Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

From that moment on, the two pirate ships watched over us. For the rest of the journey, we applied ourselves to our work with diligence, stitching veils and cloaks. Several times a day we received a visit from the leader of these allegedly cruel pirates. On each occasion he dressed differently, showing off the flashy plunder of an attack on a fishing community that he had stripped bare of what little it had. Less than looters, he and his associates were more like toothpicks scratching away the last remnants of a petty wealth.

I wondered how old he was. And if he had a brother among those crucified by my Caesar. With my limited years I found it hard to assess the age of others, but the age of this pirate was particularly elusive. Two long scars cut across his face, his wrestler’s body was dismayingly strong, and his thick, bushy beard seemed a stranger to a comb. I was not the only one. None of us could guess his age. From childhood on, he had been nurtured on violence; the measure of his years was not ours.

On one of his visits I said to him, “You’re a fish. You’ve been hooked by those you planned to hook.”

My comment unnerved him. He responded by running his knife blade over the tip of his tongue and drawing blood.

“Me, a fish?” he said, widening the wound in his tongue as he spoke. “Nobody hooks me except me.”

I was on the point of rebuking him. What was the idea behind hurting himself? But I caught his eye and his violent mood checked me. It was obvious that he had stuck the point of knife into his tongue to calm himself down. My words had touch a nerve I could not imagine.

“I didn’t intend to upset you; it was just a—” I swallowed the word “joke.”

The ageless pirate jumped back aboard his own ship with a cheetah’s agility.

Apart from that one incident, the pirates labored to make our trip a pleasant one. They even pitched in with goodwill to help ready us for our arrival.

In less time than we had calculated, we skirted the dangerous shoals ahead and the beautiful harbor of Cilicia, Tarsus, lay in sight, its quayside crowded with speedy vessels. Seen from the sea, Tarsus was a stirring sight. For a moment I credited the legend that here had landed a feather from the wing of Pegasus, after it was broken by Perseus.

Once more I requested the treatment proper to an heir apparent, and once more I received it.

As the governor of Cilicia came toward my ship on board his small vessel, our guards, I mean the pirates, covered us with an enormous cloth that we had sewn together from our own garments. When he was within feet of us, they suddenly pulled aside the cloth and astonished him with the same scene that had dazzled them. The musicians played, this time not dance tunes, but music that accorded with the solemnity of our tableau vivant. Then the pirates pulled the cloth over their own bodies and one after the other, they popped up their heads to represent the many-headed hydra.

After listening to the speech Apollodorus and I had prepared for the occasion, the governor invited the child Isis to his palace, unaware it was a child, reverencing her like Isis herself. I saw my maids beaming with delight, and my noble and faithful Charmian happy as could be.

The Cilicians were going through a serious crisis. Not long before, they had been masters of the Mediterranean, so much so that both merchant ships and those of the Roman state preferred to travel in stormy weather, storms being less perilous than pirates. To combat them, Caesar had given Pompey unprecedented resources. The Senate designated him sole general, selected from the consuls, with supreme command from the pillars of Hercules to Syria and the Pontus, and all territories twenty leagues inland. He had an army of a size never seen before. He had the authority to appoint twenty-five lieutenants, all with praetorial rank and powers, and two treasurers with the rights of quaestors, and under them he had marshaled 120,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, and 500 ships. It stands to reason that he had already routed a great number of the Cilicians’ allies. The Cilicians themselves were untouched; on perceiving the threat of the Roman attack, they had lived up to their reputation as formidable adversaries and shut up their women, children, and treasures in the castles of the Taurus.

I arrived at a court where there was not a single woman, and I ate my meals from wooden plates. The court was composed of adventurers and desperadoes from all nations, of licensed mercenaries, citizens exiled from the destroyed cities of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, runaways and outlaws from towns everywhere. They had holed up here originally because the magnificent forests of Cilicia afforded them excellent timber to construct ships, but over the course of time the governor of Cilicia proved himself the best kind of governor pirates could hope for, by his dash, his cunning, his bravery, his astonishing strategic ability, his coolness in crisis, his sense of justice, and his inveterate hatred of Romans. I should never have left that place. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here on the brink of death, trapped where I don’t deserve to be, before a mean-spirited and graceless enemy. If Caesar had defeated me! If Antony had! If Pompey had! That I could take. But this, never. I cannot continue with my story. Cleopatra’s time has come.

Diomedes the Informer

Almost, almost, almost. . she almost spoke the way I have written, those were almost her words, or they would have been if Cleopatra had not spoken very different ones. They are not exactly out of tune with her. At least they approximate her tone, and if maybe I shifted them around, if I tossed them into a saucepan and stirred them, as though concocting a potion, they would not be too far from the ones Cleopatra uttered that day. But this is not the time for saucepans and these were not her actual words. I have to confess it. If I acted like a Roman slave in my first effort, in this second I have only my own defects to lay the blame on: my mental laziness, my pettiness, my clumsy tongue that forces me to make her speak in this misleading fashion. . Face the truth and call me what I am, lazy, insignificant, gauche, but also add that I am pigheaded, because I am going to try for yet a third time. This will be my final attempt. I tense my bow. My arrow cannot miss its target. This time there will be no mistakes, though I am a veritable seedbed of errors. Because here I am not going to leave evidence of my own imaginings. I simply want to reproduce her words. I do not wish to die in the condition of a liar. Come on, Diomedes! Stop dithering! Concentrate, remember! So listen now: thus spake Cleopatra, bathed in the blood of Antony, to give testimony of her passage through life:

We reached the gates of Pelusium before nightfall. We did not rein in our mounts even when the fortress came in sight. Still faithful, the city embraced us, set there, well-weaponed and flying its blood-red flags, in the desert zone that acted as a second wall of defense.

It was ten months since the intrigues of my husband’s and brother’s Ruling Council had driven me to lay my traps, devices that had won me the popular voice of Egypt. Like all good weapons, it was two-edged; I used it both to promote myself and to expel the troops of Gabirius and the rest of the Roman leeches. Regardless of the veracity of the propaganda I spread far and wide, I managed to gain the favor of the fickle mob but at the same time brought on myself the enraged displeasure of my brother’s minions, who clung to him to suck out the riches of the Nile, for as long as they could avoid my eagle-eyed supervision and the enmity of Gabirius’s men.