Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (9 page)

“I imagine those who think to do so disagree with you?”

“They do.
 
I have listened to much passionate persuasion.
 
I am not persuaded.”

“And now?”

“And now I must shed the blood of those who would shed yours.
 
A great pity, but there you are.”

“Why do you tell me this?”

Strangely, I have again made him uncomfortable.
 
Not as before, but in some new way, a way I often see in the eyes of men.

 
His answer comes.
 
“Because I would have you know you are protected.
 
I would have you know I am not some idiot barbarian, a Goth or a Visigoth or a Manichean.
 
I say, who would kill such as you?
 
You are a gift from God.
 
There are Christians who call you Wise.
 
Not one has reported that you seek to dissuade them from their faith.
 
Not one has complained you subvert the Church.
 
All praise your tolerance.”

I do not glance at Isidore.
 
It is true I do not attempt to dissuade any from their faith, but I do try by the use of what I hope is sufficient reason to ease them into something more, something greater.
 
Isidore has not told him this?
 
I ask, “Why then would any among you want me dead?”

Theophilus closes his innocent hands.
 
“No matter which side you take, even God’s, there are those who are blind as well as base.
 
We have our share.”

“There is more.
 
You are not telling me all.”

“That is true.
 
There is more.
 
I allow you to live and to teach because by so doing I appear to be wise and tolerant.”

“You want something in return.”

“Also true.
 
You will continue to appear wise and tolerant.
 
Your pagans will be calmed.
 
Calm pagans make for, if not calm, calmer Christians.
 
I shall no longer incite my own for I have gained what it was I sought.
 
Your temple is destroyed, your Museum closed, your books are lost.
 
In time, Alexandria will be entirely Christian and this shall be by my doing.
 
I may not be tolerant.
 
I may not even be wise.
 
But I am patient.
 
The bloodshed will cease.
 
There will be built, eventually, a Church of the Blessed Theophilus.”

I see that Cyril would laugh.
 
That he does not shows wise restraint.
 
“You require only that I continue teaching just as I have been?
 
But surely by this, you ask nothing of me.”

“I am pleased you think so.
 
Your salary and your hall which was mine to give, remains yours.”

And with that, the Bishop of Alexandria turns with admirable grace, shooing along his graceless nephew, intent on leaving our house.
 
As for me, I know now to whom Didymus spoke.
 
I should have guessed.
 
No one else but the Roman Prefect held such power; Theophilus holds more.

No doubt sent by Father to see if I still live, my sister Lais enters this shabby room.
 
Behind her follows on Minkah, who knows I still live else he would have entered long since to ensure it.

The sight of Lais produces upon Isidore and on Theophilus, even on Cyril, precisely the effect it produces on all who see her.
 
Awe.

As they leave, I doubt Lais notices either their going or their awe.
 
But I notice Jone’s little face.
 
Her round eyes are rounder still and fixed on Isidore.

When all three are gone from our house and Jone is back to her books—or perhaps she now dreams new dreams, those that slow the mind but quicken the body, my poor poor Jone—Lais turns anxious eyes on mine.
 
It is not the male who troubles Lais.
 
I can think of no male who has ever troubled Lais.
 
Yet rare concern turns her brown eyes black.
 
“Was it the books, Hypatia?
 
Have they found the books, or suspect them?
 
Does rumor reach them?”

I bless these moments when Lais is as human as I.
 
Returning concern with concern, I take her hand.
 
“No, Lais.
 
They do not threaten the books.
 
They threaten me.”

Lais does not find this laughable.
 
Her eyes grow blacker.

~

I return to find Father dozing over his papers.
 
I stare long at his face.
 
Asleep, it is the face of a great man.

Leaning to kiss his forehead, behind which lives a great mind, I see he has made a mistake working alone on a problem suggested by the great Diophantus.
 
He will never arrive at the correct answer if he continues like this.
 
If Father were awake, I would not correct him for that would cause him shame.
 
As he is asleep, I erase his error and the two that naturally but unfortunately follow, replacing them with the right notations.

He who was once Theon of Alexandria will never know.

And now I am sought by Jone who comes to tell me I have one more visitor before I might work on my portion of the maps.
 
With boundless irritation, I follow her.

By the hock of Apis, it is Isidore.

I shoo away Jone who would witness yet another visitation.
 
I cared not if she stared at Theophilus, but I care a great deal that she does not stare at Isidore.

Jone has not banished Isidore to a small storage room, but left him in the atrium where now he stands, near to the pool open to the sky where Lais keeps fish: Chromis shaped as a vulva, Abdju as silver as rain, and around which are the four sides to this section of our house.

He is first to speak.
 
His speech is rushed.
 
“I am come seeking a moment alone.”

“Yes?”

“I would say that though I love Theophilus who has done much for me, I am not Theophilus.”
 
His intention is not entirely clear.
 
Does he mean he is no bully as is his “father”?
 
Does he mean he disagrees with what is done in the name of his faith?
 
I am confused.
 
“I mean, that I would not have you or your family harmed.”

“And Theophilus would?”

“He is like Athanasius of Alexandria; he would do what he felt he need do to protect the Church.”

Athanasius?”
 
This one is telling me that Bishop Theophilus is as a bishop who came before, dead now for as long as I have lived?
 
Oh, Bes, protector of families, save the world from such as Athanasius of Alexandria!
  
Though revered by hundreds, thousands shudder at his name.
 
Athanasius tortured all who disagreed with him, killed in great numbers Christians as well as “heretics,” wrote heroic tales of himself that were lies from beginning to end.
 
It is said that Athanasius founded the dread
Parabalanoi
.
 
“Do you say that Theophilus would hurt my family?”

“I say he would not.
 
Not now.
 
Perhaps not ever.
 
But it might not always be in his interest to choose to stand between you and those who love you not.”

I spread my hands in honest surprise.
 
“I am merely a woman, a teacher.
 
I cannot harm your faith nor stop it from creeping like vines ever deeper into the heart and mind of man.
 
I haven’t the power.
 
But did I have such power, I would censure no man’s beliefs.”

Isidore would reach for my hand, but restrains himself.
 
“You are Hypatia of Alexandria.
 
Hypatia is spoken of in the court of the Emperor Theodosius.
 
He has become interested in you.
 
It is too late to curb that interest.”

“What are you telling me, Isidore?”

“That you must speak as if anyone listened, anyone at all.”

I think of Cyril, who envies his uncle.
 
I think of Cyril’s mother Theophania who is said to keep virgins, both male and female, in order to watch them deflowered in the most unspeakable ways.
 
I think of the men robed in black who gather each day behind those who come to my lessons, unmoving, unspeaking, hearing only their own dark thoughts.
 
“By anyone,” I ask, “does this also mean you?”

But he is gone without answer.

Looking up through the opening in the roof of our atrium, there is the small wanderer, Venus, who is also Inanna of the Sumerians.
 
At sight of Inanna, I shiver.
 
The Goddess of Love was stripped of her garments one by one as she passed through the seven gates into the lower world of the kingdom of Kigal, so that when she stood before the Great Lady under the Earth, her own sister Erishkigal, Inanna was naked.

Immediately, Erishkigal, who hated her, had her killed and hung on a hook—and when she died, the world above died with her.
 
Yet she rose in three days and the world was born again.

There is more, and like unto tales told of Jesus, but I have had enough of this day.
 
As for this night, I choose not to see it, so retire to my room and my maps.
 
Instead I find Augustine’s notes for his intended book on my table.
 
I had forgotten Augustine.
 
I read the first page and the second.
 
I am fascinated.
 
He confesses to much that is base yet aspires to that which is sublime.
 
That he hopes to find this sublimity in what is now a chaotic, divisive, and violent “faith” intensifies my interest.
 
I read until I am forced to sleep.

If thought of Isidore intrudes, each thought is shut in a store room and sealed with the rosette of Inanna, Goddess of fertility.

Fertility of body is not my path.
 
My path is fertility of the mind.

~

I dream this night of caves.
 
I have had this dream many times, although it is never the same dream.
 
In some the caves are vast, in others so small I would need curl into a ball to fit.
 
All are dark and cold and distorted into shapes I could not draw and can barely comprehend.

I wander through my dreaming caves searching.
 
I think I am looking for Lais who cries.
 
I think I am looking for Jone who cries.
 
I look for a child who cries.

No matter how many caves I find, there is always another cave.
 
No matter how many tunnels I climb, there is always another, higher, cave.
 
No matter how deep I go, there is always a lower, deeper, cave.
 
And no one is ever here and I sob in my dream.

This night, I dream I find not Lais or Jone but Minkah.
 
By looks alone he seems not to be, but I know it is he.
 
He stands before a wall of dark green rock.
 
The rock is smooth and unblemished and he would write on it.
 
But no words form under his brush, instead comes forth strange inky insects which flap strange inky wings as they seek to gain height, but instead must crawl.
 
By their numerous feet, these leave behind slight black tracks over the green of the wall, and each track makes some sort of ultimate sense, but I cannot understand the sense they make.

Minkah the Egyptian writes and writes and writes until the cave is filled with tracks and the whir of wings.

Winter, 391

Hypatia

For months Augustine has sent letters, at least one a day, often two—including, in its entirety:
On Free Choice of the Will
—and each a closely reasoned, densely worded, discourse on what concerns him most: evil.
 
Not merely the idea of evil, but its manifestation.
 
Therefore why choose to read this day’s letter before all others?
 
Because it is suspiciously short.
 
No letter from Augustine is ever short.
 
Moments later I run for Lais.

“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?”

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?”