by Jack Lindsay
“Get a room in a boarding-house,” suggested Victor, his ardour quenched.
“I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. How dare you suggest such a thing. I’ve never slept in one in my life. Everyone knows they’re full of bugs and wicked men. You can’t love me.”
“I was only trying to think of something.”
“Then do think.”
But he couldn’t think; he was merely unhappy that she would have to leave him.
Then she had an idea. “I’ll go to my uncle.”
“Who’s that?” he asked, surprised.
But she had remembered that she wouldn’t know whether Olympos was at the Museion or the Palace, and she still felt secretive about Olympos, saying to herself that Victor would be sure to give himself away somehow if he knew.
“O somebody you don’t know. Why don’t you use your brains instead of shouting down all my suggestions.”
“I wasn’t shouting.”
The voices of both were raised; but in the heaving tumultuous crowd no one could overhear them. The crowd was moaning, wailing, screaming, then strangely hushed, all at the same time. The crowd was Isis in her birth-pangs, praying for deliverance from the body of death.
“We’ll have to walk the streets all night.” He knew that she wouldn’t like that, but wanted to hurt her after the unreasonable way she’d turned down the only sensible notion, that of the boarding-house. Some boarding-houses weren’t so bad. “I’ll probably be whipped for staying out all night.” He knew that was untrue; for he could appeal to Antonius who would laugh and pardon him; but he wanted to make Daphne sorry and afraid. “But I don’t mind.”
“That’s what we’ll do,” she answered calmly. “You’ll have to stay with me. I can’t help how much they whip you. It’s your fault.”
“It isn’t.”
“Would I be here if it wasn’t for you?”
That was true; she was suffering for his sake; tears came into her eyes.
“Forgive me. I can’t bear to see you suffer. If I’m rude, it’s because I’m so worried; and so I make you worry more. Dearest.”
She was touched, and they clasped more tightly, swaying with the crowd, forgetting all about rites, aware only of noise and movement, and glad to be in the midst of it all, swung on the dark tide, saved from all problems while the surging noise continued. Without thinking, they began to share the general perturbation, amid the oceanic whirl of lights, the yellow-fuming city, stinking with oil. Up in the sanctuary a miracle was happening. Midnight would finalise it, or end the world. The point of midnight would be a pinprick of flame on which the ball of the universe balanced.
Into the topmost sanctuary had withdrawn all the holiest of the priests, bearing the swathed figure of the Mother. Around her bed were standing the priests vowed to chastity. Their contained sexual potence was a reservoir for such moments as this; it flowed inwards, in to the centre of things, not out on to the surfaces and crannies of the earth. Isis in travail was chastity become active, the symbol of birth limned in clear lines and colours on virginal vision, the blood stormily recoiling upon its organs instead of flowing out into fresh shapes. Isis was the beginning and the end. She needed chastity as well as marriage. The prophets were standing round the doors moaning; the stolists, male and female, held in their hands the garments, light or dark, which represented the two-fold life of the gods; the pastophori held the sacred images.
Despite their preoccupation Daphne and Victor perceived the gathering of the priests; stared at the raising and lowering of holy things, the withdrawal into the sanctuary of birth; listened to the rattle and whining clang of the sistra in the hands of the priestesses who stirred in slow dances, dressed in their linen skirts, fringed scarfs knotted across their breasts. Cymbals clanged.
The crowd was moaning with an increasing terror and exaltation, waiting for the revelation. The eddying blaze of lights raced and foamed overhead like a sea, drowning the wild masses, squeezing out their breath; surely in the morning the crowd would float in the stilled pool of sunlight like dead fishes turning up their slit throats, their red-flannelled gills. Victor felt himself suffocating. Daphne held him tight and seemed to say something: that she wouldn’t let him be whipped. But he couldn’t hear, he didn’t even want to hear, he was absorbed by what was going on unseen inside the sanctuary.
Then came a mighty hush, suddenly, like the crack of a whip.
The door was opening. The priests were re-forming, quietly, quickly, regularly, making way. The movement of forming in and out, the discipline, drew all eyes with a hungry awe towards the door-panels. Midnight had come. The universe stood still, balanced on its pinprick of flame, on you and me. On me.
The image was in the hands of the priests, raised sweeping, uncovered. The naked-breasted mother with her babe, the suckling babe.
“The Virgin has brought forth! Light is growing!”
The million lights of Alexandria met in maelstrom, burst into a tremendous glow of power in the euphrasied eyes of the gazers. The Virgin was irradiated, her breasts milky with infinite fountains of gold. She smiled. Everyone saw her smile. The statue smiled. The immaculate babe was sucking her milk. The world was saved.
“The Virgin is a Mother! The Mother is a Virgin!”
“Light for the world! Light is growing!”
The shouts swelled, roared, fanning the universal glow higher into the sky, brushing away the dark, cleansing the troubled earth with proclamations of joy. Evangel of Spring. The Sun has passed through the loins of the Virgin.
Daphne was weeping, hung on Victor’s neck, saying something. He didn’t listen. He had at last found what he’d wanted to find. What he had felt stirring blindly on the day of the Adonia, opening unfamiliar eyes at the Finding of Osiris. Now he had been carried clean out of himself, into something great and rich and comforting. Into the life of Nature. One with the moving sun and the enduring earth. One with the snowflake of a flower that melted in a day, one with the crags of the mountains.
“Take me home,” sobbed Daphne.
*
They succeeded in getting away at last, on to the outskirts of the jubilant crowd. They were bruised, beaten, weary; their feet were trodden on till the insteps and toes ached; their ribs hurt from jostling elbows; their heads were fevered. Victor waited for Daphne to ask him once more to take her home; then he would argue the whole question out with her again. She really must go to a boarding-house; they could find a respectable one. The night was chilly away from the crowd. If she went home looking extremely draggled tomorrow morning, her father would probably make inquiries; she must be saved from herself.
But she said nothing.
They walked on fast, to get away from everyone. But that was difficult, when people thronged even the alleyways, shouting the glad tidings: “The Virgin has brought forth a son!” A detachment of the night-watch, acting as firemen, dashed past with buckets and axes. Such a night as this produced many fires. On towards the sea-front the lovers went, and Victor wasn’t sure if he or Daphne were leading the way. He didn’t care. In his exalted mood he didn’t really care what happened. But he rather wanted to get alone, after settling the problem of Daphne’s night-residence, to see if he could find out what had gone on inside him, to be peaceful and listen to his stirring blood, to shut his eyes and discover what images came. Daphne was an encumbrance. He couldn’t talk in this disquiet of his senses.
But she said nothing. He was relieved, astonished in a way that her mood was the same as his own, but afraid it would change. They reached the sea-front and turned eastwards, still silent, their mood of burdening mystery harmonised with the primeval voices of the sea, until they saw the palace-walls before them. Victor halted.
“Take me in with you,” said Daphne, speaking at last, in a husky whisper.
He started, paused, tried to think. It couldn’t be done. And yet, couldn’t it? Why not? There was a side door next to his room and only a short passage-way; usually he and others came in through the main do
or. Daphne’s words, while rousing him to an almost intolerable joy, frightened him; but they were like an order. He didn’t dare to show his fear. Whatever the risk, he had to take her in. Otherwise he would leave his life only a husk of regret. There were something final, beautifully irrevocable, about Daphne’s words and the tone in which she had uttered them, as if she were speaking from a depth which she had sounded for the first time, urgent, simple, passionate.
They had come to one of the postern-gates used only by the slaves.
“The password is Nusogenes. You go in first.”
He wanted to tell her to say, if questioned, that she was a newly-bought kitchen-slave; the soldier wouldn’t note her dress over-carefully and the light wasn’t very good. But the burden of silence was still in his blood, and he could not say more.
She nodded, walked straight up to the gate, spoke for a moment, and disappeared within.
Victor hurried forward, afraid that he would lose her on the other side. He passed the yawning sentry and found Daphne waiting in the shadows. She took his arm without a word, and he led her round in a detour to the side door; the buildings were all yet alight. But nobody would suspect anything if they saw; on a night like this the slaves would be stealing about together. It was really extraordinarily easy to smuggle Daphne in.
At the side door he stopped. “Wait a moment.”
He looked within. There was no one. He took her arm again and led her in, down the corridor and into his room.
Borios was there, already in bed. He sat bolt-upright, and in rage Victor saw that he was stript for the night. Sheltering Daphne as much behind himself as possible, he appealed to Borios. An old lamp spluttered dimly in a corner.
“Look here. I want to ask a favour of you. I’ve a friend here, and I want to have the room for myself tonight. Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” answered Borios, trying to peer round Victor at the demure Daphne. “ Go ahead.”
“I said: for myself.”
“Then suppose I’m not here. Put out the light.”
Victor argued, threatened, promised; he didn’t himself mind the presence of Borios very much, he was proud of having Daphne with him, but feared that Daphne would object and insist on going away after all. Borios refused to budge.
“I’m not a spoil-sport. I shan’t take the slightest notice of you. But I won’t shift. Why, you fool, that would be sure to bring someone snooping round. I’ll keep my mouth shut, I give you my word, but I won’t shift. Go ahead.”
Daphne plucked at Victor’s sleeve and whispered in his ear, “Let him stay. Put out the light.”
Victor was pleased to escape from the necessity of browbeating the imperturbable Borios; but, though immensely eased that Daphne was not going to object, he didn’t quite like the suggestion coming from her. Surely she hadn’t taken a fancy to Borios, who was a good fellow in his way, but coarse and lumpish.
“Turn away,” he said to Daphne, determined that Borios shouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing her face. Then he moved across to the lamp and snuffed it.
He heard Daphne moving in the dark, rustling about, undressing; and he seemed to be back on the day of their meeting, in the lake-side glade, and blinked his eyes to remove the dark, feeling the green-dappled light of the glade somewhere beyond his reaching finger-tips. That day she had run away, out of the glade; would she fade from his grasp again? Then he heard her slip into the creaking bed, and recalled in misery how very easily the bed did creak. Still, it was lucky that there were two small beds in the room as in the old days with Eros, or the position would have been impossible. Curse Borios. Victor kicked off his sandals, wrenched off his cloak, dragged the brooch-pin from his shoulder, drew the tunic up over his head, and moved to join Daphne.
The haste of all these operations had taken his mind away from what was actually happening. Only as he drew the blanket up over him and felt Daphne at his side did he realise. An exquisite sweetness of warmth flooded his body, followed by a recoil of fear. He hadn’t dreamed of such a consummation; it had come so strangely, so unexpectedly, so irretrievably; otherwise he would have prepared, been physically ready...Besides, the presence of Borios affected him with an unforeseen oppression, seemed to be threatening him from the rear. The numbness, which had come over him on the pier and which he had felt growing on him in his tormented vigils on the tower, returned. He clasped Daphne, shuddering, and knew the worst, in a choking emotion of loss, regret and tiredness.
“…Don’t laugh at me,” he whispered in an agony of shame.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered softly, slumbrously. “Kiss me goodnight.”
*
At last he fell into a heavy doze. She seemed to have fallen asleep long before, breathing evenly. Borios had kept turning over in his bed, but had said nothing. Then, out of a scurry of dreams, Victor awoke in the first gleams of dawn. Incredulously he beheld Daphne at his side, lying on her back with lips slightly parted, her hair sprayed in tangles of soft gold on the pillow. She appeared perfectly fresh, and her breath came as peacefully as if her dream was virginally assured, ranging in Hesperidean gardens beyond the crumbling confines of the world.
A sense of mastery and easy happiness came upon Victor as he lay looking down at her, resting on his elbow. Warmth tingled blessedly in his veins. He took her in his arms confidently; and without opening her eyes, still dreaming, she stirred, a dewy flower of repose that opened and closed about the active bee. Smiling she lifted her lids and showed her smiling eyes, still glistening with her dreams; smiled awake, dream and the world being one.
Disturbed, Borios looked across the room, but, being a lad of his word, he made no intrusive comment. The others had forgotten his existence.
*
But the sounds of morning were heard: someone clumping down the corridor, clatterings, voices overpitched with sleepiness. The lovers noticed Borios and pulled the blankets over their heads.
“I’ll have to go,” murmured Daphne, with big eyes close to the eyes of Victor, all of her close to the all of him, huddled in the trough of the bed, deliciously faint with sweat, straw-gold white in the filtering light and heat, flushed with ivory and unimaginably close, so much of her and so much alive, so beautifully put together, beautifully here and there and curving back again, and her toe-nails digging into his ankle.
He rose clear of the kiss, thrust his head out of the blanket, and told Borios to look away. Then they dressed, making silent little jokes with fingers and eyes and compressed lips because of Borios; and then Daphne looked away while Borios dressed. Borios scouted along the corridor and at length declared that all was safe. In a moment Daphne was out of the building, and nobody had seen her except a scullery-girl coming out of a door further down, who gaped and disappeared, and whose word would go for nothing whatever she said; anyhow she shouldn’t have been in the passage herself. Daphne thanked Borios, wasting time (thought Victor), and then Victor took her towards one of the larger gates where so many servants were coming and going that the soldiers in the sharp morning air did nothing except blow on their hands, drink warmed wine and milk, and talk to the girl who had brought the tray.
Victor went out with Daphne. He didn’t care what trouble he created for himself by his absence. Neither he nor Daphne spoke, though both were filled with an anxious contentment. Each wanted to know if the other felt equally enraptured; but the rapture precluded words, it over-brimmed and washed away the anxious thoughts as quickly as they arose. The fresh morning air sparkled in the awakened senses; the chuckling voices of the harbour-waters were the slow baby-lisp of love’s peace; the cry of the wheeling seagulls was the cry of the lover’s enisled union, warning the world to stand off; the crowd of busy people, still glamoured with the festival night, were tokens of the surplus energy of love, its rash undivulged thoughts.
Near the waterside they saw a man with a portable stand of rings and bracelets meant for trinkets or for bargain-pledges. The Semites still often kept to the custom of givin
g a ring as an earnest, a pledge of the price in a contract. Victor had seen his master give or take such rings at Antioch, and knew that people exchanged them during wagers or betrothals, to mark the agreement. He stopped the huckster and bought two gilt-bronze rings.
“A fine morning,” the man croaked. “Fine for putting rings on your fingers and whatnots.”
“We’ve just been married,” said Daphne.
Victor scowled at her and sought to catch her eye.
“I could have guessed it,” answered the man. “Such rosy cheeks come from more than blowing on your porridge.”
“Are you married?” Daphne asked, though Victor had taken her arm and was trying to draw her away.
“That I am,” said the man with a leer. “She’s twice my size too. So you might as well say I was double-married.”
“And how many children have you?”
“Five alive and six dead.” He counted rapidly on his fingers. “Two of the dead were twins,” he added, importantly, as if that fact complicated the arithmetic.
“Give him some more money,” whispered Daphne loudly. Victor, with the best grace he could summon, handed the man another silver coin, and then got Daphne away.
“Why did you tell him?” he said. “He might recognise you and talk about it. One never knows.”
“Yes, one does,” said Daphne, pressing his arm. “I know I love you.”
He forgot his annoyance in the overwhelming pleasure of such an admission, which brought true the furthest of all his most daring hopes. “My darling sweetest...that’s all I want to know, ever.”
They each took a ring. He put his ring on to the third finger of her left hand, and she put hers on to the third finger of his left land; and then they kissed each other’s hand and laughed, and swore that they would never lose the rings. They stopped beside a house, and Victor, losing his caution, wrote on the wall with a piece of chalky stone picked up from the roadway: “V. and D. betrothal and marriage contract. Each gives the other everything including all kisses and no provisions are made for divorce as there can’t be any such thing. Signed for ever and ever.”
