought the ground would shake.
The Beacon at Alexandria Page 14
