Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (36 page)

I, who attend so many dinners, am having a dinner!
 
Mine is to welcome Orestes.
 
What shall I serve?
 
Who shall I invite?
 
Romans choose guests numerically and so shall I.
 
No fewer than the three Fates, nor more than the nine muses.
In Constantinople, Orestes was a perfect host.
 
I must return in kind.
 
Who would he wish to meet?
 
As Prefect, his life will be full of schemers.
 
I invite those who do not scheme but think.
 
Or laugh.

Minkah and I plan the guest list, Ife, the menu.

There will be eleven at table.
 
Aside from Orestes and myself and Minkah…Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, and his wife Catherine.
 
Olinda of Clarus.
 
As a physician Olinda possesses little in social or political standing, but she is witty and wise.
 
Pappas the astronomer, old of body, soft of heart, and acerbic of tongue.
 
Meletus the Jew who is sure to add a level head.
 
And of course, my houseguest Aelia Galla Placidia.
 
The old will be leavened by the young.
 
What the young will think is for Galla to feel.
 
As the daughter of the dead Emperor Theodosius, she is surely used to tedium.
 
But should laughter be wanted, Galla laughs as Didymus once laughed.
 
And last I invite Felix Zoilus.

“You do what!” says Minkah.

“Invite your friend.”
 
I see he cannot believe what I am saying.
 
“I am serious, beloved.”

“Zoilus is a lump.
 
All we will add to our dinner will be bulk and a huge wine and beer bill.”

“But would it not please him?”

“To meet old men and the young daughter of a despot?”

“Exactly.”

“Be it on your head.”

My household turned upside down, I hide away to prepare a class in optics.
 
But in truth I turn instead to an alchemical process, a copy of the
Divine Pymander
open before me, an alembic at my elbow, and a crucible of heated silver under my nose.
 
I am so immersed in what must be manifest not only in the physical world, but a hundred times more in the spiritual, that I would miss my own dinner party if not for a servant sent to fetch me.
 
Unwashed, unpainted, uncoiffed, undressed, there are moments I annoy myself.
 
Offering my home and my hospitality, and then to utterly forget about it—shades of Father.

I do what I need do at top speed, helped by the kitchen maid.
 
Out the door I would now go, but my eye strays back to my work with corrosive sublimate, red oxide of mercury, and nitrate of silver, and I struggle with the urge to stay and the urge to go, and there, by Hades, are my pomegranates.

Shoving the blue bowl into the hands of my helper, I say, “Get cook to find a way to make these feed eleven.”
 
And off I rush to greet my guests.

How surprising.
 
My dinner party goes well, twice as well as those I attend.
 
Orestes is as ingenious at table as he is on parchment.
 
Synesius does not sulk nor does he complain of his lot.
 
Olinda fascinates with her talk of digestion.
 
Catherine tells us a tale of Synesius as a child that makes Minkah weep with laughter.
 
It makes Catherine weep with laughter.
 
Augustine, Pappas and Meletus engage in a historical topic that engrosses us all.
 
Felix Zoilus is subdued before royalty and prefect and the learned, though becomes less and less so as wine flows.
 
Any minute I expect he will shout out some interesting word.
 
I keep an eye on him.
 
So far all he has done is pinch Olinda who slaps him, but discreetly.
 
And Galla, lovely in her youth and her character, enthralls us entirely with her tales of the Visigoth king, Alaric, who died of fever attempting to cross the Great Green Sea.
 
So loved was he by his men that they landed in some secret place, and there turned aside a river so they might bury him in its bed, then let loose the river again.

Even I am acceptable, never once lost in speaking aloud some obscure concept only to look up and find all glazed over with ennui.

Cook has made a splendid table…and such an assortment of dishes.
 
In our house, only Nildjat Miw feasts, but now my small silver spike hovers over fish from the river, fish from the sea, fish from the lake, cold water oysters, eggs, fava beans, snails, nuts, cheese, a huge bowl of pungent
garum
, and wine, a great deal of the finest Egyptian wine.
 
I know what it is to drink with Great Drunks, Minkah and Felix Zoilus; I know what it is to suffer.
 
So I drink, but sparingly.
 
More accurately, I drink less than everyone else save Galla.
 
How enjoyable, this.
 
How light my heart.
 
A thought visits.
 
Why not form a salon as did Aspasia of Miletus!
 
As a woman, forbidden to learn, her father Axiochus, like my father Theon, taught her all he knew, which was a great deal indeed.
 
In search of more, Aspasia traveled to the seat of all knowledge, shining Athens—only to find that as an educated unmarried woman, she was immediately assumed
hetairai
, a “paid companion to men.”
 
Wise to the ways of the male, Apasia accepted their assumptions, then turned all on its head by coupling with Pericles, the most powerful man in Athens.
 
She not only taught, but gave succor to other young women seeking knowledge.
 
Anaxagoras who understood the moon shone by reflected light, understood this because of Aspasia.
 
Socrates took instruction from her and was well pleased.

Looking about at the faces of my guests, I am decided.
 
Under my roof the Companions may continue as pleases them.
 
I shall be pleased to remain as Hypatia.
 
But there will be a new Hypatia, born in the drowning sea, born from reading Valentinus and Seth of Damascus, born as she wandered as Io, born from seeing herself in Synesius’
Dion
…a new Aspasia who holds in her home a salon open to all: rich, poor, men and
women
.
 
As I hope these things become eventually mine, I will ask only for sincerity, intelligence and grace.

Orestes tells us he finds his position in Alexandria much easier than expected.
 
“Politics is lucrative.
 
An amazing amount of civil servants do the actual work, yet I am the one well paid.
 
Though it is tedious, and when not tedious, dangerous.
 
For instance, in Constantinople, Atticus poses as a learned bishop but is as a prattling child.
 
Our emperor
is
a prattling child—oh, fire and rancid fat, excuse me, Aelia Galla Placidia.”

Helping herself to more oysters, Galla laughs, “But my brother’s son
is
a prattling child.”

Relieved, Orestes speaks on.
 
“Neither bishop nor boy rules the East.
 
Flavius Anthemius rules.
 
If he did not, the empire would sink as fast as a block of cement in a cesspool.”

My love, on his couch, is half drunk and half sober.
 
That part of him half-sober, asks what I would ask if he were not faster.
 
“And the danger?”

“In a word—Pulcheria.
 
Only thirteen, yet already an oddity exceeding any.
 
The royal court is as quiet as a tomb, as pious as the word heresy, and as dim as the mind of Atticus.
 
There, the eyes weep with incense, the throat chokes with it, the senses dull.
 
The sister of Theodosius II swears eternal chastity, forcing her younger sisters to swear also…and neither knows the meaning of the word!
 
If Pulcheria is not praying, she is praying, for all that she does is a kind of prayer.
 
The idiocy of Atticus has driven her mad, or madness is her birthright, oh Cocytus!”
 
Galla, who has been making faces at Felix who has been making faces at her, waves this away.
 
“But mad she is, and the madder she grows, the madder grows the empire.
 
Or would, if not for Anthemius.”

Synesius raises his cup.
 
“A long life to Anthemius!”

We all raise our cups, even Galla whose nephew is emperor and whose niece is “mad.”
 
“Long life to Anthemius!”

“As for Alexandria’s bishop,” continues Orestes, silencing all on the spot, “the man is a politician through and through.
 
One knows where one stands.
 
So long as Theophilus is bishop, good sense and self interest will reign.”

“Long life to Theophilus!”

We have finished the savories.
 
We have finished the cheese and the olives.
 
Nildjat Miw and Galla have finished the oysters.
 
A servant enters bearing a bowl of steaming something or other.
 
“Ah,” says Pappas, ever a slave to his belly. “What is this?
 
What have you prepared for us, Hypatia?
 
The smell intoxicates.”

I have no idea what I have prepared, save this: it must contain the juice or the seed or both of my sister’s pomegranates.
 
I glance at the servant as she sets the bowl in the middle of the table.
 
One glance is enough for her to feel free to speak.
 
“Mistress, cook made a pudding dressed with pomegranate sauce.
 
There is a sweetness that comes from an Indian cane.”

All at my table say, “Ah!” as each holds forth a small glass bowl for a share of this exotic sweet, but Minkah is more eager than any, so eager his small bowl is first there, tapping the larger bowl which sends it sliding across the table and into the lap of Felix Zoilus.
 
Felix is up on the instant, hopping in place, his crotch a mass of pudding and hot pomegranate sauce, and we are treated to a string of fabulous expressions, most I have never heard in my life—so inventive!

As one, all stare at Minkah.
 
He acts the drunk.
 
He acts out a drunk’s contrition—and suddenly I know he is not contrite.
 
He is not drunk.
 
What he has done, he has done deliberately.
 
No one will taste of Jone’s gift.

I laugh.
 
I clap my hands.
 
I call for Cook to devise some other treat.
 
All laugh with me.
 
All think it great fun, even Felix who must change into a tunic of a long dead servant.
 
None other would fit him and this one barely.

As we wait for a second sweet, I catch the eye of my lover.
 
Neither fools the other.
 
We know, he and I…Jone is not to be trusted.

My evening is ruined.
 
As is, yet again, my heart.

~

And yet, later with Minkah, how intense the pleasure!
 
A touch with hand or mouth, a look in the eye or the scent of a secret part of the body—intoxicates.

My body arcs with pleasure.
 
That Jone is as she is, for this moment, does not matter.
 
All that matters is the cup of his fingers lying spent beside mine, the slick of sweat on his belly, his sated member slowly curling in sleep as sweet as a newborn.

~

Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria

I listen and I listen for word, but none comes.
 
I call out to the Virgin, even to God Himself, but no one hears Jone.

Two weeks pass and Hypatia lives on, not even fallen ill.
 
Yet our Holy Bishop, who only this morning was as he ever is: demanding, fearsome, busy with a dozen schemes at once, and not yet old, has gone to bed complaining of pain in his gut.

I do not live in the House of Theophilus, nor does Cyril or his mother Theophania.
 
But Theophania had pestered her brother for days.
 
She would eat at his table.
 
Cyril, who would eat anywhere, rolled his eyes at his mother’s impertinence, but finally Theophilus had said: if you must, come! and off they went.
 
No more than an hour later, just as I had settled in to read Didymus the Blind, came a reader, the lowest of the low in clerical office, looking for me.
 
“Me?” I asked him.
 
For answer, he pushed me and pulled me into the House of the Bishop of Alexandria right past the outer room where Theophania paced and Cyril sat, taking up the whole of a couch.
 
Why are they not at table, dining?

I called out to mother and son, “Why me?”
 
Both looked at me in much the same way I looked at them—we were all three astonished.
 
And then I was shoved into the presence of the Patriarch.