The Persian Boy (46 page)

I was nearly running, to keep up and listen. “Italy, now. My sister’s husband died making war there, he should have waited for me. They’ll have to be brought into order before long, or that western tribe, the Romans, will have it all. Good fighters, I’ve heard. I should let them keep their own form of government; and I could use their troops to push the empire westward, along north Africa. I long to see the Pillars of Herakles; who knows what may lie beyond?”

There was much more. Sometimes snatches come back to me, and then I lose them; seeing only his face in the cool early light, wor?n and shining, worn fine like much-used gold; his deep eyes bright as a fire-altar; his tousled hair, faded yet still a boy’s; and the strong obedient body forgetful of its wounds, ready to face the tasks of another life-span, pacing as if already on its way.

“So Babylon must be the capital, at the center. The harbor should have slips for a thousand galleys. I shall go straight from here, to get started, and prepare the fleet for Arabia … Why are you looking sad?”

“Only at leaving Ekbatana. When do we go?”

“Oh, not till the cold begins. We will have our summer.” He turned his eyes to the mountains, and would have walked naked to the balcony, if I’d not put a robe on him. “What a place for a festival! We’ll have one before we go. It’s time I offered something to the immortals.”

We had our summer.

On the hills with the hounds crying, racing the clouds; in the rose garden with its lotus pools; in the high hall whose columns were sheathed with gold and silver, as I did my Dance of the River to the sound of flutes; in the great Bedchamber where I had been shamed and now was cherished, each day and night, I used to say to myself, I will miss nothing; I will never let my eye or my ear or my soul or my senses sleep, never forget to know that I am happy. For it will be a long campaign; who knows when we shall come back?

Thus the Wise God gives us prophecy enough, but not too much; as he does to birds, who foresee the winter, but not the night of ice that will drop them from the bough.

Alexander started at once to put in train his plans for the fleet, and the great harbor at Babylon, sending orders ahead. He wanted the north of the Hyrkanian Sea explored, to see how the coast led round to India. He also did much state business Darius would have handed to someone else; it was the custom for the King to take a holiday at Ekbatana. When I told Alexander so, he looked surprised, and said he was taking one; he had never been so idle in his life.

The summer before, we had been in Gedrosia. I would dabble my hand in the lotus pool, and think, I am happy. Let never a moment flow by me unthanked, unkissed. .

One night I said, “Are you happy, Al’skander?”

He said smiling, “Couldn’t you tell?”

“Oh, yes, that. I mean here, in Ekbatana.”

“Happy?” he said, turning it over. “What is happiness?” He stroked me, so that I should know him grateful. “To have achieved one’s longing, yes. But also, when all one’s mind and body are stretched to breaking, when one hasn’t a thought beyond what to do next moment; one looks back after, and there it was.”

“You will never settle down, will you, Al’skander? Not even here.”

“Settle down? With all I have to do? I should hope not.”

He was already planning the autumn festival, and sent word of it to Greece. Hordes of actors and poets, singers and kitharists would be on the way. He was not inviting athletes. In the old days, he said, they had been all-round men, the heroes of their cities in war; now they had trained themselves into mere machines for winning one event. “A catapult can throw further than any soldier, but it can’t do anything else. It’s not good for the men to have such people beat them. Nor for the boys to see it.”

“The boys” now meant one thing to him. When the veterans left, returning to their wives and leaving, as soldiers do, the women who’d followed them with so much hardship, he had made the children his wards. He would not have them suffer in Macedon as unwanted foreign bastards; they should be reared for what they were, half Persian, half Macedonian, part of the harmony he’d prayed for at the Susa love-feast. Boys old enough to leave their mothers were at school already, and had come up here with the court. There were to be events for them at the games; he went sometimes to watch them training.

He went sometimes, too, along the latticed walk to the Harem. Roxane was like a sharp sauce to him; nauseous if one fills one’s plate with it, yet a little now and then will make one crave for the taste again. It did not trouble me?.

Summer fled by in the cool sweet hills; the roses rested before their autumn flowering. There came a day of change. His face was smoothed with joy; he could talk about nothing long without, “Hephaistion thinks . . .” or “Hephaistion was saying …” Somewhere, perhaps up in the mountains riding alone, they had broken the wall, cast themselves into each other’s arms, were once again Achilles and Patroklos; they would begin forgetting.

In the wisdom of my hard schooling, I’d done nothing to delay it; no malice could be remembered against me now. I had shut in my silent heart, as always, “Say that you love me best of all.” So I kept what I had. He’d no need to forget the nights when he’d turned to me, and known that I understood, I had not defaced the legend.

Now that it was restored, polished and shining, I was aware of a relief. He’d not been himself without it. He had lived so long at stretch, in labors and wounds and sickness and endurance, it did not do for him to have the roots of his life disturbed.

Hephaistion must have known it; he was not a fool. I expect, indeed, in his heart he was still a lover. He’d felt he should be upheld against Eumenes, right or wrong. Just so the Macedonians felt about the Persians. Just so I felt, but had the sense to keep it quiet. Alexander attracted jealousy. He was much beloved; and he never turned love away.

Even in the cool air of Ekbatana, and doing no more than two men’s work, he still tired sooner than he’d done before his wound. I was glad this other wound was healing. He’d go more rested to Babylon, where the real work would begin.

Banners went up on gilded poles with sculptured finials. A city of tents arose, for the artists at the festival. The racecourse and the stadium were cleared and leveled. The architects made a theater, with a crane to fly on the gods, and a machine for wheeling in murdered corpses, which Greek poets set such store by. Thettalos, Alexander’s favorite actor, a handsome Thessalian in his fifties, was welcomed with open arms and given the best tent. They came pouring in, flute-players, chorus-boys, scene-painters, singers and dancers, rhapsodists, acrobats; high-class courtesans and low-class whores, among them some eunuchs so shameless and bedizened, I was ashamed to see them about. Traders swarmed everywhere, selling food and gewgaws and cloth and spices, and, of course, wine.

The Palace flowed with it. There was a parry every night, for the artists, or for Alexander’s friends. Patroklos was back; he gave himself up to gaiety. For nights on end, I didn’t get him sober to bed. He was never dead drunk, knowing he couldn’t sleep it off next day; he had to be at the contests. His friends, not restrained by duty, often left the hall feet first. One gets used to this, when living among Macedonians.

While I was getting him into his state robe for the contest of choral odes, he said to me, “Hephaistion’s not well. He’s running a fever.”

Once he used never to talk of him to me; now he often would, after all our unspoken secrets. I said I was sorry, and hoped it was nothing much.

“He must have had it on him last night, if he’d only known it. I wish I’d kept down the drinking.” He went off, and the trumpets sounded.

Hephaistion was worse next day, and had cramps in his belly. Busy as he was, Alexander spent all his spare time with him. Achilles had always bound Patroklos’ wounds. He got him the most noted doctor in Ekbatana, a Greek called Glaukias; to whom he gave advice, as he told me after. But he really had some knowledge; Aristotle had taught it him, and he had kept it up. It was agreed the patient should take no solid food. The priests were told to sacrifice for his healing.

The third day he was lower; weak as a babe, rambling in his talk, and full of fever, so Alexander said. It was the day for the comedies and farces; he did not sit them out, just came from the sickroom in time to give the prizes. When I asked the news at evening, he said, “He’s better, I think. Restless and crotchety, a good sign. He’s st?rong, he’ll throw it off … I was sorry to disappoint the artists, but that was necessary.”

There was a party that night, but he left it early to see how Hephaistion was; reporting him asleep, and looking easier. Next day, though still with some fever, he was much better. Alexander attended all the contests; his absence had much upset the comedians. In the evening he found Hephaistion sitting up, and asking for food.

“I wish,” he said to me later, “I could have sent him something good from supper.” He was still fond of this pleasant custom. “But the belly-cramps leave a weakness in the entrails; I saw that often in the Oxos country. I told the doctor to be sure and keep him on slops.”

He still kept his bed, much better, but with a little fever at night, when the artists’ contest ended, and the games began.

Alexander loved the arts; but the games were his close concern. He presided over everything; always remembered the victor’s record in battle and in earlier games, when he gave the crowns. For such things the army loved him. After two or three days of this, came the day for the boys.

I’d played truant from the men’s events, finding better pastime in the artists’ quarter; but I went to the stadium for the boys’ race, to see the breed Alexander was rearing up. He was sure to want to talk about it after.

They looked healthy, having been well fed since he took them over; with features from nearly everywhere, all crossed with Macedonian; no doubt there’d be half-Indians too, when they were old enough. The half-Persians were far the handsomest. I sat just across the track from Alexander. At the march-past, they went off with their faces lit from his smile.

They lined up; the trumpet sounded; they sped from the marks. They wore little breechcloths from respect for Persian modesty, no more. A pretty sight, I was thinking; when I was aware of a stir about the throne. Some messenger was standing by Alexander. He had jumped to his feet. The steps behind had closed up with people; he shoved them aside before they could make way, he nearly stepped on them. He was gone, with those nearest him scrambling after.

I clambered from my place. I must know what it was; I might be needed. Being on the far side of the stadium delayed me. When I reached the Palace, the royal rooms were deserted. It was then I guessed.

I went up the stairs, turned a crooked passage; I had no need to ask the way. I had heard from the stairway the dreadful sound of grief, which lifted the hair on my head.

No one was guarding the door. A knot of men stood outside. I slipped in among them, unnoticed as a household dog. I had never been before in Hephaistion’s room. It was handsome, with red wall-hangings and a stand of silver vessels. A smell of sickness hung in the air. He lay on the bed, his face turned up, his mouth fallen open. Someone had closed his eyes. Grasping the body with both fists, lying across it, his mouth pressed to its face, was Alexander. He lifted his head, and gave again that dreadful cry; then buried his head in the dead hair.

After a while Perdikkas, awkward with shame and pity (yes, and already fear), said, “Alexander.”

He looked up. I stepped forward, caring for none of them. He had turned to me before, and knew that I understood. His gaze passed over me, empty. It seemed at that moment that for him I had never been. Lost, gone, possessed.

I looked at this strange room, never forgotten, where I stood like a dead thing unmourned, unburied, tossed naked into the night; at the bed with its burden, the wall-hangings of stags and archers, the silver ewers; the bed-table shoved askew, with something on it: an empty wine-jar tumbled on its side, and a platter with the picked carcass of a chicken.

Suddenly Alexander flung himself to his feet and stared at us, as if he might kill any one of us without caring which. “Where is the doctor?”

Ptolemy looked round to ask the servants, but they had long since fled. He said, “He must have gone to the games.”

I had withdrawn near the door, and w?as aware of something behind me. It was the man himself, slower than I had been to take alarm; just come, just aware of what he saw. Alexander sprang across like a beast of prey, fastened on him, and shook him to and fro. “You murderer! Why did you leave him? Why did you let him eat?”

The man, almost past words, stammered that he had seemed to be out of danger, that he had ordered him chicken broth.

Alexander said, “Hang him. Take him away and hang him. Do it now.”

Perdikkas looked at Ptolemy. His eyes were on Alexander; without moving them, he nodded. The man was dragged away, under Seleukos’ escort. Alexander went back to the bed, stared down at it, and lay where he had been before. The corpse moved, shaken with his sobbing.

More people were at the door, men of rank who’d just had the news. Those within all looked at one another helplessly. Peukestas touched my shoulder, and said softly in Persian, “You speak to him.”

I shook my head. Only one thing was wanting to my heart’s death, that he should hate me for being the one who was left alive.

So I ran away; through the city, through the stink and litter of the fair, through the street of the women, unseeing till I heard their laughter; into the country, I don’t know where. A cold stream I stumbled in waked my mind. I looked back at the city; the sun was sinking, the colored ramparts glowed. Did I run off, I thought, when his flesh was wounded? Now he is stricken in his mind and might hurt me in his madness, now I forsake him, a thing no dog would do.

Dusk was falling. My clothes were torn, my hands bleeding, from thorns I could not recall. Without even thinking to make myself presentable, I went straight back. There was much the same knot about the door. Within, dead silence.

Two or three men came out to talk apart. Ptolemy said softly, “We must get him out before it starts to stink, or he’ll lose his reason. Maybe for good.”

“By force then?” said Perdikkas. “He won’t come else. It must be all of us; it’s no time to be singled out.”

I slipped away. Nothing should get me in there, to see him look from that dead face to mine. I went to his room and waited.

He was quiet when they brought him in, no one was handling him. They all stood round him expressing grief and praising the dead, I daresay the first chance they’d had. His eyes moved from face to face, as if he were at bay among their spears. Suddenly he cried, “Liars! You all hated and envied him, all of you. Go, leave me alone.”

They exchanged looks and went. He stood in the state robe he’d worn for the games, white upon purple, all creased from being lain on. A groan burst from him, as if all the wounds he had borne in silence found voice at once. Then he turned and saw me.

I could not read his face. He had no weapon; but his hands were very strong. I went and knelt, and reached for his hand and kissed it.

He stared down at me and said, “You have mourned for him.”

It took me a moment to remember my brier-torn clothes, my scratched face and hands. I grasped a tear in my coat, and ripped it top to bottom.

He took me by the hair, and pulled back my face to look in it. I said to him with my eyes, When you come back I will be waiting, if I am alive. If not, it was my destiny. It seemed he would search me forever with his mad eyes, grasping my hair. Then he said, “You fetched him when Oxhead died. You honored him when he saved you from the desert. You never desired his death.”

I praised the dead to him, kneeling, grasping his hand. It was my confession, though he did not know it. I had welcomed my rival’s faults, hated his virtues. Now I drew them out with pain from where my wishes had buried them, and offered them, his trophies, wet with my blood. He was the victor forever, now.

Alexander’s eyes had wandered. He had not heard half I’d said. He let me go, returning to his solitude. Presently he lay down, and covered his face.

All next day he lay there, accepting no consolation.

Though he let me take no care of him, he did not send me out; he s?eldom knew I was there. The generals acted on their own, canceling the games, getting the banners changed to wreaths of mourning. Seleukos, who had kept the doctor unhanged lest the King should change his mind, dared not ask, and hanged him. The embalmers, summoned in time, did their work upon Hephaistion. There were many Egyptians with the camp.

At night, without really seeing me, he let me give him water. Without his leave, I brought in cushions and slept there. At morning I saw him wake from a brief sleep, and endure remembrance. That day he wept, as if he had only now learned how. It was as if he had been stunned, and began to stir. Once he even thanked me. But his face was strange, and I dared not embrace him.

Next morning he was awake before me. He was standing with a dagger in his hand, hacking off his hair.

For a moment I thought his senses were quite gone, that he might next cut his throat or mine. Greeks in our day only lay one lock on the funeral pyre. Then I remembered Achilles, shearing his hair for Patroklos. So I found the trimming-knife, and said, “Let me do it. I’ll do it just as you want.”

“No,” he said, hacking away. “No, I must do it myself.” But he grew impatient with the back, and let me finish it, so that he could be off. Roused from his living death, staring wide awake, he went like a trail of fire.

He asked where was Hephaistion; but the embalmers had him, steeped in niter. He asked if the doctor had been hanged (Seleukos had been prudent there) and commanded the body to be nailed on a cross. He ordered the manes of all army horses to be cropped in mourning. He ordered the gold and the silver to be stripped from the battlements of Ekbatana, and the colors painted over black.

I followed where I could, in case he should lose the sense of where he was, or become a child. I knew that he was mad. But he could tell where and with whom he was. He was obeyed in everything; Glaukias the doctor was black with crows.

I was trailing him, not too near in case he saw me, when he happened on Eumenes, who had seen his swift course too late. His face I couldn’t see; but I saw the terror in Eumenes’. He knew he was suspect of wishing Hephaistion dead.

Soon after, a rich catafalque appeared in the square before the Palace, hung with mourning wreaths. A message reached Alexander that friends of the dead had reared it, to dedicate their offerings. He came to see it. Eumenes was first; he dedicated his whole panoply of arms and armor, which were very costly. A whole procession followed him. Everyone came, who’d had a cross word with Hephaistion any time in the last five years.

Alexander watched calmly, like a child who is lied to and not deceived. He spared them not for their pretenses, but for their penitence and their fear.

When they had done, all who had really liked Hephaistion came and made offerings. I was surprised how many there were.

Next day Alexander planned the funeral. It was to be in Babylon, the new empire’s center, where his memorial would stand forever. When Darius sued for peace after the fall of Tyre, he’d offered as ransom for his mother and wife and children ten thousand talents. On Hephaistion, Alexander was spending twelve.

It quietened his mind, making these dispositions, choosing an architect for a royal pyre two hundred feet high, planning the funeral games, which were to have three thousand competitors. He was clear and precise in everything.

At bedtime, he would talk to me of Hephaistion as if memory could give him life; what they did as boys, what he’d said of this or that, how he trained his dogs. Yet I felt something unsaid; I felt his eyes when I turned away. I knew; he was thinking that his taking me had grieved Hephaistion; that he should make amends. Quietly he would put me aside, punishing himself not me, making his gift to the dead. He would do it, if once his resolve was set.

My mind ran like the hunted stag that scarcely knows it runs. I said, “It’s good that Eumenes and the rest made their dedications. He is at peace with ?them now. He has forgotten mortal anger. Of all men on earth he is only concerned with you, set as he is now among the immortals.”

He stepped away, leaving the towel in my hands, and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, till I feared he’d harm them. I don’t know what he saw in that sparkling darkness. Coming out of it, he said, “Yes. Yes. Yes. So it must be, nothing else is possible.”

I got him to bed and was going out, when he said, as briskly as he’d planned the games, “I shall send to Ammon’s oracle, tomorrow.”

I made some soft answer and crept off. What new turn had I given his madness? I had been thinking in Persian, when I spoke of the immortals; the souls of faithful men, safe through the River into Paradise. But Alexander, he had thought in Greek. He would ask the oracle for Hephaistion to be a god.

I tossed on my bed and wept. His resolve had set, he would do it. I thought of the Egyptians, the oldest people, scornful in their long history. They will mock him, I thought; they will mock him. Then I remembered; he is a deity himself already; Ammon acknowledged him. Without Hephaistion, he cannot bear even immortality.

So perfect was my grief, it made my mind white and empty, and I slept.