Theon groans at this. They all groan.
The man Pappas stands forth, his voice as a bell. “The greatest minds have lived in this city. The greatest talents have added word upon word, thought upon thought, to its store of knowledge. And all of it, all of it, was lately available to any who sought it. How can we bear to lose this? How can any bear to lose it?”
“Surely, it has not come to that?” This is said by the occultist Paulus of Alexandria. His own home lost to fire, yet his goods were removed the day before to the house of his Christian mother-in-law. Paulus interests me. Is he gifted with sight…or a spy? If spy, then for whom? Not for Theophilus or I should know it. “Theodosius shows charity. He declares we are allowed our beliefs.”
“Are you a fool?” snaps Pappas, who I begin to admire. “If we are allowed our beliefs, where are our temples?”
And now, from a chair far from all these talkers, rises up Hypatia. All throughout, as I have stood listening to this one and that, and to all at once, so too has she. At sight of her as at speech from me, once again the silence is immediate. She is stared at. To run through fire for books, to stride naked, her nose in the air, past men maddened with blood…this is one to be feared.
“You talk of a new library,” says the daughter of Theon, “you say the new library will not be as the old, it will be secret. But how secret can it be? Scholars will seek it, will speak of it. How then can it be hidden? No more than one foolish mouth, and it will be gone before the waning moon.” All is now a rustle of togas, a scratching of beards. As an Egyptian, I grow no beard, but if I did, I would scratch it. Beard scratching is a way to avoid other than beard scratching. “Shall we give them a new library to sack and to burn?” Heads are shaking, nooooo. “Nor can we trust them to one man’s house, no matter how large the house or worthy the man.”
“What, then,” asks a now sober Helladius, “shall we do?”
“We will do as the Jews once did.” By name a Greek, Meletus is the one Jew here, and head of the Jewish Schul of Alexandria. Though all other stares are blank, the stare of Meletus threatens. But as Meletus is older than Palladas, older even than Didymus, and has not a single hair on his head but hair enough for a cleaning broom over both eyes, Hypatia pays him no heed. “When Rome threatened the books of the Jews, what did they do? They gathered them from everywhere, took them out into their deserts of arid heat, sealed them in great jars, and hid them in caves. The books exist, though three hundred years have come and gone. This is true, is it not Meletus?”
Clearly, Meletus does not want to answer, but must. “Yes, it is true.”
The others stare at the bald Jew as they stared at Hypatia.
“Is this not Egypt?” says this woman of a girl, “and are we not surrounded by deserts, greater than any in Judea? And do we not have caves, and are they not dry and hot?” Yes, they all nod, yes, there are caves in the desert and they are hot.
Pappas holds up a hand. “But what of grave robbers, more numerous than lice?”
“Robbers seek gold, not books, and what they seek is near the Nile, not here.” Pappas concedes her point: Alexandria has no pyramids, no valleys of kings and queens. “We will gather the books, each from where it is hidden. We will find the right and proper caves. When these are discovered, there will be drawn three maps that if found or stolen will make no sense to its finder. Each map will be seemingly different yet in meaning the same, and three men will hold in trust these differing maps. You must decide who these three men are. As for the devising of symbol, who better than my father: Alexandria’s most fiendish geometer?” Even Theon listens with open mouth. Yes, yes, yes. I see them begin to calculate, already wondering which of them would be map-holders.
Pappas has paid close attention, so now asks the obvious question. “And where shall we keep the books before they are hidden in desert caves?”
The answer to this is as ready on Hypatia’s tongue as all else she has said. “They will be taken to the one place no Christian would think to look.”
“And that is?”
“Only those in this room will know, swear on it.”
They all swear, even me, and of them, I hope none betrays what they swear to; this while looking at Paulus and thinking of myself.
“The place is obvious. Where else than in the Didascalia, the confusing, complex, and enormous Christian school of Didymus the Blind?”
Ahhhh, they all sigh. Bold. Ingenious. Risky. For the space of a breath, they pause, then fall to discussing which of them should be the three to hold the maps. Only I am left to gaze upon Theon’s second daughter. Not one man here questions her judgment. Yet no man gapes in wonder at wisdom standing before them. I am in danger here; my heart is threatened as well as my loins. I scold myself. Step lightly, Egyptian, speak with care. No sword has proved more dangerous than this.
I banish the woman with thoughts of the man. Bishop Theophilus is my true master. What I hear in this house, should I not tell him?
No doubt. But not now. Yet if not now, when? The answer is simple. When it suits me.
~
Hypatia’s plan to remove the books from private hands and to hide them in a Christian school began that day. I watched them moved through the streets in bullock carts, in bundles on backs as if they were kindling or laundry, even secreted one by one under mantles. My own I carried openly. What Christian would take offense at, or even notice, the work of Theophilus, for each of my books was disguised as one of his.
It was good to see Lais laugh at my joke, irritating to wonder if Hypatia even noticed.
Danger traveled with every book. What if someone tripped and fell and Aristotle be exposed in the street? What if thieves, believing they had found treasure, found Livy instead? What if something should startle an ass, and it go braying off on its own scattering Homer’s Margites, what if, what if?—but there was also exhilaration.
It took a month or more, but in the end the books are hidden with Didymus. I enjoyed myself immensely.
As for who would keep a map once it was drawn, my “Master” Theon was chosen first of the three. Meletus, second. I thought neither choice surprising. As it can be done in bed, Theon will devise the maps. Meletus has knowledge of such things, yet has not shared his knowledge—what better recommendation? I should have wagered on Pappas as third choice. Instead they chose Didymus. This means the Great Library is in the hands of a craven mathematician, a reluctant Jew, and a Christian. If any die before the library is restored, their copy will follow on down a list carefully determined. Theon’s will go to Hypatia.
I too have a task. Not Theon, but Hypatia, assigns it. I do not ask why she chooses me, who does not know me, but the answer must reside with Theon who trusts me. I, who have never ridden, who have been no closer to a horse than to be trampled when in the way, or sharing a courtyard, am to ride out into the desert where few ever think to venture, and with me rides Hypatia. Whenever she does not lecture to the rich and ambitious, we are to search for a place that no one can find.
I am given a day to learn the art of riding. This is my doing for I have said I learn easily, and when it comes to things of the body, easier still. Hypatia takes me at my word. She and I alone have come out into the desert where I cannot hurt myself or the horse, and here I must prove myself. My beauty rides a fine red mare named Desher. I ride a creature as splendid as Lais. Ia’eh is as Desher, a hot-blooded horse of the high cold deserts, faraway and strange to imagine. Where Desher is the color of blood, Ia’eh is as white as a harbor gull with an eye as black as kohl. Astride her, I must know her, anticipate her, follow her as if I was part of her. Three or more times, I would fall, but I will not. Hypatia watches, a mere girl who can do more than I, who knows more than I, is a high-born Greek watching a low-born Egyptian, and I will not fall. I will ride Ia’eh as I would Hypatia. Not that I shall ever ride Hypatia, but men live by dreaming and I am a dreamer.
When we return, I am handed Xenophon’s Hippike and the work of Simonides. “Read these,??
? says my haughty darling, “So you may know the horse in all its ways.” And with that she leaves me, who ache in all my parts. It is not only Ia’eh who causes this.
Use and knowledge of the horse elevates my status. My mind is elevated by chance. As I tend to him, Theon chatters away. And because I know what Hypatia does not know—her safety rests on the will of Bishop Theophilus—I accompany Hypatia to her lectures and I listen. From time to time, I wonder: if it should be Minkah who is ordered to endanger that safety, what then? Piss on it. Worry never pays. But by Horus, I have fallen into a vat of honey.
When I ride with Hypatia, we do not go south. Due south lies Lake Mareotis and beyond the lake rise the mountains of Nitria where live the maddest of mad Christian monks. These are harmless solitaries, chilled in caves or exposed on high rocks or starving in ruins, each alone and each dying to meet their god. But there too live those in black robes, gathering like flocks of crows—these are not alone and they are not harmless. They grind their teeth with fanatical “love” of what they call God and hate beyond reason all they consider not God.
We ride as Libyans. No Egyptian fellahin would be seen so far from the chMra where lie their farms, and never on horseback, especially not on the backs of such fine horses as ours. And because even Libyans, should they be seen wandering such remote and trackless places, might be questioned by Roman soldiers or bands of thieves or by the thugs of Theophilus—being myself a thug of Theophilus, I know exactly how such questioning will go—we will say we are traders intent on finding new and better routes to markets. As “questioning” often comes in the form of a swift and silent knife, we ourselves carry knives. I am skilled with knives. Once more Hypatia surprises me. Skillfully sinking a blade deep into a post, she tells me it is wonderful what one can learn from a sailing tutor.
We begin our search in silence, I because I am merely a servant, and she because I am merely a servant. So far we have seen nothing alive other than a distant cheetah standing perfectly still on the top of a ridge and three quick vipers slithering over the sand. This day we go farther, but still avoid the Nitria where the vast bulk of those who delight in suffering lurk. Ia’eh, Lais’ filly, is mine as long as I have need of her. Lais herself, though I am told she once rode and rode well, is now more often found in her room writing her poems. Hypatia rides the spirited Desher. As Ia’eh means moon, Desher means no more than her color: red as Ra when he sang the world into existence. We have come many miles southwest of the city and still find our search hot and fruitless as one by one each grouping of caves is rejected for this or that reason.
In this lonely place Hypatia turns in her saddle. “Have you no home, Minkah? Does no one miss you or need you?”
“I have a home and there are those who need me.”
I see she is shocked. “For weeks now you live with us, yet abandon your own?”
“Your family needs me. Your father tells me your home is my home.”
“Does he now? And your family?”
“Who are they? I have never known.”
“But where have you lived? Who has cared for you?”
“I lived in the Temple and the Temple is gone. As for who cared for me, I cared for me.”
“But, as only a babe—”
“There was a woman. She took me by night to a garbage pit. There I would live or I would die, that was up to the gods. There was a man who came to the pits, as many do, to take away abandoned children for slaves. Imagine his surprise to find me a male, for most so abandoned are female. In any case, those who come choose only the strongest, so I did not die, but was seized by Jabari the Brave, a worker in wood and metal who had need of an apprentice he need not pay.”
“You are a craftsman!”
“I was. Until I ran away to the Temple to escape Jabari, who was not so much brave as brutal. I made myself useful there. I shelved and I sorted and I learned to read.”
There comes a strange light in her eye. I do not trust strange lights. “You can devise mechanisms from plans?”
“I can.”
“Even if they be complex?”
“Certainly.”
Hypatia says nothing more for an hour. I say nothing more for an hour. Banishing mothers and Jabari from my mind, I am remembering what I once read. Long ago, came to this desert a great king and all his men. But up rose a sandstorm as thick as the cough of Set in which all became lost and were never found again. I find I am telling Hypatia this with great enthusiasm. “…and since this is so, I wonder we have not seen their bones.”
By the look on her face, I see she has not heard a word. By her speech, she admits it. “Your skill has caused me to think of a device I mean to make, a much improved astrolabe—Father’s treatise on these has given me many ideas—as well as a thing that has long plagued my thoughts. As yet, I have no name for it, but when it is made it will allow one to see clearly what lies below water. Bones? What of bones?”
By now I have learned the mind of this one is a strange mind and a surprising mind. And it wanders. I am glad it is not my mind. How burdensome to live so much in the head. I live in my body and feed its desires. I glance at Hypatia, glance away. It seems a fine life to me, and one that gets better by the hour. I think of the sisters. Hypatia is all mind, Lais all spirit, Jone all bodily emotion. “Since the time of Augustus, Romans have banished men to this desert. Earlier, when the Persians conquered Egypt, King Cambyses II and his army of fifty thousand men vanished in a sandstorm and were never seen again. There must be bones everywhere.”
“I have heard of this, Minkah. But men are banished to the oasis of Siwa, not here. And King Cambyses was supposedly looking for precisely that oasis in order to destroy the Temple of Ammon by traversing the Great Sand Desert. But surely, that is legend.”
“Surely, it is not!”
“It is.”
“It is not.”
From this point on, she searches for bones as I search for caves. Sandstorms also occupy my thoughts. If one were to suddenly spring up, our bones would mingle with the bones of outcasts and Persians.
“Hypatia! Look!” Ia’eh has suddenly stopped as if she too knew what we look for. I am pointing at an outcrop of dark rock shimmering in the distance. “See how high that place is. When the rains come and flood the desert, the water would never reach here. And see how low it is. What solitary would find it alluring? And how far from any path it is! Should a wanderer lose himself here, he would not seek a way out through this place, but would turn and retrace his steps.”
All is heat. It simmers in every direction. It causes the eye to create illusion of palace and temple and great ships of many masts. Hypatia asks, squinting, “It seems perfect. There is no oasis, no water. Are there caves?”
Standing in my stirrups, I shield my eyes with my hand. “Dozens of them.”
“We must explore them all.”
Glancing at the sun, I frown. “Already it will be dark before we return to the city. We have no time.”
“The books cannot stay with Didymus. Neither he nor they are safe. You will search one cave and I another. We shall do this until it is dark. And then we shall sleep here, and begin again at first light.”
I know what is so in the house of Theon. Hypatia has a class to teach on the morrow. If the daughter does not teach, the father cannot peaceably lie in his bed. If the father does not lie in his bed, how shall I be of use? “And your students?”
Hypatia shrugs. “They will come. I will not be there. They will wait. I will not appear. They will go home. The following day I will apologize, talk longer, and all will be forgiven.”
As used to her wandering mind, I am as used to her fine and easy arrogance. I nod. We will spend the night. Seeing this, she whispers into Desher’s ear, and we are away. I follow on Ia’eh, who seems like Pegasus, feathered in white.
I am Parabalanoi. I have done harder things than innocently sleep near a woman like this woman far out in the reaches of a wilderness with no man near. But not many.
~
Three times now, well laden camels have gone out into the night. And each trip I make, those who come with me are at a certain point blindfolded, and each trip I make is taken with different men, most poor, most Egyptians—none are fellow Parabalanoi. The caves I first sighted are many. Some reach so far back into the crest of rock, searching them, I could go no farther for loss of light. Some have caves within caves, only reached by crawling through tunnels jagged with sharp and twisted shapes. And some would end in darker holes into which I have peered and these would drop down and down into a deep that if not the Underworld, would certainly do.
If all goes well, and I do not die from the effort, the whole of Alexandria’s great library, sealed in jars, will rest in the caves by the birthday of the Persian godman Mithras, though now given as birthday to the Christian godman Jesus. My new “family” grows used to these sorrows. Listening to Lais, I hear whichever godman claims it as his date of birth, it is still the return of the Great God Sun. What matter the new name they give him as he is the same godman? I had never thought of this. The same godman? Of course!
And so it goes. Alexandria believes it has lost its library and grieves. Christians, also believing, rejoice. We few both grieve and rejoice. The library lives, but as both Lais and Hypatia ask: at what cost?
And I, Minkah of the Parabalanoi, know the precise location of each cave, each jar, each book. A delicious irony.