Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  Victor was carried into his bedroom, and the fussy damp-eyed doctor who attended to the slaves was fetched. Grumbling to himself (merely out of habit, and because it frightened the more ignorant slaves who thought he muttered spells), the doctor sent for his surgical instruments and was cutting the hair away from the wound, when Antonius appeared at the doorway and asked how Victor was.

  “Here, you,” he said to the doctor. “Hold on. I’ve sent for the court-physician. I can’t have my best page murdered because I lost my head and charged into that mob. However, things were cleaned up fairly thoroughly.”

  He heard footsteps in the passage, and lifting the curtain, let Olympos in.

  “I don’t think there’s much wrong with the lad, but I don’t want his wound to get infected. He’s only a slave—but a slave of mine,” he added bellicosely.

  “I am not concerned whether he is a slave or a prince,” replied Olympos with dignified disregard. “For me he’s a person with a cut head.”

  “Good,” said Antonius, and slapped Olympos on the back. “I’m glad you’re not one of these palace-lickspittles. Now if I asked the eunuch-chamberlain to wipe after a drunken little slave-girl, he’d have fits.”

  Olympos paid him no attention but went on examining Victor’s head, and Victor felt how different were his fingers from those of the first grumbling doctor.

  “It’s nothing,” said Olympos. “It merely needs careful washing and bandaging.”

  Antonius took Victor’s hand, placed his own hand over it, whistled, and went out.

  The slave-doctor, who had watched indignantly the usurpation of his functions, went to follow.

  “You can stay and help,” said Olympos.

  Torn between anger at the interference and pleased at the collaboration, the slave-doctor began explaining at length what he had intended to do, using all the technical terms he could recollect and speaking in ponderous periphrasis.

  “Exactly,” said Olympos. “Washing and bandaging.”

  The slave-doctor relapsed into affronted silence, half-convinced that Olympos was a charlatan, and was told that he could now carry out the basin, the patches of clotted hair, the instruments; and, grumbling to himself in earnest, he obeyed. Olympos finished winding the lint-bandage round Victor’s head over a poultice of olibanum and gum-arabic.

  “Shall I be laid up long?” asked Victor.

  “No, but you shouldn’t do any work for a while.”

  Victor, who had been moaning at the pricking of his wound, brightened. “I’ll be able to go out, though I won’t have to work?”

  “That’s it. But you mustn’t go drinking or pleasure-chasing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Victor looked up, his eyes dim with thanks, into the old impersonally-bowed face. He felt attracted and keen to express his sense of benefits granted, discovering how much he longed for someone to whom he could talk about Daphne. “I’ve no use for such things. I only want...to go out.”

  Olympos liked the lad’s open sensitive face. “You like the views, no doubt.” He prepared to go.

  “No,” said Victor, doubtful whether this remark was sarcastic or not, and wanting to make the kindly, aloof doctor stay a little longer. “It isn’t views or anything like that.” He hesitated. “I want to see a girl.”

  “I’ve told you that you mustn’t—”

  “Only to be with her,” interrupted Victor, volubly. “ Only to talk with her. It’s not what you think. I love her.” He stopped, the pulse of the wound jerking into consciousness.

  Olympos smiled. “No harm in that. But lie still.” No harm in love; he wasn’t sure. He was sure of nothing except that Erasistratos was wrong about arteries; and even that he couldn’t prove. Perhaps the boy couldn’t prove he was in love, whatever his love was. Olympos felt old, but liked the boy. “No harm. As long as it doesn’t tear wounds open. I’ll send instructions about salves...” No harm in love; no harm in lack of love, but much weariness—or was it merely age? He loved his niece Daphne, but hardly ever thought of her; he wished to see her happy, but didn’t let the wish destroy his sleep or his appetite. That was a poor enough love. Anyhow he wasn’t concerned with love, but with diseased tissues; and he wasn’t disillusioned either, lie was merely a conscientious physician. “I’ll send you a harmless sleeping-draught,” he said, stopping at the door.

  The pain had come back knocking at Victor’s head, jagging a spur into him as time galloped. But beyond the jangling throb he was happy. He would have whole days free, and no questions asked; whole days with Daphne.

  *

  She waited an hour next morning at the seat in the garden, but no one came. Borios had gone on duty before Victor awoke from murderous dreams, and there was no one else who could be trusted. Victor sweated in his distress, thinking of Daphne at the tryst, sure that she would never forgive him, that she would be lost for ever (though he knew her address now), that she would die, run over by a carriage through her distraction, or would drown herself in one of the cistern-reservoirs that filled the pipes with water (as he had heard of someone else doing, because of the discussion whether the drinking-supply was contaminated), that she would be accosted by some overpoweringly charming youth who would snatch her henceforth all his own, that something dreadful would happen. And he couldn’t bear to think what she would be thinking; how she would be suffering, doubting him, torturing herself with phantom fears and suspicions...

  Daphne was in a savage temper, sure that he had deserted her at last for some palace wench, afraid that he was dead, and then surer than ever that he was deceiving her. It was the first time she’d thought such a thing; but now it burst on her like a long-prepared misery. Once before, when detained unexpectedly, he’d sent Borios with a note and been stupidly jealous afterwards because she’d said that she thought Borios a very well-behaved boy for his age (a year beyond her own), particularly as he’d been so considerate that night and morning in the bedroom. She didn’t mention that he’d tried to kiss her when he brought the note, because that was beside the point. She had easily kept him in his place and he hadn’t been at all unpleasant when she refused.

  But now she was sure that Victor had deserted her. (Perhaps the vile Borios had bragged and lied, and turned Victor against her.) The shock left her weak, empty of purpose, with quaking entrails and slogging heart that seemed to be swelling larger and larger...Perhaps she was so sure of the desertion because she’d wanted to see Victor so importantly today...

  She climbed the stairs of home with dragging limbs, and found Olympos visiting. She heard his voice and entered her father’s room, as she always did when Olympos was there (and seldom did otherwise, except to make the bed); entered without thinking, for she had no wish to talk with anyone. Luckily Olympos was launched on some description; he merely took her hand, pressed it, and went on with his remarks. She moved behind him, tidying the table and settling the rolls in their proper cases, putting the reed-pens straight. For lack of something to do, she then picked up some reeds from a corner-rack and began slowly cutting them into pens with the little curved knife lying ready on the table beside the ink-pot. When she’d got the right length (not too long or it wobbled, not too short or it wrote scrubbily), she split the reed (not too deep or it scratched and opened, not too short or the ink wouldn’t flow). She liked cutting pens. Although she was afraid that she would draw attention to her woe-begone condition, she couldn’t bear to go into her own room and be alone.

  Olympos was telling of the riot and the palace-rumours.

  “Potheinos, on instructions, drew up a list of the richest Jews. They’re to be asked to contribute to the national defence fund. A circumcision-tax Potheinos kept calling it. You know his squeaky voice: Yes, my lady, we’ll skin these Jews, we’ll cut them to the quick. Charmion couldn’t stand it after a while. They’ll still have more left than you, Potheinos, she said, even if you beggar them. The wrinkled old eunuch blushed. Indeed he did. With rage, doubtless…”

  Nicias was trying
to listen, though he objected to the fiction that he was always avidly ready to hear Olympos retail this kind of gossip. What had these petty affairs to do with the real design of life, the vital geometry? In Agamemnon life had the compelling logic of a theorem of Eucleides, and yet the logic was blood, was emotion in nakedness. Close up, life was only a mesh of endless intricate veins and nerves, a nasty mess of blood and guts; at a distance it was the active body, the individual with his strange power to mimic or to pollute the divine system.

  “Antonius was himself again—for the first time since the return. One of his pages was laid out—”

  Daphne cut right down the reed, spoiling it; cut into the ball of her thumb. She watched the blood slowly rising, coming up it seemed tentatively, unwilling to leave her body, then gathering courage, rushing. Blood. In panic she looked round, and, finding no cloths at hand, staunched the wound on the inside of her skirt. Victor was dead; it served her right for the cruel things she’d thought about him.

  “...a stone on the head...”

  Everything was slowed down, the words came infinitely slowly. And she seemed to be going deaf, she feared that she would go quite deaf before the final words blackened out her life.

  Her elbow knocked two rolls on to the floor.

  Nicias glanced up in irritation. “Don’t touch my table.” Olympos turned to help, and saw her quivering hand, her pallid face.

  She tried to avert her face, having read his solicitous eyes. “I’m all right.”

  “You look ill.”

  “I’m all right,” she repeated desperately, in harsh level tones. “I’ll pick these things up.”

  Olympos, hurt and worried, turned away again. Nicias had seen nothing except that Daphne was being normally awkward.

  “I wish you’d leave my table alone in the future.”

  “Yes, father.”

  Olympos was disturbed by the toneless voice; he forgot what he’d been talking about. Daphne waited breathlessly for his next words, terrified that she had really gone deaf and was losing the information on which her life depended. Olympos said nothing, but lay back, closing his eyes. Daphne felt hysterical; she couldn’t wait, she must know, she couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Was he killed?”

  “Who?”

  Olympos turned to her again, and was distressed at her staring eyes, her shaking lip, which she bit. All the blood seemed draining out of her face into her eyes; her blue eyes were haloed yellow, dilated. He tried to relate the symptoms. Was she ill?

  She had to speak again, difficult as it was. It was more difficult to keep on living without knowing. “What you were talking about. Someone that a stone...” She couldn’t say more. Not if she were to die. O to die! Olympos seemed to be standing over her (though she sat almost a yard away), with pincers that he thrust down her mouth, demanding more words, tearing the life out of her heaving bowels, but no more words. She hated him, with defiant eyes, gaining a trivial strength at last through hatred, enough to keep her upright on the stool, though the floor wavered and her thumb bled into her skirt, pressed against her thigh.

  “It was nothing. A page. I attended to him. Only a nasty scalp-cut.” He forced himself, out of pity, to turn away, back to Nicias. “I only mentioned it to show how Antonius is getting back his spirits...”

  He made himself talk on. Nicias grunted. He’d as soon have listened to Simon talking about the troubles of his brother and sister-in-law. One tale was as relevant to the universe as the other—as irrelevant, that was, as void of ritual form; nothing that a dance could be made out of; nothing for a chorus to make into a revelatory lyric, gravely danced. Boozy generals and trollopy queens, and children who didn’t know when it was time to go to bed.

  He muttered to himself, as if the words were a charm against the infecting futility and lack of style in modern life:

  What would have Priam done had he stood here? He would have walked upon the purple cloths.

  *

  Olympos managed to finish his account, and stood up.

  “I think Daphne wants some fresh air,” he said, speaking as casually as he could. “Will she guide an old man as far as the sea-front?”

  Daphne nodded and got up from the stool, ignoring the fact that she had ostensibly just come in from a walk. Her tremendous gratitude for Olympos (as if his medicaments had veritably raised Victor from the dead) changed into gnawing fear and hatred again; but for that very reason she could not refuse.

  Nicias was pleased to see her leave his table alone. “Perhaps you’re right...”

  Daphne and Olympos walked slowly along the road, as if by making their walk all the longer they delayed the moment of question and answer. They walked slowly, not arm in arm, so that they had to part every now and then to let hurrying oncomers pass between them. Now that he was forcing himself to frame his suspicions in words, Olympos felt that he must be utterly wrong. The idea was too fantastic. Daphne was getting overwrought, and the mention of fighting and injuries had upset her. That was all. (Think of all the queer symptoms quoted in gynaecological treatises.) But the boy had himself mentioned love. Well, what of the hundred thousand other young girls in Alexandria?

  Daphne knew what he wanted to say, and didn’t know if she dreaded or wanted what was to happen. She wanted the excruciating silence to end. Suddenly she realised: Victor was alive, he loved her still. She didn’t care what happened.

  Olympos moistened his dry lips.

  “You seemed to take a lot of interest in the boy who was injured.”

  “What boy?” she asked with wide-open eyes, far too innocently. His suspicions returned more strongly than ever, reinforcing his determination which had quavered after that first inquisitorial sentence.

  “The boy I told about. I had a few words with him after I’d bandaged his head. He was rather a nice boy.”

  “I wonder where all these people are going,” said Daphne, waving up and down the street. “Father says that everyone in Alexandria has work; even the blind weave baskets. But I never see any work, do you?”

  “He told me that he was in love,” continued Olympos, relentlessly, more certain every moment that she was guiltily evading the subject.

  “Everybody’s in love,” she answered, then grew confused. “Unless they’re horrid.”

  “Then you must be in love.”

  “O no,” she said, airily. “I’m horrid.”

  “Daphne,” he said with quick appeal. “Be frank with me. Trust an old man who loves you.” Yes, he did love her, more than he’d thought; perhaps he would lose his sleep through her, and have his appetite spoiled, and not grudge the losses. It was almost a surprising discovery.

  She made no reply, but stared down at the ground. That made her giddy, for the ground seemed to rush up as she walked towards it, and she felt that she would fall on her face or on the back of her head. She had to lift her eyes; and since she knew that he was staring at her, she had to turn and stare back.

  “I’ve nothing to be frank about. Really.”

  He knew she was lying. The meek timbre of her voice. She would have been rude or affectionately nonsensical if she weren’t hiding something. He saw the blood-stain on her skirt, and noted that she held one hand with the sleeve drawn over it; and he grew more suspicious, though entirely unable to relate these matters to the question at issue. He decided to meet guile with guile.

  “It isn’t any use. He was delirious at first, and he mentioned a name. Several times.”

  Daphne fidgeted. “Lots of girls have my name.”

  “But I didn’t say he mentioned your name,” cried Olympos triumphantly.

  She stopped and faced him with burning cheeks and eyes. “Why are you tormenting me? You’re wrong. I’ve never met this Victor of yours.”

  “I never said his name was Victor.” He stared back at her and spoke calmly this time. “Now, Daphne, don’t try to pretend any longer. Please.”

  Daphne looked wildly round. A carriage came clattering up, and she f
elt drawn fearfully to throw herself under the prancing hooves of the horses. Or to dash for the harbour ahead and drown herself. Anything to escape. Then she looked back into the eyes of Olympos and began crying.

  “Come, my dear,” he said, and, taking her arm, he led her towards the harbour-side, where they could sit on the granitic ledge of the sea-wall and talk without being overheard. She still was crying quietly, but now was thinking hard, using the tears as a veil behind which to regather her wits. Olympos also was thinking hard, trying to visualise the situation. What had the girl done? A slave...a nice boy. Utterly impossible, the whole affair. He must stop it.

  On the sea-wall, she rested with her head laid against his shoulder. She felt safer that way; he couldn’t see her eyes. The waves raced and tumbled under the ruffling wind, and smoke was belching in huge volumes from the Pharos.

  “So you and this boy think you’re in love.”

  The answer came in a low rebellious voice. “We are in love.”

  “But what are your hopes? A slave...”

  At once she began to pour out all that she had hoped and never dared to think about; but she poured it all out as facts.

  “He isn’t really a slave. Antonius loves him and has promised to free him in a few weeks, and he’s going to give him a lot of money and a big plot of land with a house on it. And Victor isn’t an ordinary slave. He’s better educated than most of the students that father has. His other master used to make him read Greek poets and philosophers...”

  “But he isn’t free yet,” answered Olympos, not knowing how much to believe. Certainly Antonius had shown great favour for the boy last night. But a freedman was almost as ineligible for Daphne’s hand as a slave. Olympos decided to concentrate on the present issue, to sap the determination which had spoken so strongly in her voice. “You can’t associate with a slave, whoever he is. It would break your father’s heart, and ruin your life.”

  “It hasn’t broken your heart,” she said stubbornly, “and you love me more than father does.”