Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

I turned away from the balcony. The room was as high and wide as the gallery on the ground floor, its wall bare and white, but the floor was covered with beautiful carpets. In the center stood three tables with vessels and plates of sculpted silver, surrounded by embroidered couches. In front of me was a cup of precious stones set into heavy gold. “There’s no way,” I thought to myself, “I can sit down at the table without getting my hair fixed and my clothes changed.” I ended up walking to the far end of the room. There was another balcony, again with its doors ajar. I peeked out at the center of Cyrene. I saw the Temple of Cyrene. In it, as in the other temples, braziers were smoking. The alleyways were in uproar, crammed with a multitude of women, children, and soldiers attending the file of men injured in the battle over the Sirens as they walked slowly by. The embarrassed men were shaking their heads, resigned or ashamed. Passing through the noisy throng, they approached the temple. As I had done, they all drank from the fountain of Cyre.

I half-shut my eyes and almost fell asleep, I was so weary, and the sounds of the ground were lulling me to rest. They also brought Alexandria to mind. I saw it before me. It was me they were welcoming. The shouts were cheers. My retinue was headed by twenty elephants, followed by hundred of ostriches, loaded with jewels and fastened together with beautiful chains of silver. Behind them came tame lions, panthers, caged zebras, then I myself magnificent in a chariot of gold and purple!

“Hail, Cleopatra!”

I jumped, startled to hear my name called by a familiar voice. The king of Cyrene was approaching me, along with his well-fed retinue which was still in the process of climbing the stairs. They wore luxurious garments equal to anything in Egypt. I felt dazed, as weary as a peasant after a day of labor, so fatigued by my night of dreams and my sudden daydream visit to Alexandria that it took me a moment or two to realize that members of my own retinue were present among the courtiers of Cyrene.

The same voice spoke again. “Cleopatra, the long afternoon you spent on the back of the bull was our equivalent of seven days and nights. Your starry night with the Amazons lasted a week in our time. Since you left Pelusium, two weeks have gone by for us.”

Who was talking to me, I wondered again, in that so familiar voice? But I could not see the speaker. The voice came from behind me, from somewhere beside the king. It was the voice of somebody shorter than the people standing there, a woman’s voice.

The king gestured with his hand. They all threw themselves to the floor, face down on the beautiful carpets, apart from a black dwarf of a slave who placed in front of the king a purple cushion. He helped his majesty put both his knees on it, so that he, too, could throw himself face down.

“Hail, Queen of Kings,” said the king. His voice sounded young, a contrast to his elderly style of clothing, but it was a voice with dignity to it.

Only one person behind him had remained standing. “When you and the bull leaped off the wharf at Pelusium, Neptune picked up a pearl. He blew on it and he spoke to it in order to give me your form, Cleopatra. Identical to you, I appeared to the fishermen on the dock. Advised by the gods, I guided your people. I divided them into two teams. I sent the warlike ones on to Ascalon. But your maids, secretary, personal servants, and bodyguards are all here. We arrived yesterday from the port of Barca.”

The pearl had my shape and my voice. I now realized why it sounded so irritatingly familiar, like one of my sisters’. I stepped forward and took the king by the hand, kissed his fingers, and helped him get up off his knees. He was quite elderly. In his features I read intelligence, wisdom, and prudence, the epitome of temperance. “He hates wine,” I thought to myself, I, the daughter of Auletes.

“Because it dissolves pearls,” said my double. She came close and took my hands. Hers were as smooth as a pearl’s surface, but in everything else she was identical to me, except that her hair was properly coiffured, and I, after two weeks of not combing or washing or changing my outfits, could pass for a veritable Amazon. I was the one who didn’t look like Cleopatra.

The courtiers remained with their mouths on the carpet. Cleopatra the pearl passed her smooth hand over my weary forehead, relaxing me considerably. She was a pearl, she was water. She let go of me and with one hand took the face of the king and with the other his aged hand. She kissed him, saying, “I grant you my pearly condition. If wine never touches it, you will not die.”

Then she gave a half-turn and strode off with a careful grace, avoiding the bodies still prostrated on the carpet. On the landing of the staircase she removed the veil from her shoulders and placed it over her face. Without a word, she went downstairs. I heard her in the gallery requesting them to open the door. Hinges squeaked, footsteps sounded, the door banged shut, and she was gone.

The king ordered the courtiers to stand up. Charmian and Apollodorus displayed unmistakable signs of joyful affection.

“It was terrible,” said Apollodorus, “having to talk to a pearl instead of to you.”

“By Jupiter, Apollodorus,” Charmian reproved him. “That’s no way to talk about a goddess!”

“Not even a goddess talks like Cleopatra,” Apollodorus replied winningly. His brain was so alert! He never seemed to get a day older. He was still the youngster that I’d met in Rome all those years before, clad in the garments of a gladiator. “Talking to the pearl was like talking to an oyster.”

My maidservants took me away to get me ready to eat. I asked them about the pearl Cleopatra.

“Your Majesty, she’s with the Amazons. She went off with them. They must all have gone back to their city. Their dogs aren’t barking anymore.”

When we got back to the banqueting room, they were bringing in baskets of bread. Dishes of food awaited us on the tables. Musicians and dancers celebrated the now absent Amazons.

As soon as they cleared the tables, I asked to be carried to my bed. I was exhausted. On the fine bed they had prepared for me, I dropped asleep. It was like falling down a well. There in the deeps, I lost all contact with the surface of life. My dreams were nothing like those of my night before among the Amazons. The only thing I remember is a forest of leafless trees. The branches were twisted and jarringly interlocked. There were no straight lines, no circles, no patterns. I stared at them from what must have been a flying position, for I was seeing them from on high. They were a mass of tangled and tortured limbs. The branches did not scratch my skin but they disturbed my peace of mind. “Order!” I was shouting. “Geometry!” I added somewhat absurdly. Losing control, I burst into tears and kept calling out, “Parmenides! Come here, Parmenides!” I had gone crazy. My thoughts leapt about, unconnected with each other. They broke into pieces and I couldn’t control them. I stopped calling for Parmenides. Then there were more branches, more unrecognized shapes, more disharmony, patternless and fragmented, heading in all directions, shapes without meaning, disfiguring the air, violating the sky, warring on life itself.

The voice of Apollodorus woke me. “Something urgent, Cleopatra. Wake up. It’s already past noon. Get up!”

Charmian, seated beside me, shook me by the shoulder. With your hand, Charmian, your noble hand, you wiped out that terrible vision of leafless forest, with its branches lifeless and chaotic. Had I cried out for her in my sleep to help me like a defenseless child?

I hugged Charmian. I tried to understand the meaning of the dream with my daylight mind. It was silly to be frightened of bare branches, but I could not get rid of the uneasy feeling.