Azazeel (13 page)

‘Azazeel, you’ve come!’

‘Hypa, I’ve told you many times that I don’t come and go. It’s you who conjures me when you want to, because I come from within you and through you. I spring up when you
want me to shape your dream, or spread the carpet of your imagination or stir up for you memories you have buried. I am the bearer of your burdens, your delusions and your misfortunes. I am the one
you cannot do without, and nor can anyone else. I am the one who...’

‘Have you started chanting a hymn to glorify your own satanic self?’

‘Sorry, I’ll keep quiet.’

‘What do you want now?’ I asked.

‘I want you to write, Hypa. Write as though you’re confessing, and carry on with your story, all of it. Say what happened to you two as you went down the stairs.’

Confession is a wonderful rite, purging us of all our sins and laving our souls with the water of the divine mercy which pervades the universe. I will confess to these scrolls,
concealing no secrets, in the hope that then I will find salvation.

The stairway between the roof of the house and the upper floor had ten steps, equal in number to the heavenly intelligences between God and the world, according to the sad philosopher Plotinus.
On the top step Octavia held me tight, took my lower lip between her lips and began to run her tongue along the line of it until I almost passed out from the tremor of pleasure. She beamed and told
me that this was the first of ten kisses she was going to lavish on me. As I descended to the next step down, she slipped her left hand through the opening in my gown, squeezed under my right arm
and pressed me hard against the wall. She was one step above me, and bent her head down towards my arm and nibbled my earlobe, like an infant sucking a nipple playfully. When she breathed into my
ear, I shivered inside. At the next kiss I reeled and almost tumbled down the stairs. So I sat down, in a daze, and let her do what she wanted with me. She pulled off her clothes and I pulled off
mine, full of desire. The other kisses I cannot mention.

By the end of the stairway we had fused together, as though we were the primal substance from which the universe began. One moment she was under me, then on top, like a wild cat ravishing its
prey and in turn being ravished. When our passion abated, we arose exhausted and picked up our clothes. She took me by the hand to show me the house by the light of the day, which now filled the
place. Octavia was affectionate, bold and reckless. I walked behind her, chased by my thoughts and by all the possibilities: I might fall in love with her and grow accustomed to her voluptuous
outbursts, but I would never succumb to her. I might stay with her for only a few days and then go about what I came to Alexandria to do, and not let myself become attached to her. I would not
choose for myself a pagan name derived from Greek. Whatever happened, I would not allow an Alexandrian widow I had known two days to deprive me of my name and my language, however beautiful she was
and however impulsive her pagan lust. I would not allow Octavia to sweep me away. I was very young at the time. I wonder, if I had deferred to her, would our grievous fate have been different? Who
knows? It’s no use wishing now, what’s done is done. What we did has passed and never will return.

We looked down from the upper floor, on the picture of the sad dog, and I asked her, ‘Why did they call you Octavia?’

‘My father married twice and had many children, and I was the eighth of his ten sons and daughters,’ she said.

‘Then I will call you Timahshmoune, which means eighth in Egyptian, like Octavia.’

She smiled sweetly and serenely and did not comment on what I said. She took me into a large room with a floor and walls of fine white marble and in the centre a bath twice as large as the one
next to her room, and with more carving. She told me her master had brought this extraordinary bath from Rome. The bath was truly amazing, as was everything in this room and the other rooms. But
suddenly a mysterious sadness came over me, welling up from inside, and distracted me from my surroundings, and I was no longer interested in these mundane and ephemeral vanities.

As she took me around the whole house, I walked with her, but my mind was elsewhere and wary. I felt that she was tempting me, trying to make staying with her seem more attractive, and I
resisted by saying to myself, ‘How could I consent to be a servant in the home of a Sicilian merchant, and husband to a pagan servant woman who is five years my senior and always taking me by
surprise with her irrepressible sexual desires? Who knows, maybe her master sleeps with her! If not, who else taught her all this debauchery she has shown me? Her master must be a real libertine
who follows his desires, fills his house with loose women, spends his nights in Alexandria in their arms and has Octavia join them.’ At that moment I felt a powerful hatred for this man and
intense anger towards this woman, who had almost made me fall in love with her and forget all my hopes.

‘This, my love, is the library,’ she said.

Her words, and her gentle touch on my shoulder, broke my train of thought. When we went into the room, I was in awe at the number of books arranged on shelves the length of the wall and the
scrolls set in holes in the walls. I had always loved books. I wanted to be alone and I almost wept for no reason, maybe because of my constant frustration. I asked if I could stay a while with the
books and my request pleased her. She kissed me on the cheek and said she would go to prepare lunch.

Octavia left me puzzled in the midst of the vast room. I looked around the walls, which were full of cavities for storing papyruses and shelves for arranging books. In those days I could read in
Greek and Egyptian but I had not yet mastered Hebrew or Aramaic. In the library I found books in other languages, such as the upstart language Latin, and eastern languages the likes of which I had
not seen before. How many languages did he read, this libertine merchant who did not believe in any god? Or perhaps he bought the books to show off, as most rich and stupid people do. No, it
didn’t look as if he were showing off, because on his elegant desk in the corner of the room I found books strewn around and two folded volumes on papyrus, with comments in Greek written in a
fine hand. When I leafed through the volumes on his desk and on the shelves, I found marginal notes and commentaries all written in the same hand and signed with his name. So it was he who read
Greek and the other languages. As far as I could tell from his intelligent comments, most of his reading was in history and literature. The man had several old copies of Aesop’s fables and
the poems of Heraclitus, the philosopher. He also had a theological epistle by Origen. I began to turn the pages of the books and open out the folded scrolls, and on the edges I could see more
comments and marginal notes.

‘My love, the food is ready, come on.’

‘I’ll stay another hour. I’m not hungry now,’ I said.

‘Come on, the food will go cold. Don’t vex me as the Sicilian master does. It’s obvious you like books just as he does.’

‘Could you bring the food here?’ I asked.

‘No, that wouldn’t do. We’ll eat in my room. The books won’t fly away. Come on, leave that book, because I’m very hungry and I miss you so much.’

She took the book from my hand and put it back in its place on the shelf. She opened the thick leather cover and said with a chuckle, ‘Aristotle, do you want to make us miss our delicious
hot lunch, for the sake of this man?’

What she said startled me, and the way she made fun of the great philosopher. ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ I said in anger. ‘Aristotle is the teacher of the ancient
world and the first person to give mankind the principles of thought and the science of logic.’

‘Ha, so before him mankind didn’t know logic and the principles of thought? Anyway, I don’t like him because in his books he says many foolish things, and claims that women and
slaves share the same nature, different from the nature of free men. Retarded!’

‘Octavia, that’s no way to talk. But I see you are familiar with the learning of the ancients.’

‘Ha, I know some things and the Sicilian master likes to read me ancient texts. He’s interested in teaching me. A neighbour of ours, a rich Christian, saw him one day reading to me
in the garden of the house and said, “The Sicilian is giving the snake poison to drink.” Our new neighbour is also retarded, like your old friend.’

I didn’t know how to answer her, and she gave me no time to think. She pulled me gently by the hand out of the room and at the door she gave me a long hug. Octavia never stopped.
‘This kiss is an appetizer,’ she joked.

We sprawled on the floor of her room and while she put food in my mouth in the usual way, she said the Sicilian master would like me, because he liked learning and scholars. She said he was
friends with the governor of the city and had many acquaintances. He would help me to study medicine and she would surround me with her love until I became the most famous physician in Alexandria,
in fact the most famous physician in the world. To my surprise, she added: ‘My love, you will be more famous than Galen and Hippocrates, and all the followers of the god Asclepius.’

‘Octavia, you do know a lot,’ I said.

‘All I want to know is you. Tell me, are you happy with me? No, don’t answer now. Be patient and you’ll see. The Sicilian master will be back in a month and I’ll tell him
everything about us and he’ll welcome you amongst us.’

The Sicilian master! I felt hatred towards him, a deep hatred, mixed with a certain reverence and foolish envy after I had seen his comments and annotations. Bewildered, I let slip my thoughts:
‘Does the Sicilian master sleep with you?’

My question shocked her and tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. Her face went red in sadness and in anger. I had not meant to say that exactly, but rather to ask what kind of relationship they
had and did the man flirt with her when he was at home, especially as she was a single widow with strong desires, or rather whether he asked her to warm his bed on winter nights and relieve his
loneliness when he missed his dog. I meant, did he, as her master, have a right to sleep with her?

Octavia bowed her head and looked at the edge of the carpet without saying a word. When I tried to placate her by giving her a hug, she slipped away and burst into tears. I regretted offending
her and thought of standing up straight away in front of her and leaving, to end everything between us in a single move. When I suddenly arose she seemed to understand what I intended and she
grabbed the hem of my gown. I stopped and she, still bowing her head, pulled me to the ground. I sat down, my eyes pinned on the half-open door.

A long silence reigned between us. It was she who broke it, saying in a trembling voice, after wiping her cheeks, that she did not understand anything I was saying, because the Sicilian master
was just like a father to her, in fact more like a grandfather than a father. It was he who had brought her up after her mother and father died. He was a man who took pity on the afflicted and, so
she said, every year donated half of his earnings from trade to the poor of Alexandria.

‘I apologize, Octavia. But you are very beautiful, I mean...’

‘Enough, don’t apologize, and I’ll forgive you because you don’t yet know the man you accuse,’ she said.

SCROLL FIVE

L
ife is unfair. It carries us along and distracts us, then it takes us by surprise and changes us, until we end up quite unlike what we once were.
Was it I who was in Alexandria twenty years ago? How can life now hold me to account for the mistakes and sins I committed in those days? How can the Lord on the Day of Judgement take us back and
hold us responsible for what we did ages ago, as though we lived one life without changing in the course of it? It did not take me long to realize that I had misjudged Octavia and her Sicilian
master, but by then it was too late, and the dead had died and the living were as dead.

Octavia remained silent that night, other than for a few words. Her silence troubled me, until I began to feel drowsy and I fell asleep on her bed. The last thing I was aware of before I slept
was the sad way she looked at me as she pulled the cover over me. She woke me early in the morning by moving about, and I was reassured to find her smiling and sitting on the ground next to the
bed. In front of her lay the breakfast she had prepared for us, spread on the ground. In the morning I again apologized for what I had said the previous night but she put a stop to my mumbling with
a touch of her fingertips on my mouth, and a tear which glistened in the depths of her eyes. She changed the subject by asking me about my native country and my early life. I answered as best I
could without saying anything important, but she hung on every word I said.

‘Come and I’ll show you something,’ she said.

She pulled me by some invisible leash, and we went downstairs to the big bedroom with the Sicilian master’s bed in it. I had seen the room before from the door but this time we went in.
Octavia opened the window and the door to the large balcony which looked out over the beach and the sea nearby. Light flooded the place. I did not go out on the balcony in case the guard or some
passer-by saw me, although I would have liked to sit a little on the sturdy wooden bench, contemplating from this unusual angle the merging of the sea and sky.