Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (20 page)

I hold up my hand for silence.
 
“If Lais would go, then she will go.”

“Thank you!”

If Hypatia cannot see what has just happened, I can.
 
Theon was not asked.
 
Hypatia is mistress here.
 
She need ask no one.
 
Yet I was asked.
 
If Minkah the Egyptian had said no, Lais would not attend the races this day.

When all is arranged, we go east from the Royal Quarter along the Canopic Way, four times wider than any street in the city, extending from its western walls to its eastern walls.
 
Sharing sweet dates and wine, we pass the Jewish quarter, the countless hostels that cater to travelers, then out through the tremendous Sun Gate of the once Emperor Antonius Pius—that improbable thing, a good king—and there, before us, rises up the great Hippodrome.

From the gates to the private boxes, all move aside for Lais and Hypatia.
 
Rome’s Prefect, Lucius Marius, whose wife bulges with child, sits two boxes away.
 
Both nod in greeting.
 
Alexandria’s magistrates, its generals and ambassadors, the wealthiest of its merchants, smile.
 
There recline or pose or leap from level to level Hypatia’s students, among them Synesius.
 
Each of these calls out.
 
Below us carouse a gaggle of philosophers who, upon sight of Hypatia, bow, and upon sight of Lais, bask.

And there is Theophilus and there the priest he loves: elusive Isidore—forbidden Hypatia, thank the gods.
 
And there, Cyril, piglet to Theophilus’ boar, his hunger for power hidden in a hunger for food.
 
And there sprawls the darkest of the
Parabalanoi
, Peter the Reader, his mouth twisted down and to the side.
 
I pretend I know them not as they pretend they do not know me.

Hypatia has brought along the fur of an animal to wrap around Lais, pillows for her comfort, a shawl of silk to cover her head.
 
As Hypatia fusses over Lais, I jump to my feet.
 
Below the chariots appear, throwing up dust and color, and how we all roar!
 
Four horses each to a chariot, each horse so similar they might be the same horse: matched blacks, grays, reds, whites, blood bays, browns.
 
My money is on the blood bays.
 
The bays are driven by Nabil, an Egyptian.

Alexios drives the team of blacks.
 
As lowborn as I, he is twenty and six and richer than Cicero.
 
Planted in his chariot with the reins of all four of his horses wrapped round his muscled arm, his muscled back straining to hold them, his muscled legs perfectly balanced, he ignores the crowd which does not ignore him.
 
“Alexios!
 
Alexios!
 
Alexios!”

Fucking catamite…and if he is not, I’ll eat my sandal.

Below us, men ready the staggered spring-loaded gates at the angled end of the oval track.
 
Drivers steady their horses, all of whom would race away on the instant if allowed.

Lais leans towards Hypatia, and I half turn to hear her; if she is faint or in pain, I would know this.
 
Though she whispers, her words are clear.
 
“There is none I love better than you…always remember.”

Hypatia kisses her sister’s palm.
 
“And none I love better than you.”

Suddenly, up from the track comes the shouting of those who maneuver the gates, the shouting of those who hold the chariots, the shouting of those who will drive them.
 
Hypatia and I are drawn away by the muttering of horses deep in their throats, the calls of the charioteers, each goading each, the creak of leather stretched to breaking, the turning of the wheels and the complaining of the wooden gates.

Lucius Marius drops a cloth to signal the start.
 
Alexios and his blacks are first away—and as Hypatia thrusts herself up, so too do I.
 
The chariots rub wheels, throwing sparks high in the air, the hooves of the horses strike the ground as metalworkers strike anvils, over and over, and five times round the
spina
each charioteer does his utter best, or utter worst, to tip his opponents, tangle their traces, send them crashing into the walls…any trick they might play to win the day.
 
Coming fast, the bays crowd the blacks.

“Smash him, Nabil!
 
Show him your ass!”

The whites careen off a wall as all disappear yet again behind the
spina
with its lengthy top a clutter of marble gods and bronze dolphins obstructing the view only to reappear a moment later in their rush back.
 
Before they do, the crowd holds its breath.
 
The crashes come at the turns round the two ends of the
spina
, the deaths occur.
 
But there is no crash, no death.
 
There is only Alexios, and his blacks.
 
Piss and shit!
 
Though blood flows from the nostrils of one, though another has a long slash on a pastern, he whips them home to such a shout from the crowd as would deafen, if I were not also shouting as Hypatia is shouting.
 
She cries, “Alexios wins, Lais!
 
He wins!”

But Lais does not look at the track nor does she look at the horses, nor does she look at the triumphant Alexios.
 
Her chin is slumped into the curve of her chest and her arms hang straight from her shoulders so that her hands rest on their backs on the stone and her fingers curl up like the fingers of the dead.
 
Hypatia’s shawl has fallen over her face.

~

Hypatia

My sister, my heart, died this day.
 
The Sun God returns as she leaves us.

In the skies over Alexandria, a great white star has appeared suddenly in the constellation of the Scorpion, brighter than the red star Antares.
 
I, an astronomer, cannot be bothered to look.
 
Emperor Theodosius has ordered, for the first time in a thousand years, an end to the “pagan” games of Olympia.
 
I, called pagan, cannot summon concern.
 
In Hippo, where Augustine struggles with evil, the Galileans have declared which of their many “gospels” is true to the number of four, and have rejected all others, which number in the hundreds.
 
What means this to me, Hypatia, who knows no truth?

Dark deadens the world outside our windows.
 
It is darker still in my heart.
 
From the moment I last heard her speak of love for me, she has never spoken again.
 
She has never opened her eyes.
 
She did not move as Minkah tenderly placed her in her litter for the run home, he and I sick with terror every step of the way, nor when we lay her limp on her bed.

At first sight of her, Olinda of Clarus gently placed her finger in the center of my sister’s forehead, saying, “All that remains is for her body to follow her spirit.”

I convulsed with shock and with sorrow.

I know the precise moment Lais left this world for another, for in that moment Paniwi turned her wild yellow eyes on me, gave out a great yowl, then leapt from the bed of her mistress and straight out the window.
 
The leap was perfect…no sound of her leaping or of her landing.

Jone who does not read, has not even a book to hold, tries to warm me with her own small body.
 
Jone is not warm, but the warmth of her intention would warm me if I could know warmth—for I have heard the words of Olinda and know them to be true words.
 
Though her body is only now gone, Lais left this world as she sat by my side in the Hippodrome.

Paniwi knows what I know.
 
I have killed my sister.
 
As Athena by accident killed Pallas, the sister she loved more than herself, so too I have killed my sister who I loved more than myself.
 
This is what is also true: truth is not to be found at the Oracle of Siwa.

I am not Athena who then called herself Pallas Athena to confess to her darkness within.
 
I will not, as did Athena in memoriam, sculpt with my own hands a huge statue of Lais.
 
I am not worthy of the heroics of a goddess, though I am as equally dark as she.
 
It is I who am at fault and I who must attone for my fault.

The boat in which we learned to sail was named by Lais
Irisi
—“fashioned by Isis.”
 
The
Irisi
lives hidden away in the Royal Harbor near what is left of Mark Anthony’s Timonium, the temple he had constructed after his defeat at Actium so he might dedicate it to another like himself, the bitter and abandoned Timon of Athens.

That Father will fall faster and farther does not touch me.
 
That Jone will—and how shall Jone react?
 
I cannot answer.
 
I do not care to try and answer.
 
If any feeling is left me, it is sorrow for Minkah.
 
How he must rue the day he made my family his.

Alexandria is alive.
 
The Great Harbor washes her thighs of white marble as she stretches herself against the curved shore.
 
But I am not alive as I set my course.
 
No moon sails the sky.
 
Only by the lights from countless apartments high and low, do I know the tiny island of Antirrhodos slides by on my left.

~

A sail is a wing, a boat is a bird.
 
Caught in the wind, we go with the wind.

The short tunic I wear is dark with dirt and salt sea spray and the sweat of my body.
 
I have no food.
 
I have water, for there is ever a gallon or more stored in the small compartment under the
Irisi’s
foredeck.

I have lost my sense of time.
 
How long since sailing away through the dark and treacherous mouth of the Great Harbor, allowing Spirit to feel the way through rock and shoal?
 
It is full winter, the season of storms when even the great ships of grain are lost to the wild Green Sea.
 
Small boats like the
Irisi
seldom last against the might of wind and wave.

The skies have been the grey of stone, the seas a series of small waves running like leaves before the wind.
 
There is as yet no challenge to my little boat who rides them as I would ride Desher.
 
Somewhere, a great leaping of dolphins curved up out of the waters only to enter again as sleek as silver and silk.
 
These strange creatures of perfect grace and wild with joy have been the last to come near, and if that was one day past, or two, I could not say.

With only sky above and sea below, I head neither east toward the city of Canopus lost in its maze of reeds, nor west toward the city of Synesius, the ruined Cyrene.
 
I will not see Augustine’s Hippo, nor do I hope to cross the whole of the open waters to Rome where I have never been nor have I ever longed to be.
 
I might find some fabled island of Greece.
 
I might not.
 
I have no astrolabe.
 
It sits unfinished by Minkah on my mother’s emerald green table.
 
Yet I know I sail straight for the belly of the sea.
 
The sun rises.
 
The sun sets.
 
Moving above the clouds as a woman moves behind curtains of soft white linen.
 
By night, if it is clear, I would know my position by the stars, but the nights are not clear.
 
The only true choice I make is not to sail south where Alexandria continues whether I am there to teach or I am not.

I seldom move from the stern.
 
If I am becalmed, I will make a canopy of my sail and drift.
 
If I meet with a storm, I will use all my skill to ride it.
 
But if I cannot, then I cannot.
 
The skin of my left hand is rubbed red from the sheet line.
 
I leave blood on the
Irisi’s
white trapezoid sail.
 
The skin of my right arm is bruised by the steering oar.
 
The skin of my body blackens as the skin of my mouth splits like fissures in rock.
 
By these signs of the body, I know time has passed, more than it seems since running from the room of Lais.

Sometimes I sleep seated and leaning against the oar.
 
Sometimes I do not sleep.
 
Sometimes, a rat who has found a home in the
Irisi
, curls under my bench to keep company with me.
 
It is as thick as the hilt of a sword and its fur the color of a blade.
 
Once I found a roach in my hair.
 
I am bitten by fleas.
 
But if hunger is theirs, all are welcome to whatever use they can make of me.
 
If hunger was mine, it is long since silent.
 
I allow myself small sips of water.
 
In this way I have water to last a few days.
 
When I sleep, I lash down the oar and shorten the sail.
 
When I am awake, I sail, sometimes by day, sometimes by night.
 
On the one clear night, I raised my weary eyes to the stars.
 
I imagined them holes through which shine the souls of the hidden palace of
Tuat
.
 
I imagined them each a sun as our sun around which some other earth circles.
 
I imagined them the eyes of gods or of demons.
 
I felt stared at.
 
I shut my own eyes and still I saw them.