Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (29 page)

Hypatia leans her head on my shoulder, content to place herself behind me.
 
“How, then, did you do it, Father?
 
Tell me.
 
Tell us
all
.”

And so I would have, and at length, but for the tremendous crash that brings my head up from a pillow…am I in bed?
 
How odd.
 
Bed is no place for Theon of Alexandria!
 
I run for my window.
 
What sounds?
 
An earthquake?
 
Will it shake my home to rubble?

Comes another great crash, and this one followed by a man shouting.
 
“A pox on your house, demon-maker!
 
A pox on all it contains!”

Again I come awake to find I am still in bed.
 
The bed is cold, its bedding on the floor.
 
And where is Damara?

“Necromancer!
 
Magic worker!”

I know what I hear—the voice of a man unschooled; in short, a fool.
 
Someone who sells me my meat or my flour or my oil, or even one of those who buy night-soil to sell on to farmers in their fields.
 
Should one of these learn I have circled the square, it would fall as music fell on the ear of a squid.

Damara?

Another voice follows the last, and a third crash follows the second, all this come from outside my window.
 
Dolts and
henen-tep
, they throw stones, bricks, pots, at my shutters!
 
How many?
 
Do any bear torches?
 
That is the important question.
 
Stones and shouting can be borne, but fire?

Damara!

“Come out, old man, father of witches!”

And now a woman’s screech: “She stands before men!
 
She teaches deviltry!
 
A demon must live in her belly!
 
Father of demons, show yourself!”

Who stands before men?

The pain sweeps through me like a wind of sulfurous dust come in from the desert, dark yellow and full of woe.
 
There is a pain in my legs, my arms, my back, gnawing like the teeth of jackals, like the howling things outside.
 
And yet, their presumption has made them wise.
 
They think to insult, but instead they exalt me—for I
am
a demon.
 
I am
Daemon
.
 
I have heard its voice and it is my voice.
 
I have squared the circle.

Hypatia of Alexandria

Ife found Father curled in his bed as a snail in its shell and as dead as a rat in Paniwi’s mouth.
 
Her screams as she ran through the house woke us all, even the horses.

By refusing to live, Father began his dying the day the Serapeum fell.
 
I remember the last words of Plotinus:
Raise up the divine within you to the first-born divine
.
 
Father’s last years and last words will be as little remembered as dust swept from the floor.
 
But as for his first years and his first words, by these Theon will live.

Sitting at my mother’s table, I have read his will.
 
Witnessed and binding, that Jone is disinherited fills me with anger…one more cause for her hatred.
 
And how does her hatred further?
 
It hurts she who hates more than it hurts that which is hated.
 
And yet, there is a shiver of understanding that troubles my spine.

Father has made himself clear.
 
If I do not wed a brother not truly a brother I must leave, for the house is now Minkah’s.
 
I ask myself and I ask sincerely: would I wed Minkah?
 
And the answer, so long unheard and so long delayed, is this—yes.
 
Though it is not his wish and though he loved Lais as I now know I love him, still I would marry.
 
And here is the way I might do it without shame and without dishonor, by the will of my dead father.
 
I should be seen to have Minkah as mine so that Jone would not lose her home.
 
There is a truth to this.
 
Jone must not lose her home.
 
But yes, yes, I would marry Minkah.

And then, before I can stop it or soften it, this thought intrudes: Minkah is an Egyptian!
 
How should I, Hypatia, a Greek, marry so far beneath me!
 
Such an unworthy thought, an ugly thought, more shaming than love for a man who loves another.

There is a small clay pot on the table.
 
Without thought, I bring it up, only to smash it down, the shards cutting my hands, my arms.
 
A mind may know a thing, the spirit may embrace it, but the voice that chatters in the head clings ever to shameful beliefs.
 
An Egyptian is less than a Greek?
 
To find I am as men who believe themselves far above women—by the star of Isis, in this moment I am made ill by no one so much as Hypatia.
 
By this, I efface even Father’s last cruelty to Jone.

I believe Minkah.
 
I believe he and I would have changed the will if Father had not forced his hand.
 
I believe him because I love him, because over and over he has proved his love for my father, for Jone, for the House of Theon, even of me, though that love is not as the one I now see I bear for him.
 
And I as well believe him because I understand Father, as wily in his way as a money lender.
 
All that is in his will is precisely as he was: thoughtless as well as careful, caring as well as unfeeling, demanding as well as giving, traditional as well as eccentric, and throughout more a child than a man.
 
In the mind of Father, the world was as Plotinus would have it: “
All things are full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.”
 
That Minkah’s life was saved by me, that he followed me home, that he has never left, that he has become the son Father lost by the loss of Damara, that he has learned all Father could teach him, that he has by his own choice protected me from year to year, that he by his own efforts transported the whole of the precious library into the desert caves, that he is Egyptian and knows not his birth-name or place so could have fallen from the stars: all this formed a pattern that well pleased the ideals of the idealistic Theon of Alexandria.
 
As it now, fully and completely, pleases me.

Later I will grieve.
 
Later I will feel the loss of my father.
 
But now I am filled with anger at so much that he has done and that he has not done.
 
Angry at myself for allowing him his small cruelties, for humoring him in those that were far from small.
 
I am angry he spent so much time dying rather than living.
 
I am angry he is dead.

Minkah and I sit at Damara’s green table which is now my green table.
 
He says nothing about the smashed pot or the blood on my hands.
 
Instead, we stare down at Father’s words, witnessed by our stable master and by our stable master’s assistant.
 
Nildjat Miw does not sit on Father’s last wishes.
 
I am not as Miw.
 
I would throw it on the fire.
 
But not for the loss of a house and not for Jone who in her faith has no need of a house.
 
I would burn it because Father harms Minkah.
 
How shall he care for its stables and its gardens and its servants and its repairs, its endless repetitive expense?
 
He must sell the horses, the ornaments, the furniture, let go the servants…and still the expense will go on, and on.
 
To lose the house, any man would find this shaming.
 
Minkah will find it more shameful still.
 
Unless we wed.

Minkah’s voice startles Miw into making a sound, easy of interpretation.
 
She is annoyed.
 
“Your father cannot give me what was not his.
 
This is your house, Hypatia.
 
It has long been your house.
 
I will have papers drawn up to that effect.
 
I will sign them immediately.”

“It was Father’s house, Minkah.”

“Without you to lean on, he would have lost it long ago.”

“Without me to lean on, he might never have fallen.”

“But he did fall.
 
And he did not rise again.”

“You think this, Minkah?
 
That my father could not have risen again if he would have?”

“Theon did what was in him to do.
 
He fell.
 
He remained where he had fallen.
 
He allowed others to carry the weight that was his to bear.
 
In response, Hypatia did what was in her to do.
 
She did not fall.
 
Though young and a woman, she carried her family.
 
She carried me.
 
This is her house.”

Listening, I love him more.
 
Listening, I see plain yet one more thing I have been blind to.
 
“You did not love my father.”

For the space of a moment, Minkah is quiet.
 
I watch as some resolution forms in his eyes.
 
I think what I see is that he will speak truth to me, truth I might wish I had never heard.
 
“No, Hypatia.
 
I did not love Theon.
 
Yet I came to understand him.
 
I forgave him his weaknesses long ago.
 
But I could not love him for them.
 
I could love Lais.”

“All loved Lais.”
 
My voice is as small as my breathing.
 
There is more.
 
I know he will tell me more.
 
He gathers himself to do so and I cannot stop him, would not stop him.
 
By the passing of Father, more than Father will pass.

“And I love you.”

“Of course.
 
As a sister, just as I love you as brother.”

“I do not love you as a sister.
 
If I could in all honor, I would do as your father wishes.”

“You would marry me?”

“Yes, Hypatia, I would marry you.”

I am thrown into tumult.
 
Minkah and I might wed?
 
It would keep me in the house of my birth.
 
It would keep the house for Jone should she ever come home.
 
And to hear that he loves me?
 
I who have heard these words from so many, but who have never truly heard them at all, hear them now and thrill to them now.
 
I would leap from my chair.
 
I would cleave to it.
 
I would turn to Minkah and give him my heart.
 
I would turn away so he does not see how he touches me.
 
And why am I torn between when I have won all?
 
Hypatia, speak truth!
 
Because I would lose my freedom.

This is more than freedom from the whims and needs and demands of a husband, more than his assuming control over my home and wealth—my freedom is that I am seen by the world to be free of a man, but even more, to be seen by women as free.
 
I stand as a woman alone and by standing alone, stand all the taller.
 
And what I can do, they can do.

I would say this, I would tell him I have loved him since the day we stood in the depths of the Serapeum daring fire for the books, I would explain all but the loss of status, but Minkah is already speaking.
 
“I would have you as wife, but I cannot.”

“Cannot?”

“I am not who you think I am.”

Across the years, Isidore sounds in my ear.
 
Who is this Minkah the Egyptian who lives in your house and eats your food and hears your teaching and goes you do not know where?
 
Ask him who he is.
 
As if the earth shook under me, I tremble.
 
“Who do I think you are?”

“You believe I was born poor, and in this you are right.
 
You believe me an Egyptian of the streets, and in this you are right.
 
You believe me a craftsman, and in this you are right.
 
You believe I love not the Christian come among us to destroy what causes them fear and discomfort, and again you are right.”

“Then who is it I do not know?”

“You believe I am still poor.
 
You believe I am good and have done good.
 
You believe I would never cause harm.
 
In this you are wrong.”

“What do you mean, Minkah?
 
What are you saying?”

“As Isidore was, I am
Parabalanoi
.
 
I do the bidding of Bishop Theophilus.
 
In your home, for so long as I have lived here, you have harbored a spy, one who has performed his shameful tasks faithfully even though he loves you.”

I stare at him.
 
I
stare
at him.
 
Immobilized with horror, yet how fast my thoughts—Theophilus must know of the library!
 
But before I can react to this latest calamity, before I even know
how
to react, comes a great crash outside a door I had not thought to close.
 
The statue of Thoth falls.
 
Nildjat Miw jumps from her place on my table, not away, but towards the door.
 
His knife drawn, Minkah is there a moment after Miw.
 
What they have found is Jone, senseless on the tiles near the god of knowledge.

~

Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria

Which touches me?
 
I scramble to my feet on the instant.
 
I push away the hand that holds mine.
 
Minkah’s hand.
 
I would spit on him.
 
I would spit on them all, even the cat, Hypatia’s enormous cat, who curls and curls like a snake round my ankles, who leaps when she finds me, who forces her face into my face, talking and talking and saying such odd and terrifying things I long ago learned to shut my ears.

Minkah speaks.
 
“Jone?
 
Do you sicken?”
 
Yes, I would say,
you
sicken me, you who I know now to be a deceiver.
 
But I say nothing.
 
I cannot even look at him,

Hypatia speaks, who is full of demons.
 
“I will send for Olinda.
 
Do you need Olinda?”