Dear and Glorious Physician (16 page)

“You would prefer, no doubt, to be following Keptah about among the fever-infested pallets of slaves, and be learnedly examining their pots,” said Cusa, sarcastically. “Nevertheless, if you are to arrive at Alexandria with more than a smattering of learning I advise you to apply yourself to your lessons. Not,” he added gloomily, “that it will do much good for one of your limited intelligence.”

It was his way of spurring Lucanus to extra efforts. Lucanus would usually answer with one of his calm and austere smiles. He seldom could be aroused to anger, but when he was he became as resistive as stone, and there would be a bitter blue flash in his eye sockets.

Lucanus sat today in silence, his hand idle over the stylus, the books rolled, his head bent. But when Cusa taunted him, he glanced up, and the icy fire in his eyes warned the antic tutor. However, Cusa said, “Do not look at me, you son of a former slave, as though you were my master and I had unpardonably insulted you. It is only fortune that made you free. In a more sensible house you would be swilling water over the stones and emptying the chamber pots, and not sitting at a marble table like a patrician.”

“Give me peace,” said Lucanus in a muffled tone.

Then Cusa saw that the youth was in some awful distress, and that further taunts would incite him to violence. The teacher had long ceased to whip him at lessons. In his heart he now loved his pupil and had almost stopped envying him for his beauty and the favors Diodorus showered on him.

“Well,” said Cusa, thoughtfully, and fingered his satyr’s chin. He studied Lucanus. His mind leaped about like a goat. He looked at Rubria’s empty chair. The maiden had been more breathless than usual lately, and once or twice she had closed her eyes as if about to faint, her lips and cheeks turning a peculiar ghostly gray. Cusa, whose curiosity was bottomless, had spent many years studying Keptah’s books on medicine, and something flickered in his agile mind. It was something deadly. He reflected that Lucanus would not be in such obvious anguish if Rubria’s illness were trivial. Cusa saw that the youth was also staring at Rubria’s empty chair, and that his mouth twitched rigidly. As Cusa feared, the gods, waiting in their lightning-lit silences, had struck at the maiden in some mortal and peculiar fashion, and Lucanus knew it. The teacher cleared his throat.

“Rubria is absent today,” he said, watching Lucanus narrowly. “Ah, what weariness it is to be a woman! She will be present tomorrow.”

But Lucanus, not hearing him, only gazed at Rubria’s chair, and his throat became as stiff as marble. Cusa felt unfamiliar pity.

“Attention!” said he, unrolling a manuscript. It crackled in the silence. “Diodorus is expending much time and effort, and eventually money, on you. Let us be men, not children.”

Lucanus did not answer; his fingers twisted the stylus as if he were tortured. Cusa pondered. Then he said, “Let us consider Anachrusius for a moment, in passing. Observe his philosophy. ‘It is the critical moment that shows the man. So when the crisis is upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough and stalwart antagonist. To what end? you ask. That you may prove the victor at the Great Games’.”

A sardonic and mournful smile ran over Lucanus’ lips. He looked up at his teacher. “You have always declared that God was an allegory, Cusa. A figment of poesy.”

Cusa shook his head reprovingly. “So He is. But lately I have become mindful that He is something more. The vital element of the universe, as Aristotle has said.”

“You will soon be sacrificing in some temple,” said Lucanus, with cold disdain.

Cusa shrugged. “It has been declared that sacrifices do no harm. If the gods exist, the sacrifice will please them, and that is excellent. If they do not exist, your neighbors will comment on your piety, and that is even more excellent.” He was hurt that his attempt to lighten Lucanus’ somber mood had not succeeded. “Attention. Anaxagoras declared that man became intelligent because he learned to use his hands. He lacked observation; the monkeys use their hands, and their intelligence is not notable. The rabbits of the field lift carrots in their front paws and devour them as men would devour them, but rabbits are only a little less stupid than some human students I could name. Aristotle maintained that men learned to manipulate their hands because they had become intelligent. He also maintained that the brain is only an organ to cool the blood. The Eastern philosophers declare that the brain is the seat of the soul, the ego, the mind, and not the heart. Aristotle has his moments of stupidity, and I prefer the Eastern philosophers in this matter. That is not the point of discussion, however. What philosopher seems to you the most valid in this instance: Anaxagoras or Aristotle? And why?”

The stylus of Lucanus moved sluggishly, and then with greater speed as his mind lifted the problem in its invisible hands and turned it about, studying and weighing it. He wrote neatly and concisely, in small letters. Cusa admired him furtively. Some hideous knowledge had stricken the young man; nevertheless, he could let an idea engage his thoughts. Only a peasant could be overwhelmed by his emotions. However, Cusa reflected with some melancholy, the peasant enjoys considerable peace of mind, peace unknown to the cultivated man. Was the price of intelligence always pain?

Cusa suddenly yawned, as Lucanus, still very white and rigid, applied himself to his lessons. The day had become very warm, very silent, breathless. The sun shone too brilliantly. The birds were still. All at once, in spite of the sun, there came a sudden thunderous and cavernous sound, shaking the house, momentarily stirring the trees beyond the open door. The silence which followed it took on a kind of ominousness. Cusa went to the door and looked out upon the garden. The grass, the flowers, the very fountains, seemed caught up and imprisoned in absolute light, at once terrifying and strange. Each color was intensified, and vaguely enhanced by a quality of terror. Cusa found himself gasping; it was as if the lid of a cauldron had been lifted. He looked at the sky. Here the light was curiously brazen, obscuring the blue. Aha, thought Cusa. We are about to have weather. He knew these swift semi-tropical storms, violent and destructive. They passed quickly, however. But never had he seen light so brassy. In a moment the earth became citron-colored. The very palms were bathed in an ocherous light; the leaves of the deciduous trees yellowed. The blades of grass were topaz. The white lilies turned tawny. A restlessness, a foreboding, struck the air. And the heat increased unbearably as the sun appeared to enlarge, to become the golden shield of Zeus himself turned to the world, not in clouds, but in saffron immensity.

I do not like this, thought Cusa. As if replying in godlike derision, the skies exploded in amber flame. Fury seized the trees and the palms and the very grass. They writhed uncontrollably. Books blew from the marble table in the schoolroom. There was an unbearable screeching in the air, like millions of parrots going mad. All color disappeared from the gardens into one icteritious glare. The whole world has turned jaundiced! thought the frightened Cusa. He struggled with the door, for the gale had become savage blows on his body. He called to Lucanus to help him, and his voice was swept away. But the young Greek was beside him. It took their combined strength to shut the door, and then they stood, panting, staring at each other. There was no opportunity for speech. The thunder, continuous and deafening, enveloped them, accompanied by terrible and continuous lemon-colored lightning. The floor rumbled steadily under their feet. They held their mouths open, struggling for breath, for the heat was a blast from many furnaces. Once or twice they heard a wild sound, as of waters in torment.

Then the rain came, not dropping steadily, but in sidewise sheets of pure and crushing water, the color of yellow crocuses. Cusa and Lucanus went to the marble table, which trembled under their sweating palms. The lips of Cusa moved in frenzied prayer. Lucanus watched him, and his mouth curved unpleasantly. Cusa, pausing for a moment in his prayers, was startled by the expression of the young man. Cusa continued with his prayers hastily as the thunder roared like mighty chariot wheels over the earth, but he pondered. The inflamed lightning flickered again and again on Lucanus’ face in the icteritious dusk, and it seemed as if it were striking the face of a tragic statue. Again and again the earth shuddered.

The gale beat against the bronze door with iron fists. The curtain at the window spread out straight, like a sail, billowing. Blinded by the lightning, and shivering to his very heart, Cusa covered his eyes. He did not see the water beginning to seep under the door. First it came in tendrils, quivering. Then it ran in broad and snakelike streams, glittering in the lightning. Then it was sheets, rising and flowing and wrinkling. It covered the tessellated floor. When it reached the sandals of Cusa, he jumped and opened his eyes. But Lucanus did not move. His head was bent. It seemed that he meditated.

Surely it will be over soon, thought the panic-stricken teacher. But the storm increased in intensity. It appeared about to devour the earth in fire. An odd sound underlined the bellowing of the thunder, a rushing, indescribable sound. Cusa lost track of time. If the pillars of the house had come down, if the colonnades had been shattered, he would not have been surprised. No one approached the schoolroom from the inner door. The whole house was cowering. Occasionally the steady crashing of the thunder was punctuated by a splintering sound, an extra flash of flame, as a tree was stricken. The white walls of the room palpitated in waves of brilliance, fading momentarily to dimness, then igniting again.

Never had Cusa experienced such a storm. He longed for human consolation and courage. Lucanus had none to give him. He was apparently unaware of the assaults on the earth from the screaming and shouting heavens. He had rested his elbow on the table, and was supporting his chin with the thumb and index finger of his left hand. He might have been a student considering a theorem.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The lightning ceased to dart its flaming sword over the earth; the thunder stopped as abruptly as a crashing voice. The beating flames on the walls of the room subsided. The curtain fell limply over the window. Cusa’s ears, however, rang for minutes afterwards. It was some time before he could control the trembling of his legs, and rise, and splash through the limpid water on the floor. He pulled open the door, and fresh water gushed in.

A clear and innocent sun, newborn and wide-eyed, looked down on the earth. Shattered trees and palms were strewn over the ground like kindling. The fountains overflowed in cascades of silver luminescence. But the flowers had been struck to the earth like frail and colored corpses. All at once the sweetest odor rose from the ground and from the broken roses and the tossed jasmine. Birds took up a timid song of thanksgiving for preservation. The voice of the river, too close, conversed loudly and in agitation to the sky. Quicksilver ran everywhere, through beaten grass and fallen trees, and from trunks and leaves.

Slaves began to pour from the dripping house. They surveyed the destruction, and began to lament. Cusa shouted to them, “Eheu! Where have you been hiding, you cowards! Bring bread and cheese and wine at once. Are we to starve in the midst of books?”

For the first time Lucanus looked up, and he smiled slightly. But it was no longer the smile of youth; it was the smile of a weary man. A slave, still quaking, brought a tray of coarse bread, cheap local wine and a thick slice of hard yellow cheese, and some cucumbers in sour milk. He chattered, “Oh, there is much damage done! Four of the best cherry trees are down, six of the apple, and all the pomegranates are destroyed! As for the olive groves, one shudders to think of them. Many of the cattle were blasted in the fields yonder, and the sheep have disappeared.”

Cusa swaggered to the table, thrust a finger into the bowl of cucumbers and sour cream, and licked it. “It is not curdled enough,” he commented critically. He glared at the slave. “Are you a child to be afraid of the storm? While it was going on — was there a storm? — we were considering the ‘Phaedo’. Begone.”

The water was flowing through the door. Lucanus said, “I wonder who it was who was huddled near me voicing imprecations and prayers simultaneously?”

“Attention!” said Cusa. “We shall consider the Categories of Aristotle.”

The hot sun dried the water, and the floor steamed. Now the whole garden, and all the earth, was enveloped in radiant mist. Still the river clamored, and Cusa uneasily wondered if it would invade the land. Everything dripped; a thousand tiny musical voices tinkled everywhere. Statues in the garden ran in watery light. The scent of the jasmine was as the odor of the white lilies along the banks of Lethe, overwhelming and drugging the senses. The voices of the slaves outside came into the schoolroom, full of ejaculations and awe at the destructiveness of the storm.

Cusa ate with relish, but Lucanus drank only a little of the wine. He appeared absorbed in his books. An hour passed, and another, and then another. The spring sun sloped to the west. Cusa could not read Lucanus’ quiet face, which had a quality of massiveness about it. The stylus scratched.

The inner door opened, and Diodorus entered the schoolroom, and Cusa and Lucanus rose. The tribune’s face was ghastly and tight. He walked to the marble table and looked Lucanus fully in the eyes, tried to speak, and then could not. Lucanus cried out and seized the muscled arm. “Rubria! Rubria?”

“Come with me,” said the tribune, and he stretched out his arm and put it around the shoulders of the young man, like a father.

Iris was august in her sorrow. Aurelia wept beside her, but Iris did not weep. Lucanus could not approach his mother, for there was about her a majesty that repelled gestures of consolation. She stood in the center of the hall of her house, clothed in silence, her face blind and withheld, her hands pressed together before her. She seemed to hear only Diodorus, who was telling her of the death of her husband, Aeneas.

“While others fled like chickens, he stayed with his accounts in the little shelter near the river,” said Diodorus, in a low voice. “There are times when bravery is folly, but who shall question loyalty and courage? He could not carry all the books with him, so he remained. But the river surged over the land, over the docks, over the shelter, and took Aeneas with it when it retreated.”

He was full of wonder and reverence that his freedman had tried to preserve his records even to his death. He did not know that to Aeneas the records themselves, the mere writings of his hand, were more valuable in the moments of disaster than his very life. They had symbolized, for Aeneas, the reason for his existence; in them was recorded the evidence that he had been of importance, and in their neatness was a refutation of his former slavery. Triumphantly, at the last, he had seen Diodorus leave for higher ground, unable to move him from his tablets, his table, his stylus.

Only Lucanus, by some inner perception, understood, and he was stricken. Over these past years he and his father had grown apart, and the stature of Aeneas had dwindled in his son’s youthful eyes. He had not listened too dutifully when Aeneas, in the evening, had expounded on the Greek philosophers pompously. Lucanus knew more about them, and more truly, and with profound depth. Often it had irritated him to observe his father’s superficiality. Only the presence of Iris had prevented Lucanus from expressions of impatience. Sometimes he had found his father unbearable. He had angered Lucanus by derisive comments on Diodorus’ lack of culture. He had hinted that in the tribune’s interest in Lucanus was an acknowledgment of his inferiority as a trampling Roman. “It is a tribute that coarseness too infrequently pays to refinement,” he would say. Lucanus would open his mouth impulsively, only to catch his mother’s tender and warning blue glance, and then he would subside, fuming.

To Lucanus his father’s death was a tragedy beyond his mere death. He could not weep. He could only sit and gaze at his mother. He wanted to fall at her feet, groveling, begging her forgiveness.

I have lived only in the house of Diodorus, thought Lucanus. I have lived only for Rubria, and Keptah, and my books. A man wishes to stand as a god in the eyes of his son. I let my father see that he was a pygmy of a man; he saw himself shrink in my regard. Oh, I could not let him believe he was important, though I tried to speak dutifully and in the false accents of respect! To such degradation did I fall.

“When the river yields up his body, he shall have a hero’s funeral,” said Diodorus, looking at the beautiful Iris, who stared at him with blue blindness. “I shall light the pyre myself. There will be banners and trumpets, and the presence of soldiers in full regalia. And incense, and the sound of drums, and a garment of mingled crimson and white.”