Father has opened his eyes. They are milky with sleep, dull with dying.
“Father!” I lean even closer to his ear. “Do you hear me?”
Father turns his face into mine. “How could I not hear you? Are you not shouting? What are you wearing? What is that? I can see straight through it.”
It is true. I have adopted, when not lecturing, the fashion of thin silk, so thin the shape of my body might be glimpsed, but only in full sunlight. Here it is as the gloom of Kur, the crevasse of dust.
“Have you wed? Have you birthed a boy?” Sitting back, I am shocked. I do not answer. I cannot answer. He struggles to sit up. How long has he done other than lay flat, save for his head propped up by pillows? I rush to help him. Father struggles, Miw strolls calmly out the door. “What,” whines Father, “is a woman if not a portal through which man makes his way into this world?”
Believing he jests, I jest. “A woman is the other half of a man, the more perfect half.”
He thrashes his head from side to side. He looks for something in his cell of a shadowed room. “I want my grandson.”
“I have no child, neither male nor female.”
Father cannot sit up. He is much too weak, so sinks back on his bedding. “As my only daughter—”
“You have another daughter, Father. Jone.”
“As my only daughter, you will marry. I order it.”
With a cloth kept near, I wipe the spittle from his lips, the crusted muck from his beard. “Why answer to a man, when I am already wedded to truth?”
“You know no man?”
I think of the men I “know.” They have been many and varied. Some young, some old, some rich, some poor, some who love me more than I love them…all, to one degree or another, a revelation. “Men are amusing, Father, no more.”
“Serious men are not amused to be found amusing.”
“No doubt. But too much seriousness shows a lack of good sense. And must I remind my own father of Plato? ‘All the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also.’”
Father now passes wind so foul, Minkah’s perfumes are blown away. As I leave, my feet are chilled by the tiles of a room bereft of the sun. Behind me, Father yells, “You will marry Minkah. Where is Minkah?”
~
Minkah the Egyptian
“Minkah, my son. You will write my will as I dictate it.”
Take dictation? I do much for the man, but not this. “Rinat is in the house. Hypatia will send her here. Now, if you wish.”
“Rinat? Who is Rinat?”
As I have done for years, I refrain from crushing the idiot’s windpipe. I have no wish that he truly die. With time, I have learned pity. A hard lesson, but mastered nonetheless. Theon is weak. It is his nature to be clever, yet foolish; as it is the nature of Hypatia to be more than clever and exceedingly strong. It is my nature to serve and to learn what it is wise to serve and what it is not wise to serve. Few rise above their own nature. Theon is not one of these.
The old man snivels. The heat that boils his blood seems less. He is not delirious nor has he coughed this day. He does not complain his head aches like a tooth. As I have seen Olinda do a hundred times and more, I place my hand on his sweated forehead. He snatches it away. “I want it written now. I want it in your handwriting. It will be done as is right and proper in Latin, the language of law-makers, and when it is done, this Rinat can witness it.”
“Women can witness nothing, Theon.”
“They cannot?”
Delirious or not, he has at least one toe in some other world. “Only men might do so.”
“Fine. Forget Rinat. As witnesses, gather up all the best equipped males you can find. But no Christians. Christians mustn’t get their hands on a thing, nothing! You hear me, Minkah? Not even the piss in my pot.” I hear him. In this, at least, he is right. Theophilus and his ilk force many to leave to the Church what properly belongs to family and to friends. Everywhere, it becomes scandalous, but everywhere, the dying comply for fear of reprisal which comes in many guises. “And now,” says he, “let us begin.”
“You do not die.”
“I will die.”
This is inarguable. “But not now.”
“Pah. Begin.”
Gathering paper and pen and writing board, I am ready. At the last, what does it cost to please the old boil? Hypatia is safe in her workroom. The house goes about its placid day. The Companions do not meet until this evening. I have nothing to report to Theophilus. And Theon has nothing to leave. A few minutes work at most. Later, to clear the palate, I will ride Ia’eh who needs the exercise as much as I.
Theon is asleep. Relieved, I begin setting all down again. He is not asleep. He is reciting. “I, Theon of Alexandria, leave to my only daughter…” I do not write “only,” but do write the name “Hypatia.” “…the original copies of books written by me, and all other books in my possession. I leave her also the table of green stone that was brought to this house by my beloved Damara. I wish the necessary sum spent building my tomb in the Necropolis, as good and as fine as any, for I am Theon of Alexandria. There will be carved ivory and painted glass. There will be singing birds. There will be statues of Thoth and of Osiris, there will be Greek gods and goddesses, but there will be nothing Christian! Not a thing, hear me!” He breaks from his narration; I break from my writing so he might rant. “And if a symbol or some other thing that was once ours, is now theirs by theft, do not include it. Think, Minkah! What if in some distant time my tomb is discovered and by these stolen symbols I am mistaken for Christian? Even now, my bones rattle with horror. I should die again! You and Hypatia will ensure this does not happen.” I nod. I smile. My pen is poised. “Good. We continue. I will be wrapped in my wall hanging.” I look up. Wall hanging? Commissioned by his friends as a gift on his fiftieth birthday, it depicts Alexandria’s leading mathematicians and philosophers. Theon occupies the most prominent position among them. I had forgotten it. “Incense is to burn constantly.” No small expense, incense. “Copies of my work will be sealed within a box made of red granite and bound with blue copper and this box will be secreted near my body, the exact position of which to be determined by Hypatia. In this box will also be placed a certain map.” Again, I lift my pen. Theon has no right to bury his copy of one of three maps that lead to the Great Library. Also, he has no map. When he is well and truly dead, I shall give the map to Hypatia as long ago agreed. “In my burial chamber will be placed near mine the body of Damara, taken from the tomb in which she now lies. There will be also built a second chamber as grand as the first for the body of my much loved Lais, taken as well from the tomb of Damara, and in time this second chamber will contain the body of Hypatia and the body of Minkah the Egyptian.” As Hypatia has had all this prepared at her own expense for the past three years, this too I do not write down, although I pretend to. No need to note that Jone will take the place of Minkah. “To defray some of the cost, the tomb of Damara and Lais will be sold. It is a fine tomb and should fetch a fine price. All else that is mine, my house, my goods, my money to whatever sum…” I do not mention he has no money; that all money for years now is Hypatia’s money, earned by her in spite of him. “…I leave to my son, Minkah the Egyptian.” My hand is off the page on the word “son.”
“You cannot leave me your house, Theon. This is Hypatia’s house. It is Jone’s house.”
Where he finds the breath is surprising, but the volume of his voice exceeds my tolerance. “This is my house, mine, and I will leave it to whomever I wish! Write what I have said to write!”
I could and would leave now, be done with this foolishness…but if I do not remain to curb the worst, someone else will write it exactly as he speaks it. Bugger. But as I fully intend exhibiting this drivel to Hypatia knowing she and I will rewrite it together—and only then will it be witnessed—I write on.
Speaking has exhausted the man. Speaking loudly has taken away what is left of his voice. Again, he closes his eyes, and again I make a move
to sneak away, seeking Hypatia with this will of his so we might laugh as we laugh over the poetry of Palladas, making such changes as are fair to his daughters, but comes again that crust of a voice I have heard for fourteen years. “Write further.” I reseat myself, pen hovering. Eyes closed, he opens his mouth. “If, by one year from the date of my death, my son Minkah the Egyptian should be married to my daughter, Hypatia…” How many times must I raise my pen? Theon continues. I do not. “…and by two years from the date of my death, got her with child, be it male or female, my house and all it contains reverts to the name of Hypatia of Alexandria.”
I would pull his grey beard from his grey face. He has forced his will on Hypatia for years. Even dead, he would continue. He thinks he will soon die? He is closer than he imagines.
“You are not writing!” Theon’s eyes have opened. They stare directly into mine. “Write what I have said, and when you have written, show me the page.” I write. I show him what I have written. Fortunately, he reads only this last so does not notice all that is missing. “You will now leave my testament on that table, and then you will bring males, two or three, it matters not. I will have this signed and witnessed before supper.”
The cunning old cunnus. Theon has taught me Latin. Therefore in Latin, I write the word cacM at the bottom. Under my breath, I translate: shit.
~
Theon of Alexandria
Standing on the topmost step of the Serapeum, I raise my arms before multitudes—and am deafened by shouts and applause and the high-pitched ululating of women.
“You see, Hypatia! Thousands of years, and could any construct a square of area equal to that of a circle? No, they could not! Antiphon the Sophist, Oenopides and Hippocrates of Chios, Bryson of Heraclea, Hippias of Elis, not even Anaxagoras in his prison cell or Archimedes with his spiral curve or Liu Hsiao in the Imperial House of Han could solve such a problem. Nor could the mighty Aristotle. But I, Theon of Alexandria, have squared the circle!”
Hypatia leans her head on my shoulder, content to place herself behind me. “How, then, did you do it, Father? Tell me. Tell us all.”
And so I would have, and at length, but for the tremendous crash that brings my head up from a pillow…am I in bed? How odd. Bed is no place for Theon of Alexandria! I run for my window. What sounds? An earthquake? Will it shake my home to rubble?
Comes another great crash, and this one followed by a man shouting. “A pox on your house, demon-maker! A pox on all it contains!”
Again I come awake to find I am still in bed. The bed is cold, its bedding on the floor. And where is Damara?
“Necromancer! Magic worker!”
I know what I hear—the voice of a man unschooled; in short, a fool. Someone who sells me my meat or my flour or my oil, or even one of those who buy night-soil to sell on to farmers in their fields. Should one of these learn I have circled the square, it would fall as music fell on the ear of a squid.
Damara?
Another voice follows the last, and a third crash follows the second, all this come from outside my window. Dolts and henen-tep, they throw stones, bricks, pots, at my shutters! How many? Do any bear torches? That is the important question. Stones and shouting can be borne, but fire?
Damara!
“Come out, old man, father of witches!”
And now a woman’s screech: “She stands before men! She teaches deviltry! A demon must live in her belly! Father of demons, show yourself!”
Who stands before men?
The pain sweeps through me like a wind of sulfurous dust come in from the desert, dark yellow and full of woe. There is a pain in my legs, my arms, my back, gnawing like the teeth of jackals, like the howling things outside. And yet, their presumption has made them wise. They think to insult, but instead they exalt me—for I am a demon. I am Daemon. I have heard its voice and it is my voice. I have squared the circle.
Hypatia of Alexandria
Ife found Father curled in his bed as a snail in its shell and as dead as a rat in Paniwi’s mouth. Her screams as she ran through the house woke us all, even the horses.
By refusing to live, Father began his dying the day the Serapeum fell. I remember the last words of Plotinus: Raise up the divine within you to the first-born divine. Father’s last years and last words will be as little remembered as dust swept from the floor. But as for his first years and his first words, by these Theon will live.
Sitting at my mother’s table, I have read his will. Witnessed and binding, that Jone is disinherited fills me with anger…one more cause for her hatred. And how does her hatred further? It hurts she who hates more than it hurts that which is hated. And yet, there is a shiver of understanding that troubles my spine.
Father has made himself clear. If I do not wed a brother not truly a brother I must leave, for the house is now Minkah’s. I ask myself and I ask sincerely: would I wed Minkah? And the answer, so long unheard and so long delayed, is this—yes. Though it is not his wish and though he loved Lais as I now know I love him, still I would marry. And here is the way I might do it without shame and without dishonor, by the will of my dead father. I should be seen to have Minkah as mine so that Jone would not lose her home. There is a truth to this. Jone must not lose her home. But yes, yes, I would marry Minkah.
And then, before I can stop it or soften it, this thought intrudes: Minkah is an Egyptian! How should I, Hypatia, a Greek, marry so far beneath me! Such an unworthy thought, an ugly thought, more shaming than love for a man who loves another.
There is a small clay pot on the table. Without thought, I bring it up, only to smash it down, the shards cutting my hands, my arms. A mind may know a thing, the spirit may embrace it, but the voice that chatters in the head clings ever to shameful beliefs. An Egyptian is less than a Greek? To find I am as men who believe themselves far above women—by the star of Isis, in this moment I am made ill by no one so much as Hypatia. By this, I efface even Father’s last cruelty to Jone.
I believe Minkah. I believe he and I would have changed the will if Father had not forced his hand. I believe him because I love him, because over and over he has proved his love for my father, for Jone, for the House of Theon, even of me, though that love is not as the one I now see I bear for him. And I as well believe him because I understand Father, as wily in his way as a money lender. All that is in his will is precisely as he was: thoughtless as well as careful, caring as well as unfeeling, demanding as well as giving, traditional as well as eccentric, and throughout more a child than a man. In the mind of Father, the world was as Plotinus would have it: “All things are full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.” That Minkah’s life was saved by me, that he followed me home, that he has never left, that he has become the son Father lost by the loss of Damara, that he has learned all Father could teach him, that he has by his own choice protected me from year to year, that he by his own efforts transported the whole of the precious library into the desert caves, that he is Egyptian and knows not his birth-name or place so could have fallen from the stars: all this formed a pattern that well pleased the ideals of the idealistic Theon of Alexandria. As it now, fully and completely, pleases me.
Later I will grieve. Later I will feel the loss of my father. But now I am filled with anger at so much that he has done and that he has not done. Angry at myself for allowing him his small cruelties, for humoring him in those that were far from small. I am angry he spent so much time dying rather than living. I am angry he is dead.
Minkah and I sit at Damara’s green table which is now my green table. He says nothing about the smashed pot or the blood on my hands. Instead, we stare down at Father’s words, witnessed by our stable master and by our stable master’s assistant. Nildjat Miw does not sit on Father’s last wishes. I am not as Miw. I would throw it on the fire. But not for the loss of a house and not for Jone who in her faith has no need of a house. I would burn it because Father harms Minkah. How shall he care for its stables and its gardens and its serva
nts and its repairs, its endless repetitive expense? He must sell the horses, the ornaments, the furniture, let go the servants…and still the expense will go on, and on. To lose the house, any man would find this shaming. Minkah will find it more shameful still. Unless we wed.
Minkah’s voice startles Miw into making a sound, easy of interpretation. She is annoyed. “Your father cannot give me what was not his. This is your house, Hypatia. It has long been your house. I will have papers drawn up to that effect. I will sign them immediately.”
“It was Father’s house, Minkah.”
“Without you to lean on, he would have lost it long ago.”
“Without me to lean on, he might never have fallen.”
“But he did fall. And he did not rise again.”
“You think this, Minkah? That my father could not have risen again if he would have?”
“Theon did what was in him to do. He fell. He remained where he had fallen. He allowed others to carry the weight that was his to bear. In response, Hypatia did what was in her to do. She did not fall. Though young and a woman, she carried her family. She carried me. This is her house.”
Listening, I love him more. Listening, I see plain yet one more thing I have been blind to. “You did not love my father.”
For the space of a moment, Minkah is quiet. I watch as some resolution forms in his eyes. I think what I see is that he will speak truth to me, truth I might wish I had never heard. “No, Hypatia. I did not love Theon. Yet I came to understand him. I forgave him his weaknesses long ago. But I could not love him for them. I could love Lais.”