Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  “But you won’t.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Why not, pray?”

  “It would only increase the sufferings. The people need safety and peace, food and work; and until that is fully given them, they must dream. I can’t stop them dreaming, but I can make the dream as harmless as possible. I tell you that I have no ambition.”

  “Then resign your position, and give me back the throne of Egypt. I am ambitious, I make no pretensions otherwise.”

  He smiled without approbation. “Egypt belongs to Rome now. I am a Roman. I obey the law of my race: which includes the ordering of all other races in the civilised world.”

  “You obey the law—even when it means the breaking of all laws.”

  “Even then.”

  She felt baffled. His pale handsome face with its curly hair and bulging temples repelled her. Yet there was power in him, as there had been power in Caesar. But with Caesar she had felt at home; with Octavianus there seemed only a faceless stone, without crevices.

  He looked at her, and wondered when she would have the sense to let him go. How she clung to life, undignified, utterly unattractive. He was suffering keenly, though the years had steeled him against most things—suffering through shame for her—and she appeared quite blind to his emotion. He wanted to cough, but was determined not to show physical weakness before her. His heart thumped, shaking him from head to foot; but he stood nonchalantly, deliberately turning his pity into disgust. For a moment there swept over him a wish to ravish her, out of anger for her obtuseness—to show her that it made no difference. The issue was Rome against the East, not wretched personalities, not dreams of the disinherited tribes for a Saviour, not dreams of the ruler for the crown of a god-halo. All the world needed was common-sense and respect for the moral basis of the state. Order. That was everything. The sense of Order. Emotion was the destructive force, and dreams. The woman on the bed was rotted with emotional fantasies.

  She felt her grip on the situation slackening, her head growing confused and heated. She realised that she had made every possible error in her effort to impress Octavianus, and even yet she could not understand him. She began talking wildly about Caesar and Antonius; most of the time Octavianus couldn’t tell to which of the men she referred, except that he guessed she was blaming Antonius for the war with Rome.

  She tossed and bit her embroidered pillow. “O I wish you were alive,” she moaned, herself uncertain whether it was Caesar or Antonius she meant. She knew that she was acting too obviously; and yet the more she felt this doubt, the less she could stop herself. She wasn’t acting at all.

  She tried to talk coherently, to argue out the position of Egypt from the point of view of international law, to insist that Caesar had definitely assured the independence of Egypt. Octavianus scarcely listened. He was so ashamed for her sake. If Egypt had been merely his, he would have given it back to her to stop her from making such a show of herself. But Egypt wasn’t his, though he was taking it over personally as President of the Roman Senate—an illogical arrangement, and open to the charge of ambition, but the only one that would work.

  Cleopatra seemed to read his brain. She broke into an accusation again of ambition. She swore that all Caesar’s ideas of Empire had come from her. What would serve nowadays but the centralisation of rule which had been achieved in Egypt with such pre-eminent virtue? Hadn’t every event during the last twenty years shown that the trend of forces vindicated what she wanted to do.

  Octavianus stood with bowed head, listening at last with interest, but making his own private reservations. His presidency was not kingship in the Egyptian sense; it was the rule of law that was the basic factor of Roman life, and Cleopatra would never grasp that. It might be true, it certainly seemed to be true, that the disrupted world was praying for a saviour-king; but the world was rotted with dreams bred of insecurity and malnutrition, and didn’t know what was best for it. Let it pray. The Roman must seek to give security and food, while resisting as much as possible the prayer for the saviour. Yet things were difficult. Some dream-cry was needed to cement the aspiration for brotherhood...No matter. Let the cementing come from the home, from a religious sense of the decencies; and if there was truth in Cleopatra’s prophecies that the dreams of the East would sap the walls of Rome, then let the walls collapse.

  She leaped from the bed, saying that she must show him what Caesar himself had written to her on these matters in his letters. She ran to a chest in a corner of the room, returned and thrust into the hands of Octavianus a bundle of love-letters. In one of them, she said, Caesar promised her Egypt. Octavianus glanced at them, sickened by the perfumes in which they were drenched as if in spices to hide the odour of the dead. He knew the handwriting. C4...That night...only you...kisses as many as the stars...I think I left a portion of manuscript in the left-hand cupboard...” Below Caesar’s usual high standard of literary form. That was his only comment. He wasn’t interested—rather, he was extremely loth to read. He pretended to look, skipped over the papyrus-sheets and wax-tablets, and handed them back.

  He was turning to go. She wanted at all costs to keep him as long as possible. The vulnerable point might show at any moment. It was her last hope.

  “I want to hand you personally the treasury-list,” she said, speaking slowly and distinctly to keep away the leaden sense of failure. The disregarded bundle of letters lay at the foot of the bed. “My steward is ready.” She clapped her hands, and Olympos appeared at the curtains. “Send Seleucos in,” she said.

  Seleucos entered, a squat man with a long nose bulbously pointed. He made a short bow to Cleopatra and a very deep bow to Octavianus, and to Cleopatra’s rage handed the sheet direct to him. Octavianus glanced at it and was about to lay it aside, when Seleucos sidled up.

  “Excuse me,” he said, clearing his throat and then realising he couldn’t spit in such a presence. After almost choking in his dismay, he managed to speak on. “You saw that list.”

  Octavianus nodded impatiently.

  Seleucos looked furtively at Cleopatra, spat in his extreme confusion, then, after a gulp of horror, declared, “ She cheated. It isn’t a full list. She left out a casket of jewels.”

  All Cleopatra’s rage of frustration burst out within her uncontrollably. She sprang from the bed, her strength returning. She caught Seleucos by the hair at the top of his head, wrenched at his nose, ears and hair, and banged him on the face. Octavianus was startled; then with a laugh he interposed and freed the steward. Panting, Cleopatra fell back upon the bed, and Seleucos ran terrified from the room. Octavianus dropped into a chair and laughed heartily. The tension went from his body, and he laughed with boisterous cordiality. Cleopatra felt that he had at last unmasked himself, but that his unmasked self was even less suited for her aims than his masked self. He was impenetrable, laughing with the abandon of a boy; his face had lost all its effect of tiredness and aloofness; and he laughed as loudly as Antonius had laughed, but without the element of bull-throatiness that had betrayed the lecher in the laughing-boy.

  Still panting with vexation and impotence, she stared at him.

  “I wished to keep those things only that I might have presents for your wife and sister.” It cost her much to mention the sister, who had been the wife of Antonius, but she succeeded in doing so without any effect of strain.

  “Of course,” said Octavianus easily. “I thank you on their behalf. By all means keep the casket.”

  He seemed to have lost all fear of her now. He sat calmly on his chair, waiting to hear if she had anything more to say. But she felt used-up, disarmed. She could sense that the man before her had many weaknesses, but there was no contact possible between him and her; he wasn’t interested in her except as an historical personage who was a bother; and if he took her it would be only out of a slight curiosity or compassion which would evaporate an hour afterwards.

  He saw that she had nothing more to say. He rose and bowed.

  “You can be sure that
you will be treated with all courtesy; and a person of your experience knows perfectly well that matters of international importance are settled by laws beyond the control of the individual. I wish you good-bye.”

  He turned smartly on his heel, and was gone.

  She sat motionless on the bed. She felt soiled. Why had she acted so ineffectually, so basely? He would go about laughing at her. No, at least he wasn’t that kind. But he despised her. She didn’t care. As long as Czesarion could be saved. The words of Octavianus smote her again, “The last of your line.” Caesarion was excluded, not con-sidered, as if already dead. Ah dear Isis, look down on Caesarion. Let him escape.

  The walls of the room closed in on her. The world was evil, and there was escape for no one.

  Olympos raised the curtain, and found that the Queen had fainted. He called to Charmion and Eiras.

  *

  For the next two days Cleopatra was continuously demanding the attendance of Olympos; but despite his care of her he grew hourly more worried about Nicias. He sent a slave and learned that Nicias had still not visited the Museion. Snatching a few hours’ leisure when Cleopatra had taken an opiate, he slipped into a carriage and was carried to the flat of Nicias. But no one answered him when he knocked at the door. Standing back in the roadway, he looked at the windows. Across the window of Daphne’s room the shutters were tightly fixed, and, as he stared, he saw that there were nails appearing through the wood. The shutters had been nailed up from the inside!

  At once all his doubts rushed back upon him. The nails could only have one meaning: that somebody—who else but Daphne?—was imprisoned in the room. He recalled the shifty look that Nicias gave while speaking of Daphne’s visit to Canopos. The tale was incredible; he had never believed it, but hadn’t definitely questioned himself about it till this moment. Daphne had no friends at Canopos, and why should she have gone there at such a dangerous time?

  He knocked again, and got no answer; then unwillingly returned to the Palace.

  That night he could not sleep. The sense of evil deepened, wrapping him in clammy webs of distaste; and at dawn he rose with a sudden desire to see Victor. Surely the boy would know about Daphne. It was only the slight remaining impulse on the part of Olympos to forget the association, to ignore his doubt whether Daphne had told him the entire truth, that had kept him from seeking out Victor before. But now he was overwhelmed by a hope that the pair had run away together, leaving Nicias embittered and determined not to confess what had happened. Although Olympos would not have approved of such an elopement it was better than the dark suspicions begotten in his head by the manner of Nicias.

  He knew where Victor slept, and went straight to the room. Victor was in the pantry, said Borios who was lacing up his shoes. Olympos waited. In a while Victor returned with a bowl of barley-porridge. He started at the sight of Olympos and wondered what the coming meant, but felt irrationally that it was something to do with Daphne; for since the night when Olympos had bandaged his head and talked about love, he had always connected Olympos with his affair.

  Olympos told him to finish his breakfast, and studied him while he ate. There was something pleasing about the boy, yet weak; his mouth had sensibility and there was intelligence in his blue eyes. But this morning he looked washed-out; his hands trembled as he stirred the porridge; his eyes wandered uneasily to the bed, and he tidied the sheets.

  At last Borios had gone out, and Victor put the bowl down. “Where is Daphne?” asked Olympos.

  Victor was astonished, and yet he had expected some such question. “Daphne...” he stammered.

  Olympos narrowed his brow. He had forgotten that Victor was unaware of his knowledge. “I’m her uncle,” he said. “She told me all about your love.” It was hard to use the word “love”; all his deep-buried but half-ignored and rationalised social-prejudices rose up within him to abuse this slave who had compromised Daphne; but for Daphne’s sake he humbled himself. He went on quietly, and his self-control brought him a real sympathy for the lovers, a forgiveness for the boy before him. “You can trust me. I’ve been trying to see her, but her father says she’s gone to Canopos.”

  “He found out about us,” blurted Victor, his first suspicions disappearing before the need to unburden himself. “The slave told him. He’s got her locked up there, I think. What’s this about her going away?”

  “What have you done to help her?” asked Olympos severely.

  Tears came into Victor’s eyes. “I’ve done my best. I went to see him and asked him not to be angry. If you only knew how I had to fight to do that. But he turned me out. I could have run away to a friend in the south.”

  Even in his anguish Victor had caution enough not to mention the exact locality of the farm. “But I stayed on here as a slave. I couldn’t bear to leave her. I couldn’t be free without her.” He realised that he mustn’t boast about intentions of illegal flight. “Antonius said I could be free. He freed me.”

  Olympos was softened. “There was nothing you could have done.” He felt a wish to ease the boy. “But it will all come out right in the end.”

  Victor rose from the bed and came close to Olympos with distraught eyes. “O will you help us?” He lifted his hands limply, and Olympos felt dislike stirring again.

  “Leave it to me,” he said testily. Victor hung his head and drew back. “Don’t lose heart,” went on Olympos more kindly. “I’ll see that you both have your chance.” He rose and laid his hands on Victor’s shoulders. “You’ll be good to her? you’ll love her always?”

  “As my life,” answered Victor, staring yearningly into the pale eyes of the old man, and trying to convey the depth of his devotion; but though he knew that the devotion was there, he could only feel the wish to convey it, not the devotion itself; and he feared that Olympos would misunderstand.

  Olympos was satisfied. “I believe you.” He wanted to believe; always he wanted to believe in people; and so often he had been betrayed. Now Nicias had become crazed. There was only one disease: fear. Everything else could be cured but the taint of fear, and nothing except that taint was worth curing. Yet there was an achievement in perfecting the operation of removing stone from the bladder. Olympos saw the operating-slab before him; the body was cut open, and the hook was fixed in the stone to keep it from moving; then the thin blunt-edged cleaver was placed against the stone, and the stone was carefully broken without injury to the bladder. He had closed his eyes, and the picture rose before him—the body was the body of Daphne, and Nicias was holding the cleaver, with mad eyes; he let the edge slip.

  Olympos sweated, chilled, and awoke to the scene about him. The disordered room, the anxious-faced Victor. No one should interfere with another’s life, another’s body. No one should get stone in the bladder, necessitating interference. No one should be in love. It didn’t matter. His hands were firm; he didn’t fumble. That was the main thing. Probably he did no good. He couldn’t know. Only, his heart was torn.

  “Wait at the corner of the Sema street,” he said and went out.

  *

  Passing down the corridor, he heard his name called, and saw a slave who had already come several times with messages from the officer in charge.

  “I have a message for you, master Olympos,” the man said loudly, though some of Cleopatra’s girls were standing by. “You are to watch that the Queen has no poisons, for Caesar fears that she may wish to end her life if she hears that Cesarion is dead and she is to walk in the Triumph at Rome. She is not to be told such matters.”

  Olympos put his finger to his lip and frowned; but the man’s air of deliberate gaucherie, his embarrassed smile, confessed the truth. The girls had been meant to overhear. Murmuring together, they had hurriedly withdrawn; the Palace would buzz with the news in a moment; and within an hour it would have reached Cleopatra, whatever precautions were taken.

  Olympos signed to the slave to go, and himself passed on. So Caesarion was dead; and now Cleopatra would die. There was no doubt of it. And she was
best dead in a world where she had no place. But Daphne’s life was only beginning...His heart froze. What if Daphne were already dead? She had been weeks alone with Nicias. Perhaps he had starved her to death, strangled her. Olympos quickened his pace and called again for the carriage. He wished to go as fast as possible; also he had not the strength to walk.

  But he made the carriage go by a roundabout way, although at full speed; for he must not arrive too soon before Victor. Then, deciding that he had allowed enough time, he descended and knocked at the door. There was no answer. He called the two coachmen and bade them heave the door down. They braced their shoulders and pushed. There was a crackling screech, and something snapped. Olympos bade the men stand back. Ignoring the curious knot of passers who were collecting, he listened and heard footsteps. He waved the men back to the carriage.

  With grating of the half-broken hinges, the door opened and Simon put out his head. “Go away,” he said. “Master says go away.”

  Olympos pushed past him and walked up the stairs. At the top hovered Nicias, his face darkly convulsed with fury.

  “Go away,” he cried, swinging his arms round. Then he saw who it was. “You...”

  “I want a word with you, please,” said Olympos mildly. He took Nicias by the arm and drew him into the study. Nicias submitted, after a backward glance down the stairs.

  “What was the noise?”

  “A drunken soldier fell against the door,” answered Olympos, saying the first thing that came into his head.

  Nicias accepted the explanation, with a muttered male-diction against Romans; and they sat down beside his table.

  “I haven’t seen you for a long time,” said Olympos, seeing that Nicias did not mean to open the conversation. He himself had no plan; now that he was faced with Nicias, he did not know what to do or say. He had taken for granted that by entering the closed premises he would find out everything; but he had found out nothing, except that he was afraid of the eyes of Nicias but could not look at anything else.