Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria Page 8

  “He means to visit!”

  “Who means to visit?”

  “Augustine!”

  Lais, looking up from her own letter, smiles. “The priest in Hippo who admires you so?”

  “The one who writes me so. More than Synesius!”

  “But you welcome his letters.”

  “Letters are not the man. And I cannot say no, please, I am busy—which I am. I cannot plead that I have lectures to give, commentaries to write, books to read, hours I must devote to Father, there is a device I design, and this week alone I meet with three who have come from Rome just to see me.”

  “Write him back. Tell him he cannot come.”

  “I cannot!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he is already here!”

  ~

  My life has become Augustine. What I do, he does. What he says, I hear…for if any can talk, it is this man. But he cannot sit still. Nor can his face remain at rest. It changes as his thought changes—and his eyes! Augustine’s eyes are as beautiful as a pond deep in the rushes. His robes carelessly worn, his sandals mended and mended again, his hair a cloud of black turning white, he must be out and about. He does not ride. Chariots are a horror. So we walk. By now, there could be no place in Alexandria he has not seen. Born here, raised here, by walking its streets, I have now been where I have never been. If before my city delighted me, now it astounds me. I know wide straight streets and sea air. I know scented rooms, pools of golden fish, and cloth of finest linen. I know flights of words and of numbers. I consider the stars and dream of distant worlds. But others know crooked streets as narrow as hallways, rags stiff with filth, rats underfoot, the scat of pigeons and hawks as a thick and irksome rain, and altars to countless gods each demanding sacrifice of blood or of purse—and the noise! The importuning that we buy some questionable thing! The hands that reach out, the spit as we pass—by the formless mud of Nu, I had no idea!

  As for Augustine, raised in a dusty backwater along the coast of North Africa, knowing only Rome and Milan, and now the undistinguished Hippo Regius, he shivers with joy. He would be a teacher, he would instill his passion in others; in Hippo, he has, so far, taught his students nothing. But he bursts with ideas on teaching. He tells me there are three types of students. The first has been taught well, the second has not been taught at all, and the third has been badly taught but does not know it. A teacher must adapt to each of these, and the most difficult type is the last, for this student believes he understands when he does not. Augustine also believes a teacher must allow his students to speak, even to encourage their questions.

  In this, I find much to ponder. I see I have not been much of a teacher. Listening, I hope to become a great deal better. As for evil, he asks why is the world so fraught with danger? Why do so many, even those who enjoy comfort, also suffer pain and sorrow? How does a man bear to know that all he does, even if good, comes in the end to nothing but dust and emptiness?

  Looking up from all this, I find we are in the Jewish Quarter. A maze of streets, large and small, some of the houses are as old as Alexandria itself. From the beginning, this place is home to our Jews.

  “Come, friend,” I say, “Let me show where once lived a great man.”

  It is not far, the small house I seek, the one with a small blue door through which once passed the philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, but to stand before it seems for Augustine a shrine. “Philo lived here?”

  “He did.”

  “You have read his De Presidentia? ‘God is continually ordering matter by his thought…there never was a time he did not create, for the Words have been with him from the beginning.’ Sublime!”

  “Tell me then, Augustine, if you believe as did Philo, that matter is ordered by God’s thought, would that not mean evil exists in the thoughts of God?”

  For this I receive only a startled eye. “Why,” he asks, “is this house not marked in any way?”

  “That it remains and is tended, marks it.”

  I think Augustine torn between body and soul. And I, torn between mind and soul, almost understand him. In the belief that body hinders the soul, he denies the body, and so is tormented. In torment, he finds his “evil,” and tries to escape it by defining and redefining it. His self-set task becomes an obsession. For me, evil has begun to blur. This, I think, the doing of Lais. For all I call evil, she calls experience. For all I lament, she calls adventure. Beyond generous, beyond accepting, her generous accepting infuriates by stealing away my righteousness. Angered by this or saddened by that, I do as any—find voice in righteousness. Yet truly, righteousness is not a gift but a curse. To believe one is right is to believe another wrong. If the other is wrong, then one has the right to “correct” him. Correction comes in many guises, and most I would call “evil.”

  Because he would see the great lighthouse and because he would see where Pompey Magnus, seeking asylum from the last of the Ptolemies, was cut down as an ill-fated gift to Caesar, we walk across the Heptastadion. Alexander’s causeway, seven times the length of a Greek stadium, links the Island of Pharos with Alexandria on which sits the village of Pharos.

  Augustine takes it all in at a glance, saying, “The pirates of Pharos are much like the burgers of Hippo: uneducated, filthy, smelly, and loud.”

  “Do the people of Hippo steal? Do they stare and talk behind quick hands?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I should no more wish to see Hippo than I would wish to remain here.”

  Where before I received a startled eye, now I receive one stern. “Who do you teach, Hypatia? Would you not say that the need of these exceeds all others?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “The needs of my family come before all.”

  “These are your family.”

  “There are those who are worthy and those who are not. All of nature teaches us this.”

  I have displeased him. Augustine turns his idealistic face away. Would he have me lie and call all men and all women equal? I do not speak of status or wealth or comeliness. I speak of intelligence. Few can reason. Fewer reason well. Genius is as rare as a mermaid. I have never seen a mermaid and every genius I have ever known, I know from books. “The shadows lengthen, Augustine. My family awaits me.”

  At the southern end of the Heptastadion, within sight of the Alexandrian docks lying to the right and to the left, we are stopped by the raising of the platform to allow a grain ship bound for Rome to pass through from the Royal Harbor into the Eunostos Harbor, and here we come on a most terrible sight.

  A small crowd, one gathered only by happenstance, is also stopped on their way into the city.

  A man is being beaten with cudgels. Already he is down to his knees, his hands covering his head, blood streaming down from both head and hands. Who beats him? Three! And each a fearsome thing with teeth bared as a dog’s teeth. A fourth, huge as a bear, stands between us and the blooded man. Behind us, the people watch, terrified, huddled together as a flock of goats before lions. They would help, but how? They would not help. I have no knife, but should I have, I would be no match for the bear of a man. I can think of none who would be a match. Augustine has no knife or cudgel. He has no stick or stone. But he walks forward shouting, “Stop this! You will kill him!”

  Not one pays the slightest mind. The poor thing, a merchant by the look of him, is now flat on the ground where they can kick him as well as hit him. But Augustine has caught the attention of the bear of a brute. It walks forward as a bear would walk, to pick up my friend as easily as it would pick up a child, only to throw him down on the stones. I make no sound save a moan deep in my throat. Augustine is back up as fast as he can speak. “I insist! Stop in the name of Christ!”

  Near me, a woman clutches a babe. What she says, she says to herself, but I hear. “They do this in the name of Christ.”

  I turn to her. “What do you mean?” She would say no more, but I ask again, “What do you mean?”

&
nbsp; If she whispered before, now it’s only a breathing: “Parabalanoi.”

  Oh, I see. I understand. The brotherhood. I have heard them called angels. We are told they bury the dead, tend to the ill, care for the widow. We are told they are a select and loving order of Christians who do the good work of the Bishop of Alexandria. But twice as often, I have heard them called thugs. I have heard them called demons. If I were ill or widowed or dead, I might bless them. But I am alive and I do not bless them. These are the men who killed so many at the Serapeum, these and the monks of the Nitrian mountains.

  “But what has he done?”

  “He follows the teaching of Arius.”

  By Discordia, but how Christians bicker—worse than astronomers. They hold councils denying this and claiming that. And now they publically punish one who thinks as the priest Arius of Alexandria taught: that the Son is not equal to the Father? I cry out as the bear reaches once again for my Christian friend, “Come away, Augustine! Come away!”

  “How can I leave,” he replies, “knowing God must weep. You run, Hypatia, but I will not.”

  And with these words from Augustine, the eyes of the bear find mine.

  The man who is beaten lies still, the three who have beaten him, turn away. And when they turn they turn as the bear turns, towards Augustine and towards me.

  “Hypatia?” says one of the three, not large and not small, but covered in blood not his own, and my name in his mouth is as dirt. He spits it out. “Is this the woman who thinks to teach men?”

  Those who have cowered and watched move away from me, and away from my talkative friend. The path is clear now. The drawbridge down, the ship on its way to the sea, and the woman with her babe flees across towards the docks of Alexandria. If I had a babe in arms, I should be running with her. But I do not have a babe and my friend neither moves nor speaks, but stands where he stands, facing these “angels.” If Augustine does not leave, I cannot leave. But what it is I can do, I have yet to determine, save pushing him off the causeway into the harbor in the hopes though he does not ride, he swims. This is a good idea, a fine idea. I am a strong swimmer. We could be gone on the instant. And as the three start towards me, I start towards Augustine with a mind to shoving as hard as I can.

  “Felix Zoilus!” shouts he who has asked in a kind of furious wonder if I teach men, “Stop her!”

  But the bear called Felix Zoilus will not stop me. Father’s tutors have done their work. If I must, I can be as an acrobat, tumbling towards Augustine, and if I must, kick him into the sea, following on as a maid from Minos using the horns of a charging bull to somersault over its back. I prepare my leap, up on my toes, my thighs tensed, my balance perfect—but I am suddenly grabbed by the edge of my tunic and pulled…and this is not done by Felix Zoilus or by any of the three who have begun to move towards me. A voice sounds in my ear. “Run, Hypatia. Follow the woman and run.”

  Minkah!

  “But Augustine…?”

  “Trust me, beloved. Augustine is safe. Now, run!”

  And instead of my shoving Augustine, I am shoved by Minkah, and I run as I am told, but as I run I look back to see Minkah standing before the three as well as before the bear of a man and none seem inclined to harm him. He has taken Augustine’s arm, is pulling him away, and Augustine allows this.

  Great Ammut! How brave our Egyptian. Where once I saved Minkah, now he saves me.

  Knowing Minkah will guide my friend to his lodging, I race home on bare and flying feet.

  But he has called me “beloved.” In such times, any can make a mistake. He must have been thinking of Lais.

  ~

  I do not tell Lais of my day on the causeway. I do not tell Father. Augustine, packing to return by ship to Hippo, does not mention it. As for Minkah, we say not a word to each other. It is as if it never happened…even the stable lad I sent to see if the man lived, and to help him if so, found no one there.

  ~

  Accepting water from the jug held by a servant, Lais turns her face to me, a face I judge all beauty by. “From this place, Miw, I see all that gives my heart its greatest joy. To have you with me completes the world.”

  “Sister! I love none better than you. If it would please you, we shall sit here forever.”

  Lais laughs. Her laughter never stings or shrinks my heart but is as the music of the lute lifting my spirit.

  We recline, my sister and I, on divans in a garden we grow on our roof and from this garden the blue harbors deepen before us and beyond Pharos glimmers the green and shifting sea. Behind us the gold of the city shivers in the sun.

  We have done exactly nothing for an hour save speak now and again of horses and books. Because of this, what Lais says next unsettles me.

  “What do you make of Minkah?”

  “Our Egyptian?”

  “The very one.”

  “What should I make of him? He is Father’s man. That he serves Father is all I require.”

  “Is it?”

  “Indeed! What else?”

  “Nothing else. I suppose.”

  “Lais! What do you mean by this? Minkah is a servant.”

  “Is he?”

  “Do I discourse with Socrates? A question for every question?”

  “Socrates was, of all men, wisest.”

  “And you are, of all women, wise as well. Was he also cunning?”

  “Who?”

  “Socrates!”

  “I am not cunning.”

  “Exactly what I would have said a moment ago.”

  Lais shifts on her divan, reaching for a fig. Full of grace, yet I note her hesitate, though it is gone in an instant. Even so, I wait to see it again for anything that troubles Lais, troubles me. But it is gone. It was nothing. Lais pops her fig in her mouth. “Do you not think Minkah an interesting man?”

  “That he can fashion what I design, this I find interesting. That he follows me wherever I go, this I find interesting. I have asked him why and he answers: to protect me. I tell him I need no protection. I say I have walked these streets alone as a child. I drive them now alone as an adult. I have never needed a watchdog before. I need none now. Lais! Why on earth do you speak of Minkah?”

  “I find him an interesting man.”

  “You find all of interest.”

  “Yes, to a degree. But some I find more interesting than others.” And here her sloe-eyes are so full of impish humor I can do nothing but flush and turn away.

  We are silent again. Lais has sunk her barb. I think of Minkah. An interesting man? An Egyptian, a servant, a creature of the streets, a lover of tall tales and epic adventure. One who called me beloved…but could not have meant me. Could I speak to Minkah as I speak to Augustine? To Father? Even to Synesius? Of course not. I now reach for my own fig but miss my aim, knocking Lais’ cup to the tiles. Before I can retrieve it, she has already bent over to do so. Comes a hiss of pain through her teeth.

  “Lais! What ails you?”

  The one I love most in all the world retrieves her spilled cup, sets it back on the table. “Nothing that will not pass, Miw. Hopping down from Ia’eh, I twisted a muscle in my hip.”

  “You rode without me?”

  “Who has time to ride whenever she pleases and who does not? All that is mine I owe to you.”

  “I would give you all seven times over.”

  “I know. But tell me true, is there not something else you see in our Egyptian?”

  “Lais! Stop!”

  BOOK TWO

  “O my Mother Nut, Stretch your wings over me; let me become like the imperishable stars, like the indefatigable stars. O Great Being who is in the world of the dead, At whose feet is Eternity, In whose hand is the Always, Come to me. O great divine beloved Soul, Who is in the mysterious Abyss Come to me.”—Egyptian inscription

  One year later

  Winter, 392

  Minkah the Egyptian

  I, Minkah, am become Theon’s right hand, his left hand, his two skinny legs, and often his sodde
n head. I empty the pot he pisses in. I sponge his backside. I bring his meals and his drink so I might all the more empty his pot and wash his ass.

  I know now the meaning of Theon’s name: “to rush.” Being alone when I learned this, I barked with laughter.

  In any case, I do all I do for the sake of Lais and for the sake of Hypatia. I also do this because now that I have insinuated myself into their home, it is understood that I shall remain here. Theophilus has at long last learned of the meetings in Theon’s bedroom. It was inevitable that he would.

  Today as many as a dozen crowd round my “masters” bed, all eager to hear the news from Rome. I doubt Theon remembers Rome, much less has news of it. But the more I hear, the more I understand why these men are so interesting to Theophilus.

  Pappas stands before Theon, his back to the room, so that only Theon and I might see his face. Pappas is silently urging his old friend to speak out, even to sit up, for sitting would be at least something. The rest still hope the old rag will act the pivot around which all circles. Pappas catches my eye and I his. We say each to each: Theon is not what he was nor will he be. Daily he retreats farther into his bed as a snail into its shell. By eye alone, I promise Pappas I will do all I can to hide this. By eye alone, he thanks me.

  Turning back, Pappas speaks as if it were Theon speaking. “Valentinian is dead in Vienne!”

  “Ah!” say all with varying degrees of delight.

  “Made co-regent at seventeen by Theodosius, now that he is twenty, he hangs himself…or has been hung. Whichever, Valentinian is no more.”

  Helladius, as much a stump as ever, fingers a curl of cheese left in Theon’s bowl. Has he the nerve to eat it? “Either way,” he yells, deciding against the theft of cheese, “how exciting for Rome! Romans are lovers of blood, the more blood the better. If it were to rain blood on Rome, full half would fill the streets holding buckets to catch it.”