The Persian Boy (22 page)

He himself, who could never be idle anywhere, used to ride out hunting. Often he let me come along. Xenophon, he told me, said hunting was the image of war. It was for Alexander. Dangerous rocky ground, long runs, a fierce quarry, lion or boar for choice were what he looked for. I remembered Darius in the royal park, shooting at driven game. After Alexander’s hunts, I felt nearly dead. But I’d have died sooner than own it; before long I hardened, and came back just hungry for my supper.

While we were camped there, a Persian lord gave a great birthday feast, and asked the King to honor it. He came to bed hardly drunk at all. Persians drink deep on their birthdays; but they hold it better than Macedonians. He was always careful among them, and watched his friends as well.

As I was settling him into bed, he said suddenly, “Bagoas, I’ve never asked you, in all this time. When is your birthday?”

He could not make out why I was crying. I knelt by the bed with my head in my arms, and he patted me as if I had been Peritas. When at last I got it out, he leaned over me, and I heard him swallow a sob. It was absurd; I ought to have been ashamed.

He would not await the day, since, he said, I had missed so many, but next morning gave me a beautiful Arab horse and a Thracian groom; and two days later, when th?e jeweler had finished it, a ring with his portrait carved on chalcedony. I shall be buried with it. I have put that in my will; along with a curse, to keep the embalmers from stealing it.

Not only were the Benefactors a kindly people; they had worked out just laws among themselves. He greatly took to them. Before he went, he offered to double their lands; but they asked just for the tail-end of their valley, the one bit they did not own; it would round them off, which was all they wanted. He sacrificed to Apollo in their honor.

Bessos was lingering in the north, with no sign of raising a powerful army. While his generals and satraps were subduing the country round about, Alexander moved eastward, towards the outer skirts of Great Kaukasos; taking his time, making his mark; here and there founding a city.

I remember, the first I saw him make was upon this march; one of his Alexandrias. The site was a rocky hill, easy to defend; on a good trading route, as the Phoenician merchants told him; with a clean year-round spring for the public fountain, and good land next it. It commanded a pass for caravans, which had harbored robbers. Every day he was scrambling over it, with his architect Aristoboulos; marking out the places for the garrison fort, the market, the gates and their defenses, making sure the streets were well laid out, with channels to drain off the muck. He thought nothing like that beneath him. He had slaves to quarry and hew the stone, and free craftsmen to do the building. It amazed me, how quickly it all went up.

Then he had to people it. He would put in veteran soldiers, not all of them Macedonians; there were Greeks, and free Thracians, mostly with women and children they’d gathered on campaign; they were glad to be given a farm, though some grew homesick later. Some of the craftsmen settled there. They might not be very good, or they would have followed the lords and generals; but here they would not have rivals, and they brought something into the wilds, of Susa or of Greece. For all these people Alexander left laws, never too foreign to their ways or the gods they followed. He had a feeling for what they would understand, and see the justice of.

He put his whole soul into this city, all day till suppertime. He did not get drunk-there was good water up there, so nobody sat down thirsty-but after the day’s work, he liked to sit talking with the cup before him. Founding a city always stirred his mind. He knew it would make his name live among men to come; it made him think of his deeds. At these times he liked to go back over them, some said too much. Well, he did them. Does anyone deny it?

He would talk to me sometimes, after, the wine still in him, his spirit still burning it up. I asked him once if he had known, before he crossed to Asia, he would be Great King. He said, “Not at first. It was my father’s war; I wanted to win it faster than he’d have done. I was appointed general of the Greeks, to free the Greek Asian cities. When I’d done it, I disbanded their troops; and after that it was my own.” He paused; then, seeing that I understood, said, “Yes, it was after Issos. When he ran away, leaving me his chariot and his royal mantle and all his arms; his friends’ bodies who had died for him; his wife-even his mother!- then I said to myself, If that’s the Great King, I think I could do better.”

I answered, “Kyros himself did less.”

I know the envious Greeks have written that I flattered him. They lie! Nothing was too good for him, or half good enough. I felt the impatience of his greatness, reined and curbed by the dullness of lesser men. They say I took his gifts. Of course I did. The best of them was to see his delight in giving. I took them in love; not, like some who claimed to be his friends, in covetousness soured with envy. If he had been a hunted man with a king’s price on his head, I would have gone barefoot with him through Asia, starved with him, lain down in the market stews to buy him bread. All that is as true as the face of God. So had I no right to make him? happy in his victories? There was never a word that did not come from my heart.

When the city was founded, he sacrificed, and dedicated it to Herakles and Apollo. I did a dance for Apollo, who, Alexander thought, must be the same as Mithra. I hope both gods were satisfied; I danced only for him.

I was someone now at court. I had my two horses, my baggage mules, my tent, and some pretty things in it. As for power, I wanted that over one heart alone. Sometimes I remembered Susa, and all those who had tried to buy my interest with the King. Only unwarned newcomers tried it now. The Persians said, “Bagoas the eunuch is Alexander’s dog. He will feed from no other hand; let him be.” Macedonians said, “Watch out for the Persian boy; he tells Alexander everything.”

Sometimes, when I waited on him in his bedchamber, he would say I ought not to do servants’ work; but that was just his courtesy. He knew I lived for it. He would have been sorry, too, to do without me.

We marched eastward towards the heights, over high passes, with only the tracks the herdsmen made, following the poor grass with the seasons. In the rock-clefts grew little bright dry flowers like jewelers’ work. Great skies spread to dark horizons. I lived in the hour, I was young, the world unrolled for me; as it did too for Alexander, riding always ahead, to see the next turn of the road.

Of an evening he asked me to teach him Persian. (I had taught him some, but not of a kind which would do at all for an audience.) The sounds are hard for westerners; I never pretended he spoke it well. If he was cross from disappointment, it was over in a moment. He knew I saved him from making a fool of himself in public, which his pride could not endure.

“See what mistakes I still make in my Greek, Iskander.” I had put in a slip or two, to cheer him up.

“How are the lessons? Has he tried you with reading yet?”

“He only has two books, and they’re both too hard for me. He asked Kallisthenes to lend us one; but he said the sacred treasures of Greek thought were not to be smudged by barbarian fingers.”

“He said that to your face?”

I had not reckoned on his being quite so angry. This Kallisthenes was so grand he must not be called a clerk, but a philosopher; and he was writing Alexander’s chronicle. I thought my lord deserved someone who would better understand him; but one must go carefully with great men.

He said, “I am tiring of this fellow. He’s too full of himself by far. I only took him on to please Aristotle, who’s his uncle. But he has all the old man’s set notions, whose errors I had to find out for myself, and none of his wisdom for which I honor him. He taught me what the soul should reach after. He taught me the skill of healing, which I’ve saved some lives with; and how to look at the natural world, which has enriched my life. I still send him specimens, wild beasts’ skins, plants, anything that will travel . . . What’s this blue flower?” He took it from behind my ear. “I never saw that before.” It was nearly dead, but he pressed it carefully.

“Kallisthenes has none of that,” he said. “Does he often insult you?”

“Oh, no, Sikander-“

“Al-ex-ander.”

“Al’skander, lord of my heart. No, mostly he doesn’t see me.”

“Never mind if he thinks himself too good for you. I see signs that it will be my turn next.”

“Oh, no, my lord. He says it’s he who will make your fame.” I had heard that myself, and thought he had better know.

His eyes turned pale. It was like watching a storm from shelter. “Will he so? I have left a few marks about the world, to be remembered by.” He started pacing the tent; if he’d had a tail he would have lashed it. “He wrote of me first with such fulsomeness that the truth stank like a lie. I was a boy, I didn’t see the harm it did me. I rounded Cape Climax with god-sent luck and good guessing, but he had the waves bow before me. And heavenly ichor flowing in my veins! Men enough have seen the color of my blood, and so I told him. And none of it from his heart.”

The sun was setting into ?a great horizon, the moorlands darkening in waves, the watch-fires budding flame. He stood to look, putting away his anger, till the slave kindled the lamps. “So you’ve never read the Iliad?”

“What is that, Iskander?”

“Wait.” He went into his sleeping-place, and came back with something gleaming in his hands. “If Kallisthenes is above bringing you Homer, I am not.”

He put on the table what he held; a casket of pure white silver, gold lions on its sides, the lid inlaid with malachite and lapis, carved into leaves and birds. There could not be two in the world. I gazed in silence.

He looked at my face. “You have seen this before.”

“Yes, my lord.” It had stood by Darius’ bed, under the golden vine.

“I might have thought. Does it hurt you? I’ll put it away.”

“Truly no, my lord.”

He put it down again. “Tell me, what did he keep in it?”

“Sweets, my lord.” Sometimes, when he was pleased with me, he used to put one in my mouth.

“See what I use it for.” He lifted the lid; I caught the scent of cloves and cinnamon. It choked me with the past; for a moment I closed my eyes.

He brought out a book, even more worn and mended than the Kyros one. “I’ve had this since I was thirteen. It’s old Greek, you know, but I’ll make it a little easier. Too much would spoil the sound.”

He read a few lines, and asked if I had understood.

“He says he is going to sing about the anger of Achilles, which brought terrible trouble to the Greeks. Men died in great number and the dogs ate them. And the kites, also. But he says it fulfilled the will of Zeus. And it began when Achilles quarreled with-with some lord who was powerful.”

“That’s very good. It’s a crying shame you’ve had no books yet. I’ll see to that.” He put the book away, and said, “Shall I tell you the story?”

I came and sat by his knees and laid my arm across them. If it kept me here, I did not care what kind of tale he told me. Or so I thought.

He told just the tale of Achilles; leaving out what I would not understand. So, after he had quarreled with his Great King and refused allegiance, we came quite soon to Patroklos, who had been his friend from boyhood; who took his part and comforted his exile, and died of taking his place in battle; and how Achilles avenged him, though it had been foretold his own death must follow. And after the duel, while he slept in weariness, Patroklos’ ghost came to him in his dream, to require his funeral rites and recall their love.

He did not tell it with art, like the taletellers in the market, but as if he had been there and remembered everything. At last I knew where my rival stood, grafted into his spirit, deeper than any memories of the flesh. There could be only one Patroklos. What was I, to that, but the flower one sticks behind one’s ear and throws away dead at sunset? In silence I wept, and scarcely knew that my eyes were shedding tears, as well as my heart.

He lifted my face, and, smiling, wiped my eyes with his hand. “Never mind. I cried too, the first time I read it. I remember it well.”

I said, “I am sorry that they died.”

“They too. They loved their lives. But they died unfearing. It was living without fear, that made their lives worth loving. Or so I think.”

He rose and picked up the casket. “Look, you have been nearer it than you knew.” He moved the pillow of his bed, and opened the bed-box. A dagger was there too, honed like a razor. Every second king of Macedon had been murdered, and sometimes two kings running.

Long after this, I caught my name as I approached his tent, and heard him say, “I tell you, when he heard the story of Achilles, his eyes were full of tears. And that fool Kallisthenes talks of Persians as if they were Scythian savages. The boy has more poetry in one finger than that pedant has in his head.”

At autumn’s end, we reached the southern spurs of Parapamisos. They were already shawled with snow. Far to the east, they join Great Kaukasos, the wall of India, which goes on higher and higher, further than anyone knows.

On a spur of? their foothills, sheltered from the north wind, he made the year’s third Alexandria. By the time of the first snowfall, it was ready for us to winter in. After some of the king-houses, like ogres’ lairs in legends, it was good to smell clean new wood and wall-paint. The governor’s house had a porch with columns, in the Greek style; and a plinth in front, for a statue of Alexander.

It was the first he’d had done since I had been with him; but he, of course, was as used to taking his clothes off for this as for his bath. The sculptor made drawings from all around him, seven or eight studies, while he gazed into the distance making himself look beautiful. Then he was measured all over with the calipers. Then he could go off hunting, and need not come back till the face was being finished. It was very fine, both calm and eager; true to his soul, though of course it left out the sword-cut.

One evening he said to me, “The new thing has begun. Today I sent orders back to the cities, to make me a new army. This one I’m growing from seed. I’m having thirty thousand Persian boys taught Greek, and trained to use Macedonian weapons. Does that please you?”

“Oh, yes, Al’skander. It would please Kyros too. When will they be ready?”

“Not for five years. They must start young before their minds get fixed. By then, I should hope, the Macedonians will be ready as well.”

I said I was sure of it. I was still of an age when five years seem half a lifetime.

The air grew soft in the foothills, delicate flowers pierced the melting snow. Alexander decided he could cross straight over the mountains after Bessos.

I don’t suppose even the local shepherds warned him. They only went up with the summer snow-line. He guessed the high passes would be hard, and went ahead with the soldiers; but I doubt he knew what they were in for. It was terrible even for us, who had their beaten way to follow, with more supplies. I, who love mountains, felt that these hated men. My breath labored, my feet and my fingers burned as I beat the blood back into them. People huddled at night for warmth, and I had many offers, all with fair promises to treat me like a brother; meaning that when it was too late I would not dare to tell. I slept with Peritas, whom Alexander had left in my care; he was a big dog, and there was a good deal of warmth in him.

Our hardships were nothing to the army’s. With no fuel on the barren rock to cook their meat, they had to thaw it on their bodies, or were lucky to have it warm from some horse that had fallen dead. Their bread ran out, and they fed on the herbs the cattle eat. Many would have slept into the snow-death, but for Alexander struggling on foot along the column, finding them where they lay, dragging them to their feet, and putting his own life into them.

We overtook them at the border fort of Drapsaka, on the other side. There was food to be had; below, Bessos had wasted the land to starve us out.

I found him in a lodging of old roughhewn stone. His face was all burned with cold, and it seemed that only his sinews held his frame together. I was still not used to a king who starved with his men. “That’s nothing,” he said. “That soon comes back. But I can’t yet believe I’ll ever be warm again.”

He smiled at me, and I said, “You will tonight.”

I did not have the chance to warm him long. Once his men were rested and fed, before a full month was up he was off down into Baktria.

I was now of fighting age. Eunuchs before, among them my wicked namesake, had borne arms. I kept thinking how Hephaistion had been with him on the mountains; keeping him warm, maybe. So the night before he went, I asked him to take me with him; saying my father had been a warrior, and if I could not fight at his side, I would be ashamed to live.

He answered gently, “Dear Bagoas, I know you’d fight at my side. And you would die there, and quickly too. If your father had lived to train you, you would have made a soldier up to my best. But it takes time; and the gods willed otherwise. I need you now where you? are.” He was proud, but not for himself alone; he had feeling for the pride in others.

Just then Peritas, who had been terribly spoiled from sleeping in my blankets, tried to creep by stealth on the bed, though he weighed it down and took up all the room. So it passed in laughter; but I was left behind again, for Alexander went ahead with the troops, expecting Bessos.

He was not there; nothing was there but snow, still thick on those high uplands. He had not found much to ravage; in winter the people there bury everything, their vines, their fruit trees, even themselves, for they live in sunk beehive huts which the snows cover all over; they hole up with all their stores, and come out in spring. Soldiers clemmed with hunger would see a wisp of smoke rise through the snow, and dig down to the food. They said the stench was dreadful, and everything tasted of it; but they did not care.

With the spring, we followers caught up; the court and the royal city took form and traveled onward. Then news came that Bessos had crossed the Oxos, east. He was on the run, with a poor following. Nabarzanes had been the first, but not the last, to know he had looked for a king in vain.

Alexander marched slowly through Baktria. No one resisted him; so wherever he went, he had to take surrenders, and get his new lands administered. For Bessos, once again there was no hurry.

The next we heard of him, was from one of his own lords, a man well on in years, who came on a weary horse, his clothes and his beard full of dust, to give himself up to Alexander. This, he explained through me (I was interpreting, for the sake of secrecy), was what he had urged Bessos himself to do, when he held a war council. Gobares, who now addressed us, had cited Nabarzanes as an example, which was surely rather simple of him. Bessos had taken drink, and at the mere sound of the name made for Gobares with drawn sword. He had scrambled off, faintly pursued since he was well respected; and here he was, ready in return for pardon to tell us all he knew.

Bessos’ Baktrian levies had now deserted him. He had never led them, only fallen back before Alexander. They had gone home to their tribal villages; their surrenders could be trusted. All Bessos had left were those who had escorted Darius to his death; a remnant who shared his flight not from love, but fear.

He was making for Sogdiana, in which his last hopes lay. The Sogdians, Gobares said, do not like strangers, and would be loath (”At first,” he said politely) to accept a foreign king. So Bessos would cross the Oxos, and burn his boats behind him.

“We will cross that river when we come to it,” Alexander said.

Meantime, he had to choose a satrap for Baktria. I awaited this with sadness; the second Persian satrap of Areia had rebelled, and he had had to send them a Macedonian. Nonetheless, he gave Baktria to a Persian. It was Artabazos. He had lately told Alexander he was getting too old to march about any longer; the mountain-crossing had left him rather tired. I have heard he ruled his province with prudence, vigor and justice; retired from office at ninety-eight; and died at a hundred and two, from riding a horse that was too fresh for him.

So now it was time to go north and cross the Oxos. We’d been near it in the mountains; it takes its rise there; but for leagues it dashes through rocky gorges, where only a bird could go. The hills open out on the threshold of the desert; after that, it slows and widens on into the furthest wilderness, where at last, they say, it sinks into the sand. We were to cross at the first ferry, where the road goes on to Marakanda.

We went down pleasant warm slopes with vines and fruit trees. The holy Zoroaster, who taught us to worship God through fire, was born in those parts. Alexander heard this with reverence. He was sure the Wise God was the same as Zeus; and had seen him in fire, he said, since childhood.

We had enough of fire before long. When we came down into the Oxos valley, the desert wind from the north was blowing. It comes in ?midsummer, and living things all dread it; it’s as if the air had been passed through a furnace, and blown at you with bellows. We had to wrap our heads in cloth, to save them from the burning, pelting sand; four days of it, before we reached the river.