by Jack Lindsay
He stared at Victor again, let him go, and said in a beseeching voice. “Don’t whisper, I tell you. Now get me some more wine.”
*
After an hour of blighted misery, Victor learned that Antonius wasn’t leaving Alexandria, that he was merely moving from the Palace to a small summer-residence built on a rock in the harbour. The rock was joined to the mainland by a narrow causeway of some two hundred feet; and soon the household-slaves were scurrying in long lines backwards and forwards from the Palace to the rock-villa, carrying the necessary furniture, luggage, and stores. Eros and Victor were given some bundles of important papers to convey; and they hastened across to the tiny island, rather pleased at the removal, liking the house built lonely amid the waters, and pleased also to escape the presence of the master in his drunken mood.
As they passed along the beach lined with marble-promenades and granite-barriers, they saw a band of women who had come from the Chapel of Adonis, flocking round the priests who bore the image of the god, the life of the world gored by the tusks of winter. The hair of the women was undone, flung back over their shoulders and streaming in the sea-breeze, twining with the wind-snakes in ceaseless conflict; and the dresses had been torn amid lamentation, and the breasts of mourning bared. Lamenting went the women, crying the death of the saviour but knowing in the death of a saviour was contained a promise of new life. Did not the seed-grain, rotting useless for food in the harrowed earth produce the multiplied grain of the future’s food?
Victor wished that Daphne might be among the mourners of the god, and he eagerly gazed at the crowd. He would have liked to see her with breasts bared, lamenting the young beautiful god; but not thus, not on the corrupted soil of Alexandria. He would have been ashamed of her if she were among the women. He loved the abandonment of the worship, but despised the women wailing.
On clean earth, among my friends. But where are my friends, where is the adored earth?
Daphne wasn’t among the women. But Victor, in his increased interest for womankind, studied the women thronging, though he despised them; compared their breasts, their eyes; and wondered how so many of them could bear to expose such slack and disfigured bodies. There were a few young girls, but they hadn’t torn or pulled open their dresses half as much; indeed they didn’t show much more than they usually did, whereas the withered and the slack were shameless, offering useless breasts to the succour of the young god, the lost beloved.
Eros jeered, and Victor snapped back. Before yesterday he would have thoroughly agreed with the jeers of Eros, and even today he felt as repelled as Eros, but repelled in a different way. He felt somehow that he knew what the women were doing, and only shrank because they weren’t doing it well enough; they shouldn’t be old and ugly.
“I believe you about that Jewess now,” said Eros with haughty spitefulness. “But I don’t need to wish you bad luck. You’re deteriorating under my very eyes. I pity you.”
Victor swallowed his rage. He couldn’t bear to be near Eros now; he loathed his pretence of superiority, loathed his walk and his gracefully helpless hands, simply loathed him. One good thing about the removal was that it meant new quarters, and he was determined to see that he didn’t have to sleep with Eros henceforth.
The most richly clad priest called out something, and lifted his hand. The women wailed. The image of the bright-eyed god, wrapt in scarlet linen, was slowly raised amid an outcry of moans, prayers, and exhortations, and then dropped into the water. A splash, and Adonis was gone. The women burst into shrilling wails. Adonis had died for them. Then they called with anxious hope and faith.
“Come back to us next year, Adonis.”
What would happen if the resurrection failed, if the vampires of the dead blasted the seeds of the earth and spread a universal barrenness? The god who died for the world must come again, or there was no hope, nothing. Only a widening chill of winter. Barren stone.
Come back, Adonis. Be born again. Ascend out of harrowed hell and save the world.
“He won’t die,” screaming a woman nearby. “He can’t die.” She lurched round and addressed the pages in-coherently. “He’s gone down into the womb of the waters. Into Aphrodite the Foamborn.”
“Have it your own way, my good woman,” said Eros with sarcasm. “I trust you’ve brought some safety-pins, for your dress needs them.”
She turned wild uncomprehending eyes upon him, and Victor was startled by the resemblance to the eyes of Antonius in his stupefied violence. He hastened on, disquieted, while Eros followed with rearguard-jeers at the worshippers.
What was it all about, the fighting and the loving, the wailing and the laughing? It had broken Antonius, raised him on its crest and dropped him. What was this rite of Adonis, dying and coming again, that made the woman’s eyes as mad as the eyes of Antonius suffering? Yet the woman had been filled with joy, a kind of chuckling glee of faith; her voice had been as dreadful as her mad eyes.
Under his breath he prayed. Aphrodite, don’t make me mad. Let me understand. Can’t one become part of the loving and the dying, and yet remain unmaddened? I don’t want to die yet. Be kind to Daphne.
He was being drowned by unknown forces, the face and the loins of Daphne; dragged down under the waters of life, to die.
He prayed that Adonis would ransom him. Yet how could the gods save, since they were themselves the forces they represented? Love brought love, and Death brought death, but couldn’t save. That was what Aristocrates had said. Yes. “The pattern of their own necessity, the same and never the same.” Victor couldn’t understand the phrase, but it was menacing. He wanted to believe that Adonis could die for him and save. But wasn’t Adonis only the image of the lover dying in the arms of love, giving himself and finding himself, closed in the lap of his engirdling mistress, in the womb of the living sea? Adonis couldn’t save. The lover could only worship his own fate, glorifying himself in the god.
The effort of thought burned heavily in Victor’s blood, turning to sweat on his brow. He wanted to understand, to remember how he had felt last night in the niche of flowers, in triumph. But he couldn’t remember it, as one can’t remember lightning. It was too quick, neither day nor night, lamp nor star. A transfiguration. It split, yet lighted up, but one saw nothing. A storm of shapes, and the gash of light.
Save me, Aphrodite, and I’ll give you a statue of silver out of my savings.
But he didn’t know what he wanted to be saved from. Not from Daphne.
“At least the Queen won’t be able to come visiting us here,” said Eros, who, though hurt by Victor’s defection, could not restrain his tongue.
They had walked the length of the causeway and come before the door of the not-quite-finished summer-house. It was a house which was forever being altered, since the idea of the sea-surrounded villa attracted each Alexandrian ruler in turn. Each had fresh plans how to perfect the villa, but somehow never fully carried out the plans; and the villa had never been occupied. Only the foundations of granite, built to resist the winter-seas, had been unchanged; and the villa was a medley of rooms at different elevations, balconies, terraces and towers with one main tower on the sea-side. The astonished caretaker was excitedly lighting fires and sending braziers into all the rooms, to get rid of as much damp as possible, while slaves were pushing in with rolled-up carpets and bedding. One of the rolled carpets, swinging round, had knocked a man with a chest off the causeway. The man had been hauled up with a rope, and now he was noisily trying to find a dinghy so that he might fish for the chest with hooked poles.
“I’m not going to sleep with you any more,” said Victor to Eros.
He felt the need of being alone; and he wanted to hurt someone. And Eros was the only person whom it was in his power to hurt. Besides, he somehow blamed Eros for everything that had gone wrong. If he hadn’t been such a coward yesterday, he would have made love to Daphne down by the lake, not frightened her in the dark; and it was through spending too much time with Eros that he’d become a cowa
rd jeering at girls, dirtily self-sufficient...Anyway, he blamed Eros.
Eros shrugged his shoulders. “I shan’t fill the chamberpot with my tears. I’ll never forgive you for upsetting that bowl. As I said, you’ve lost all your manners. Down the sink, I suppose.”
He laughed away to himself with subdued titters, and Victor let him laugh.
*
Taking advantage of the bustle, he slid off down the Street of the Sema, the seaward end of which opened not far from the foot of the causeway. Reaching the Museion, he wandered about the street, leaned against a pillar, climbed the steps of the Sema opposite in order to inspect the university-building. Its stately aspect, the rows of slender Ionic columns and the broad expanse of worn steps, fascinated him. All knowledge must be cloistered within those walls. He kept thinking that Daphne lived there, though he knew that her home was a flat in the neighbourhood. A group of students, obstreperous and sure of themselves, came out; and he hated them. Some bearded men entered, and he was certain that each of them was Nicias; which was clearly an impossibility.
It ought to be an easy matter to inquire and learn where Nicias lived.
He slowly ascended the steps, imagining himself a student. As he ought to be. Then he could meet Daphne on equal terms. He would be the best student of Nicias, whatever Nicias taught.
But his thoughts scattered, as, on reaching the tall door-way, he was halted by a doorkeeper who seemed to rise out of the pavement, a burly man with long face and jutting jaw, and with thin eyes.
Victor was too disconcerted to ask about Nicias or to offer a bribe for a tour of inspection. He had plenty of pocket-money, Antonius being no miser; but he forgot all his plans and retreated down the steps. At the street-level he stopped and pretended to be waiting for someone by peering up and down the street. At last he saw an attendant emerge from a side-gate, probably the kitchen-quarters. There was no one else to ask. Waiting till the man had gone far enough down the road to be out of view of the doorway of the Museion, he accosted him.
The man eyed him suspiciously.
“I want to know where Nicias lives,” blurted Victor. “Don’t know.”
“I mean the professor Nicias who teaches in the Museion.”
The man, who had a round creased face and dull black eyes, thought for a long while, again eyed Victor, and then swung his arm round.
“Lives out. Somewhere round here. Only dines with us.” He went to pass on, but Victor caught his arm.
“Yes, I know. But where?”
The man shook his arm free and gave a snort when Victor produced some coins. He at once began talking furiously, working on himself, rolling his eyes. “I won’t be bribed. Marked coins, I’ll swear. I don’t know anything about the gold medals that master Nicolaos lost. I don’t care who hears me. I suppose you’re a sneakthief. You look like a spy to me. I’ve got my living to think of. I’ll call for help if you don’t leave me alone. I saw you following me yesterday. You make my life a misery...”
Victor hurriedly retreated. Some passers had already collected to hear what was going on, and he left the man gesticulating and talking to them. Slipping behind some pillars, he tried to ignore his failure and to bring himself to facing the ordeal of the doorkeeper again. Time was going. What excuse could he make? Then he recalled that Daphne had mentioned her slave’s name, Simon.
He ran up the steps and called to the doorkeeper, “Where does the professor Nicias live?”
The man came forward, furious.
“You’re the lad that I warned off—”
“His slave Simon ordered some food from my father’s shop, and didn’t say where to deliver it.”
The doorkeeper regarded him with distrust. “Why didn’t you say that before?”
Victor cowered before the lowering glance. “I want to know where he lives.”
“There’s something behind this.” The man thrust out his jaw even more prominently. “I’ll trouble you to step this way.”
“I only want to know where he lives.” Victor was terrified. He drew out some silver coins and pushed them into the man’s hands. Then, as the man still scrutinised him, he added, “I’ve got a letter for his daughter. That’s the truth.”
“O ho, is it?” said the man, fondling his jaw and charmed at the chance of showing his power. “I should hope so. You think you can buy me, do you? Who’s your master? You’ve got a palace-uniform on.”
“I can’t tell you,” answered Victor, feeling that his only hope lay in pretending to be an intermediary. “I’d be beaten.”
The doorkeeper scented an intrigue. His eyes narrowed till Victor could see no more than a thin streak under the reddened lids, and he breathed loudly through his nose.
“So someone in the Palace has cast eyes on the daughter of master Nicias,” he said ruminatively. “She’s a nice young thing, and a well-behaved girl, I should have thought.”
“So she is,” said Victor hotly, feeling that he had betrayed himself after all. “It’s not what you think.”
“Then what is it? If it’s anything else, it’s respectable.”
Victor in his terror decided on boldness. “If you don’t tell me where she lives, I’ll report you where it won’t do you any good.”
The doorkeeper had been shaking with slow silent laughter. At Victor’s threat he suddenly pushed his face close down against Victor, breathing objectionably through his nose.
“I don’t believe you, and I’ll tell you why. If what you say was true, you’d know where Nicias lived without coning to me about it. You’re doing all this on your own, and I’ve a good mind to call master Nicias.”
Victor dragged out all the coins he had left, and put them into the man’s ready palm.
“ Is that all you’ve got?” asked the man.
“Yes. Where does she—he live?”
“I’ll tell you then.” The man’s face wrinkled into a slow grin. He chuckled. “In Alexandria, my lad.” His chuckle deepened into a bellow of laughter, which he instantly cut short; and after a cautious look down the hall, he turned with an official scowl to Victor. “Out of here, before you’re thrown out, and learn to keep your eye off well-behaved young girls, getting them a bad name!”
“Please” began Victor; but seeing the inexorably shut mouth, he stumbled down the steps, glad to escape with nothing more than a loss of coins. The man wouldn’t suspect Daphne, because he’d think that if guilty she would have given her address away.
*
Cleopatra took no notice of the removal, and Antonius for the next few days recovered something of his old spirit in the excitement of settling the house. He had named it the Timonion, after Timon the legendary misanthrope of Athens. He was going to exclude the world, and females in particular. He threw a stray cat overboard, luckily unseen by any of the fanatical Egyptian populace, who reverenced all cats as manifestations of the goddess Bast. It was a tomcat, one of the slaves insisted, but Antonius merely laughed and said that he called every cat “she” because all women were cats. On the outside of the front door he nailed with his own hands a placard whereon he had written the epitaph which Timon was said to have composed on himself:
Timon, the misanthrope, I’m tombed below, Go and revile me, stranger—only go!”
He had left most of his servants in the Palace, keeping only those whom he most trusted; a freedman soldier-friend Lucilius, and the rhetorician Aristocrates. Victor and Eros alone of the pages were ordered to join him; and there in the damp island-villa, amid stained plaster and flaking frescoes, he took to drinking steadily.
Victor fumed for an opportunity to continue the search for Daphne, and at least had the satisfaction of obtaining a room apart from Eros, a small compartment in the sea-tower. There he slept alone, and at dawn climbed to the tower-top and looked south over the city of Alexandria. Behind him rose the great Lighthouse, smoking skywards by day and darting out its beams by night. To the left was another island, Antirhodos, with some defences; then the Royal Harbour, and the prom
entary, built with palaces and ending in the Temple of Isis Lochias. Before him spread the harbour-promenades of the palace-quarter with a background of colonnades and public buildings dominated by the curving Theatre. The Palaces were endless, for each Ptolemaios had reared his own, a mansion in the Greek style; masses of glittering marble, rambling halls and peristyles, surrounded by gardens and porticoes, galleries and summer-turrets, fountains and pergolas. Directly in front of the Timonion was the temple that Cleopatra was building for herself and Antonius as the divine rulers of Egypt and the world. Only the back was visible to Victor in his tower, a pile of scaffolding. Further to the right was the head of the Street of the Sema, and more temples, that of the sea-god Poseidon, that of Bendis (a Thracian deity, but acceptable to the Alexandrians because of bacchic festivals), and that of the Deified Arsinoe, the first woman of the Ptolemaioi to marry her brother.
Then there were the crowded docks, the lines of shipping, with the warehouses of the Emporion; the long mole running to the Pharos; and, beyond, another harbour filled with masts. Southwards, on the other side of the teeming city, rose the noble Temple of Sarapis, domed on its hill, and, to left of it, the shrine of Pan.
It was a sight that never wearied, in the light of dawn. Endless houses clustered together among forests of marble columns, cut into rectangles by the regularly laid-out streets; the beautiful huddled palaces; the glorious Sarapeion floating on blue mists of dawn over the city that it guarded; and, at one’s back, the towering Pharos. A city of infinite riches, of splendid and delicate forms, spread in the dawn as a gift for the gazer from the sea.
A million people slept there; but for the gazer there was only one, a young girl with pale gold hair, hair of the very dawn. The city had been built only to hide her from his seeking eyes.
The sea-gulls wheeled about the tower, diving for scraps along the quays and then swooping round the harbour. Victor stared into the cold faint light, taking deep breaths. He felt himself growing stronger, more able to stand alone. Even though every thought turned towards the lost Daphne, he felt a strength flooding freshly along his veins, steadying him. It gave him patience, and for the first time he knew serenity, a purpose in life. He was ready to wait for years; for in these moments of conviction, without thinking, he was sure that Daphne was also waiting, that she was bound to him as he to her.
