Glory and the Lightning (5 page)

“But, my divinity, that is only rumor. Am I not faithful to you?”

“No,” said Thargelia. “But you amuse and satisfy me and I enjoy your conversation, and that is my contentment.” She looked momentarily troubled. “There are times when I fear that Aspasia will not be the happiest of companions to a man, for men do not cherish a dagger tongue in a woman. She is rebellious and not too supple of character. I advise and rebuke her often.”

“There are men who prefer a woman of fire to a complaisant woman in their arms. Who would not prefer to subdue a spirited horse rather than a donkey, or a listless mare? You have a treasure in your house, Thargelia.”

“Whom I guard,” she replied.

So Echion, though he lusted after Aspasia, who was healthy and wondrous in appearance and intellectual, was ever decorous with his pupil. He luxuriated in his pleasant life, and not even an Aspasia would ever threaten it however much he desired her. But he had his fantasies, which had to satisfy him.

The maidens streamed into his classroom this day like rose petals blown by the wind, and Echion licked his lips. He saw Aspasia and noticed, with his physician’s eyes, that she appeared perturbed and preoccupied. That was an omen that she would be more contentious than usual. She sat down on one of the chairs and looked at him with distant eyes. It did not occur to him that she was hardly aware of his presence. He thought, in his egotism, that she was thinking of him and the lesson to come. He gave her a wary smile, to which she did not respond. She looked down at her clasped hands.

“We will discuss, today,” he said, thinking that his classroom resembled a garden of flowers, and rejoicing in the vision, “the truth that a sound body is the result of a sound mind. We have discussed this before, but I wish to enlarge on it.”

Aspasia came to herself and raised an imperative hand. Echion frowned, but he inclined his head. “It is your argument, Echion, that a man is his own malady and that health is only a matter of judicious thought and a serene philosophy.”

“True, Aspasia.”

“Then all ills, apart from an accident, are created in the mind of the sufferer?”

“True.”

Aspasia smiled contemptuously. “Then an infant or a young child, afflicted with the White Sickness, is responsible for his deathly ailment?”

The physician stared at her, nonplussed. Aspasia smiled again. “An infant is born with a deformity or an illness which will kill him. Tell me, sire, if he is to be accused of wrong thinking.”

Echion felt less than affection for the maiden and became insensible to her charms. He coughed slightly. “There is a theory among the Egyptians that men carry with them, into their present lives, mental corruptions of previous lives, and the corruption appears in their extant bodies.”

“Do you believe that, my teacher?”

It was not accepted by the Ecclesia that men had lived prior lives to their current one. Echion felt himself in danger from this disputatious chit. He said, with caution, “There are many mysterious things, my child.”

“But you have advanced the theory that man is his own malady! Tell me, then, how an infant, just born, can be diseased, and die of that disease.”

The physician lifted his hands and beamed like the sun and resorted to an aphorism. “Who knows what is in the mind of a child?”

Aspasia said, “Infanthood is not far behind me, nor childhood, and I am, at fourteen, still young. I recall my infant and childish thoughts. They were not mysterious. They were concerned with appetite and little pleasures, as are all the thoughts of all children. Why, then, am I in health and others sicken?”

“You had parents of health,” said Echion.

Aspasia said, “I never knew my father nor did I ever hear his voice. My mother died three years ago. My mother was not of the best of constitutions, otherwise she would not have died of the plague of the lungs.” She paused. “You have remarked that I had parents of health. Is it possible, then, that a healthy child will be the offspring of healthy parents? Yet I have seen slaves in this house who were not of a sturdy body, who gave birth to children who were neither sick nor deformed. I have also seen a young and vigorous mother delivered of a child who could not survive, so ridden with illness was he. Considering these things, should we be careful not to say that every ill is self-wrought, and therefore we should not despise the sufferer?”

“Medicine,” said the physician, his face a deep and swollen red, “is an exact science. But every man is an individual and what will kill one man will not disturb another or cause him any inconvenience.”

“It is, you will admit, a mysterious and occult and subjective art? It is unique that it is not applicable to every man?”

This was against all Echion’s convictions and theories. He bit his lip.

Aspasia smoothed her hair with both hands and her smile was derisive. “Medicine, it would appear, is an art and not a science, and only artists should engage in it, men of subjective reasoning and occult prescience.”

Echion wondered why he had ever considered the maiden beauteous. He saw the discreet smiles of the others. He said, “I have cut for the stone, and the stones were identical! There was no art in it!”

“But,” said Aspasia, “some lived after the operation and some did not. Therefore, the sufferers were not identical, nor could their lives or their deaths have been anticipated.”

Echion said with triumph, “Those who survived were healthful of thought, and those who did not were diseased of mind!”

“How can that be proved—if medicine is an exact science—sire?”

When he did not reply Aspasia said, “It is all subjective. There is no way to prove it with exactitude, and so it is not a science but an art, and art is unpredictable.”

“I have said, Aspasia, that though medicine is an exact science no man is like another.”

“You have never admitted that before,” said the maiden, and nodded with approval. “So men are not always their own malady, but are driven by mysterious courses which we do not as yet discern and may never discern. Tell me: Is a disease in one man exactly as it is in another?”

“No. But again it is the matter of the individual response of the mind.”

“The mind, then, is subjective. Who has seen a mind? Can you cut for it, or change it with a scalpel? It can be subdued with opium, as you have once told us, but it will not remain subdued. True it is that a man can kill himself by his own thoughts, and as the mind is subjective then it follows that the body is also. But is it not true that a diseased body can affect the mind, that pain can turn a philosopher, however much of a Stoic he is, into a screaming animal without shame or dignity?”

“He induced it first in his mind,” said the physician, who was beginning to hate the damsel.

“How can that be proved, sire?”

“It cannot be proved, of a certainty!” he shouted.

“Then that which cannot be proved of a certainty is not objective, and not a science. It is only a hypothesis. Does it not follow then that medicine is hypothetical?”

There had been Egyptian teachers who had spoken of this, and Echion had despised them as arcane dreamers, unacquainted with reality. “Is it your contention, Aspasia, that we should regard medicine as mere thaumaturgy?” His voice had become softly vicious.

“We should not discard thaumaturgy as part of subjective medicine,” replied Aspasia with the utmost seriousness. “Do we not have Delphi and the priests and our religion, which is based on magic, contemplation, reflection and belief in what is not discernible by the open eye? To deny that is blasphemy and heresy.”

“You are a Sophist,” said Echion, suddenly turning deadly pale. “You also twist the truth and muddy crystal waters with your vaporings. Your reasoning is fallacious. What do you consider you are, you mere maiden?”

“I am a subjective realist,” said Aspasia, with another of her lovely and apparently innocent smiles.

“A contradiction in terms!”

“As is all our philosophy, and even our lives, themselves.”

Echion thought of Thargelia, who had often teased him with similar dissents. Yet he knew that Aspasia also disagreed with Thargelia on many matters. “You are disputatious,” he said, with severity. “You argue only for your own pleasure, and I doubt you believe in those arguments yourself.”

“I seek only knowledge,” said Aspasia, with unbearable demureness.

“And what has your limited knowledge taught you?”

“That nothing exists but the mind, and as the mind is subjective all else is subjective also.”

“My child,” said Echion, recovering himself and achieving a superb smile, “if ever you are cut for the stone, or deliver a child, you will of a surety know that the pain is objective and not subjective.”

“If I suffer, then, the pain which all suffers under the same circumstances, it will be my guilt, the guilt of my deformed mind?”

“We will go to the infirmia,” said Echion, exasperated almost beyond control. The girl’s arguments, he told himself, were jejune and not worthy of the response of a man of science, and she sought glorification and attention for herself, as all inferior womanhood did—recognizing its own inferiority. She made but noises, like a heifer, and considered them philosophy. She needed a flogging and not indulgence. The girls tittered discreetly about him and he felt a swollen pressure in the sides of his throat. He hated Aspasia now, and his hatred made him feel voluptuous and he longed to get her into his bed where he would teach her true objectivity! To his horror he had a sudden physical manifestation which, the girls discerning, provoked them to more titters, and they pretended to be embarrassed, they covering their fresh faces with widespread fingers through which they peeked. He tightened his girdle in mortification.

He must talk with Thargelia with the utmost severity. He had heard from the master of science that Aspasia also contended with him on the same subject of objectivity and subjectivity. It was well to train a hetaira so she could converse with the eminent man whose mistress she would become, but it was another matter to deliver a maiden who preferred argument to all else to such a man.

They walked through a narrow white hall of marble. On the left were simple Doric pillars between which the gardens flashed with changeful light and color. The fountains glittered and sparkled in the sun and as a portion of the water fell on blossom and shrub a seductive fragrance seeped on the warm breeze. Aspasia thought. If there was any reality at all it was beauty, and if there was any truth it existed in harmony. As men were not in the least harmonious there was no truth in them, and as their thoughts were dark and intricate and insidious they were blind to beauty for all their ecstasies about it. We are a perfidious race, thought the damsel, ugly and incongruent in this world, and why the gods endure us is a great mystery—if the gods exist.

They entered the infirmia, a clean bright long room with open windows. Here there were only single narrow beds and not the usual crowded beds of sanitoria. This was the infirmia of the slaves, both men and women, and children. The room beyond, prettily decorated, was for the young hetairai, private cubicles, and filled with flowers, and with skilled attendants. Only two or three of the hetairai were interested in the infirmia, and among them was Aspasia. Immediately on entering the rooms Echion forgot the maidens, for here was his authority and his skill and his subjects. He walked from bed to bed, examining, frowning, questioning the patients and their attendants in a sharp concise voice, and Aspasia followed and listened with admiration and deep attention. Now her respect for the physician returned. He might not be kind or thoughtful, and he might be rough in examinations, immune to the cries of the sick, but his judgment was faultless and he betrayed here his cynical understanding of the vagaries of the human mind and was quick to discover the whimperers who preferred illness to work and duty, and to denounce them. Aspasia pondered. In numerous ways both Echion and herself were right; they both had part of the truth. There were illnesses which indeed were self-induced voluntarily or involuntarily, but there were illnesses which came of themselves. But it was almost impossible to decide the category.

Echion’s rosy bald head gleamed in the shifting sunlight. His eyes were attentive if without pity. He was more interested in the disease than he was in the sufferer. In this he was the scientist and not the physician. He carried with him a tablet and a stylus for his own information. He paused by the bed of a fat male slave of about thirty and looked upon him with disgust. “Here is one who not only devours to the full the excellent and abundant food given him in this house but pilfers tidbits from the kitchen, especially those redundant in oils and spices and rich flavorings. He has been seen to snatch, slyly, the very food from the plates of his fellow diners at the table, thus depriving them of their necessities, which they have dutifully earned. He sips, unseen, from their glasses and not even the threats of the overseer are heeded, nor is he restrained by punishment. What is left on the plates of the mistress of this house, and her teachers and pupils, is devoured by him before they reach the kitchen. Look upon his belly! Observe the saffron of his thief’s countenance, the yellow in his sullen greedy eyes! Consider his many chins! Hunger does not drive him. He is a slave to his stomach, which is his god. Is there wonder that he has stones in his liver and gall bladder? No! He has been in this infirmia many times, suffering agony as the stones moved. Has that halted him? No!”

He glared at the sick man, then flicked his strong fingers painfully on the slave’s cheek. The man winced, then groaned. Echion nodded fiercely and smiled a most unamused smile. “When first he would appear here I would give him a draught of opium to relieve his anguish, for indeed the anguish is even more painful than a difficult birth. But, no more! He writhes upon his bed and calls upon the gods to give him death, when he is in torture. But he shall have no opium until he has learned that judicious eating is the only answer to his affliction. Then, of a certainty, he will suffer no more nor need opium.”

Aspasia said in a subdued voice: “What is it that compels him to eat so disastrously, to steal food?”