Hebra began to groan, to talk incoherently. “It is her assaulted flesh which speaks,” said Keptah. “The spirit is also protesting the ignominy of its passiveness under the drug. There are those who say drugs subdue the spirit; it is not so. Does she feel the pain? Surely. But when she awakens she will not remember that she suffered. She will say, ‘I was as one who slept through a storm’.”
Lucanus, filled with pity for the girl, said deep in his soul to her, “Rest, endure, be of courage. We will save you, dear child.” He directed the full force of his mind to her, to reassure her. Perhaps it was only the drugs she had taken, and the stupefying wine, but all at once she sighed, and relaxed. The tight muscles became soft, no longer tensed.
The gray-pink and glistening intestines were exposed now. Here they were, in their convolutions, slipping mass after mass. They palpitated, writhing a little, and Lucanus spoke to them kindly in his mind, and they too became flaccid. With the most exquisite care Keptah pushed them aside, and, like a burgeoning evil, a huge opalescent bladder ascended from beneath them, pushing them aside ruthlessly, a cloudy and glimmering bladder seething with corruption and shifting patterns of blood. It bobbed restlessly over the intestines. It was attached from below by a rope deeper in color than itself.
“This is the vital moment,” said Keptah, working with sure hands. “We will now look very carefully at the ovary. The slightest carelessness will explode this bladder and fill her whole belly with death.” He exposed the yellow-white ovary. “Aha!” said Keptah. “It is in good health. We shall save it after all. You are too preoccupied. Use more pads, hold the flesh aside firmly.”
All at once the whole scene dimmed and flickered before Lucanus’ eyes. The smell of blood almost overpowered him. His legs trembled violently, and there was a huge dry retching in his stomach. He said to himself, If I fail this girl, if I faint, who will help? He looked at the wicked, restless bladder, forced calm upon his natural human revulsion. He tried to observe the layers of fat over the peritoneum, yellowish and wet as sheep’s fat. He pressed the pads harder against the yawning mouth of the wound, and his muscles tensed, and he sweated. Keptah was neatly tying the lengths of the cord of the bladder in several places, pulling the linen thread tightly. The opalescent corruption dimmed to a milkiness; the patterns of blood darkened. Then, with a slow motion of the scalpel, Keptah cut the cord. The bladder lay quiet on the intestines.
With the utmost care and slowness Keptah lifted it from its position and dropped it on the tray. Lucanus’ eyes were swimming, and drops of water dripped from his face. “Watch how I sew these layers now, as neatly as a seamstress,” said the physician. “Not an error must be made in the sutures.” He employed a crisscross pattern, using a clear thread, which he explained was catgut. “The body will absorb these in time, and the joinings will be firmer than before. Some physicians use linen thread, which the body does not absorb, and which later causes difficulties.”
The evil bladder was as large as a curled, newborn child on the tray. Taking infinite pains, the physician brought each layer of the belly together, sewed it firmly. “The fat is difficult; it sometimes separates from the thread, or tears apart. There. We have it now. And now for the skin, which is very tough. Here we use linen thread, which we will cut away in a week.”
The belly had become miraculously flat. The girl groaned over and over, catching her breath with desperate sobs. “She is awakening,” said Keptah. He tied the last expert knot. He dipped a cloth in hot water and wrung it out and put it over the girl’s heart, then he dipped another cloth and wrapped it over her feet, and another over her wrists. He bent his head and pressed it against the girl’s breast. “Rapid, but strong. She will not have shock, which is much to be feared. Use the bucket close to her mouth, and hold her head.”
He wrapped large white strips of cloth over the body as though they were grave wrappings. He stood back and regarded the girl contentedly. He was very calm. He glanced at Lucanus, and saw that the youth’s tunic was wet and dripping. He laughed gently. “You have endured it very well. I congratulate you. Drink this wine as fast as possible. I may even say I am proud of you.”
The girl opened dull eyes. Keptah bent over her. “It is all over now, my child. You are well.” The girl moaned, began to cry. Keptah crushed more acrid leaves and pressed the potion into her mouth, gave her water. She swallowed feebly. She was as white as death. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep cures more illnesses than any doctor’s art.”
He nodded at Lucanus. “I noticed, with pleasure, that you have kept count of the restraining pads. Now you will clean up this mess, and you will visit her in a few hours.”
“Glaucus,” whispered the girl. Keptah moved aside the screen and summoned the husband, who came in like the wind. He knelt beside his wife and laid his cheek to hers, sobbing. “It is much more rigorous on the husband,” observed Keptah, wryly.
He left Lucanus to the filthy and repulsive job of removing all evidences of the operation. Lucanus’ hands moved weakly and with wincing. He washed the scalpels and replaced them on the tray. The smell of the blood was sickening, and all the effluvia of the violated body. Why could not a slave have done this labor? He was irritated. When he emerged from the screens he found Keptah genially conversing with the other patients and giving orders. Keptah said to him, “You will not always have an assistant. Too often a surgeon must stand alone and do everything himself.” He looked at Lucanus, and hastily caught up a bucket, and Lucanus vomited violently into it until it seemed that his very entrails and stomach and liver would leave his gaping mouth. Keptah was patient. “Again I congratulate you, my Lucanus. It is better to indulge one’s self after the emergency than during it. Go and lie down until you are ready for Cusa.”
Lucanus wiped his sour mouth. “I prefer to go home.”
“No,” said Keptah. “You would dwell too much on what has happened. Gird yourself; continue with your work.”
The autumnal winds mourned like the voices of a multitude of doves when Lucanus left the schoolroom. The gray rains drifted against the palms and the trees and through the colonnades of the house of Diodorus, and now, suddenly, the sea-voiced gale whitened every leaf, every branch and trunk, blanched the grass. A muted howling rose from the earth, a most dolorous sound. Lucanus pulled the hood of his mantle over his head and gazed somberly at the bleached and writhing garden. The fountains complained in distress; the statues ran with gray water; the flowers bent their heads in docile suffering. Lucanus was young; he forgot that tomorrow all would again be smiling and warm, the palms glittering, the birds singing to an azure sky. As it was now, to him, so it would always be, torn with ragged anguish, replying feebly to the wind that roared in from the sea, bending endlessly and helplessly like the grasses of the ghostly Elysian fields.
All is dead, said Lucanus to himself. All is beaten, all is gray, all is inundated. All is withered and drowned and lost. What I have loved is gone. Lucanus wiped his wet face with a corner of his mantle and felt a most frightful desolation in himself, a hollowness unfilled by a single dream or hope. His young flesh was weighty on his bones, as if that flesh were old and drenched and sodden with earth. He looked at the vaporous sky, as colorless as death itself, and he wanted to weep, but there were no tears in him, only an aridness where nothing grew and nothing stirred.
He longed to go home, yet he shrank from the thought. Iris, his mother, would be there, her beautiful face white with silent grief; she would gaze at him questioningly, and he had no answers for her. She was old; she was thirty-one. The elderly possessed no wisdom, only queries. Only youth had the replies, and it could reply only when it was happy. In truth, said Lucanus in his heart, there is no answer to nothingness. And nothingness is all that there is. And then he was filled with a wild and tumultuous rage, and he lifted clenched fists against the sky. “I shall defeat You!” he exclaimed. “I shall deprive You of Your sacrifices!”
The sea-voiced gale blew against his face and body, and he felt it as a
mocking and challenge. He began to walk through the gardens,trembling with fury, and came to the open portico before the house. The carved bronze doors were shut. He stood and stared at them, and felt them obdurate. He strode to them without thinking and struck them with a fist. When they opened he said to the slave, “I wish to talk with your master, Diodorus.”
The chief of the hall regarded him impudently. “The master is in his library. He has not spoken for many days. Do you wish to intrude upon him, Lucanus? He will not see you; he has refused his Roman friends. Will he see the son of a freedman?”
Lucanus thrust open the door and hurled the slave aside. The spectral and watery light from the sky fell onto the black and white marble of the hall, and Lucanus went over it, his sandals echoing, his white mantle flowing about him in ghostly folds. The cool dank air of the house was like the air from a tomb, musty and unliving. No voice or movement broke the silence except the slapping of Lucanus’ feet. The archway of the library was shrouded in thick brown cloth, and this Lucanus pushed away. Only when he stepped into the library did he suddenly wonder why he had come and what he was doing here.
Diodorus was sitting at a pale marble table, many books rolled about him, his head in his hands. He was as still as a statue carved in dark bronze, for even his tunic was of a deep color. When he heard the rustling of the curtain he dropped his hands heavily and lifted a lightless face and stared at Lucanus blankly, Lucanus, whom he had not seen since the death of Rubria.
Lucanus was stunned by his patron’s appearance, at the ashen color of his cheeks, at the dryness of his mouth, at the hollows in which his dull eyes lurked without sparkle or interest. The very flesh of the tribune seemed to have withered; his shoulders sagged listlessly, and when he moved a little it was with an effort. Lucanus suddenly felt his own youth, the strength of his body, the flexibility of his limbs, the vitality of his blood in spite of his sorrow and his bottomless anger. Here, as his mother had said, was absolute despair, beyond the reach of consolation.
“What?” murmured Diodorus, as though he did not recognize the young man. He watched Lucanus approach him, and with complete uninterest he watched while Lucanus knelt beside him, his head bent on his chest. A muffled sound came from Diodorus, a weary and fathomless sound. Then he dropped his head in his hands again and forgot his visitor.
Words involuntarily came to Lucanus’ lips. “Master, there is an old story which my father told me. An old man lost his only son, and his friends came to him and said, ‘Why do you weep? Nothing can bring back your son’. And the old man said, ‘That is why I weep’.”
The one high window in the library admitted wandering and crepuscular light, shadowy and vague. Silence filled the room. The youth knelt by the man, and both were motionless. Then Diodorus slowly and falteringly put his hand on Lucanus’ shoulder. He said, in that rusty voice, “You too loved her. But you are not her father.”
“I lost my father,” said Lucanus, and turned his cheek so that it rested on the hand of Diodorus. His words came in a fierce rush. “Look upon me, noble Tribune. I am a son who came not to hate his father, but to despise him lightly as a man of little learning and of many pretensions. I became arrogant and impatient, and condescending. I forgot all he had suffered, all he had known. I no longer found his bombast touching; I found it risible. I did not lose my father in those years, but my father lost a son. And now the son has lost his father, and I cannot reach him and ask his forgiveness for cruelty and impatience and the pride of youth.”
Diodorus’ hand lay still on Lucanus’ shoulder, and for the first time life returned to the tribune’s eyes, and sympathy. He could not see the face of Lucanus, hidden as it was in the shadow of the hood. He said, very gently, “Surely the gods do not reject contrition, and surely the shades in the regions of death are aware of repentance.”
But Lucanus shook his head, unable to speak.
“I honored my father,” said Diodorus, compassionately. “I am not a man without understanding. I can imagine what it must be to remember that one despised his father.” He paused. “Aeneas was a good man, and honorable, and I trusted him without reservation. If he strove for wisdom the striving was not despicable. It is only when a man does not strive that he is less than an excellent dog. Let us honor those who know in their hearts that they are not great, for they respect and reverence greatness.”
“Yes,” said Lucanus. “But that does not absolve me.”
Diodorus did not speak for a few moments. Then he said, as if thinking aloud, “It is good so to live that when a loved one dies one has no regrets. But who does not have regrets? Who has not been rude and harsh and unfeeling at times? Who has not been human, with all faults? Why, then, should we punish ourselves and cry aloud, ‘If only I had known! If only I had watched! Then, perhaps, I could have held back death with my bare hands, before it was too late!’ ”
Wonder ran like frail light over his tortured face, and his shoulders lifted. He said, “I have often said to myself that I was remiss, that I did not guard my child more closely, that if I had been more careful she might not have died. But now I see that the gods have their hours of choosing, and we can do nothing but pray for the souls who have left us, that they will have peace and that they will know we have loved them and will continue to love them.”
But the dryness became dustier in Lucanus, and what Diodorus had said was only an echo with no meaning.
“Yes, yes!” cried Diodorus. “Why have I drawn away from life? Why have I been less than a brute, who mourns, and then resumes his living? What the gods have willed, so be it. They need not answer us, for their nature is beyond our understanding.” He shook his head vehemently. His hand clenched on Lucanus’ shoulder. “I have left my poor wife to cry alone in her bed, and she the mother of my daughter, and heavy with child. I have abandoned her, and when she came to console me I turned from her. Did she suffer? Did she wander into an empty room? Did she miss a maiden’s voice, and that maiden her very flesh? What was that to me, the hating, the embittered, who wished to revenge himself for the loss of his daughter? Lucanus, surely the merciful gods sent you to me today! Had I brooded much more I should have fallen on my own sword!”
“I will revenge her,” Lucanus whispered to himself. “I will revenge her all my life.”
Diodorus looked down at the kneeling youth, whose hard white face was hidden in the hood, and it seemed to the tribune that here was a messenger from Olympus itself. He put his knotted soldier’s arms about the young man’s shoulders as a father embraces a son.
“We have no longer to pray to be absolved of our crimes against the dead, but of our crimes against the living,” said Diodorus. “Let us, then, rise like men and go about the business of life. The living await us.”
Then, like Odysseus and his son, they wept together, and the tears of Diodorus were healing, but the tears of Lucanus were like scalding acid.
Lucanus went through the dripping forest to his home, and he said, numbly and incredulously, “What was it that I said to him? What message did I bring him? In truth, I said nothing at all. I talked about my father, for whom I do not truly grieve, but for whom I feel only regret. When I spoke, my thoughts were with Rubria, and not with Aeneas, my father. And she I will avenge against whatever gods there be.”
Diodorus went into his wife’s chamber, where she was lying in sadness on her bed. She started up when her husband entered, and when she saw his face she knelt on her bed with a sobbing cry and held out her arms to him, and he held her to him while she cried on his shoulder.
“Forgive me, beloved,” he said to her, and his tears mingled with hers.
Iris, standing in the gloomy and foggy dusk of the evening at her door, saw her son approach, and she waited for him, not hailing him or greeting him. He came into the house and threw off his cloak, and she saw the pallor of his lips, the blue and stony hardness of his eyes. She said, “You have seen Diodorus. I prayed that you would go to him, for you have remembered that he is as a father to you
. Tell me. Is he still broken with sorrow?”
Lucanus’ eyes flickered. “There is something which I do not understand, and which I may have understood when I was a thoughtless child. I spoke with Diodorus. I spoke with him not of Rubria, but of my father. And he stood up, and he was like a man reborn. Do not ask me what I said for I do not remember.”
Iris had lit a lamp. She turned and faced her son, and never had she seemed so beautiful to him, so clothed in golden light, so like a statue carved by Phidias. She went to Lucanus and put her hand gently against his cheek.