Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  Round the square ran conference-halls, and cells for the pastophori or image-bearers, while the rooms aloft were in-habited by the tonsured priests who had taken the vow of chastity to the Mother of God, the God-Mother. Four great columns interrupted the converging approaches and supported a cell built with little columns of differently coloured stone. At the door Manethos dismissed the servants who had been attending discreetly in the rear; bidding them find their own positions for viewing the ceremony and be waiting on the lower steps when it was over, to attend the family home. Then, passing through, the party made their way to the inner court encircled with equally sized columns, portico merging into portico in a bewildering forest of gleaming pillars. Statues and paintings narrated the vicissitudes of the god, his wife and child; and in the recesses of the cloisters were stacked holy bibles recounting all that the divine family had done, their drama of death and redemption which became the revelation of human fate and the hope of human happiness and health. The roof’s of the cloisters were gilded, and the pillar-capitals of gilt copper. Under the copper plates on the walls, so guides were wont to declare, lay plates of silver, and under the silver plates of gold.

  At the further end of the inner court stood a colossal figure of Sarapis, a mystery-form of Osiris, the judge and benefactor: a bearded figure, grave and majestic, his head surmounted by a great corn-measure. In the middle of the court rose a pillar so high that Daphne could not see the top as it faded into the dazzled dome-sky, and beside the pillar was set a sanctuary-cell with several doors. Before the cell were two obelisks and a fountain that sent up its glittering tree of waters, forever shedding silver blossoms but still unimpaired in its slender grace, its bright fecundity. Everywhere burned lamps, and the fountain was so splashed with light that it seemed another lamp, a torch that spouted with drops of crystal reflecting copper gilt,

  Daphne had never seen so many priests, and, not having a clear idea what was the use of priests, she was astounded at the number and tried to count them, feeling that she was suffering from an optical illusion—but if that were so, to count them was useless; so she gave up, and looked at her own feet shod in yellow Sicyon-shoes. For the priests seemed to stand in as many rows as the pillars, and the array of lamps made her eyes wink and water. The glare was worst in the court, there was so much gold and polished stonework and gem-set ornamentation.

  Manethos spoke in a low voice to some very old priests who looked as if they had parched away through living amid stone and flame. For by now the night had taken on a magical aspect, neither of daylight nor of darkness, and the Sarapeion was a dream-building which dwelt always in this strange dimension of lamplight that dwarfed the earth and made all-embracing the home of the god. The centre cell was particularly frightening; the lights, the warmth, the unexplained movements of everyone, the awe of the colossal Sarapis with his curly ambrosial locks and beard, all seemed to direct attention towards—or rather to divert it too obviously from—the closed cell before which the fountain clashed its lithe belly-dance, like a bejewelled naked harem-girl, and within which surely lurked some god-ogre for whom the temple with its flame and ritual was the oven steaming the flesh of the chosen victims.

  The sensation was growing overpowering, when to Daphne’s relief Manethos led the womenfolk down a cloister less noisily lighted than the court and its annexes. Sheftu-Teta and her daughters settled down at once on some marble seats in meditation; and Daphne, with an anticipation of discomfort, followed their example. Either she herself had ceased to feel feverish, or the heat of the many lamps and torches had not penetrated to the cloister-depth, for the stone seat was chilly and seemed at once to wear away all the protective fat of her rump, striking straight to the bones. She was unable to meditate on anything except her dislike of all temples, her cold bones, her wish to get away from her friends, and the extreme unlikelihood of finding Victor in such a crowd. She hadn’t realised how big the temple was. When she’d come with her father in the daylight to give a hurried travellers-look round, she had thought there was only the usual amount of porticoes and altar-space, or perhaps a trifle more. She’d been more interested in the view over the city and the harbour from the steps, and it was the view that had had awed vastness. Perhaps Sarapis was getting his own back on her now for that disrespect. With extreme repugnance she offered up a prayer to him, thinking that a god with such an enormous statue ought to be above showing spite for a young unmarried girl.

  She would never find Victor in such a crowd. She prayed earnestly to Sarapis that she should find him. Never before had she been so anxious for the success of a meeting, though she had no plans, no notion why it was so important to meet him on this crowded stirring night when they wouldn’t even be able to exchange two words in privacy.

  The Manethos family meditated with closed eyes.

  Manethos did not altogether approve of the temple or of the Graecized form of Sarapis, though his own ancestor had aided in the creation of both. In those days this synthesis of Greek and Egyptian had seemed more promising. But events had moved so fast. The irruption of Rome upon the eastern Mediterranean had changed everything, speeded up everything, broken down the kings and given the businessmen too much power. The capitalists of the East wanted Rome to conquer everywhere; for that meant peace, controlled markets of exploitation. Not the peace of a world become one family under the smile of Ra, the Word of power which was Light and manifested itself on earth as Trinity. Yet strange were the ways of the One. Perhaps the Roman was doing the work of Ra in the end, and the world must build on the greed of commerce until such time as all greed should be consumed.

  A choir was chanting hymns. The style, though some-what modernised, though somewhat saccharinely shoddy for a man of Manethos’s severe taste, was yet definitely Egyptian. But he did not like the accompanying music of the organ. That was a Greek invention, with bellows worked by hydraulic pressure, keys operated by levers, and perforated sliders to open and shut the mouths of the pipes. Still, the general effect was Egyptian; and it was here, in Alexandria, that the organ had been invented.

  He sighed and relaxed; and then, rising, bowed to the womenfolk and retired to take a part with the other priests.

  “Will you be here all the while?” asked Daphne, the sense of nightmare returning upon her, as if Manethos’s withdrawal left her more at the mercy of Sarapis, who she was convinced was her enemy.

  “Yes, we will be here,” replied Sheftu-Teta, emphasising we gently so as to include Daphne.

  Daphne reddened. She had given away too easily the fact that she didn’t feel a member of the party, that she hoped to play truant; and even without such gratuitous self-betrayals she had the feeling that the serious-eyed Sheftu-Teta could read her thoughts.

  She tried to think, defying Sheftu-Teta to see behind her eyes. There was only one excuse that she could think of, and that was no use. If she said she wanted to go to a privy, one of the girls would be sure to go with her. She studied her surroundings. A little way up the passage was an opening, hut it led in the wrong direction. If she slipped up it, she would still have to cross the top of the passage, in full view of the others. But she decided to take the risk.

  Mumbling something about books in the recess of the next portico, she rose and strolled towards a painting on the wall, stood boring her left heel into the mosaic pavement and staring at the painting at first without seeing one detail of it; then the subject started out so suddenly that it seemed as if a real woman had detached herself, as if the plaster had swelled out in relief, into a breathing woman who thrust a child almost into Daphne’s arms. Isis suckling her babe. Isis with such outstanding breasts, and a stiff little baby wide-mouthed. The painter had made the nipples far too long, at least they were several times longer than Daphne could stretch hers, even after a warm bath. Still, she liked the painting, and for a moment forgot her purpose, hearing in surprise the chanting of the choir, a rising phrase of ecstatic yearning.

  Then she remembered, and dodged into the next
passage, ran up it into the court, and, taking advantage of a knot of passsers, slid across the court, sure that she had been hidden from her hosts. But she knew that she wouldn’t be left at liberty for long. As she ran, an idea throbbed into her head. If only Victor was at the door. But he was always on time, poor dear.

  There was nobody at the door except several door-keepers, who, remembering with the expert memory of their kind that she had come with Manethos, moved obsequiously to let her through. She said to the nearest that she felt faint and wanted some fresh air; and hated him because she had been so undignified as to give explanations, and in a rather weak voice. But there was no Victor. How dare he be so late?

  In shame she was turning away when she saw someone dashing up the steps and knew that it was Victor. Forgetting her anger, she moved down a few steps to meet him. He was panting, but looked up at the door-keepers with fear and resentment.

  “They wouldn’t let me wait up there.”

  “Ssh.” She lowered her voice, afraid that the door-keepers would again send Victor away. One of the door-keepers was hovering near, but he was deterred by Daphne’s presence. She must be brief.

  “Come back in an hour or so. Ask for Manethos. Manethos. Say you have to see me. Then say you’ve been sent by father to take me home. I’ll tell you more later. Say he’s ill.”

  Then, in her worry, she herself pushed Victor down the steps, almost causing him to lose his balance and tumble. She couldn’t bear that the door-keepers should order him off. But, with a dazed look on his face, he had already retreated down towards the surging crowd that had assembled all about the front of the temple on the slopes and lower ground.

  “I feel better now,” she observed graciously to the doorkeeper who stood behind her; uncertain whether it was the man she had already addressed, and even more uncertain whether she should have said anything at all. With flushing cheeks she hastened back for the inner court, trying to saunter and to attain that sense of well-being which was necessary for a successful look of innocence in the eyes.

  Yes, sure enough, there were the three Manethos women talking to some priests and giving instructions for a search. “Kind-hearted beasts,” said Daphne to herself. “They wouldn’t let me come to any harm, O no. They’d like to make me an ibis-bird like themselves, thin-legged and big-nosed and looking solemn all day.”

  “So here you are,” said Sheftu-Teta mildly, resolving never to take Greek girls out again. “Come and sit down.”

  Daphne, who was expecting a rebuke (which would have merely made her feel impenitent and superior), felt rebuked by the air of considerate relief.

  “I lost my way,” she said, and shuffled. It was really most unpleasant having to deceive these people; she felt a rush of her first admiration warmed now into love for them; she would have liked to have told Sheftu-Teta everything; but as she herself didn’t know what “everything” was, lack of words seconded her caution and saved her. And since she couldn’t confess to Sheftu-Teta, her emotion of love began to wane and she decided that she would nevermore have anything to do with people whom it was unpleasant to deceive. She preferred people like her father whom it was an undiluted pleasure to deceive, or people like Victor, whom she’d never deceive, because she couldn’t. Poor Victor, what a lot of oil he’d put on his hair.

  *

  Hours passed, or what seemed like hours. Daphne couldn’t keep awake. Whether it was the incensed air of the temple or the monotonous chanting, she felt herself falling off to sleep: which was curious, for she was so uncomfortable. Once she slipped from the seat and sat heavily on the floor. The Manethos girls helped her up, and she hated them more than she had ever thought she could hate anyone. They seemed perfectly awake; their slim brown arms were so strong; they spoke so kindly. It was the way they were able to sit in meditation that hypnotised her with her sleepiness.

  “I’m boring you,” she said. Which she knew was a silly remark, since nobody had said anything for over an hour. “I’ve never felt so sleepy. It must have been something I ate. I hardly ever go to sleep. Not when I’m away from home, I mean.”

  The Manethos girls made it quite clear that they disliked general conversation in a temple. They seemed ready to go on meditating indefinitely. “I bet they cheat,” thought Daphne. “Some people can sleep with their eyes open; and since they haven’t got anything to think about, they don’t know when they’re thinking or when they’re not.” She decided to test the younger girl. “Do please tell me what you’re thinking about,” she whispered.

  “Some other time,” said the girl with a charming slow smile. “When there’s nothing else to do.”

  Daphne was baffled. But by dint of wriggling her toes, biting her lips, pinching herself, twitching her thigh-muscles, and crossing and uncrossing her legs, she managed to keep herself aware of being Daphne, daughter of Nicias, sitting on a stone seat and waiting for something. Most alarming, when she did feel that hypnotic drowsiness come over her, she kept seeing Isis, the suddenly incarnated Isis who had burst from the frescoed wall like a finger thrust through a papyrus-sheet. (Daphne guiltily recalled the rages of Nicias when she’d spoiled rolls and papers as a very young child—rather, she didn’t exactly recall the spoiling, she recalled her mother telling her about it, and it was easy enough to imagine what a rage Nicias would have been in. She wasn’t sure if the face that came scowling across her mind was memory or imagination, but anyhow it made her wonder if her mother’s nipples had been as long as those of Isis in the painting. Did suckling cause such an elongation? She couldn’t remember, though she’d often seen babies at the breast; she must watch more closely.) The emergent Isis was behind the screen of her hazy thoughts, waiting to thrust out at her the sudden baby; breaking through the wall of resistance; an image laboriously painted, a casual reflection, startling with new demands and possibilities, offering a world beyond calculation. Who that had never seen a rose could guess that the hard tight little bud would relax into such voluptuous whiteness, such stores of summer-scent? The music, the temple-smells, the paintings, were closing her round like a new dress which is of such astonishingly fine material and cut that one delays the moment of putting it on, the moment when the impersonal perfection of the dress must submit to becoming the slave of the wearer’s person, enriched with the new dimension of depth and action, and from that moment doomed to all the laws of attrition and change.

  Why hadn’t she told Victor to come almost at once? Unfortunately he always did precisely as he was told.

  At last he came. But she was so drowsy (fighting away, yet welcoming, the wavering frescoed wall of sleep, which threatened to curdle into the white swelling body of Isis) that she didn’t hear him come down the passage, guided by a round-faced priest. She opened her eyes to see him shifting on his feet before Sheftu-Teta.

  “...I’ve come to take her back,” he was saying. “Her father’s ill...calling for her.”

  “I am very sorry indeed,” said Sheftu-Teta, eyeing Victor. Somehow she didn’t feel convinced, though what there was to suspect she couldn’t see. The boy was clad in a palace-uniform, but Nicias worked in a palace-department, the Museion; and there was nothing improbable in an old man falling ill and asking for his only daughter...a widower too. But why did the boy stammer so? Perhaps it was his way. These barbarians were never at ease in the world unless they blustered.

  “Your father is ill,” she said, turning to Daphne.

  “Father!” cried Daphne, jumping up, and then felt that she was over-acting. But in her half-stupor she hadn’t been certain if the news was true or not. She went on, in her reaction from over-acting, in a voice that was far too emotionless. “I suppose I’d better go home.”

  “I fear so,” said Sheftu-Teta, interpreting the voice to express reluctance to obey the call, and therefore feeling easier. “You had better take one of the girls with you.”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it. Of course not,” insisted Daphne, trying in vain not to be too emphatic. “She’d miss eve
rything; and besides, how would she find her way home again? Our place is too poky, there isn’t another bed, and father doesn’t like—doesn’t like being disturbed.”

  But her distraught manner had the desired effect; for Sheftu-Teta recalled what Manethos had told her of the prejudices of Nicias, and thought that Daphne was endeavouring to hint that an Egyptian would not be welcomed.

  The rejection of the offered escort did not displease her, for the last thing she wished to do was to send one of the girls back with this foolish little Greek girl; she had only made the offer so as not to appear wanting in hospitality and care. Daphne seemed so irresponsible, but perhaps it was only in comparison with the other two girls. Sheftu-Teta’s heart warmed with maternal pride.

  “Good night then,” she said.

  Daphne made her farewells, trying not to be too hasty or to look too pleased. She’d never call on these wretched people again; she detested them. They offered her their best wishes for her father, and she said she was sure that there was nothing wrong with her father at all, but she must rush in case he was dying, please don’t feel worried, but of course one can’t be sure, and anyhow she thanked them, she’d enjoyed herself wonderfully, and so she’d better go home at once.

  She went, followed by sheepish Victor. They said nothing till they’d passed out of the building and down the steps. Daphne pushed into the front ranks of the swarming crowd, and they clasped one another and giggled, whispering and wriggling.

  “Didn’t she look like an ibis standing on one leg.”

  “I was so frightened I’d say something wrong.”

  “O it’s so glorious to be free again.”

  “Only you and me.”

  Suddenly she grew afraid. “Where am I to spend the night?” She’d been so concerned to escape and see Victor that she hadn’t noticed how she’d isolated herself. “I can’t go back to father, and I can’t go to the Manethos’s again... ”