Alexander and Alestria (19 page)

"Look, Hephaestion, here is the secret of this war: they are hashna leaves. They do not grow in this forest, and the Gonya know nothing of cultivating the land. Men are supplying them with this mild drug on condition that they make war with us. Men are manipulating them to attack us. Men are afraid of us and want to drive us out of the Indies before we take their cities by storm and claim their treasures for ourselves."

Hephaestion wanted to reply, but I interrupted him:

"I have been told of a great king called Poros. He is so rich, it is said, that his elephants are covered in precious stones. This gallant warrior dreams of uniting all the kingdoms of the Indies. I have arranged to meet this man, Hephaestion, I must confront him. If I die in combat, you will take our troops back to Persia. If I win the battle, I shall share with you and with all my soldiers the unimaginable treasures of the Orient."

"Are you really so blind? The gods are sending you signs to stop this absurd campaign. The degenerate state of the Gonya proves we have reached the limits of humanity. Beyond this forest there are no more men but the kingdoms of monsters and wild beasts. And do you, the great Alexander, want to lose your soldiers down to the last man in order to be king of those lowly creatures?"

Hephaestion shot a look laden with contempt at Nicea, then withdrew.

Weary of arguing with him, I let him leave. Hephaestion could not understand me: his dream of seeing me venerated as king of the Greeks and Persians had been realized, and any other unexpected dreams were mere poetry and madness to him, a Macedonian nobleman raised by Aristotle like myself.

Two days later in battle an arrow shot from behind drove into the crest of my helmet. Had the soldier's hand wavered? Or had he been ordered to threaten me? Days passed, and still the army could not identify the murderer. I suspected a conspiracy among the highest ranks and entrusted Bagoas with carrying out a secret investigation of my friends' loyalty.

The eunuch reported back all the conversations his men overheard: Hephaestion was angry with me for being so obstinate; Cas-sander still could not forgive me for marrying an Asian of obscure parentage; Crateros complained that I had grown hard-hearted and said I was deaf; Perdiccas was still mourning the loss of Cleitos, whom I had killed with my own hand; Ptolemy, the eldest and most restrained, was convinced I should be forced to take a year's rest. They all referred to me as the tyrant behind my back.

Shut away in my tent, I taught Nicea how to play a musical instrument. I lay on my bed listening to the monkey plucking the strings of his lute and pictured Alexander, Hephaestion, Cassander, Crateros, Lysimaque, and Perdiccas at school together. At first we had been inseparable, all experiencing our first kisses and embraces at the same time. There were the fits of laughter, the arguments and reconciliations followed by exalted oaths of loyalty. Alexander was right at the middle of that virile little world, playing the capricious girl who knew just how to secure promises and protection.

Those young boys swore they would never leave each other; they decided to conquer the world together. Along the way on our campaigns, carnal love had given way to friendship, and each of us in turn had taken lovers. That band of happy reveling friends had gradually split up as they waged wars and conquered lands. They had all lost their innocence, and I had become an arbitrator, responsible for sharing out glory and wealth: I was both their master and their slave, handing out titles and promotions. They plotted to try to force their ideas on me; they came and begged me to oversee their lovers' upbringing; they formed a united front against anyone who succeeded in getting close to me; they made sure my relationships never lasted long. Their possessiveness grew the farther we marched away from Macedonia. Anything not from our country they condemned as a perversion, a whim, a disloyalty. The Persian clothes and customs I had adopted, the barbarian food I so loved, Bagoas the slave I had given a position, Alestria the Asian orphan I made my queen… all were offenses that drove Cleitos to insult me in public. By killing him with my lance, I had broken an oath of eternal friendship.

Nicea abandoned the instrument and turned to massaging my head. The love and gratitude I read in his gaze were not enough to console me. I tore myself from this sadness by turning my thoughts to war.

Withdrawing from the Indies and taking my troops back to Persia would mean giving the Indian princes time to rally around Poros. My soldiers were so haunted by the nightmare of crossing the Indies that-once their minds were relaxed, their bellies fed, and their muscles unwound-they would not have the courage to suffer a second time. Only the ignorant have temerity. To rest was to give up: we had to advance.

Lying in Darius's bed in Babylon, I had laughed at the thought of my victory. Now, in the middle of a hostile forest that featured on no map, I laughed at the thought of my defeat. Losing his friends was a failure for Alexander the Great. Isolated in my tent, betrayed on all sides, I was back to the loneliness of the little boy watching the stars. The pinnacle of my life as a warrior had come full circle. Alone and disarmed, I still had the same dream, though, the same obsession: to conquer beauty.

The headlong gallop toward wonderment knows no limits.

Wonderment is the gold of the sun.

I, Alexander, son of Apollo and Ammon, will not renounce it.

Slaves protected by warriors went ahead of us. Day and night they felled trees and carved out a road on which the Queen's City-a vast nomadic town-could travel through the forest of the Indies in Alexander's footsteps.

At each stopping point the soldiers planted stakes in the ground and built a wall. Ptolemy ruled as master in the men's quarter: he received provisions and gave supplies to the king; he took in the injured sent back from the front, and greeted reinforcements from Greece and conquered lands. Troops were constantly on the move. Over and above the whinnying of horses and the sounding of horns, we could hear the bustle of breeders mating horses from different lands, armorers experimenting with metal alloys, weavers pushing their creaking looms, and cooks noisily slaying calves.

In the women's quarter Alestria rose before the sun to receive her subjects' salutation: men and women formed a long line outside her tent, and one after the other prostrated themselves at her feet-all except for the Macedonian warriors, to whom the king had granted the privilege of greeting her with a bow.

In order to marry her, Alexander had asked Alestria to recognize the satrap Oxyartes as her father and to take the Persian name Roxana. Being extremely jealous, he required her to wear a veil in male company. I, Ania, standing beside my queen for the morning audience, ruminated on my loathing for this man who had robbed her of her dignity while offering her this daily spectacle of veneration.

Alestria cast her black eyes over each of her visitors. Military chiefs brought her news from the front; doctors came to ask for remedies to heal the injured; sages wanted to show her their inventions; soldiers and their wives told her of conspiracies against the king; madmen, outcasts, and criminals groveled at her feet; tradesmen, courtesans, and prostitutes lined up to sing her praises; all of them hoped to reach Alexander through Alestria, all of them wanted to please the king by flattering the queen.

The sun followed its course across the sky. The thud of felled trees, the whicker of foals, and the chanting of slaves wringing out wet sheets reached the tent. On top of this constant racket, men came in and argued, women fought and pulled each other's hair while the babies clinging round their necks screamed. Alestria heard their whispering and sobbing, their shrieked accusations and despairing lamentations, with patience and indifference. People spoke to her in every language: Macedonian, Greek, Persian, and tribal idiom. She did not understand everything, but they thought she did, confiding in her their concerns and corrosive anger. They came to her so that she could bear their pain, jealousy, and hatred. Alestria accepted these bouquets of venomous flowers without complaining about their vicious thorns, listening to them without uttering a word. Her silence was soothing, her attentive expression a balm on their open wounds, her luminous presence purifying.

Men and women alike left feeling appeased. Alestria was the deep, limpid lake before which Alexander's servants prostrated themselves prior to throwing their waste into it. She said nothing and never spoke to me of it, accepting this earthly waste in silence and transforming it into brilliant red fish, twinkling lights, wafting weeds, and water lilies.

When the sun reached its zenith, the audience came to an end. Once released from her duty, the queen called for her horse, galloped to the entrance to the city, and waited for the king's return, sheltering under a parasol erected for her by the soldiers. She remained motionless, her eyes fixed on the horizon, her body taut as a bow trained toward Alexander, toward the target that did not appear.

If horsemen came into view, her body quivered, preparing to launch into a gallop. But Alexander was not with them; they were bringing her gifts from the king. Sad and disappointed, she went back to her tent. She took a little gold knife he had given her and carefully undid the string, the banana leaves, the leaves of gold and silver, and the petals. A gem, an insect, a box, or a feather would emerge, and she would stroke it and spend the next few days looking at this precious object.

During the audiences her eyes smiled and radiated light. But I, Ania, her faithful servant, could read through her veil. Her body was there with us, but her soul had flown to those distant lands where Alexander fought. Her body was here, mute and cold, imprisoned by the men and women who needed a queen, while her soul was over there, close to him, where she found her joy, her spontaneity, and her words once more.

Our ancestors were right to forbid love, which turns a woman into the living dead!

Alestria, my queen, had become a stone statue.

All the jewels he offered me were pebbles.

All that embroidered cloth accumulating in my tent was shrouds.

Nothing was worth as much as his eyes, more precious than emeralds.

Nothing was worth as much as his skin, the most beautiful cloth in the world.

When Alexander realized that these gifts did not dazzle me or comfort me, when he realized that these inanimate things could not replace him, he sent me a parrot, a frog, a girl child covered in hair found on the battlefield.

These creatures that I cared for could not speak for him. In the little girl's eyes I read the terror of someone who has survived a massacre. I gave her the name Alestries, like the heroine of my unfinished novel.

Alestries was starting to walk and could already babble the language of the Amazons. Her accent only heightened my melancholy. Outside it was eternally summer, but in my heart it was winter, endless frost. Alexander was my only springtime, coming round and leaving again.

I did not want to learn Macedonian or Greek; I was not Roxana, Queen of Asia. I belonged to the grasshoppers, the wind, and the pollen, all things that fly away and never come to rest. I was Alestria, who had halted her gallop for a man.

For a man, Alestria had become Roxana. She had renounced the steppe and turned into a flower planted in a silver pot and transported on a golden chariot.

All the tents covered in gold leaf, the warriors bowing at my feet, the beautiful women submitting to me, all the swift horses and the birds with a thousand shimmering feathers-they were all shadows. I wanted only him, his feet, his hands, his breath.

My life was waiting.

My life was worrying.

My life was joy and wrenching pain, endless dozing and awakening.

Was he injured? Could he find his way?

Had he been struck by a poisoned arrow? Seen the savage leaping at him from the trees? While I waited, I grew weaker.

I no longer had any appetite for food, games, or pleasure.

I no longer dreamed. I no longer spoke. I was silent.

I did not know what I was waiting for-for him to come back, for him to leave, for his wounded flesh, for his dead body on the top of the pyre.

I forced myself to eat, to get dressed, to arrange my hair. Before Alexander's men and women I hid my despair and forced myself to stand upright, to command and be radiant. I granted each of them a silent blessing, a prayer. Soldiers, wives, courtesans, whores, tradesmen, workmen, slaves, horses, dogs… I loved them all because I loved their king.

When alone with Ania, I could not look her in the eye. I was afraid she would discover my secret: I had agreed to be Roxana, Queen of Asia, for the beauty of my beloved. Behind my facade of dignity I had been defeated by suffering, I had grown weak and was no longer worthy of her loyalty. She and the other girls should leave this queen who could not fight her own sorrow. But how could I survive without them?

It was my punishment for relinquishing my freedom.

I missed the steppe. I missed the calls of migrating birds. I thought of the girl children, the foals, the goats. I missed the smell of our cooking. I missed the song of the steppes. I was no longer Tania, the melancholy girl who liked to savor the pleasures of life in secret. I, Ania, was overrun by the impurities of the world of men, disgusted by their massacres, intriguing, and denunciations. I was tired of living among women who did not know how to enjoy life and who argued all day long over a scrap of fabric, a child's pout, the cost of a ring.

Men and women hovered around me, the queen's serving woman. They threw me compliments, brought me their regional dishes, gave me gifts, and tried to find me a husband. I turned them away with a scowl.

It was so easy to read their thoughts: they wanted to bribe me in order to win the queen's favor. They wanted to know the secret of where we came from, our past, our customs. They wanted to know the queen's moods, what she said, and what she worried about so that they could take great pride in telling the entire city.