The Memoirs of Cleopatra
Chapter 16 : As large as a wars.h.i.+p, dedicated to pleasure and power, the barge rode on the bosom

As large as a wars.h.i.+p, dedicated to pleasure and power, the barge rode on the bosom of the Nile. It stretched over three hundred feet from its lotus-flower bow to its curved stern, propelled by many banks of oars, and the decks contained banqueting rooms, colonnaded courts, shrines to the G.o.ds, and a garden. The cabins and corridors were of cedar and cypress, with the dazzling colors of carnelian, lapis lazuli, and gold everywhere. Caesar marched on board and then, as I had hoped, he stood stock-still and looked about him, letting his eyes sweep over the room in hungry appreciation.

Suddenly I had an apprehensive thought: What if he decided to annex Egypt after all? It was his by right of arms. He had given no indication that he wished to do so, but every other defeated country had been made into a Roman province. Was it only my person that prevented him from doing so? And might this trip whet his appet.i.te for my country, rather than appeasing it?

"Ah," he finally said, turning his gaze back to me, "Rome suddenly seems mean and squalid, her buildings cramped and dark, even her Forum plain and limited."

Again, that hungry look in his eye. "We have much to learn from you."

When we cast off, and the stately vessel began slowly to make its way under silken sails, Alexandria was gleaming white under the spring sun, as pure as the clouds racing overhead. Most of the buildings had been spared after all: the Museion, the Serapion, the Library, all were visible from the ceremonial deck. But there was much damage in the city, and I knew that it would take years to restore it to its former perfection. The people lining the harbor were dressed as Greeks, and shouting in Greek.

"Now we leave Alexandria for Egypt itself," I said, as the city grew smaller. "You will hear less and less Greek. But never fear, I speak Egyptian."

"Fear?" he gestured toward the four hundred smaller s.h.i.+ps following us, loaded with his soldiers. "Not as long as I have my legionaries."

"What, are you naked without your soldiers?" I teased him.

"Any general is," he said, "but particularly a Roman one. I learned that, in spite of my services to the state, they would have rewarded me by killing me after I returned from Gaul, had it not been for my soldiers."

"I am happy you have brought them. Egypt needs to see us both, to be rea.s.sured. They need to see the strength of the army that will prevent any further civil wars here."

As we sailed in majesty, slowly, as befitted a procession, I relived the time I had come this very way, on a child's adventure with Mardian and Olympos to the pyramids. Now I would show them to this man I loved, show them with the pride of possession.

The royal bedroom was as large and sumptuous as the one in Alexandria. There was a square bed, covered with leopard skins, and hung around on all sides with the sheerest silk netting to keep out insects. Elsewhere in the chamber were couches inlaid with ivory, gilded ebony footstools, bowls of rose petals, and alabaster oil lamps. Caesar and I retired here soon after the setting sun had stained the broad waterway of the river with its dying. We watched the night mists begin to rise from the reeds on the banks, and then pulled the silk curtain across the square cabin window.

"My world has shrunk down very small, into this crystal of luxury and pleasure," he said, kicking off his sandals and stretching out on the couch.

"Is this not the whole world?" I said, coming over to him, and seating myself on one of the footstools. "For lovers, is not their private room the center of the world?"

"The center of their world," he agreed. "But when the lovers are Caesar and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt--then their worlds reach far beyond these walls."

"You called me Queen of Egypt, but to yourself you gave no t.i.tle." I tried to say it lightly, but I knew the omission meant something. "Surely there are many you could choose from. Some you already hold: Consul, general. One you are: master of the Roman world. And Amun."

He threw back his head and laughed. "Amun! Oh yes, I wore his robes once. And a miracle happened." He leaned over and put his hand on my abdomen. "The G.o.d must have brought this about."

I covered his hand with my own. "You know he did." I was sure that it must be the divine wish of the G.o.ds, for with all his wives and lovers, he had begotten only one other child, and that was over thirty years ago, before I was born. So lavish in their benefices to Caesar in every other way,, the G.o.ds had withheld from him the gift of offspring. Was that not their way: to make someone master of the world, and then give him no one to leave it to? It had happened with Alexander as well.

"What will we name him?" I asked, not idly. What would the name signify? Would Caesar acknowledge this child as an heir? And what would it mean if he did?

"You may choose," said Caesar, taking his hand back and resting it across his chest.

"By that, do you mean there will be no official Roman recognition of him--or her? No name conferring members.h.i.+p in a family?"

He looked pained. "It can be no other way. You are not my wife, and under Roman law a foreign marriage is not recognized. The children of such a union have no status."

I was incredulous. Was this the conqueror, the man who smashed all the Roman laws, who had delivered the death blow to the Republic with his armies, and revealed the Senate for the impotent thing it was? "Roman law?" I asked in wonder. "What does Roman law mean to you?"

He looked alarmed, and sat bolt upright. He took several deep breaths as if to steady himself. "That is a thought that should not be voiced aloud."

"It is a thought that is in everyone's minds. You have shaken the Roman world to its foundations. Now you can rewrite the laws to please yourself."

He reached out very slowly and took my face in both his hands, and guided it toward his, where he kissed me lingeringly. "Egypt, Egypt, you are very dangerous," he murmured. "If I stay longer, I am lost. I left Rome a general, and I shall return--"

"A king," I whispered. He should should be a king; all the fates shouted it. be a king; all the fates shouted it.

"I was going to say 'Amun,' " he said with a smile.

Like the conquering general he was, he picked me up and carried me to the bed, pushed aside the sheer floating curtains around it, and laid me carefully on the leopard skins. They felt cool and slippery under me, and I made myself comfortable on them, waiting for him to come join me, to hold me close to him. How I had missed his touch in the past weeks, when he had been either absent or absent in mind while the war had produced ever more taxing problems. I realized with sadness that I had come to need him the same way that I needed rest, and fresh air, and the scent of flowers in the wind. His presence was joy itself to me. Just as I could exist without rest, or fresh air, or the perfume of flowers--in a prison--so I could exist without him, but his absence would make it a prison, no matter how sumptuous.

In his lovemaking it always seemed as if he had never touched anyone but me. I knew that was not true, and whenever I let myself imagine it, picture where he had got his learning, it sent stabs of jealous pain through me. I consoled myself with the thought that together we made a perfect whole: he my first love, and I his last. In that way I could bear to remember Pompeia, and Calpurnia, and Servilia, and Mucia, and . . . always Cornelia, his early love.

Now darkness enveloped the room as he extinguished the lamps, and I heard his footsteps coming toward me. Then he was beside me in the still, fragrant night, and when he held me and pressed me close against him, I could only tremble with antic.i.p.ation of what pleasures he had planned for that night.

For many long moments he did not move, but lay quietly breathing, his chest rising and falling almost in rhythm with the slight movement of the water underneath us. The stillness that he was able to keep within himself was powerful. Where other men would lunge and grab, he held back. I began to wonder--had he gone to sleep? Was he so deep in his own thoughts that once again he was absent? Just when I myself had begun to wander away in my thoughts, I felt him stir and turn to me. One arm reached over to touch my neck, and he turned easily on his side, leaning on his other shoulder.

His hand--not as hard and callused as I would expect a soldier's to be-- caressed my neck, my cheek, my ear, lightly. He was running the backs of his fingers across my skin, as if he only needed to feel the slightest contours. I closed my eyes and enjoyed each feather-light touch, finding it very soothing, but arousing at the same time. It made me feel like a precious relic, a carved gem that a collector would touch reverently, in awe. His touch grew firmer as he seemed to be memorizing all the planes and hollows of my face and neck, like a blind person who sees only through his fingers. All the while he said nothing. Finally he rose a little higher and turned and kissed me, a kiss as light as his earlier touches. It caused such a surge of pleasure in me, it was as if he had ravished me; the light, teasing promise of more ignited a fiery impatience of desire within me.

Now he began to touch my shoulders, my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, my abdomen--all with that slow deliberateness that was beginning to be torture. Outside the windows I could hear the low gurgling noise of the Nile as it flowed past, liquid and yielding. I felt my own legs begin to loosen, like one of those floating flowers on the Nile, and to twine themselves around his. His legs were long and muscled, and I loved the hard, sleek feel of them.

I had been wearing a silken gown that was the color of the Alexandrian sky at dusk; it was one of my most prized possessions, because the silk had come not from Cos but from somewhere even beyond India, and it was as transparent as early morning fog. Now, pressed against Caesar, it seemed to exist only as a layer of silken mist, almost a sheen on the flesh rather than a covering. I had forgotten it was even there--although no natural flesh is so s.h.i.+ny and perfect--until he deftly untied its laces and peeled it away.

"The serpent's skin must be shed," he said. "Come to me all new."

And I did feel as if I had left off a skin, or a former part of my being. The gown fell to the floor beside the bed, so light it made no sound of settling.

"The tunic must follow," I insisted. It was already off his shoulders, and his chest was bare. "It is not wanted here." I pulled it off.

Around us the slight breeze was puffing out the filmy bedcurtains.

"The Aurae of the light, playful winds keeps us company," I said.

"The Aurae should depart," he said. "I wish no witnesses to our private hours." He kicked at one of the curtains, deflating it.

"So even the G.o.ds obey you," I said. I was longing for him to take me, almost shaking with desire for it.

"Sometimes," he said, taking me in his arms. But he seemed in no particular hurry to do the rest. He slowed when I would have hurried, and to this day I am thankful, because I remember every bit of it, prolonged as it was, and at each stage I was like a thirsty man who got a half-cup of water, so that no water seemed cooler or more delicious. In the end he did not disappoint me.

"Just as winning Gaul conclusively was worth the nine long years it took," he said, "I have learned that there are times that call for speed and others that call for a stretching of the time."

I sighed; I could hardly speak as yet. Finally I said, "Pleasure should always be stretched and pain shortened."

"No matter what they are in life, in memory they always seem to rearrange themselves in the opposite manner. All pleasures are seen as foreshortened and hasty and fleeting, and all pain lingering." He raised himself on one elbow, and I could feel him staring at me in the dark. "But I swear to you, I will never forget these days with you. My memory may shorten them, but it can never erase them."

I felt a deep, shadowy presence pa.s.sing above us. "How darkly you talk!" I said. "Why, I have made you sad!" Nervously I leapt up from the bed and fumbled for a way to light one of the lamps. "We must have some spiced wine, to make us merry." .

I managed to get the lamp lit, and it sputtered feebly into life. I looked back at where he lay, sprawled in the bed linens, one sheet draped over his shoulder. Around him the bedcurtains made a frame.

In the dim, flickering light he looked as bronzed as a statue, and for a moment his solemn expression made me think perhaps he had somehow been transmogrified into one. Then he laughed, and held out his hand for the spiced wine I was pouring from the gem-encrusted gold pitcher into an onyx cup.

The royal barge plied its way up the Nile, and from our shaded pavilion on the upper deck we watched the countryside slide past--bristly-topped palms, flat-roofed mud-brick houses, creaking waterwheels, and fields of glowing green. Our sails billowed and flapped; from every village the people sighted them and hurried down to the banks of the river to stare at us as we pa.s.sed.

"The richest country on earth," said Caesar, shading his eyes against the sun. "Mile after mile of bright green, producing grain to feed the world." Was it wonder in his voice--or greed? Again, I felt a bit of fear. "Italy looks barren beside this, with its stony hills and little scrubby pines. And Greece--a bare, rocky ground is all Greece is. No wonder Greeks have to leave and live abroad."

"Oh, but Egypt is green only near the Nile. Wait until you see the desert. Egypt is mostly desert," I a.s.sured him.

"A long ribbon of fertility," said Caesar, seeming not to hear me. "Six hundred miles of garden."

"We shall be at the pyramids tomorrow," I said. "And I shall show you the Sphinx."

"You have already shown me the Sphinx," he said. "You are the Sphinx."

"I am no riddle! Nor am I unknowable," I protested.

"Does the Sphinx know he is what he is?" he said. "You are more of a riddle than you imagine. I know less of you than of any other person I have spent so many hours with."

"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 refas.h.i.+oned 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 are Amun," I said, laughing. 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 G.o.ds? 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 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 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 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." 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 s.h.i.+vered, watching the horizon for the appearance of the tips of the pyramids, the only monuments to defy doom. Certainly their builders had no 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, bra.s.s-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.