Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

I burned with love for him, but I did not neglect Egypt. During the hours I dedicated to my duties as a monarch, he took up with the slavegirl. And not only once. He let me know it, pushed it in my face. He wanted to batter and bruise my loving pride. Not content with that, he stirred up an endless number of complaints against me. His theatrical displays of jealousy assumed an almost grotesque tone. He started by alleging that the reason I left him alone for hours at a time was to caress the dusky skins of princes and servants, men who, it goes without saying, existed only in his sick imagination. One scene of jealousy followed another, every time more violent. He mocked our love incessantly by using the slavegirl whom he had taken without desiring her. Then, in return, absurdly, he made me pay for it, torturing me with his rages. He parodied our love with her. But with her, he could not match our joy, for he had fallen prey to a frightful melancholy. Nothing made him smile. Certainly, the wine he was drinking in ever greater quantities brought him no smiles; it only left him more irritable and consigned him to yet deeper depressions. More for his depressions, I think, than for his attentions to the slavegirl, I, too, began to neglect my duties. He continued to ignore his work, but at least he put aside the slavegirl and, for the moment, his outbursts ceased. The slavegirl disappeared. Somebody did me the favor of making her disappear, and I lend no credence to the rumor that she was carrying Antony’s child at the time. He and I returned to our old happiness, to parties, to laughter, as if nothing had happened — and not because we were pretending. Our mutual attraction far surpassed our squabbles.

We were back in our bed. We rarely left it. Antony was making love to me with an exasperated insistence that gained energy from its very repetition. We left our bed only when we received news that his idiotic relatives had provoked a war in Italy. It could bring them nothing but headaches and losses. Yes, his wife Fulvia and that imbecile of a brother had declared war on Octavius.

Mark Antony embarked because I practically threw him into the sea. The tame lion, like every cat, seemed scared of water. He did not want to go. But as soon as he landed on the Italian coast, he forgot his fears. He extended his claws and defended himself with his old wilderness strength, fighting with both fury and cleverness.

His indifference to his private life even included me. He stopped writing to me. I never for a second considered forgetting him. For many reasons. One was that just before leaving, he had resumed his role as a governor. Once more, I felt he was back at my side, as in the best days of the past. Another was that, a little before he sailed, I had become pregnant with his Egyptian heir. Our son, I thought — our children, as it turned out, because they were twins — would incarnate our love. Rome and Egypt would be blended into one. Now Caesarion would not be alone; he would have siblings, and their father would take pains to legitimize his inheritance. The children of Cleopatra would be masters of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

A third reason for not relinquishing him was that the slow-witted but aggressive Fulvia soon died. He was a widower, and, in my stupidity, it never crossed my mind to doubt that he would return to share my reign, that I would be recognized as his wife in all four corners of the world.

I nourished the fond hope that he needed me as much as I needed him. How could I have been so bereft of common sense? Even when he was in Alexandria, hadn’t he ceased to need me? Hadn’t he warmed his bed with another woman? My situation was desperate. Cleopatra could not feign love with another, but neither could she cease to feel desire. Desire, Mark Antony, desire for love, desire of the flesh, desire for conversation with an equal, desire for the company of a peer! They all amount to the same thing, to one appetite, a single need to satisfy different cravings. Affection, the pleasures of the flesh, company, a man who watches over us and guards us against the world, a judge, and an accomplice. Even in the worst moments, Mark Antony, you talked to me; with the sweet light of your conversation you illuminated for me the last and least of your thoughts. Even at those moments, you caressed me with affection, you gave me pleasure. Even then, you talked to me endlessly. With nobody else did I speak with the intimacy you and I shared. With absolute certainty I believed you were my other half. From the very first day I idolized you. You calmed me, fulfilled me, and satisfied my need for companionship as no one else did. Only you, my divine Antony, Osiris himself.

When he returned to Rome, I was still close to him. We were not separated, no matter that he had crossed the Mediterranean and had stopped writing to me. He was my other half, my partner. His journey was a mere detail, a highlight that set off the general picture of our love. Neither his tantrums nor his slavegirl nor his jealous accusations nor his depressions nor his foolish drinking bouts nor his mind distracted by each and every fanciful gust of wind — none of this mattered. Only his company. Perfect, I would say, if it had not been that desire unsettled him at times and left me unsettled for him. But I would soothe him and myself with the silky certainty of our love. Then I received the news: he had married Octavia, the sister of Octavius, as a “token of reconciliation,” as the courier babbled it in his report. He paid with his life for such ominous news. And my hopes died with him. I was still not ready to deliver my twins, but I gave birth to a grief like no other. It did not resemble Antony’s depressions, griefs that were dark enough but lacked depth, coming and going without rhyme or reason.

His marriage restored my sanity. It was impossible for a triumvir to marry a woman whom his people had never regarded as a citizen. I could be the queen of Egypt, I could have a statue of gold dedicated to me in the temple of Venus Generatrix, Caesar could have Rome worship me. But for all that, and for all my being the wealthy heir of Alexander the Great, never could I be anything but a foreigner, an Egyptian. So my despair had neither name nor direction. Since the moment he had left, I had not ceased to be by his side for even an instant. Recalling our moments of greatest sweetness, I mean our rapture in Tarsus, forgetting his craziness with the slavegirl, I held him to be my ideal, the perfect companion, the incomparable one. And he truly was incomparable! For, who could match him? The Queen of Egypt, Isis, could have no lesser lover, no one inferior to herself in power and beauty, in energy and intelligence. There was no man to equal him. What of Octavius? Someone fooled by the glories that he claimed for himself on our defeat might be tempted to ask that. Octavius does not have a shred of real flesh in his whole body. Octavius will preen himself over our ruin and this will give him the look of the Caesar he longs to be. But he will be a mere fraud. The man is a nonentity. Cleopatra could never have bothered with him. I said I needed to have a man the equal of Antony, not cheap glass masquerading as a diamond, not cheap iron dressed up in gold leaf, pretending to be the genuine thing. For that is what Octavius is, despite being the nephew of the great hero I loved and whose assassination robbed Cleopatra of her man.

I did not drown my sorrows in drink. I could not comfort myself in Antony’s way, telling myself I’d no reason to be sad or taking another warm body into my bed. Antony had married somebody other than me, he had married a Roman, therefore (I don’t know where I get the “therefore”) he had made his fortune. Octavia was good-looking (I had no doubts on that score). She was much younger than I. She was accommodating. The triumvir had clearly had excellent luck.