Pandora (15 page)

“That she does
not
want of you,” said the Priestess, staring at me. Her eyes were huge, or was it the paint? No, I could see the whites of her eyes, so glistening and pure. Her painted mouth let loose words like a tiny breeze in a monotone.

I was fast becoming delirious and totally unreasonable. I murmured what I could about my initiation, what details I could tell a Priestess, for all these things were highly secret, you know, but I confirmed for her that I had been reborn in the rites.

All the stored-up weakness in me was cut loose in a flood.

Then I lay down my guilt. I confessed that I had, early on, left the Cult of Isis, that in recent years, I had walked only in the public processions to the sea, when the goddess was carried to the shore to bless the ships. Isis, the goddess of Navigation. I had not lived a life of devotion.

I had done nothing when the Priests of Isis were crucified, except speak out with many others behind the Emperor’s back. There had been a solidarity between me and those Romans who thought Tiberius was a monster, but we had not raised our voices in defense of Isis. My Father had told me to remain silent So I had. This was the same Father who had told me to live.

I turned over and slipped down off this couch and I lay on the tiled floor. I don’t know why. I pressed my cheek to the cold tile. I liked the coldness against my face. I was in a state of madness, but not an uncontrollable state. I lay staring.

I knew one thing. I wanted to get out of this Temple! I didn’t like it. No, this had been a very bad idea.

I hated myself suddenly for having become so vulnerable to this woman, whatever sort she was, and the atmosphere of the blood dreams beckoned to me.

I opened my eyes. The Priestess bent over me. I saw the weeping Queen of my nightmares. I turned away and shut my eyes.

“Be at peace,” she said in her calculated and perfected voice. “You did nothing wrong,” said the Priestess.

It seemed preposterous that such a voice should issue from such a painted face and form, but the voice was definite.

“First,” the Priestess said, “you must understand that Mother Isis forgives anything. She is the Mother of Mercy.” Then she said, “You have been more fully initiated by your description than most here or anywhere. You made a long fast. You bathed in the sacred blood of the bull. You must have drunk the potion. You dreamed and saw yourself reborn.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to revive the old ecstasy, the priceless gift of belief in something. “Yes. I saw the stars and great fields of flowers, such fields . . . ”

It was no good. I was scared of this woman and I wanted to get out of mere. I’d go home and confess all this to Flavius and make him let me weep on his shoulder.

“I am not pious by nature,” I confessed. “I was young. I loved the free women who went there, the women who slept with whom they chose, the whores of Rome, the keepers of the houses of pleasure, I liked women who thought for themselves, and followed me goings-on of me Empire.”

“You can enjoy such company here as well,” said the Priestess, without batting an eye. “And don’t fear that your old ties to the Temple caused your downfall in Rome. We have plenty of news to confirm that the highborn were not persecuted by Tiberius when he destroyed the Temple. It is always the poor who suffer: the street whore and the simple weaver, the hairdresser, the bricklayer. No noble family was persecuted in the name of Isis. You know that. Some women fled to Alexandria because they would not give up the worship, but they were never in danger.”

The dreams approached. “Oh, Mother of God,” I whispered.

The Priestess went on talking.

“You, like Mother Isis, have been the victim of tragedy. And you, like Mother Isis, must take strength and walk alone, as Isis did when her husband, Osiris, was skin. Who helped her when she searched all over Egypt for the body of her murdered husband, Osiris? She walked alone. She is the greatest of the
goddesses. When she recovered the body of her husband, Osiris, and could find no organ of generation for him with which she might be impregnated, she drew the semen right from his spirit. Thus, the god Horus was born of a woman and a god. It was the power of Isis who drew the spirit from the dead man. It is Isis who tricked the god Ra into revealing his name.”

That was the old tale all right.

I looked away from the Priestess. I was unable to look at her decorated face! Surely she felt my revulsion. I must not hurt her. She meant well. It wasn’t her fault that she looked to me like a monster. Why in hell had I come here!

I lay dazed. The room had a soft golden light coming mainly through its three doors, and they were cut Egyptian-style, these doors, wider at the base than at the top, and I let this light make a blur of my vision. I asked the light to do this.

I felt the Priestess’s hand. Such silken warmth. So lovely, her touch, her sweetness.

“Do you believe all of it!” I suddenly whispered.

She completely ignored this question. Her painted mask gave forth the creed.

“You must be like Mother Isis. Depend on no one. You don’t have the burden of recovering a lost husband or father. You are free. Receive into your house men with love as you choose. You belong to no one but Mother Isis. Remember, Isis is the goddess who loves, the goddess who forgives, the
goddess of infinite undemanding because she herself has suffered!”

“Suffered!” I gasped. I moaned, a very uncommon sound for me, most of my life. But I saw the weeping Queen of my nightmares, bound to her throne.

“Listen to this,” I said, “the dreams I will now recount, and then tell me why it is happening.” I knew my voice sounded angry. I was sorry for it. “These dreams don’t come from wine or potions, or after long periods of wakefulness that twist the mind.”

Then I launched into another totally unplanned confession.

I told this woman of the blood dreams, the dreams of ancient Egypt in which I had drunk blood—the altar, the Temple, the desert, the sun rising.

“Amon Ra!” I said. This was the Egyptian name for the sun god, but I had never spoken it to my knowledge. I said it now. “Yes, Isis tricked him into revealing his name, but he killed me and I was her blood drinker, do you hear me, a thirsty god!”

“No!” said the Priestess. She sat motionless.

She thought for a long while. I had scared her and now this scared me all the more.

“Can you read the ancient picture writing of Egypt?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

Then she said, in a more relaxed and vulnerable tone:

“You speak of very old legends, legends buried in the history of our worship of Isis and Osiris; that
they once did indeed take the blood of their victims as sacrifice. There are scrolls here that tell of this. But nobody can really decipher them, except for one . . . ”

Her voice trailed off.

“Who is the one?” I asked. I sat up on my elbows. I realized the plaits of my hair had come undone. Good. It felt good because it was free now and clean. I raked my hair with both hands.

What did it feel like to be entombed in paint and wig like this Priestess?

“Tell me,” I said, “who is the one who can read these legends. Tell me!”

“These are evil tales,” she said, “that Isis herself and Osiris live on, somewhere, in material form, taking blood even now.” She made an expression of denial and disgust. “But this is not our worship! We sacrifice no humans here! Egypt was old and wise before Rome was born!”

Who was she trying to convince? Me?

“I’ve never had such dreams, in a string like this, with the same theme.”

She became very worked up with her declarations.

“Our Mother Isis has no taste for blood. She has conquered death and set her husband Osiris as King of the Dead, but for us, she is life itself. She didn’t send you these dreams.”

“Probably not! I agree with you. But then who did? Where do they come from? Why did they pursue me at sea? Who is this one who can read the old writing?”

She was shaken. She had let go of me and she stared off, her eyes taking on a deceptive ferocity due to the black lining.

“Perhaps somewhere in childhood you heard an old tale, maybe an old Egyptian Priest told it to you. You forgot it, and now it flames in your tortured mind. It feeds on fires to which it has no right—your Father’s death.”

“Yes, well, I certainly hope so, but I’ve never known an old Egyptian. At the Temple, the Priests were Roman. Besides, if we take the dreams and lay them out, what is the pattern there? Why is the Queen weeping? Why does the sun kill me? The Queen is in fetters. The Queen is a prisoner. The Queen is in agony!”

“Stop.” The Priestess shuddered. Then she put her arms around me, as if it was she who needed me. I felt her stiff linen and the thick hair of her wig, and beneath it the hurried pounding of her heart. “No,” she said. “You’re possessed of a demon, and we can drive this demon out of you! Maybe the way was opened for this wretched demon when your Father was attacked at his own Hearth.”

“You really believe it’s possible?” I asked.

“Listen,” she said as casually now as one of the women outside. “I want you to be bathed, to have fresh garments. This money, what portion can you give me? If none, we will provide all for you. We are rich here.”

“Here’s plenty. I don’t care.” I pulled the purse loose from my girdle.

“I will have everything done for you. Fresh clothes. This silk is too fragile.”

“You are telling me!” I said.

“This mantle is torn. Your hair is uncombed.”

I spilled out a dozen or so gold coins, more than I had paid for Flavius.

It shocked her, but she covered up the shock very quickly. Suddenly she stared at me, and her painted mask managed to make a flexible expression, a frown. I thought it might crack.

I thought she might weep. I was becoming a regular expert in making people weep. Mia and Lia had wept. Flavius had wept. Now she was going to cry. The Queen in the dream was crying!

I laughed in madness, throwing back my head, but then I saw the Queen! I saw her in distant wavery recollection, and I felt such sorrow that I too could have cried. My mockery was blasphemy. It was a lie unto myself.

“Take the gold for the Temple,” I said. “Take it for new clothes, for all I need. But my offering to the goddess, I want it to be flowers, and bread, warm from the oven, a small loaf.”

“Very good,” she said with an eager nod. “That is what Isis wants. She wants no blood. No! No blood!”

She started to help me up.

I paused. “In the dream, you understand that she weeps. She is not happy with these blood drinkers, she protests, she objects. She herself is not the one who drinks blood.”

The Priestess was confounded, and then she nodded. “Yes, that is obvious, is it not?”

“I too protest and suffer,” I said.

“Yes, come,” she said leading me through a thick tall door. She left me in the hands of the Temple slaves. I was relieved. I was weary.

I was taken into the ceremonial bath, cleansed by Temple maidens and re-dressed carefully by Temple maidens.

What a pleasure to have it all done right.

For a little while I wondered helplessly if they would frame me in white pleats and black plaits but they used the Roman style.

My hair was properly done by these girls in a correct circlet that would hold, leaving a generous frame of ringlets around the face.

The clothes given me were new and made of fine linen. Flowers had been stitched along the borders. This finery, so precise, so minute, seemed more valuable than gold.

It certainty gave more joy to me than gold.

I felt so tired! I was so grateful.

The girls then made up my face more artfully than I could have done it, and more in the Egyptian style, and I flinched when I saw myself in the mirror. Flinched. It wasn’t the full paint of the Priestess, but my eyes were rimmed with black.

“How dare I complain?” I whispered.

I put down the mirror. One doesn’t have to see oneself, fortunately.

I emerged into the great hall of the Temple, a proper Roman woman, with the extravagant face paint of the East. A common sight in Antioch.

I found the Priestess with two others, as formally dressed as she, and a Priest who wore the same old-fashioned Egyptian headdress, only he wore no wig, just a striped hood. His tunic was short, pleated. He turned and glared at me as I came forward.

Fear. Crushing fear. Flee this place! Forget about the offering, or have them make it for you. Go home. Flavius is waiting. Get out!

I was struck dumb. I let the Priest draw me aside.

“Pay attention,” he said to me gently. “I will take you now into the holy place. I will let you talk to the Mother. But when you come out, you must come to me! Don’t leave without coming to me. You must promise me, you will return each day, and if you have more of these dreams, you will lay them before us. There is one to whom they should be told, that is, unless the goddess drives them from your mind.”

“Of course I will tell anyone who can help,” I said. “I hate these dreams. But why are you so anxious? Are you afraid of me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t fear you, but there is something I must confide to you. I must talk to you either today or tomorrow. I must speak with you. Go now to the Mother, then come to me.”

The others led me to the chamber of the Sanctuary; there were white linen curtains before the shrine. I saw my sacrifice lying there, a great
garland of sweet-smelling white flowers, and the warm loaf of bread. I knelt. The curtains were pulled back by unseen hands and I found myself alone in the chamber kneeling before the
Regina Caeli
, the Queen of Heaven. Another shock.

This was an ancient Egyptian statue of our Isis, carved from dark basalt. Her headdress was long, narrow, pushed behind her ears. On her head she wore a great disk between horns. Her breasts were bare. On her lap sat the adult Pharaoh, her son Horus. She held her left breast to offer him her milk.

I was struck with despair! This image meant nothing to me! I groped for the essence of Isis in this image.

“Did you send me the dreams, Mother!” I whispered.