Kleopatra (26 page)

Auletes, lying on the sofa next to his daughter like a bloated fish while she sat up against a pillow, whispered these words
into Kleopatra’s ear, careful to prevent the servers and the other dinner guests from hearing what he said.

Kleopatra wished she had not partaken of each type of food offered at the Roman banquet. She was not accustomed to the weighty
feeling in her stomach, but Auletes said that one must be polite and act like the natives. The first course of the dinner
consisted of several kinds of lettuces, snails, grilled eggs, smoked fish, olives, beets, and cucumbers; the main course brought
oysters, fish, sow’s udders, stuffed pheasant, lamb, and the ribs of pigs, all doused in a coarse fish sauce called
garum
that was strangely sweet and sour at the same time; lastly, there were cheeses, fruits, breads, and small sweet things to
finish. None of it was very good, in the opinion of the princess, lacking the subtle flavoring and careful preparation of
the food served at home. Wines of many kinds, stronger than Kleopatra had ever tasted at her own court, were poured lavishly—sloppily,
even—throughout, laying waste to the austere posture of temperance and restraint that the Romans publicly assumed. Far from
living like the hardworking men of the land they pretended to be, they indulged grossly—crassly, she told herself—in princely
excess, to the point of having ice brought in from the mountains to cool their wines.

“Father, Julia disgusts me,” Kleopatra whispered back to the king. “I do not believe a woman should act like a kitten any
more than a kitten should do the reverse. She is appalling.” The princess had made her judgment. “Look at her.”

The object of their discussion, Julia, only daughter of Julius Caesar, presently was writhing her body like a dancing Arabian
slave girl to get Pompey’s attention. Kleopatra had heard much talk of the piousness of Roman women, but she had seen little
evidence to support it. Perhaps, like the image of the stoical farmer, it was a ghost of the Roman past. Earlier, on her way
to the lavatory, Kleopatra had overheard two elderly ladies gossiping over Julia’s behavior. They had agreed that in their
day, a Roman girl knew how to be useful, how to spin cloth, keep house, raise chickens, maintain the hearth, honor the gods,
and advise her husband. “Oh, that one is
useful,
” one of the ladies said cryptically of Julia. “For one thing and one thing only,” agreed her companion. Kleopatra’s enjoyment
of their indictments was cut short when the blame for the degeneration of the young people fell upon “that fat Egyptian potentate
and others like him,” whose debauched ways had crept into innocent Roman minds. Kleopatra wanted to reveal that she had understood
their derision, but instead she dismissed it as the prattle of a generation on its way to the grave.

“Does Daddy want more wine?” Julia asked her husband. Pompey lay prone on a dining couch, looking straight into the barely
covered bosom of his child bride, caressing her midriff through the gauzy wisp of a dress. She wiggled as she fed him pieces
of fresh melon, bitten into tiny morsels by her teeth and then inserted into the mouth of the general, whose eyes rolled back
as he chewed.

Seventeen, tall and lanky like her father, she would not be an attractive woman in later years. But presently she had the
fresh charm and girlish naiveté that grown men seemed to find irresistible. Pompey the Great was no exception. Kleopatra,
who had held his attention earlier in the day, was caught between jealousy and disgust. She had thought better of him. Now
she had cause to reevaluate his character.
Senex bis puer.
A handy Roman expression. The old man is twice the fool.

She disliked Julia, but no more than she disapproved of all the brassy Roman women. Earlier in the day, she, Charmion, and
Hekate expressed their unilateral disdain of the breed. They listed their objections to the Roman female systematically.

They had no physical prowess outside the arts of seduction.

They did not go to gymnasium, they did not ride, they did not hunt.

They were as loud as soldiers and used abominable language.

They cared for nothing but adorning themselves with gaudy jewelry, bossing their men around, and attracting attention.

The fiercest indictment was the nasty way these Roman matrons treated slaves. At this moment, Julia had taken her focus off
Pompey and was chastising an old Spaniard—probably captured years before by her father—for spilling the juice of a plate of
olives that he attempted to place on the table. The old man had fallen to his knees to wipe the liquid with the hem of his
tunic when another woman, a guest, hit him on the head with her fist.

“Miserable old oaf,” she said. “Pompey, you must retire these pathetic creatures that Caesar captured in Spain. When was he
there? Was it in this or the last century?”

Pompey simply laughed at her and continued to stroke his wife’s body.

Earlier in the week, Kleopatra had winced and had to hold her tongue when Julia slapped a girl for neglecting to secure a
lock of her hair in the elaborate coiffure she had just executed. She witnessed this at their “get-acquainted” time, during
which she had to relinquish an opportunity to accompany her father and Pompey on a morning hunt.

“Yesterday I rode the animal Strabo,” the princess said stiffly, trying to make a conversation. “A fine steed. And so generous
of the great Pompey to allow a stranger to mount it.”

“Isn’t Daddy handsome?” Julia asked Kleopatra when they were alone.

“I have not had the honor of meeting your father,” she answered. But she had specifically heard that Julius Caesar was too
tall, too thin, and had too little hair.

“Oh, Your Highness,” Julia said patronizingly. “I mean my husband.”

To be fair, Charmion said, perhaps Julia was trying to make the best of a political marriage made to a man older than her
father. Hekate had given a knowing nod of agreement. Kleopatra did not care. She would spend the rest of her visit at the
Pompey residence avoiding contact with the goose, even though Auletes thought it in the best interest of their cause that
the two young females forge a friendship. They had no common ground; Julia fully dwelled in the lower regions of sensual pleasure
that the princess had yet to discover. She had given herself completely to its service.

In truth, thought Kleopatra, what else did Julia have to do with herself? She would never be called upon to rule a people,
to administrate a government, or even to solve a serious problem. She was the political tool of her father and the toy of
Pompey the Great. Until he tired of either her or of alliance with Caesar. Kleopatra could not decide if the Roman women—boisterous
and insistent, always clamoring to be heard—were more fortunate or less than the sequestered women of Greece, who more readily
accepted the feminine destiny. She could not decide, and she settled for being very happy to have been born a princess who
might do as she liked, for she was not cut of the cloth of an ordinary woman.

Auletes reached across the dining couch, placing his great paw behind his daughter’s neck, bringing her closer to him. “My
child, I am very frustrated. I do not know what is wrong with Pompey. Have you noticed that he does not leave the house? Would
you not think that the most important man in Rome would have business to attend to? I believe he is hiding.”

“From what?”

“I do not know. More than that, he refuses to discuss my situation!” said the king.

Kleopatra tried to recede from the smell of wine and fish sauce on her father’s breath, but his hand held her firmly in place.

“That is why I wish you to cultivate Julia. She may be able to help us.”

Earlier in the day Pompey had given Auletes and Kleopatra a tour of his garden, and appeared to listen patiently to Auletes’
arguments for support in regaining the throne. But never did he come forth with an offer of help or a plan of action, even
after the king asked directly when he would take his case to the senate. “Would you like to hear me play the flute?” Auletes
asked Pompey, trying to prolong his time in the man’s company. Pompey replied that he would enjoy that a great deal, but not
at the present moment. After the walk, he absented himself to another part of the house.

“I am losing patience with Pompey’s evasive tactics,” said the king. “He wants to tell me all about his varieties of rhododendron
while Thea’s behind sits on my throne.”

“I know, Father, but Julia is like a small toy. She has no political sway.” Kleopatra whispered in Greek, hoping that the
Roman woman next to them was either too uneducated or too drunk to understand them.

“And now that bloodsucker, Rabirius, is after me.” Rabirius the moneylender had driven to the villa to ask for repayment of
the six thousand talents he had lent in order for the king to become Friend and Ally of the Roman People. “You must go ask
my wife for it,” the king had replied, and then poured his troubles out to the portly man. By the end of the visit, Rabirius
had promised to intercede on behalf of the king with his influential friends in the senate, and Auletes had borrowed more
money.

Kleopatra fought against the blackout that was coming from drinking so much barely diluted wine. Unsatisfied with his daughter’s
response to his troubles, Auletes turned on his belly and began to tell his tale of woe to the woman next to him. When Kleopatra
regained consciousness, she heard her father say, “And my despicable wife took the opportunity to turn the Regency Council
against me. I do not know the fate of my trusted adviser Demetrius, nor of my four other children.”

The king spoke loudly to make certain that he was heard by his host, but Pompey remained attentive to his wife and the treats
she inserted into his mouth.

“I am certain that the senate will soon hear of my plight and come to my aid, just as I came to the aid of Rome in her plight
with Judaea,” the king said pointedly in a voice that was too loud.

“Would you like to hear me play the flute?” she heard her father ask the woman sitting languidly on the couch next to him.
“Oh yes,” she replied. “But not now.”

Kleopatra groaned at the rebuff to her father and lowered her head into her elbows. How banal were these Roman dinners. The
food she found foreign and not to her liking, nor to the liking of her stomach. The conversation was limited to cheap gossip,
recipes for the food served, and the seemingly eternal Roman problems with their lazy slaves. She noticed that the Romans
both envied and disdained refinement, calling their upper-class boys who admired the arts and letters of the Hellenes “greeklings,”
and regarding them as “unmanly.” These slights upon her nationality she bore with disdainful dignity, much to Charmion’s approval.
There was no use in defending Greek achievement to the barbarians.

All throughout dinner the Romans talked incessantly with no mind to concealing the food they chewed, kissed one another on
the lips while their mouths were still full, belched loudly, expelled gas, spilled food over themselves and their servers,
and laughed out loud at the loquacious poet who sang to them while they ate. Their dining habits were similar to their grasp
of most of the world’s money and resources—insatiable.

Auletes had now struck up a conversation with the woman who had slapped the Spanish slave. Her husband, waving a goblet in
his hand, interrupted them. “Will we have another display of your dinner before us as we did the last time?” he asked his
wife. The woman glared at him through her painted eyes as the other guests laughed. “It looks so nice going in but so terribly
ugly coming out,” he continued.

“It’s not as if you haven’t treated everyone here to the same spectacle,” she said. “I had gotten a bad piece of fish. That
is all.”

Kleopatra closed her eyes and prayed to the goddess that the woman would not do what her husband had intimated, but the goddess
apparently was not listening. As Auletes continued to tell the woman his troubles, she put her hands over her mouth and ran
from the room, leaving behind a trail of vomit. Servers scurried to the floor to clean up her mess. When she returned, a slave
wiped her mouth while another poured her more wine and still another fussed about her clothing, swabbing away her filth. For
these services she said not a word of thanks. All the while Auletes continued his discourse to anyone who would listen, no
matter how halfheartedly.

Hekate got up to leave the banquet, stopping by the couch of the princess to wish her good night. “Have you ever seen such
a disgraceful display of crudeness?” the elegant Greek woman asked in a whisper.

Since the death of Mohama, Hekate had become a companion and friend. Kleopatra admired Hekate’s preternaturally long neck,
which she held high above her collarbone. She leaned against Hekate’s full bosom, closing her eyes, wishing that she might
miraculously disappear. How meager the princess felt in the company of women like Hekate who burst with the essential female
charms. Kleopatra noticed her father’s easy vulnerability to Hekate’s low, soothing voice, her high, full, creamy breasts,
and the way her breathing quickened and her eyes upturned when she approached the king with one of her wishes. Kleopatra possessed
none of these qualities. She was still small and straight up and down, and devoid of any hope that she would one day be as
round and desirable as Mohama, or as slender and desirable as Hekate.

Hekate stroked Kleopatra’s hair gently and rhythmically just like Kleopatra petted her dogs. “Would you like to go to bed?”
she asked. “I will tell the king to excuse you.”

“No, I will wait up with my father.”

They looked at the king, who was now trying to plead his case to the oblivious, intoxicated Julia. Pompey had fallen asleep
on the couch face up and was making sounds like water being sucked from a cistern.