by Jack Lindsay
He called again, “Anyone here speak Greek?”
A thin man came forward and answered in a mixture of Greek and the native dialect. At least Victor could make out the general meaning of what was said. He felt a consuming love of the thin dirty man whose surly voice broke the circle of absolute isolation; but he controlled himself.
“I want food. And I can pay for it.”
He produced the gold piece and was about to give it to the man, but drew back his hand. No. That wasn’t the way; he mustn’t show fear or weakness.
“Here’s proof I can pay,” he went on. “ Get me some food. Food.”
The man gabbled to the others, and after a while a woman appeared with some bread—thin slices which had been dried in the sun to make them keep well. Victor tried to eat, but the bread was too dry. He swallowed laboriously a few morsels, and then called for beer. “Cheese too,” he told the man. “ Soup...” His list of foods gave out, and he could think of nothing but warm appetising soup. The man shook his head; but after a long discussion with the women he managed to get a half-mug of sour beer, a small piece of cheese, and some dried fish.
Victor ate rapaciously, undeterred by the ring of watchers.
He felt guilty however because he was eating while Daphne was still hungry; but it was necessary for him to regain his strength first, so that he could return to her after coming to terms with these villagers.
Several younger men had now joined the group, and they were muttering together, looking at Victor malevolently. He grew afraid again and tugged at his belt; if he offered them all the money, perhaps they would do nothing. But his hand ceased its tugging; he felt as if Daphne’s eyes were upon him; he couldn’t give the money away. It was the only thing that could save his life and Daphne’s life and the life of the baby for which he cared nothing alone but which he could not bear to see die.
He drew himself up.
“Tell them all,” he said to the interpreter, “that I have many friends in the Limne. Officials. Great men. They’ll tear down the houses of anyone that does me injury. My boat was sunk through a leak, and I’ve lost my way. All who help me will be rewarded.”
He stared calmly and commandingly at the mutterers, folding his arms. The quickly eaten food was weighing down his stomach, weakening him as it drew the blood from his distressed body to grapple with the toil of digestion; but already he could feel a new strength creeping back into his veins, almost an intoxication. Nothing was going to go wrong. He wouldn’t let it. By God, he wouldn’t.
“I want a carriage,” he said to the interpreter, and then realised that such a demand was ridiculous. “A waggon will do.”
The man shook his head dully, and Victor saw that it would be necessary to find a means of arousing his self-interest if anything was to be done. He continued, “I’ll take you as my servant for a month. I’ll pay you well. Five times what you’d be earning here.” Perhaps that was over-generous, but he had wanted to say a “hundred times” and so he was proud that he had only said “five.” He tried to speak in a business-like way, as if he were used to hiring servants. “Will you come?”
The man agreed after a consultation with a muddy old man whom Victor discovered later to be village-head; and at once became zealous on his master’s behalf. He remembered that there was a cart in one of the sheds. Victor explained to him why the cart was needed; and the man remembered that one of the villagers had a mule which could probably be hired. The mule wasn’t very active, but could still stand upright. Slowly Victor had his way. It took a great time to make the purchases; at one moment the villagers refused to sell anything, at the next moment they were all clamouring round and trying to sell objects for which no request had been made.
He settled the matter by detailing to his newly-acquired servant what was wanted, and telling him to make the selection; if he took worthless things, the price would be deducted from his wages. The man had told the villagers that Victor had been shipwrecked with his wife who had thereupon brought forth a child; and the story appealed to their imaginations. Victor found himself carried away by the work of ordering his servant and the others; he forgot his leaden stomach fighting with acid juices to absorb the sudden food, the racking pain over his eyes, the sagging ache of his muscles. He heard his own voice caustically bidding the crowd to stand back. There was no menace now in the natives; they seemed to have accepted his intrusion; they smiled at him good-humouredly and gave friendly messages to him through the interpreter. One of the women, at the interpreter’s suggestion, agreed to visit the rock-tomb and assist Daphne.
Victor was happy. Never had he been so happy before, for he was at ease. He was dealing with these people on their own level. He liked them all, but hadn’t shown any fear of them. Now it would be all right to make a return of fellow-feeling. In giving the gold coin to the interpreter (to be given in turn to the village-head who was to provide the small change for disentangling the respective claims of the villagers, for a charge of five per cent), Victor declared that the money left over was to be used in providing a free public meal. When this offer was understood, the crowd shouted with joy and pushed round to touch their benefactor appreciatively (though the interpreter remarked to Victor that, if he knew the village-head, the five per cent charge would be sufficiently elastic to take in most of the money over). More food and clothing was produced and stowed gratis in the cart; various women gave extensive advice to Victor about Daphne’s condition (though he could not follow a word of what they said); and about half the village would have followed him on his return to salute, and have a look at, Daphne, if he hadn’t forbidden them through the interpreter on the plea that quiet was needed.
He responded to these shows of good-will by picking up a small girl who had clung round his leg, lifting her in his arms, and offering her a fig from a bundle in the cart. She opened her mouth and chewed at the fig, holding it with both hands. He put her down and found that the cart was ready to go; and amid the applause of the villagers he set off with the interpreter at his side, while the woman came behind, goading on the mule.
As they went, he deliberated. Daphne would not be well enough to be moved yet. They would lodge in the rock for some days, for it was a large chamber and there was room enough. Then he and the interpreter would take Daphne in the cart to the farm of Lucilius, which could not be many miles distant. The sailors had said that the district was only a short way further south.
As they came near the rock-tomb, he signed to the interpreter not to hurry, and ran ahead. He had some figs in his hand, the most palatable of the foods that the villagers had been able to muster. Sobbing with joy and anxiety, he sped over the broken ground, careless of his jolted limbs. O God, what if anything had happened to Daphne and the child.
But as he scrambled up the slight slope, he saw that she was safe within the rock-chamber. She had raised herself a little and leaned against the wall, the baby in her arms under her bared breasts. A dim glow suffused her, haloing her pale-gold head, softening her weary limbs in an attitude of perfect repose. He thought of Isis and the Divine Babe who had been born on the night of his marriage with Daphne. Daphne was greater than Isis, for she was Isis and yet mortal. Pity swelled and burst in Victor, leaving only love and courage and pride. Here was his wife and his son, here the meaning of things hidden and manifest. The unutterable Mysterion. The thought of the last years rushed upon him and he tried to find a way of grasping the changes that had occurred within him, for he had changed while yet nothing seemed changed; but the thought was too large, too exacting, and only fragments of it blundered through his mind.
Daphne opened her weary eyes, and they burned at once with deep violet fires of welcome.
“Everything is all right,” he said breathlessly. “Everything.”
“You are here,” she murmured.
He held out the figs, laughing. “Beautiful figs to eat.” She shook her head and parted her lips for a kiss; and he kissed her, and then broke up a fig and fed her.
&
nbsp; Beauty and terror of the world. Images flared and faded within his blood. Isis and the Holy Child, Daphne with her bared breasts suckling the world. He understood it all, and yet it escaped him. The acts of religion were a veil behind which the reality stirred; they sought to mirror the changes of the blood, the pang and release of growth, the timeless darkness of memory, the mouth of light, hunger and eating and the food changing into blood, the life of the blood driven into consciousness, desiring, returning into itself, growing, finding new meanings. It was only this, there was nothing else. Why then did the priests make it difficult? or was the difficulty only in the darkness of the blood that clouded the moon-mouth, the releasing light? and in the fear of the past, the insatiable dead that cluttered up the earth, claiming their offering, their share in everything?
He had no words for these thoughts, which came to him in quick jerking emotions, like the moon racing through a wild cloud-rack, like fishes slithering in the underwaters; moons of beauty, glistening spawn of thought, in the wild depths.
In the body, in the changes of the blood. One in everything, touching or not touching, tired or active, in bodies reverend without shame. He knew it all, in her arms he knew it, or standing alone.
And he loved the child, his shared child, his son.
Outside the interpreter was loudly superintending the unpacking. The mule brayed. Victor went out and took up the rugs. “Bring in the food,” he said.
Then with cautious gentleness he raised Daphne while he slipped the rugs under her and wrapped her up, and he touched their child caressingly and smiled at her. And the answering smile in her eyes made him feel that his heart was broken, that he was the happiest man in all the world. And he was afraid of no one.
