by June Trop
“Surely if it had been Binyamin, he’d have chosen a more appropriate weapon, if in fact he’d have thought he needed to bring one at all. So either you or Aunt Hannah must have been taking in the air in the Bruchium Quarter last night.”
At that moment, the room shrank around me, and I hated him for his sarcasm.
“I wasn’t following the bearers, Papa, I was following you. You went to a saloon, not to an inn. And not an ordinary saloon, mind you, but a backroom gambling den with the kind of ruffians you said Binyamin would consort with on a voyage to Rome.”
The pitch of my voice clotted with rage, each word cutting through his arrogance like the carving knife had slashed through that fiendish hound’s throat. And my tone reverberated with a cruel satisfaction, even pride, for standing up to his bullying, for unleashing my own brand of intimidation, for turning the tables to give him a dose of his own medicine.
So I continued.
“And there was one ruffian in particular who caught my eye. When he wasn’t swilling his Negrito, he was relieving himself in the yard. I hardly recognized you, Papa. What’s become of you?”
I crossed my arms, preparing for another gust of sarcasm.
Instead his expression morphed from denial to indignation and finally to remorse and shame as he collapsed into a private agony.
At first his mouth moved, but the words died in his throat. So, pushing back his chair, he levered himself up on shaky legs, wiped his sweat-drenched palms across the belly of his tunic, and dragged his chair to my side of the desk while I slid mine over.
As he turned toward me, the weepy gray light from the peristyle illuminated one side of his face.
“Miriam, my dear Miriam, it was bad enough having you interrogate me as if I were a common criminal, as if I’d absconded with the family jewels, but I cannot have you loitering in blighted alleys in the dead of night. That was reckless of you. You are the light of my life and the future of our family. You must not do that again.”
My rage began to leak away.
“I too have been reckless,” he said. “With the delay in announcing your marriage date, my relationship with Amram has soured. You know I am a proud man, Miriam, that I live by my word. So I cannot be at ease with him anymore. I cannot face him. I have broken the pledge he and I made when you were a toddler and Noah was a skinny lad, the very pledge, reaffirmed over the years, that became the cornerstone of our partnership.”
His back rounded now, his head bowed, his arms crossed in his lap, he continued softly, with a catch of emotion in his voice. His lips barely moved except for a self-pitying sigh.
“So, I’ve been trying to raise the capital to buy Amram out of our shared investments. At first the goal seemed attainable, but Alexandria has prospered despite the burdensome taxes and outbreaks of civil strife. So our assets have appreciated. And with Noah’s adding new mortgages to our holdings all the time, I saw my goal, paradoxically, becoming harder and harder to achieve.
“That’s when I turned to gambling, first on the chariot races—only the long shots, mind you—and then on dominoes and twelve-card draw in my club, but as my losses outstripped my winnings, the stakes got too high for me. So I had to find lower-ante games.
“You’re right, Miriam. I hardly recognize myself. The only way I could consort with those ruffians was to get good and drunk, to drown my shame and wallow in my indignity.”
Anger and pity, sorrow and disgust, horror and compassion each took a turn vying for my emotions. But when I took his hand in mine and pressed it to my lips, I saw a disarming candor and surprising gratitude illuminate his eyes for the first time.
All this man has ever wanted for me is a secure future with a loving family. Is he to be condemned for that? Why can’t I just explain to him that I don’t want to get married? That I’m not the reincarnation of Yocheved. That I don’t want children. That I don’t even like Noah anymore, at least not when I’m with him. That I want to study alchemy and learn about keeping the body and spirit of both humans and metals healthy. That all I want is to recover the scrolls before they find their way onto the black market. Before Jews are crucified, scourged, drawn and quartered, immolated, and butchered. Before our businesses are razed. Before there’s another pogrom.
On the other hand, why can’t I just marry Noah and solve all our problems? Why can’t I set the date and heal the breach and restore my father’s honor and ease Amram’s grief and have a houseful of children? Why can’t I do what every other maiden in our quarter would love to do, to marry into an adoring, honorable, and prosperous family? Instead, I vacillate. I’m unable to resolve the dilemma, even though I think of little else except the betrothal and now, of course, the scrolls. And with the end of the week bearing down on me—I have only a little more than three days left—I’m no closer to solving that problem either.
So I also confessed.
“Papa, I too am living with a shame that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I borrowed priceless scrolls, and despite my promise, I could not return them. Someone took them from my cubby in the library, probably during Shabbat but certainly between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. Someone who knew what they were and where I kept them. Someone who had the opportunity to take them. Why someone would do that to me, I do not know. But I need to know, Papa. Was it you, for whatever reason? To tarnish my standing with the League of Alchemists, to spur my marriage to Noah, or to sell them so you could sever the partnership and restore our solvency? Please, Papa, for my sanity. Please, for the inviolable bond between us. Please tell me. Did you take the scrolls?”
“No, Miriam. I did not. On my word of honor, I did not take your scrolls. Nor do I know who did.”
So it was Binyamin.
Chapter 19
Tuesday Afternoon
I DIDN’T HAVE to look far for Binyamin. His expletives were billowing out of the library like smoke from the lighthouse. When I peeked in from the courtyard, he was sitting at the now-scarred cherry wood table, the restrained northern light backlighting his face. He was wearing a green sleeveless, knee-length tunic of fine Indian cotton girded at the waist with a leather belt, which, like his sandals, was studded with multicolored Alexandrine glass beads. One hand was folded under his chin to support his frown, while the other tapped a steady rhythm with his stylus against a wax tablet. Binyamin was never still.
The lingering scent of ash feathered my nostrils as I entered, the maids having mopped the floor after sweeping up the shards of pottery and splinters of glass. They’d replaced the lamp and restored the arrangement of the furniture but left to Phoebe and me the task of re-shelving the thousands upon thousands of scrolls. The room smelled empty of not just the shattered artifacts but the very souls of my mother and father, who, in better times, must have celebrated the acquisition of each vase and figurine.
As soon as Binyamin spotted me, he dropped his stylus and curved his arm around the tablet. Too late. I’d already seen what he’d been working on, a list of provisions for a voyage to Rome.
“Are you really going?” I asked.
“Maybe someday.” He let his answer hover. But then, tunneling his lips, inhaling deeply, and leaning back in his chair, he added with a sigh, “Yeah, Sis. I’m leaving soon, but that’s a secret. I’m not looking forward to another row with Papa.”
Yes, I thought, he’ll leave as soon as he sells the scrolls. He’ll get many times the amount of money he’d need to go in style, and knowing Binyamin, that’s exactly how he’d go.
My foot hooked a leg of the chair across from him. When I dragged it out and sat down, Binyamin leaned forward.
“So, how are you getting ready?” Was my attempt to pump him as obvious to him as it was to me?
“I’ll finalize the arrangements tonight.”
I took that to mean he hadn’t sold the scrolls yet.
“That
soon?” Despite my effort to sound calm by speaking slowly and distinctly, my voice was thin with tension, and my head whipped back as if he’d kicked me in the face. An alarm buzzed through me at the thought of his fighting in the arena, but the hope of recovering the scrolls tingled down my spine. I had only three days left.
“Who knows?” he asked with a shrug and turned-out palms. And then, as an afterthought and with a snicker, he added, “Are you afraid I’ll miss your wedding? Because you’ve really done a number on Noah. If there’s such a thing as being lovesick, he’s terminal.”
Binyamin would mock Noah whenever he could because Noah had become the son to Papa he could never be. I can still remember the time—Binyamin and I couldn’t have been more than six—when I realized that Papa favored Noah over his own son.
Papa and Amram had hired two litters to take Noah, Binyamin, and me to the Pharos Lighthouse. Noah’s sisters were too young to go. I remember our litter with its fringed canopy and polished bronze fittings carrying Papa, Binyamin, and me behind lace curtains, the warm odor of the padded leather interior intensifying the intimacy.
Cruising high above the crowds that clotted the Canopic Way and the Street of the Soma, we glided through the din of commerce, the clang of foundries, and the clamor of warehouses before crossing onto the Heptastadion. There we whizzed past a party of Syrian tourists, a fuel convoy, and a band of pilgrims headed for the Temple of Isis. The bearers slowed only to thread us through a platoon of soldiers. Taking a break from the heat and the weight of their enameled cuirasses, they lay spilled across the roadway. Binyamin sat forward to wave first to them and then to the thick-necked sentries guarding the small fort at the end of the causeway, while I sat back to watch the current slap against the hulls of the thousand and one ships and listen to the rigging smack against their masts.
The bearers deposited us on the shore path just beyond the causeway so we could walk the rest of the way. Aside from the lighthouse, I wanted to see the abandoned village Hector had told me about. Many of its houses had been ravaged by fire during one of the battles Julius Caesar fought with Cleopatra, but the entire village had to be abandoned when Caesar’s forces demolished the aqueduct that carried water along the Heptastadion to the island. Anyway, we didn’t go, because Papa said that Amram shouldn’t have to look at the relics of death and devastation even if the village was destroyed almost a century ago.
Bending into the wind, we followed the shore path’s curve along the Great Harbor walking single file for about a mile, first east, then north, and finally east again to the lighthouse. Salt-laden gusts thrashing the weeds that lined our path snapped the hem of my tunic, whipped my face, and filled my nostrils with the odor of raw seaweed. At times a spray from the breakers would catch me by surprise and coat me with its lacy foam, but I would just pretend I was a sea captain caught in a squall, fighting the deafening gusts, the pelting rain, and the heaving waves.
By the time I managed to steer my imaginary ship through the squall, the others had reached the Aswan granite pillars that frame the courtyard of the lighthouse and were craning their necks in wonder at the marble and bronze Tritons that adorn the triple-tiered, marble-faced tower. The first tier is square, the second, octagonal—I remember both their observation decks were jammed with tourists—and the third, cylindrical. But my attention fixed above the third tier, to the lantern and the polished mirrors that spread its light and then to its cupola, capped by a weathervane of Poseidon poised with his trident to either calm the seas or stir a storm.
I asked Noah to read me Posidippus’s epigram, which is inscribed on the tower. I can only remember some parts, the ones about the tower appearing “to cleave the sky from countless stadia away” and a sailor seeing “a great fire blazing from its summit,” but Noah didn’t get to finish anyway because Binyamin, impatient to get inside, kept pounding on Papa’s thighs with his fists.
To reach the entrance, we had to hike up a steep, two-story ramp supported by sixteen graduated arches. Papa’s armpits looked like they’d melted by the time the two scarlet-caped Roman sentries admitted us—from the bottom of the ramp, they’d looked like a pair of statues—and permitted us to start the eighteen-story climb toward the first observation deck.
As we circled through the odors of mice and brine, our jug-eared, pimple-faced guide directed us up the broad interior ramp that spirals around the core of the lighthouse. The cones of sunlight from the western windows spilled their amber glow onto the damp stone floor before casting our furry shadows onto the eastern wall. As we passed the hundreds of immense rooms, our guide explained that the ones pierced by windows are for housing the mechanics and attendants. The others, he said, are for storing the stacks of resinous wood and the amphorae of oil and bales of reeds that fuel the lantern’s fire when the wood is in short supply.
A file of mules three abreast passed us hauling carts of wood from the storage rooms to the top of the second tier. There slaves would unload the carts and carry the fuel to the lantern. When Papa said that for a fee, the mules would also carry tourists, Noah complained of being tired. I remember Papa caressing his bristly hair and taking his hand, but when Binyamin asked for his other hand, Papa called him a big baby. Amram took Binyamin’s hand, but it wasn’t the same. And hasn’t been since.
My mind was finding its way back from the lighthouse to Binyamin’s scorn when he added by way of an apology, “I just meant that Noah is crazy about you.”
In a fit of pique, I folded my arms across my chest. “It’s still not funny, Binyamin.” But then I felt my face relax and my lips soften. “The truth is, I’m distraught over the betrothal. I don’t want to marry, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to marry Noah. As devoted, as rich, as shrewd, and as sympathetic as he is, he’s become repulsive to me. But I don’t seem to have a choice. Papa’s heart is set on the marriage, the sooner the better.”
“Yeah, that’s Papa all right, so good at directing everyone else’s life. He acts as if he knows what’s best for us, but he’s really just engineering what’s best for himself.”
He turned a thickening gaze toward the window.
“Remember when we were kids how I used to sneak off to the games to see the gladiators?”
I didn’t answer. I could tell he had more to say.
When his eyes found mine, he continued.
“other tiI loved the entire spectacle, beginning with the fanfare that starts the parade into the hippodrome. But my favorite part was when the gladiators, accompanied by jugglers, clowns, and acrobats, would circle the arena in detachments according to their various schools. My own heart would beat in time with the trumpets, flutes, and drums that accompanied them.
“Those gladiators! They’d look like gods as the early morning light defined every muscle in their well-oiled bodies. And the young women mooning over them! Intoxicated by their own erotic fantasies, they’d throw the gladiators kisses and beckon them with lewd gestures.”
Fascination was warming the chill in Binyamin’s eyes.
“Before the bouts they’d sacrifice a bull in homage to the emperor, but not an ordinary bull, Sis. This one would have its horns gilded for the occasion and its flanks draped in garlands. Between the blare of the trumpets, I’d hear the priests intone their blessings as they hovered to subdue the poor beast. Then, amid the smoke of incense, knives would flash until the animal cowered to its knees and its blood stained the sand. After that, the smell of fresh meat burning on the altar would signal to the impatient fans that the spectacle was about to begin.
“Next, either wild beasts would fight each other, or better yet, a lone gladiator would face a single beast. That’s when you’d see the dignity and discipline of Rome, Sis. I’ll never forget one gladiator, slight, naked but for a loincloth and a film of sweat, armed with only a thin sword and a frozen, tight-lipped grin. His opponent, a broad-backed Numidian lion, trotted into the arena from its
underground cage. Whether stunned by the glare or bewildered by the noise, it swept the sand with its tail, apparently too dazed to fight. But when the gladiator scooped up a handful of sand and flung it in its face, the lion snapped. Snarling with rage, its ears flattened, it hurled itself through the air, its sunlit claws aglow like amber, its tufted tail a streak across the arena. In an isosceles stance, the gladiator plunged his sword into the heart of the beast, but not before it stood on its hind legs and clawed the flesh off his jaw. Gushing his own blood, the gladiator nevertheless raised his sword to salute the prefect and bow to the spectators. And then, leaving a trail of crimson to mark his path across the arena, he disappeared behind an iron grille.”
The image of the triumphant gladiator danced in Binyamin’s eyes.
“Before Augustus they’d follow the sacrifice with the andabates. That was when a dozen or more gladiators wearing helmets without eyeholes blindly brandish their swords while the mastigophori—they’re in the arena to goad the fighters—prod them one toward the other with long-handled pitchforks. That must have been hilarious.
“But the best part would come next, the bouts featuring a pair of gladiators. We’d thrill to at least ten of them, like the ones between a retiarius and a secutor, who train to fight each other. The retiarius is the only one who fights without a helmet, no leg armor, only a loin cloth, some strapping around his left arm, and a bronze shoulder guard extending to his elbow. Unlike the secutor, he has no sword, only a trident and a wide-mesh, circular throwing net. Sis, you should see how resolute a retiarius is, even in the face of death.”
Binyamin was saying more now than I’d ever heard him say before.
