Philon pulled at his lip and nodded, giving the peculiar half-smile he used when I said something he understood from his own experience.
“No,” I went on, “it was just . . . he made me nervous.”
Philon smiled. “And who’s to blame you? What would happen to you if . . . if the authorities found out?”
I shrugged. “I suppose they’d just send me home in disgrace. And once I got home, well . . .” I hesitated, glancing around at the few figures hurrying down the great street, and the shuttered houses. No one was nearby, but I continued only in a whisper. “I would sit there doing nothing for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t have to worry about marriage. If anyone did marry me, it would be someone of lower rank who wants the money badly enough to put up with the disgrace. But even someone like that would demand respectable behavior from me. I would never be myself again.”
We walked on in silence for a minute or so. Philon was frowning. “Well,” he said at last, “I hope you can stay out of the trouble.” We were nearing the street his house was on, and he paused on the corner, the frown fading. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Theogenes is corning — yes, again! And my new assistant has arrived: you’ll meet him at supper.”
I’d heard of this proposed new assistant a couple of weeks before, and had tried to get used to the idea, though I couldn’t help feeling jealous of him. I managed to smile. “Good. You need help, with all your patients. I never could understand why you didn’t have an assistant before I came.”
He chuckled. “Couldn’t you? Let me explain. I don’t earn much money. Most assistants find money useful. And even those who aren’t worried about it like to be taught by somebody well known, and assume that anyone well known earns money, or at least has a few wealthy and distinguished patients.”
“I know that,” I said, smiling. “But you’re as good a doctor as Adamantios — better. You could have lectured at the Temple too, and even picked up a few wealthy and distinguished patients.”
He scratched his beard. “Perhaps that’s true. But when I ran away from Tiberias, I made a bargain with God. You let me become a doctor, I told Him, and I will treat anyone in need, and not worry about whether or not they can pay me. I will use the art in Your service, not to gain a reputation or wealth for myself. So I never had time for the rich and important patients — and no one ever came posthaste to drag me across the city to treat one against my will, either. Still, perhaps I shall get my reputation at last.” He gave me a grin. “The man who taught Chariton of Ephesus.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I’m not! Why do you think Kritias has come to me instead of to Adamantios? He heard me mentioned as your teacher. And he’s a hardworking, kind young man and should make a fine doctor, though he’s not as clever as you. Poor lad, he’s already tired of hearing about you. Come on, I’ll introduce you!”
He pressed on up the street to his house, smiling again, and I trailed after him, wishing that I were worthy of such a master.
Theogenes and Theophila were married just when the vines began to bud, while the winter-flowering hellebore in the Temple gardens was still heavy with fragrant white flowers. They were married at Theogenes’ synagogue in the Broucheion quarter, a beautiful big building which had somehow survived the region’s destruction; it was surrounded by a garden, colonnaded, and glowed inside with paintings and mosaics. Theogenes’ brother had come by camel all the way from Antioch, and Philon’s son, Alphaios, had arrived from Tiberias just two days before. I had been very eager to meet him, but in fact we didn’t get on. He was a brilliant, passionate, narrow young man of about my age, and he cared about nothing but the Law. The first thing he did when we met was try to convert me. It was very embarrassing for everyone, and I found it thoughtless of him. If he’d succeeded, it would have caused considerable trouble for his family, since Athanasios’ monks would not have approved of Jewish interference with their bishop’s physician. But I suppose Alphaios thought that this was a small price to pay for the salvation of a soul from the Galilean heresy, as he called it. When he saw that I wouldn’t be converted and couldn’t argue the Law with him, he left me alone. But it was clear that he was suspicious of me. He’d heard of me from his father’s letters, but that’s different from knowing someone, and he (understandably) found it very strange that a foreigner, a Christian, a friend of the archbishop, and a eunuch was so deeply enmeshed in the affairs of his family. He didn’t like Theogenes either: he thought him very worldly.
The wedding went very well. The couple stepped under the wedding canopy and exchanged vows, there were psalms and hymns of rejoicing, and finally we had a huge party in the garden. Luckily it was a clear, unseasonably warm day, a golden, perfect day, and it seemed that everyone on earth must be happy to see how happy Theogenes and Theophila were. There was eating and drinking and dancing. It began to grow dark, and torches were lit, fastened to poles, and burned brightly under the trees. Everyone gave presents to the bride and bridegroom, and then there was more eating and drinking and dancing.
I gave Theophila a piece of my mother’s jewelry, a ring set with sapphires and amethyst. She gasped when she saw it, then held it up, turning it in the light so that the jewels burned. “Oh, Chariton!” she cried, looking at me. “It was your mother’s, you shouldn’t give it away!”
“Wear it,” I told her. “It’s better worn than sold. And I can have no one else to give it to.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She slipped the ring onto her finger, then kissed me. Theogenes clasped my shoulder and pressed my hand. I nodded, mumbled something, and slipped out of the crowd. The synagogue was empty now, so I went and sat there. The lamps at the front, by the shrine of the Law, had been lit, but the rest of the building was in darkness, the painted walls full of vague shapes of animals and men. I sat down at the back and wept. I was no longer even half in love with Theogenes — but they were so happy. And I could never be happy like that. Never get married, be loved by some tall young man; never have children. Not if I wanted to practice the art. Not if I stayed myself. And if I stayed myself, I was simply my own grave, with no free outlet to the world until death came and claimed me.
I heard a cautious step entering the synagogue, and I hurriedly stopped sobbing. There was another step, and then a voice said, “Chariton?” softly. The voice was Philon’s. I got up, wiping my face, and he hurried over.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I know it’s bad luck to run out on a wedding feast. But I couldn’t help it.”
He shook his head. “Everyone understood. That is, they can understand that a eunuch might feel unhappy at seeing so much gladness that he can never join.”
I tried to laugh. “They understand rightly. I might just as well be a eunuch.”
He sighed, peering through the darkness at my face. “I don’t know what to say to that,” he confessed at last. “I should say, “Go back to your family, get married, it’s natural and right and you obviously want it.” But I’m used to you as a eunuch. I can’t imagine . . .” He stopped, then reached out and touched my cheek. “Poor Chariton,” he said, feeling the tears.
I started crying again. I sat down. “I’ll get over it,” I said. “I won’t go home. I can’t imagine, either. Only just now I feel wretched.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll be able to tell everyone what you are,” Philon said, squatting beside me. “You are very good. And if your reputation were really solidly established, it would survive a revelation like that. You could make your own rule, establish that women can study medicine.”
“If that ever happens,” I said, swallowing a sob, “it’ll be when I’m old, too old to marry.”
“You have friends,” he told me. “And you could have students. Students can become almost like your own children — as I have reason to know.”
I flung my arms around him and wept onto his shoulder.
Athanaric avoided me after the threats and the offer, though he remained at the palace, asking questions and occasionally going of
f to see the prefect or the duke of Egypt, presumably to compare notes. I did not have much time to worry about him. I was so busy with my patients that I began to wonder whether I should take an assistant at once. It seemed a very extraordinary thing for someone who had only arrived in the city three years before, who was under twenty and had only been practicing on her own for a few months, to take an assistant. But I was working so hard that I scarcely had time to sleep, and whenever a crisis came up, I badly wished I had someone else I could send to do the rounds, as Philon used to send me. But I didn’t look for a job elsewhere. I was proud of my career. And Philon’s suggestion had given me something else to hope for. One day, far away in the future, I might openly call myself Charis of Ephesus, a doctor of Alexandria, perhaps a teacher with a few student assistants, one or two of them women. It was something to think about, anyway.
Easter that year fell on the calends of April, or the fifth of the month of Pharmuthi, in the Egyptian reckoning — the Egyptians do everything differently from everyone else, and have a completely different calendar. The archbishop kept Lent very strictly, eating nothing but dry bread and drinking only water, and he traveled about the city and into the neighboring countryside, preaching and settling the affairs of the church. He was eager to set up reserves of money and places of concealment which might be useful to his supporters after his death. The Alexandrian church was very wealthy and owned a great deal of land in the area; Athanasios and Theophilos went through the accounts line by line, trying to attach the land and money to their own supporters so that any intruding bishop couldn’t get his hands on it. Theophilos was good at things like that, but Athanasios was still worried about him. “He loves the church,” he told me once. “But I don’t know how much he loves God.”
I was worried about Athanasios. He coughed more and more often, and occasionally became feverish; he was exhausted with fasting and hard work. But if I reproved him for it, he just smiled, no longer even bothering to argue.
On Easter Eve he and half the population of Alexandria kept vigil. They started the festival at the tiny shrine of Archbishop Peter the Martyr, which is near the sea, outside the city wall. There was a huge crowd, thousands of people, and I was in the middle of it with my housemates, the nuns. There was a great deal of singing as the evening fell; musicians played on the lyre, the flute, and the cymbals; some of the people danced. When it was dark, we saw the Pharos lit: first a little yellow glow as they struck the kindling, then a bright flare, and then the great swath of light crawling over the dark sea, reaching further and further as the fire took hold. You could see the outline of the city itself, a web of little lights crisscrossed by the great avenues of the Canopic Way and the Soma Street; on the other side of the city was the Lochias promontory, the citadel of the government, its stone fortifications black against the sea. The musicians stopped playing, and everyone fell silent. You could hear the night sounds of the birds, and the hush of the sea. Then someone began to sing.
It was a hymn of rejoicing, praising the time when all light started, when the Lord led his people out of slavery into freedom, out of death into life, out of darkness into day. One voice began it — one of the deacons, I think — but it was soon taken up by the rest of the clergy, and then everyone was singing, the music rising in great waves through the darkness. It swept me up with it, and I stood among the others with my mouth open, singing as well. Then, in the shadow in front of the shrine, someone lit the bonfire that had been readied, and suddenly I saw Athanasios standing in the firelight, his best gold cloak reflecting the glow around him. His white hair stood out around his face, and his eyes were staring into the light, wide and illimitably happy, focused on something beyond the fire. I knew then what I should have seen all along: he was eager to die. He had tried to stay alive as long as was absolutely necessary, out of love for his church, but he had long ago set his mind on death. He would not live for another Easter, and he wanted to celebrate this feast perfectly.
Athanasios lit a torch at the bonfire, and the people cheered, that deep, rhythmic Alexandrian applause that is unlike the acclaim of any other people. The clergy lit their torches, and the people poured forward with lamps and candles and anything else they could find to burn and give light. The musicians began to play again, and the procession moved off, twisting down the road into the city through the Gate of the Moon, like a sunrise in the west. By the time they reached the church, people were dancing again and giving the long whooping cheers they use at the racecourse. I did not sing now. I walked along in silence, wondering if the others would be so glad if they knew that within the year they’d have another archbishop, one installed by troops.
The service for Easter Eve is a very long one. First there were prayers and singing in the cathedral; then everyone who wanted to be baptized that year was brought into the baptistry and plunged into the water; then there was more singing and a procession back into the main church. The congregation settled itself to listen. Thousands of faces were packed into the great, barnlike cathedral; the light of a thousand lamps glittered off the stern mosaic saints along the wall; incense and the smell of the great hot crowd surrounded us. And Athanasios preached. It was a fierce, passionate, glad speech based on the text “death is swallowed up in victory.” “This is the season of death,” he told the people, “and it is the season of rejoicing. For where what is human comes to an end, what is divine does not. Thus when we are dead, our poor nature tired out, God himself raises us up, and what was born of earth he leads into Heaven. For God has restored to us in Christ the image of his own eternity. Death, beloved, has no power over us. The lord of this world has no power. Death is swallowed up! Consuming our mortality, he consumes himself, and only victory is left for us!”
“Athanasios!” roared the people; his name, of course, means “deathless.” Athanasios sat on the episcopal throne carved with the lions of St. Mark, looking deathless indeed, his eyes sweeping the hall. He set down the Gospel he was holding and stood, stretching out his arms, and the crowd shouted his name again and again until his voice stilled them. I remembered what he had told me, that acclamation intoxicates the will. He looked intoxicated with the acclaim now, and he spoke for over an hour, the crowd cheering him at every pause. Then he celebrated the Eucharist, and there was more singing, and afterward eating and drinking and dancing in the street until day; and then he preached and celebrated the Eucharist again, and finally, in the clear spring morning, he dismissed the people with a blessing.
I did not go home. I went straight to the episcopal palace, and arrived, bumping into the slave who had been sent to fetch me, shortly after the archbishop. Athanasios had fainted on the way home from the church. When I went into his room I found him doubled up on the bed, coughing up blood.
I did everything I could: steam, cupping, warm compresses, and various drugs, even black hellebore, which I normally avoided. But the “deathless” Athanasios floated through my treatment with a smile, responding to none of it, his eyes still fixed on whatever it was that lay behind the fire. He was quite lucid, and insisted on interrupting the treatment to talk to all his clergy.
On the second day he sent me out of the room and had a long session with Peter and Theophilos. Peter came out weeping; Theophilos looked white and shaken, and went off somewhere private. I went back into the room and looked at the archbishop. For the first time since his collapse, I was the only one there. He hadn’t allowed me to lock out the others. Since I had the opportunity, I bolted the door. There was not much hope that he’d recover, even if he was allowed to rest, but it was always possible.
He had been lying still, staring at the ceiling, but when he heard the bolt click he looked at me. “Charis,” he said, and smiled.
I went over and sat down beside him.
“You are still angry?” he asked, smiling.
“You might have lived for years,” I told him.
“If I had heeded my doctor,” he finished. “Well, I have lived for years already. Longer than I
could have expected. And as my master Anthony the Hermit said, exchanging this world for Heaven is like exchanging a copper drachma for a hundred solidi.” He looked at me for a moment, the eyes, though sunken, as deep and penetrating as ever. “The faith still doesn’t mean much to you, does it?” he asked. “Not compared to Hippocrates.”
“Oh, Holy Christ!” I said. “You don’t want to spend your last hours converting me.” I tried to give him a drink of honeywater; he refused.
“I can think of worse ways to spend the time. But not everyone is called to asceticism and divine service. Your way is good, though not the most excellent one.” He stared at me again, this time with regret. “You will marry.”
“What? I have no intention of marrying. I am married to Hippocrates.”
“You will get a husband though,” he said slowly, “as well as your Hippocrates. You are too fond of people, Charition. Ai, I never meant to become archbishop. I meant to become a monk. But I was too fond of power and acclaim, and it trapped me. The world holds us by what we love. But all that is over now. No more battles now.” He paused, then smiled, the expression of intoxicated happiness returning to his face.
I felt helpless, furious, profoundly grieved. “You should have lived!” I told him. “Think what will happen to us without you! Your death will extinguish all the light in Alexandria!”
He jerked his head back — no — very weakly. “Not all the light. One man doesn’t matter that much. And no one can live forever, even with the best doctor.” He smiled at me again. “You mustn’t lock the door, my dear; the people want to see me. Tell the others to come in now.”
He died after midnight on the second of May. He was lucid till the end, and happy, fiercely happy, watching for his death. Most of the city was watching too: mobs of people encircled the house, waiting for the news. I kept trying to cure him, even when it was clear that all I was needed for was to say that the breath was gone. When it was over, I knelt by the bed with the others and, like them, wept bitterly. He was a proud man; I could easily believe that he’d been highhanded and violent in his youth, but his mind had soared above his age like an eagle, and there was no one else like him. When we announced his death, it was as though the whole of Alexandria went into mourning. All the shops were closed, the churches shrouded in black; even the Pharos was hung with black streamers. A light had gone out, and the city waited for its invaders.
The Beacon at Alexandria Page 21
