“Have you not heard me? Christ is Gnosis, who comes if we call. He awakens the dreamer.”
“Woman! Are you saying the Christ was neither man nor God?”
Why answer? He would not understand my answer. Turning away, I speak to those who can “hear.” “And when he comes, we remember once again that we are eternal and loved and filled with Spirit. Sophia is the soul. Christ is that which enlightens the soul. Christians have denied and hidden Sophia in their Holy Spirit, a mysterious concept they do not explain. And by so doing, they have unbalanced the world. Without Sophia, Christ is alone…and is not called. Without Christ, we remain asleep, lost in self-created illusion.”
There. I have told them what it is I begin to sense has something of truth about it. When I look again, Isidore is gone. I had not noticed his leaving.
Nildjat Miw remains, the tip of her tongue poking from her closed mouth where it appears now forgotten. One tooth shows, sharp as a thorn. And then, she speaks—a most complex series of sounds. I feel as Isidore; I can only imagine what they might mean. I smile and I scratch her chin. “Indeed,” I say, sure that I agree to something profound.
And then the atrium fills with the voices of my Companions. The debate I have engendered lasts for hours, and when it is over I am limp with thought.
~
Though I believed him gone, Isidore sits in my workroom. That I do not scream with surprise surprises me. It is late and it is hot. We swim in wet heat.
His back is bent with despair, his face black with anger. I think of Synesius. His whole life seems a lament. Synesius would be bishop or he would not, he would leave what he loves or he would not. Isidore’s life seems a tale of ill-use. He would remain, humbled, without access to power. He would find another kind of power. He would have riches. He would not.
I can help neither of them.
He speaks without looking at me. “I am lost in the jaws of a lion.”
“Do you ask for advice?”
“As I love you, it is exactly your advice I cannot take. I attend your lectures, Hypatia, I am called Companion. But I remain a priest of Christ, and my faith is strong.”
“I love not your faith, but you…”—he would hear the word “love”; he leans forward to savor it, but it sticks in my throat—“…I care for. No matter the price, you must follow your true belief.”
Throughout, his eyes are bleak. What smolders within him escapes into flame. “But the price, Hypatia! So high; how can I pay? To curry favor with Rome and with Constantinople, Theophilus abandons Origen.” He slaps his thigh with a sound like the short sharp bark of a dog. “Origen! What greater teacher of Christ has walked this earth? Who brought together so much that was disparate, yet so worthy? Philo the Jew, Numenius of Apamea who loved Pythagoras and Plato, your own Valentinus, these and more he bound round with his own godly thoughts. Origen, not Theophilus, gave Christianity what it did not have, but which Hellenists gloried in and even Gnostics achieved: an orderly and self consistent system! To remain with Origen I cannot also remain near Theophilus. But if not a hermit, what choice is left me? Do you know where it is I must go and do you know who is already there?”
He tells me what he has told me before. I answer as I have answered before. I am decided. Isidore must leave the Companions. Though I had hoped we did, we hold nothing for him. I will tell him so kindly, but I will tell him. And I do know where he must go; to the caves of men hardened by rage and made brutal by ignorance, fanatics driven from Alexandria by the hunger of their bishop. This too decides me. I must cause him pain. To cause pain is to feel pain. “As you cannot deny Origen, you will crouch in a cave, own only what you can carry, eat only what can be found there. But you will sleep as a babe for you will be a principled man.”
Isidore shakes his head. “All this is so. And because it is so, I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I cannot think. I ask myself, over and over, in heaven’s holy name, how do I do this?”
“Isidore, I have read the gospels, the Bible, the commentaries. The church of Theophilus darkens the light. It takes from the world what was offered it by Jesus and by Origen: that the soul is eternal, existing before the body as it will exist after, that all come and go in this world living each life as an actor takes part in a play, and that no soul suffers an eternal hell. Like ancient masters in the Valley of the Indus, Origen believed even the souls of demons, if demons there are, would return to their Source. Are souls not free, he asked, and will they not, when perfected, restore themselves in apokatastasis to the Perfect Mind?”
Isidore comes close, too close. “I knew you, of all, would see through to the truth…and I am asked to deny Origen! If I do not comply, Theophilus will strip me of my priesthood!”
“Then you must leave.”
From flame, Isadore is swept yet again into gloom. “But so too do I love my life here.”
“You love the role you play, as I love mine. Like Sophia, we are daily fooled by them. Even Origen lost himself in matter.”
“Never.”
“Thinking to banish desire, did he not make himself a neuter?”
“Lies!”
“But to the senses, what else but matter exists?”
I see what I do. I coerce him to do what I would have him do—leave Alexandria. By his leaving, the Companions are free of him, and I am relieved of honesty.
“You advise that I go to Nitria?”
I do—because it is best for me. But is it best for him? “Your bishop is gone to depose John Chrysostom, the Bishop of Constantinople…”
Isidore’s mouth curls up. In it, there is undisguised vanity. “Which John refuses to attend, just as Theophilus refused to attend the synod John called against him.”
“Just so. Does it not seem wise to make use of his absence?”
I am watching a small brown spider. Only moments past, she caught a fly and is wrapping it quickly in silver thread. “But if I go to Nitria,” Isidore is saying, and only now I notice how sounds his voice—into the midst of worry and hurt has crept an unpleasant hint of petulance—“I will no longer be a Companion.”
This could be stopped by a word, cleansed by a final honesty. As a cruel child, I would have spoken it by now. But I have drowned in the sea. I have lost Lais, most beloved of me. The books I treasure are hidden so that even I cannot read them. My time, and the time of all like me, grows short. But none of this stoppers my tongue. Something else, something in Isidore, keeps me quiet.
Quicker than the spider has seized her fly, Isidore seizes hold of my arm. “Have you nothing to say?” His eyes burn with a dark and unhealthy light. It is not the light I saw as we lay together under the palms of an oracle’s oasis. It is not the light of desire, not even of lust. There is a possessiveness in it, a kind of thick and reckless fury that comes with being opposed. It is as the face of Theophilus when John was chosen as bishop over Isidore. It is as the faces of men and of women running through the streets with blooded hands and blooded thoughts, or of those in black who stand at the back of my lecture hall. In this moment I know why my heart has left Isidore.
I do not know this man. I do not want to know this man. I have taught him, loved him, dreamt of him, longed for him, shared his error, and forgiven him for it. For months I have fallen away, thinking him not worthy of me. I have wronged myself. I can forgive my fickle heart. He is Parabalanoi. He has always been Parabalanoi.
“I would be Bishop of Constantinople if not for a vile eunuch! And now I am reduced to caves and shitting in holes. You, only a woman, would choose this for me? Do you not know who I am?”
“Tell me, Isidore. Who are you?”
“Better yet, ask this! Who is the woman so chaste she would kill me before yielding herself…yet now gives herself to all?”
He frightens me; I will not show it. He causes me dread; he will not see it. He has cut into my heart; I will not bleed for him.
“I am who I am.”
“Indeed.” He is close now, so close I smell the perfume he uses to sweeten his breath. “Bu
t who is the Egyptian who lives in your house and eats your food and hears your teaching and goes you know not where.”
“What do you mean? What are you saying? I know who Minkah is.”
“Do you? Do you really know who you found stealing books in your library, who you have made a Companion?”
My frightened heart, once warm and then cool, now turns cold. “There is none I know better. If you would still please me, priest, shun my company as I shall shun yours.”
“Ask him, Hypatia, ask this man you know so well who his paymaster is.”
Paymaster? What has my brother to do with money? I would ask but Isidore is gone.
Would I have really asked?
Late Spring, 405
Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria
Father is dying. I cannot imagine what could concern me less unless it is his mathematics. I know he dies and why he dies because in each of the years I follow the command of our Holy Bishop Theophilus, I have made sure of all that occurs in my sister’s house and that I report it faithfully.
Twice now, I have crept quietly into my father’s darkened room. The stench is terrible no matter how Minkah perfumes with myrrh his draperies and cushions or how many flacons filled with sweet oils and jars of unguents he sets about. I leave as soon as I come. Father knows me not. But this is as nothing. When has he ever known me or me him? I would not know him now if I could. He is repulsive. Covered with sores, he raves, he coughs, he whines. Even Olinda stays away. For one thing, as with Lais and her horrid disease of the stomach, the poor woman can do little with Father and his putrid fever. For another, Father is as ridiculous in the face of death as he was in the face of disappointment. Imagine taking to one’s bed for fourteen years. And the words he calls his physician! The gestures he makes towards Minkah! Not even at market have I heard or seen things so vile. And he knows not his savior. I would not want to be Father when he is called to judgment.
But all that is by-the-by. Father will die and that will be the end of that, one less sinner in the world. But this I do feel. Humble before my God, and as great a sinner as all men are, and all women even more so, I make now this confession: I cannot care for Bishop Theophilus no matter how worthy he is of all good regard. After all, God has chosen him to lead a great city, and yet…there it is. Here, in the privacy of my own heart where only Christ can see, I confess also this: I not only cannot care for my city’s bishop, he causes me great unease. This is, no doubt, a fault of my own since it could not be a failure of his, and yet…there it is. And as I am confessing, this too I admit: I love Minkah with that same heart that does not love Bishop Theophilus. Love for one and lack of love for the other are both great sins, this I know as I know the color of the three small eggs that each year hatch in the nest outside my cell window, and I will surely pay for these sins in some way that is yet to be revealed to me. But this at least I can claim as mine: neither knows how I feel. It is my sin and only mine. A comfort…and there it is.
I have one more sin, the worst sin of all. I do not know where it is, I could not find it, but I know the library lives. I know Minkah has helped hide it somewhere far into the desert. Minkah could not know how evil his act. He had only just found us, only just come to know Father and Lais and Hypatia. I believe even now he is innocent. His innocence and my guilt cause me to pray far into the night.
I sit this day in the house of the bishop waiting for one of our talks about Hypatia and who visits and how long they stay and if anything was said he should know. It is my sixth or seventh visit since he returned from his travels. He had meant to go all the way across the Great Sea to Constantinople to hold a synod against John Chrysostom who is bishop there, and then go on to some other place for some other purpose. That was two years ago. I am not supposed to know this, but our bishop was not allowed to set foot in the city of the Emperor of the East so was forced to hold his synod against their bishop in some lowlier place. John Chrysostom did not deign to appear, yet Bishop Theophilus condemned him whether he was there or not. I am also not supposed to know that his condemnation bore no weight with the Most Holy Innocent, Bishop of Rome. Because of this, our bishop demanded a second synod against Constantinople’s bishop. That too was ill received. Pity our poor Holy Bishop. And then he traveled to somewhere north of Ravenna, and was there set upon by Goths or Visigoths or whichever army of heathens threatens the Empires now…there are so many and they cause so much fear and turmoil, I cannot keep up. They ride into a place, they rape and they pillage, one or another of them calls himself “emperor” until he too is cut down. Those who are left ride away. Another godless sort from some other heathenish place rides against the Empire, and all happens again. In any case, our bishop escaped Ravenna.
Since returning home, his temper has been, in a word, evil. We all of us know he is coming from rooms away by the clanking of his jewelry and the unceasing howl of his voice. He howls, it seems, because even though the Empress of the East, the witch Eudoxia, cast John from her church and her city, she soon called him back. Apparently, she could not deny him, and this because though the rich love him not, the poor love him well, at the same time reviling our bishop for the exile of their bishop. But then, right away Eudoxia cast John Chrysostom out again, not because our bishop wished it, but because he spoke against women and against Eudoxia and the statues she caused to be carved of herself…and why should he not! Every word I hear he has said, is no more than Jesus said, or Paul, or any worthy father of the faith come later, and who is Empress Eudoxia to have gone against all these, or so shamefully have shown herself in gold and stone? I allow myself a small gloat, for when God saw all that she did, He exacted a great price in His just and enormous rage. First He sent a tremendous storm to rage against her city and its people, which destroyed much and killed many, and then, seven days later, He slew her in childbirth, taking also her child. How just is God!
I would think the storm and her death would soothe Bishop Theophilus. Nothing soothes him. He acts the wounded bull. It seems to me, considering the fate of Eudoxia, that our bishop should make his peace with their bishop, wherever the poor man is now. John is not in Constantinople, but where he is, if any know, I am not one of them.
But here is a thing. No matter what I feel or do not feel for Bishop Theophilus, I am eager to make my visits to his house, for there now lives the son of his sister, a young man called Cyril who accompanied our Bishop on his troublesome travels. And while it is true the nephew of our bishop is hasty in thought and so also in action, and his ire when crossed is somewhat excessive, there is something about him…exactly what, I cannot clearly say, though I can try: Cyril is what Theophilus is not. Both are men of faith, yet I suspect the faith of Theophilus could be set aside for any number of reasons, and has been. I know Cyril’s could not.
I know also I could never feel for him as I feel for Minkah—after all, Cyril is shaped like one of my sister’s geometric cones, and his face is, well, to be kind, unwholesome in its pallor, and as for his teeth, my goodness!—still, if allowed, I would be his friend on the instant.
There is a sudden great to-do along a corridor and, oh! The door slams open on the antechamber I wait in, and here is Cyril. I would speak to him! But my heart races so, I cannot. He is the nephew of the Bishop of Alexandria. He has been educated to follow on after Theophilus. And who am I?
“You!”
I jump where I sit. But I do not look up and I do not unfold my hands. I cannot use his name. I cannot call him “father” for he is not yet a priest…though why Theophilus neglects to make him one seems odd to me. But there you go. And I cannot call him master for I have no connection. How do I answer? “Sir?”
“Your sister is Hypatia?”
Of course. Hypatia. I should have known. I fester as a boil. “Yes, sir.”
“I hear, for a woman, she is brilliant. Some say, too brilliant.”
“Yes, sir.”
So saying, Cyril looks to his left and to his right. There is a monk
at either door. He leans close so only I might hear. “And then there are those far from brilliant. Look at the Synod of the Oak. Uncle used mobs to coerce the bishops who bothered to come. Mobs are like wild beasts. You can’t depend on them to be there and if they do come, you can’t be sure what they’ll say or do. Why, they could turn on you, for God’s sake.”
At this, the door to the bishop’s great chamber opens and as it opens, Cyril’s mouth closes, turning instead into a smile full of unpleasant teeth. I do wish he would not smile. From inside, we both hear his uncle call out, “Nephew! Come. We must talk.”
I sit, waiting my turn. Though he hides it, Cyril no more loves Theophilus than do I. And he told me! We shall be friends.
~
Hypatia of Alexandria
In constant shadow, for light hurts his eyes, my cat and I find Father asleep.
As once I leaned over to whisper in the ear of Lais, I now whisper in my father’s ear. “I have set aside all other work: Euclid, Plotinus, even our work on Zeno of Citium…each neglected for this new thing, this tremendous thing. Oh, that I could speak and you could hear me. Are you not still Theon of Alexandria, and do you not yet have a wondrous mind?”
I weep as I say this. I weep because I cannot remember my father’s wondrous mind. Did he once stand upright lecturing before great crowds at the Museum or the Serapeum? Was he tall? Did he hold back his shoulders and hold high his head straight as a mast? All the days of my youth, this was the man who taught me the glory of number, who pointed out the planets in their courses, the stars that fell, who indulged each whim: the lyre and the harp, the mixing of paint and of ink, the making of paper—it was endless what I asked and what he granted.
And now he is an old man dying in an old bed. And if he is not forgotten, it is only because I tell any who ask, and many who do not, that what I have learned I have learned from Theon of Alexandria.
He cannot last. Olinda does what she can, but still the fever rises and with it comes delirium. Fewer and fewer are the hours in which I find my father still lives in the eyes of this dying man. And yet I continue to speak as if he were here. “I study the words of a woman called Mariamne who said the world and all it contains is a dream dreamed by Consciousness, and if that is so, numbers are a part of this beautiful dream, and we are its dreamers. Do you dream now? Have you hidden in dream?” I touch his hand. It is not cold nor yet is it warm. It does not move. “Euclid’s smaller and smaller points become eventually nothing. Zeno’s footsteps, halving the distance from tree to tree, never arrive. Parmenides said nothing happens. We believed we knew what they meant, but did we, Father?”