The Memoirs of Cleopatra (21 page)

“I tell you, I am no mystery!”

“No one is a mystery to himself,” said Caesar. “But what you truly want, what you truly are—those things remain veiled to me in regards to you.”

It was so simple! How could he say that? I wanted to be with him, to be loved by him, to become a partner with him in a union that was—political? military? matrimonial? O Isis, I realized then that I was not sure what I wanted—or rather, that the thing I wanted might be brand new: a new alliance—a new country—perhaps formed of east and west, the way Alexander had envisioned it. But it was a vision that had died with him, whatever it had been. If it was to be reborn, it would have to be refashioned for our world, three hundred years later.

“You look so solemn!” he said. “Whatever are you thinking?”

“Of Alexander…”

“Strange. I think of him, too. It must be this country. Something about Egypt, that calls forth visions of Alexander. Here he went to the oracle, and found out he was the son of Amun.”

“Whereas you
are
Amun,” I said, laughing.

He laughed, too. “So I am Alexander’s father!”

“No—but this child that you are father of, is perhaps—can be—”

He quickly put his finger over my mouth, and stopped me in mid-sentence. “No! None of that! Do you wish to call down the wrath of envious gods? No!” He looked angry. “I went to Alexander’s tomb before we left,” he said. “I wished to see him. Long ago, when I was in Spain, and I was only forty, I came across a statue of Alexander. I realized that forty years after his birth, he had already been dead for seven years! He had finished conquering the known world, and had died, and here I was, seven years older, and I had accomplished nothing. That changed me. I left that statue a different person. Now, this time, I approached the man himself, lying there all encased in his golden armor with his shield by his side, stiff with death and angry about it—I could see the rage on his face—and I was able to say, ‘I have done all that I wished since that day in Spain, excepting one thing only: to complete your conquests.’ ” He turned and looked at me, his eyes a little surprised that he had voiced it aloud.

“Yes?” I encouraged him. “Say it. Say what it is you still want.”

“To conquer the Parthians. And beyond that, India.”

The air was still. The words hung there.

“O Isis!” I breathed.

“It can be,” he said. “It is possible.”

But
…you are fifty-two years old, the remnants of Pompey’s army are still at large, Rome is filled with your political enemies, you have little money to finance such a venture…Egypt…
I thought. The empire of Alexander, revived and enlarged….

“I too have sought solace at the tomb of my ancestor Alexander,” I said cautiously. “His blood runs in me. And in
our
child,” I reminded him. “But his dreams can be dangerous—desert demons drawing us on to doom.”

“No, when Alexander went out into the desert he
found
his dream,” said Caesar stubbornly. “And if dreams and doom are intertwined—I could not find it in myself to avoid the dream for fear of the doom.”

I shivered, watching the horizon for the appearance of the tips of the pyramids, the only monuments to defy doom. Certainly their builders had not—we have forgotten their stories if not their names, and robbers have made off with their treasures and desecrated their mummies.

It was twilight when we first perceived, like the tiny points of pins, the apexes of the pyramids, far away above the green banks of the Nile. As the sun sank and touched, fleetingly, the stones, they glowed.

“Look!” I said to Caesar. “There they stand!”

He stood up to see them better, and watched a long time at the rail as the day sank down into night.

At the faintest light of dawn we set sail, and as the pale yellow gold crept across the sky, we saw the pyramids loom larger. By the time we docked and they filled a portion of the sky, Caesar had fallen silent. He stood and stared. Then he set out, walking briskly, on the causeway toward them. I followed in my litter. I could not have walked as fast as he in any case, but certainly not now.

My mind conjured up the shades of the old priests who had accompanied the Pharaoh’s funeral sledge; they must have swayed, walking slowly, chanting, clouds of incense enveloping them. Now one Roman walked in their stead, his bright cloak snapping in the wind.

At its base I alighted from the litter, and stood beside him. He was still silent. He had to tilt his head far back even to see the top. I put my hand in his, and pressed it.

He stood there so long I felt some spell must have come over him. At length he moved, and began to walk around the base of the pyramid. My bearers quickly brought me the litter and I followed, bouncing over the rough, stony ground. Caesar kept walking out in front, faster than I have ever seen anyone walk without actually running. It was as if he wished to outpace us, and encounter the pyramids alone. I told my bearers to stop, and to take me near the Sphinx instead. I knew he would come there, when he had had his fill of the pyramid. I also knew he would not come before he was ready.

They erected a pavilion to shade me from the sun while I waited. The sun had crept up in the sky, and the marvelous shadows of the Sphinx were disappearing. I stared at the melancholy face of the creature. Had we been here at dawn, we would have seen his face bathed in those first rays that are pink and soft, for he faces east. He has greeted the rising Re for—how many years? No one knows. We believe he is the oldest thing on earth. Who built him? We do not know. Why? We do not know. Is he to guard the pyramids? Were they built to lie under his protection? A mystery. Sand covers his paws, and every few hundred years it is dug away. Then the desert blows it in again, and he settles down in his soft, golden bed. He rests, but does not sleep.

Caesar came around the corner, as suddenly as a thunderclap. He hurried over to my side. He seemed excited; far from tiring him, his hike seemed to have invigorated him. “Come!” He yanked my hand, and I stumbled up out of the folding chair.

The sun was hot, beating down on my head, making me feel faint. I twisted my hand away. “More slowly, I beg you!” I said. “It is too hot for such haste, and the sands here are treacherous!”

Only then did he seem to lose his trance. “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me.” Together we walked in a more normal pace to the Sphinx. Its earlier tawny color had been changed by the noon sun into hard whiteness, and there was no shadow of pity anywhere on its features.

“The lips,” Caesar finally said. “They are longer than a man lying down. The ears—bigger than a tree!”

“He is mighty,” I breathed. “He will keep Egypt, as he has since before living memory.”

“Yet he was made by men,” said Caesar. “We must not forget that. The pyramids were made, block by block, but still made by men.”

“Higher up the Nile you will see other wonders,” I said. “Temples with columns so thick and high it seems impossible that men could have raised them.”

“Yet we know they did,” he said. “There are no mysteries, no things intrinsically unknowable, my love, only things that we do not understand yet.”

We watched the day swing round the monuments from the shelter of the pavilion. The heat grew intense in midday, and I could feel the sunlight trying to enter between the cracks of the awnings, searching like eager fingers for an opening. Wherever they succeeded in getting through, the sand they struck grew too hot to touch. The pyramids and the Sphinx radiated white heat, dazzling like a mirage in front of the pure blue sky.

Caesar leaned back and watched them, sipping some wine, and allowing one of the staff to fan him with the small, brass-bound military fans. It did not do much to stir the overheated, still air.

“You should use one of mine,” I said. My servants were standing by with fans of ostrich feathers, wide half-circles that could wave and send rolls of air in all directions.

“Never,” he said. “It even looks decadent. Who would use a fan like that?”

“People who are hot,” I said. “As we go farther up the Nile, closer and closer to Africa, and the heat intensifies, I wager you will beg for one of these!”

“You know how fond I am of wagers,” he said. “I am a gambler. I accept.”

“What will you give me if I win?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “I will marry you according to Egyptian rites,” he finally said. “You will be my wife—everyplace but Rome. Because—”

“Yes, I know. Roman law does not recognize foreign marriages.”

But laws are made by men; and the only things built by men that so far have proved immutable are the pyramids.

The heat began to lessen; I could feel it release its grip on us. The colors outside began to change; the stark white was replaced by a honeyed tinge on the limestone, and this gradually faded to a rich golden amber, so sweet a color that it made gold seem gaudy by comparison. Behind the monuments the sky had turned a tender shade of violet-blue, with long fingers of purple clouds stretched out to welcome the setting sun home. The sun would go down behind the pyramids, lighting them from behind for a while.

The smell of heated stone beginning to cool came to me on the evening breeze that had sprung up. Soon darkness would fall; we must make our way back to the boat.

“Come,” I said, rising.

“No. I want to stay,” said Caesar. “We would not sail at night anyway. The moon is nearly full. Why hurry away?”

Because…because the desert changes at night, I thought.

“You are not afraid?” he asked in a low voice.

“No,” I had to say. And I was not afraid so much as uneasy. I did not wish to lie so close to the monuments of the dead, to a city of the dead. Traditionally, this side of the Nile was deserted by the living after the sun had gone beneath the earth each night.

They had enlarged the pavilion for us, made it into a proper tent. Now we could lie down and stretch out; now there were cushions and refreshments at hand. But after the servants had arranged all these things, Caesar ordered them to leave. We were to be completely alone.

“Something we have never been,” he said. “One gets used to being always in the company of others, but it colors everything.”

Caesar all to myself! Caesar alone! How many other people would have paid exorbitant sums to change places with me? They would have had petitions for him, supplications, bribes…possibly even poison or a dagger. He must have trusted me completely.

The only thing I wished from him was to let the hours stretch out unbroken between us for a little while.

Darkness falls swiftly on the desert. There is little twilight. One moment the pyramids and Sphinx were rounded, whole, emitting a sort of light of their own, as if they had stored it up during the long day; the next they faded out against the sky.

“But there is a moon rising,” Caesar said. “Soon there will be light enough.”

A gigantic, swollen moon was struggling on the horizon. Its face was still pale and dreamy-colored. It would throw off the clouds clinging to it, then shrink, yet grow brighter at the same time.

The sands were blue-white and the moon so bright we could see every line in our hands, could see the fibers in the ropes anchoring the tent. The pyramids were sharp-peaked, casting vast shadows on the sands behind them. The eye sockets of the Sphinx were empty black pools.

It had grown surprisingly chilly; we pulled our mantles around us. I could hear, not so far away, a pack of hyenas yowling.

I had thought we would talk, speak at last of all that was within us. Instead, silence reigned. It must have been past midnight before Caesar finally said, “Now I have seen six of the seven wonders of the world.”

How many places he had been! And I had gone nowhere, had seen nothing outside Egypt. “Tell me of them,” I said.

“There is no need for me to describe the Lighthouse of Alexandria,” he said. “But for the others, quickly: the Colossus of Rhodes has fallen, but you can still see the bronze pieces; the great Temple of Artemis in Ephesus is so vast you can get lost in it; and I can never think of Zeus as looking any different from the statue at Olympia. But the one wonder I have never seen is the one I am determined to conquer for myself: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.”

“Are they even real?” I asked. “Has anyone seen them for hundreds of years?”

“Alexander has.”

“Always Alexander.”

“He died there in Babylon. Perhaps his last sight was of them, outside his window. In any case, I intend to conquer Parthia, and when I take Babylon, my reward will be to visit the sacred place where Alexander died, and to see the Hanging Gardens.”

“Can you trust me enough to reveal your intentions? Have you a plan for this conquest, or is it still unformed?”

“Come.” He pulled me up from the cushion. “Let us walk outside.” He carefully arranged the warm mantle around my shoulders.

I had to squint, so bright was the light. Everything under the moonlight looked different, sharp and cold and hard against the inky sky.

“I have been cut off from the outside world since first I landed in Egypt,” he said. “In truth, I should be even now on my way back to Rome. I linger here because”—he shook his head—“I seem to be under some sort of spell.” When I laughed, he said, “If you knew me better, you would know how out of character it is for me to dally like this. Work calls. Duty calls. But here I am—on the desert at night with the Queen of Egypt, far from Rome, and going farther and farther toward Africa every day. I shall have to answer for it to my enemies, who will doubtless make the most of it.”