Last Days With Cleopatra Read online

  Victor knew nothing of politics or the forces involved in the war. He merely knew that Antonius was crushed, and the knowledge made him wretched.

  Eros, a handsome fair-haired lad, had tried to console Antonius; but Antonius turned on him one look of terrible appeal and anguish, and motioned him away. The pages left the room. Once outside, Eros abused Cleopatra in his slightly prim voice, and today the primness had grated on Victor. Perhaps Cleopatra was to blame; perhaps it was Fate. What did it matter? The blow had come. Victor tried to comprehend how Antonius could have hoped for different news. He had heard Cleopatra say once: “We can count those legions as lost.” She spoke tentatively, with a sidelong glance.

  “Of course not,” said Antonius harshly. “They’ll obey the orders I sent from Cape Tainaros. They’ll march across to Bithynia. I’ll stake my life on it.”

  His voice was thick, unpleasant with a dark hint of self-pity. Victor could see how much depended for him on what the legions did; but he had felt that Cleopatra was right. And now the message had come.

  “She dyes her hair,” said Eros, somewhat shrilly. He was always making remarks about Cleopatra’s looks; Victor was annoyed, he’d never even noticed himself what colour Cleopatra’s hair was. Eros went on with a sneer, “Eiras told me that she has a special henna-wash with melted copper-filings in it. That’s where she gets her summery glow. Who wouldn’t?”

  “O shut up,” replied Victor, roused to unwonted self-assertion; and walked away.

  There was nothing to do, and never had he felt so lonely. But he was free for some hours; other pages were in attendance; and he wanted to lose himself in the bustling city of Alexandria.

  Cleopatra would be with Antonius now, even though he had given orders that no one was to be admitted. They’d be quarrelling, of course; perhaps also embracing. At least one didn’t feel lonely while one quarrelled. Victor had nobody to quarrel with except Eros, and such a quarrel would bring no satisfaction; Eros was too conceited. Neither could Victor lose himself in mourning for Adonis, a pretty boy statue suggestive of Eros, or in watching the sleek-armed ladies who wondered why the Queen didn’t come.

  The Queen was swearing at her lover; and she could swear foully when she felt that way. She was arguing, explaining, bringing out further plans, accusing, defending herself, refusing to be touched. She hadn’t any time to go ahead restoring confidence among the upper classes of Alexandria by a state appearance in the Chapel. For a moment Victor hated her like Eros, and then felt it foolish to hate her. He knew nothing about her at all. He’d only been with Antonius two years, moving about Syria, Asia, and Greece; and he accepted Cleopatra as a settled part of the new life into which he’d been plunged, taking no notice of all the political gossip that Eros loved. Once he’d seen Antonius and Cleopatra sleeping in one another’s arms (he’d seen them sleeping thus often, but had never really looked at them before), and they seemed old and tired, yet infinitely happy. And the happiness had wiped out their age and tiredness; at a second glance they’d seemed peaceably contented, neither old nor young; and Victor had been painfully envious. But not as Eros envied. Victor didn’t mind them having their happiness. He simply wanted to have the same thing for himself.

  Today that emotion had returned, stronger. But how was a slave to find happiness? He could only share at second-hand the lot of his masters, their joys and their sorrows. It would be better to worship Adonis, since all experience was to be at second-hand; to see one’s life only in the life of the saviour-god, dying and resurrected.

  The thought came suddenly; and Victor halted. He was beginning to understand, without knowing it. Else, where had the thought come from?

  He walked on quickly, as if to escape from such thoughts, growing afraid of the Chapel and its gods of painted wood, who seemed to be claiming him. He wanted a different kind of life, arid didn’t know what kind he rejected, what kind he wanted.

  *

  The park was thick with people who wished to have a look at Adonis after the recital; nurse-maids and soldiers; gardeners guarding the flower-beds; and children. Victor disliked the children most of all. He never felt at ease in their presence, and was unable to play with them or to fondle them as other people did, without becoming painfully self-conscious. He passed out of one of the gates into the Avenue of the Tucheion. Still there were people everywhere, and what crowd so noisy and restless as an Alexandrian crowd? Shoppers and loungers filled the pavements and the porticoes; officers on horseback waved gaily to innumerable woman-friends; carriages, some small and trim with a single cropped glistening horse, others four-in-hand, drove past with stately speed. Despite the byelaws, men with barrows or panniered asses tried to sell their goods, to the rage of the shopkeepers. Roman legionaries and eastern auxiliaries bawled insults at one another, or joined voices to slander a group of the household troops. Slaves threaded their way in a slow ambling run. Swarthy Jews stalked past in slightly overstressed dignity, missing nothing. A woman in a litter with transparent curtains (to keep off the dust) a long-cloaked philosopher; merchants and shopkeepers with screwed-up eyes and purses at their sides; office-proud scribes and secretaries; sea-captains with swinging gait; a meditative priest; half-naked Egyptians grinning amiably; a girl with a large black cat on her shoulder; a hermit, travel-stained, come on some business from the settlement below the lake, averting his eyes and rushing to escape as soon as possible the scene of sin; proletarians leaning against the pillars, ready to laugh or to offer any assistance that might produce a tip, to carry luggage across the city or lead the way to a house of ill-fame...Everyone was busy, even the slow-eyed loungers.

  Victor was oppressed by the insensate activity, in which he had no part. If he’d had something to do, he’d have enjoyed it all, unaware of his enjoyment, absorbed in the moment of noise and swarming colours, the glare of marble and the bright coolness of the shadows. But, having nothing to do, he felt that all the stirring people around were dull fools, not even intelligent enough to blush at the futility of the things that distracted them.

  How could people get so worked-up over the questions of what they wore or what somebody else wore, what they ate or what somebody else ate, what they had to boast about as against somebody else’s boasts? There was nothing to get excited over at all. One wore clothes to keep warm, and ate to keep alive; and everything else was a lie.

  Victor had never thought like this before. He grew worried at his own captiousness. It must be the result of having listened too much to the talk of Aristocrates. Antonius had been so depressed for weeks, and he’d spent the time talking with Aristocrates, debating whether life was worth living. Aristocrates maintained that to make the query was to be already frustrated; life was only worth living if it was lived—or something like that.

  Victor’s head burned confusedly with the unusual effort of thought. First the despair of Antonius, and Eros so petty, and then all the dressed-up women in the Chapel, fat- checked with paint and heated. Worst of all, the woman clutching the flower-pot as if rapt to heaven. Because Adonis died for her. She seemed to know something, but so did everyone. Everyone seemed to know something except oneself. Why hadn’t Adonis died for Victor? Perhaps he had.

  Aristocrates had explained that, or something like it. Victor wished he’d listened more carefully. At the time he hadn’t had the least interest in the arguments, except that he’d wanted Antonius to be pleased; but now they seemed the most important thing in the world. Aristocrates had said something about life being a dance, or a pattern like the stars in the sky. Self-sufficient. Not merely like the animals, though they were rather better than most human beings. Man was the only animal who could dance, ritually dance; his life could become a divine pattern, was divine already if one could only see into it. Into what?

  Victor gave up trying to think the problem out. What was the use? Antonius talked for weeks about the divine dance of the stars and ended by sitting dumb in his chair, waving his hand helplessly like a child.

  But Cleopa
tra would be with him now. Victor knew how she would stare at the frightened door-slave who’d say he had orders to admit no one. She wouldn’t answer; she’d walk straight into the room. And Antonius would return to life, even if only to abuse and weep, to beseech and curse.

  Victor looked at the women in the street. The more mature women he didn’t care for. They scared him somewhat; they seemed too sure of themselves, too well fed, too weighty and loose—except for the scraggy ones, but at those he didn’t look at all. The younger girls were better. But they were either too cheeky and bright-eyed, or too palely shy. The shy ones were beyond his hands and thoughts, respectable girls whom he dared not address. The cheeky ones were the common girls, who repelled him in his lonely mood. He wanted someone who would understand his loneliness and so be able to end it. Surely Antonius and Cleopatra understood one another, even if they exchanged insults and recriminations; they finished in each other’s arms and were peaceful for an hour or two, blissfully peaceful. That was why they still lived, still found life worth living. Aristocrates was a fool with all his reasons.

  The woman with the flower-pot had Adonis, Antonius had Cleopatra. Was that all that Aristocrates had meant? Then why couldn’t he say so? One needed another person as a mirror. One needed to be glorified in somebody or something else. In the earth, as the woman whose body was the flower-pot of Adonis. In the beloved, as Antonius, who found his rage and his need of peace reflected in Cleopatra moving about the room near to him.

  Dimly these ideas wavered across Victor’s brain, obscure miseries and desires, veiled images of agitated memory, given an indecisive shape by the rhetoric of Aristocrates. He knew only that he was lonely.

  A girl passed, full-limbed, dressed in a single cotton shift. An Arab girl with an oval face. Her brown cheeks had a ruddy glow and her mouth was darkly red. She reminded Victor of a girl known two years ago; and he turned to follow her, to ask how she had come to Alexandria. But he stopped. It wasn’t the same girl, it couldn’t be. There were hundreds with the same kind of face; and as he thought, there seemed no resemblance after all. Not the tenderness at the corner of the eyes. O he mustn’t think. And he didn’t want this Arab girl, even if she’d been ready to speak with him. He didn’t know what he wanted, but it was nothing that offered itself in the crowded streets of Alexandria where a world was gathered. Everything in the world, and nothing.

  It was best to watch the ladies in the carriages. They were so soon past, carried out of sight before one could pick flaws. They were impossibly out of reach, looking at no one, and sure that everyone else was looking at them. But their pride angered him at last, though the last thing he wished was that one of them should notice him and his admiration. He came out of the residential area into which he had strayed: where row after row of smart Greek houses, built with the regulation space of a foot between, stretched as far as the eye could see. Back into the main-street.

  How closed were the lives of people. Victor gazed on the faces sullen or merry, and they were all equally closed. Equally they told him nothing, would refuse to tell him anything, however much he gazed, whatever words he said. And he knew that his own face was as closed against all the others; reluctantly, obstinately closed.

  A blind beggar with a dog, and then a girl with a heavy parcel, her lips moving as she repeated to herself some message under her breath. Or she was witless. It wasn’t worth while looking at people; there was only this kind of thing to see.

  Victor went off down a side-street westwards; but though there were less people, the crush was as great, since the street was narrower. Shops and shops, workshops and manufactories; shuttered and garlanded houses; and somewhere flutes playing. Alexandria pulsed with life; and Victor, hungry for life, loathed it all.

  Then he was in the Street of the Sema, and set off southwards, passing the great Mausoleum building wherein lay the embalmed body of Alexandros the Macedonian, surrounded by the dead Ptolemaioi. But dead kings meant no more to him than living street-girls, and he passed by. The Museion opposite attracted him more, but only a little more; and then he forgot Muses and argumentative philosophers and the young god Adonis dying for an audience of well-dressed ladies critical of the lament-singer’s style. The wind was blowing from the sea, and he felt refreshed. He walked more briskly, and his mind responded to the body’s rhythm, growing easier and less troubled. Why did he want to own more than himself? All mirrors lied. Wasn’t it better to be alone than a wailing Antonius chastised into a weary peace, a snare of engulfing embraces?

  He raised his chin and looked steadily around, no slave.

  He wanted nothing but to enjoy the movement of his body down the street of the wind. To preserve his loneliness, never to be drawn into the whirlpool ceaselessly devouring, into the blindness and the craving, the world enslaved. Once a surrender was made, it couldn’t stop; and it was better to be alone, striding through the sea-wind, giving no one the right to possess or to judge one’s life. Something was lost in aloofness, but how much more was lost by surrender—answer, wailing Antonius, king of the world? There was only choice between two losses. Better the sharp renunciation of standing alone, like an escape of u arm music, than the honey-drugged anxieties of those who surrendered to the drama of mating Love and Anti-love. Wasn’t that the phrase of Aristocrates? What did it mean anyway? Nothing, probably. And yet words meant so much, while one listened to them.

  He had reached the vast Canopic Way, a hundred feet wide and four miles long, traversing the city from west to east, lined with colonnades and public buildings, and filled with yet more hurrying or lazy people. Today was the Adonia, and even the Egyptians and Jews showed a restive sense of festival. A detachment of palace cavalry, bright in red uniforms, went cantering past, interrupting the other traffic; and people cheered, for no reason except that they liked bright colours. A Jew with broken teeth spat in the gutter. Victor waited for the commotion to subside, watching the Jew in preference to the promenading women; but he learned nothing of what was going on behind the dark deep-set eyes, with lids dropping slightly, the lean fingers combing the long wavy beard, the signet-ring flashing. That was the way. Show nothing. Spit in the gutter.

  He crossed the paved roadway, and went on southwards. He knew now where he was going. To the Lake. Space and quiet. There were no such things in the city, its thronged parks and squares, its industrious harbour-side; but around the lake there would be a chance to rest. Walking fast, Victor soon covered the half-mile, and reached the end of the long street where the city wall ran across the Canal, the Dragon River. Passing over the bridge, he saw Lake Mareotis spread before him, glistening broadly and dotted with pleasure-craft.

  His heart sank. Was he never to get away?

  Turning to the right, he followed the roadway that led between rows of bungalows and food-shops, and gained the edge of the lake. There the papyrus-reeds grew thickly, and he felt more at ease. The clear afternoon drifted its blue over the scene, muffling sound pleasantly in the water-silence. Far ahead could be seen vineyards, stripped of their grape-clusters; and near at hand lotus-lilies opened their wide cups, bosomed in the lake. Men had trodden the grapes in the vats with yelling glee and lewdness, and the wine would be drunk; but no one drank from the lotus-cups offering sunlight, moulded from the breasts of Isis. They trembled in the straining eyes of the gazer, filling with milk of light, spilling their Isis-milk in the rippling waters. But there was no waste. The breasts of the earth did not run dry under the suckling sun, the renewing lover, son and husband.

  Whose milk did I drink, O Isis?

  Will my lips ever again touch the nipples of a woman?

  Many-breasted goddess, the sun is milking the flowers, but I am thirsty. The bees of autumn are drowsy with fullness, but I am weak with dearth. The vines are stripped, but I have no wish for wine; for when my lips are wet, I shall have no one to kiss. Forgive me.

  *

  Once he thought he had found a retired spot, and almost stumbled over a pair of lovers. In another
nook was a family of five children with a blowsy mother. Then there were more houses, mooring-piers and boatsheds; fences of split palings; and villas rustically quaint, with dovecotes, unexpected towers or windows, and sleeping-out places on the roof; villas painted with stripes and ringed with trees to which were attached gilt swings. And always somebody playing music.

  The sounds pursued him, little tinkling bells hung in the wind. He couldn’t escape them, however he shook his head. Like a girl with earrings, he made the echoes jingle more loudly. He wanted quiet, to think, to find out what he was thinking, to stop thinking.

  Wild duck rose and circled over the reeds. A barge came closer, with someone twanging a lyre. Always music. Blurred by the accompanying water-voices, it was more tolerable, more saddening. Victor wondered what he was seeking, what he was trying to shun. The blossom-eyes of Adonis, the shrill sneer of Eros, the little coarse-lipped Arab girl with eyes that might have grown tender. After all, he wanted to be somewhere on the waters, rocking gently, listening to lyre-music softened by the baby-lisp of the waves.

  He passed a plot of beans. Someone poor with a tumble-down hut. Strange that the bean-grower hadn’t been bought out by someone who wanted a lakeside bungalow. Perhaps an obstinate old man who preferred poverty in his own way. Good luck to him. Beyond was a clump of acacia and myrtle, and Victor entered the shadows, pleased at finding his refuge at last, doubtful.

  But it wasn’t quiet he found. It was more than leaf-murmur he heard. A girl’s voice, raised in a smothered scream; something crashing; a struggle.

  His impulse was to run. He hated all physical conflict, a coward before violence, ashamed of it, feeling somehow that anyone who incurred violence must deserve it. As it was disgraceful to be ill, or to slip and hurt oneself. Suffer in silence. Hadn’t he bitten his wrist and wet his pillow, night after night, years ago?

  Now he wanted to run. But a perverse curiosity drew him on, without any intention to help. He moistened his lips. He had the right to do nothing, having suffered in silence. But what of the others who cried out, this girl...He advanced further into the thicket, meaning to see what was happening, impelled by a wish to watch the struggle unseen, to discover why it was that people acted violently, to overlook the struggling girl, to learn something.