them.“If you can’t get out, if you need me, come back here,” I said.
“We have our own people here,” Jacob said soothingly. “Thank you from my heart for the beautiful ruby, Pandora. You will survive. Go back in, bolt the doors.”
I made it to the chair but I did not sit in it. Rather I collapsed and prayed,
“Lares familiares . . .
spirits of the house, I should find your altar. Welcome me, please, I bring no ill will to anyone. I will heap your altar with flowers and light your fire. Give me patience. Let me . . . rest.”
Yet I did nothing but sit in shock on the floor, my hands limp, for hours as the daylight waned. As the strange little house grew dark.
A blood dream began, but I wouldn’t have it. Not that alien Temple. Not the altar, no! Not the blood. I banished it and imagined I was home.
I was a little girl. Dream of that, I told myself, of listening to my eldest brother, Antony, talk of war in the North, driving the mad Germans back to the sea! He had so loved Germanicus. So had my other brothers. Lucius, the young one, he was so weak by nature. It broke my heart to think of him crying out for mercy as soldiers cut him down.
The Empire was the world. All that lay beyond was chaos and misery and struggle and strife. I was a soldier. I could fight. I dreamt I was putting on my armor. My brother said, “I am so relieved to discover you are a man, I always thought so.”
I didn’t waken till the following morning.
And then it was that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before.
Note this. Because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.
The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world.
I was alone. I went from room to room of this small house, banging upon the walls with my fists and crying with my teeth clenched, and whirling. There was no Mother Isis.
There were no gods. Philosophers were fools! Poets sang lies.
I sobbed and tore at my hair; I tore at my dress as naturally as if it had been a newborn custom. I knocked over chairs and tables.
At times I felt a huge exhilaration, a freedom from all falsehoods and conventions, all means by which a soul or body can be held hostage!
And then the awesome nature of this freedom spread itself out around me as if the house did not exist, as if the darkness knew no walls.
Three nights and days I spent in this agony.
I forgot to eat food. I forgot to drink water.
I never lighted a lamp. The moon nearing her fullness gave enough light to this meaningless labyrinth of little painted chambers.
Sleep was gone from me forever.
My heart beat fast. My limbs clenched, then slackened, only to clench again.
At times, I lay on the moist good Earth of the courtyard, for my Father, because no one had laid his body on the moist good Earth, as it should have been done, right after his death and before any funeral.
I knew suddenly why this disgrace was so important, his body rent with wounds and not placed on the Earth. I knew the gravity of this omission as few have ever known the meaning of anything. It was of the utmost importance because it did not matter at all!
Live, Lydia
.
I looked at the small leafy trees of the garden. I felt a strange gratitude that I had opened human eyes in this darkness on Earth long enough to see such things.
I quoted Lucretius:
“That which comes from Heaven ascends to Heaven”?
Madness!
Alas, as I said, I wandered, crawled, wept and cried for three nights and days.
4
INALLY , one morning, when the sun came spilling down through the open roof, I looked at the objects in the room and I realized I didn’t know what they were, or what they’d been made for. I didn’t know
“We have our own people here,” Jacob said soothingly. “Thank you from my heart for the beautiful ruby, Pandora. You will survive. Go back in, bolt the doors.”
I made it to the chair but I did not sit in it. Rather I collapsed and prayed,
“Lares familiares . . .
spirits of the house, I should find your altar. Welcome me, please, I bring no ill will to anyone. I will heap your altar with flowers and light your fire. Give me patience. Let me . . . rest.”
Yet I did nothing but sit in shock on the floor, my hands limp, for hours as the daylight waned. As the strange little house grew dark.
A blood dream began, but I wouldn’t have it. Not that alien Temple. Not the altar, no! Not the blood. I banished it and imagined I was home.
I was a little girl. Dream of that, I told myself, of listening to my eldest brother, Antony, talk of war in the North, driving the mad Germans back to the sea! He had so loved Germanicus. So had my other brothers. Lucius, the young one, he was so weak by nature. It broke my heart to think of him crying out for mercy as soldiers cut him down.
The Empire was the world. All that lay beyond was chaos and misery and struggle and strife. I was a soldier. I could fight. I dreamt I was putting on my armor. My brother said, “I am so relieved to discover you are a man, I always thought so.”
I didn’t waken till the following morning.
And then it was that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before.
Note this. Because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.
The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world.
I was alone. I went from room to room of this small house, banging upon the walls with my fists and crying with my teeth clenched, and whirling. There was no Mother Isis.
There were no gods. Philosophers were fools! Poets sang lies.
I sobbed and tore at my hair; I tore at my dress as naturally as if it had been a newborn custom. I knocked over chairs and tables.
At times I felt a huge exhilaration, a freedom from all falsehoods and conventions, all means by which a soul or body can be held hostage!
And then the awesome nature of this freedom spread itself out around me as if the house did not exist, as if the darkness knew no walls.
Three nights and days I spent in this agony.
I forgot to eat food. I forgot to drink water.
I never lighted a lamp. The moon nearing her fullness gave enough light to this meaningless labyrinth of little painted chambers.
Sleep was gone from me forever.
My heart beat fast. My limbs clenched, then slackened, only to clench again.
At times, I lay on the moist good Earth of the courtyard, for my Father, because no one had laid his body on the moist good Earth, as it should have been done, right after his death and before any funeral.
I knew suddenly why this disgrace was so important, his body rent with wounds and not placed on the Earth. I knew the gravity of this omission as few have ever known the meaning of anything. It was of the utmost importance because it did not matter at all!
Live, Lydia
.
I looked at the small leafy trees of the garden. I felt a strange gratitude that I had opened human eyes in this darkness on Earth long enough to see such things.
I quoted Lucretius:
“That which comes from Heaven ascends to Heaven”?
Madness!
Alas, as I said, I wandered, crawled, wept and cried for three nights and days.
4
INALLY , one morning, when the sun came spilling down through the open roof, I looked at the objects in the room and I realized I didn’t know what they were, or what they’d been made for. I didn’t know
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