Battle after battle, my soldiers grew richer and I accumulated experience as well as maps and books expounding the wonders of this world. The fury of a body streaming with blood and sweat alternated with the chill lucidity of solitary thought, constructing strategies. I was overcome with melancholy as soon as the exultant rage abated. Athens fell without a fight: that metropolis which once teemed with traders, sailors, politicians, and philosophers was now reduced to ruins. The agora was deserted, but the taverns prospered: the poorest boys and girls went there to prostitute themselves and sell their souls.
Sitting at the foot of the Acropolis, I was before the very gates of eternity, looking toward the horizon: the sea, silvery waves, and sailing boats. Socrates had been condemned to poisoning. Plato’s republic was now a mere shadow on the walls of a cave. Athens and its ruined palaces, the great city of Thebes that I myself burned down, and Macedonia, a land rich in cereal crops but poor in the arts: these three formed a vast prison locking me in its unhealthy backstreets and decadent ways.
Disguised as a soldier, I loitered around the port of Athens looking for easy pleasures. Boys hovered round me, flashing me looks and tugging at my arm. The most beautiful succeeded in getting me to sit down and share their cheap wine. The sun was setting over the sea and the clouds turning scarlet. Growing steadily more drunk as my frustration grew, I could not find a single face that attracted me, a body that smelled good, a person who could bring me gratification to distract me from my gloom. I turned a street corner and caught the eye of a frightened little boy selling dates under a tree. Inexplicably, my body was inflamed by him. I grabbed him and, despite his pleading and crying, dragged him to the nearest inn and emptied myself into him.
The following morning I left Athens as soon as the sun was up, horrified by the memory of that drunken night, by the little boy’s terrified expression—so like Alexander’s as a child. I had committed Philip’s crime. His soul was distilled in my blood. In death, he lived through me, making a mockery of my pointless rebellion.
I needed greater acts of cruelty, fiercer battles! I had to gallop and climb and throw myself at the highest battlements. Only arrows and the sparking clash of swords, only the cries of dying men and the flames of burning cities, could exorcise my anguish! With Greek cities pacified, the world had become too small to contain my suffering, which prospered more swiftly than my pleasure. I needed new cities, barbarian nations, and unknown lands to deflate my pain.
Persia, its infinite expanse and shadowy provinces, appeared like a dream, a necessary dream and an indispensable challenge. It became the obsession that promised to bring an end to my torment.
Ambition healed and intoxicated me. I had no choice: in a long starless night, Alexander would be a shooting star, burning intensely. Though short, his life would leave the memory of its swift dazzling trajectory across the celestial vault.
OLYMPIAS TALKED TO me of marriage. I knew from my men that she had started looking for a wife for me among the daughters of Macedonian noblemen. Her dreams of a happy marriage and her longing to be a grandmother made the very air in the palace difficult to breathe. I tried to evade the question with talk of my father, accusing my mother of allowing him to pervert me, and of tolerating my vices as she had his. Olympias looked at me, her eyes filled with sadness.
“Woman!” I screamed, “you gave me love, but that love nurtured a monster. I don’t want to be married! I don’t want a wife like you! I don’t want to have children I can harm!”
She looked away and said nothing.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and gave full vent to my anger.
“Look at me,” I bellowed, shaking her. “I’m not the man you think you love. I’m not a god. I destroy cities for the sheer pleasure of showing that I’m more fierce and dangerous than Philip, to exceed him in every crime he committed. I have decapitated children, eviscerated women, burned men alive when they have done me no harm at all. Oh, Olympias, you gave birth to a tyrant!”
She held me in her arms and wept.
“Give me a child,” she whispered. “Then go and never come back! If I raise a son of yours, he will be a good and just king, he will be wise and clement…”
Her words touched my heart, which had no armor against her. My tears mingled with hers, and we wept together for our ruined lives. Night fell, and Olympias sang me the same songs that had lulled my childhood. I lay with my head on her stomach and fell asleep as I used to then.
Women are stronger than men. Even Philip, despite his drunken rages, had never succeeded in defeating Olympias. How could I escape her will? I set off on horseback again, leaving her in charge of the palace and the scheming trappings of power. But her letters followed me beyond mountains; her voice silenced the tumult of war and brought me back by her side, in her bedchamber looking out over orange trees and fountains. I could not help myself replying, and our exchanges were like butterflies flitting over fields strewn with corpses. She and I were harnessed together by the timeless link that joins a man and a woman. Philip was dead; I in turn had become her intrepid warrior, her devouring force, her hand reaching out to expand its territories over the world. She was my home; she had the keys to my treasure and watched fiercely over Pella. I waged war at the front, and she pacified to the rear. I pillaged, and she balanced the accounts. I killed, and she dressed the wounds.
How to fight a woman who had borne suffering, accepted violence, survived brutality? There was a small room in the palace where black crystals were laid out on an altar. My mother shut herself away in there, and no one, not even Philip, had ever dared open that door. Olympias knew everything about me; I had been a part of her. I knew nothing of her, nothing except the mountainous land she came from, a place where people wore black and went to market to sell scorpions, snakes, spiders, and precious stones with magic powers and evil promises. The men practiced vengeance as others might sing and dance. The women of her family, promised to Dionysus by an ancestral pact, learned from him the skill to subdue warriors.
Preparations for a military expedition against the Persians had begun many years before. Philip had reformed our armies to make them more mobile. With archers marching ahead of the phalanxes and walls of lances hiding the cavalry, our square formations could transform themselves into curved lines at any moment. After good harvests and with our grain stores full, the mention of a war against the Persians motivated Greek cities that had once submitted in terror: they regained their dignity and aspired to a sense of unity. Meanwhile, Olympias had taken several lovers, and she hid behind them, governing from the shadows, the intrigues of one group neutralizing those of another. I was no longer afraid my throne would be usurped.
I introduced more rigor and discipline to Philip’s army. I studied maps of roads and gathered useful information. I knew the names of influential ministers and eunuchs. I knew exactly where the favorite of Darius, the Great King, had a beauty spot. Knowledge paralyzes action. The more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew of an empire a thousand times more powerful than mine. Days passed, and still I made no decision. It was Olympias who hastened my departure. Knowing that she could not hold me back, she harassed me day and night about taking a wife. Her muttering about the continuity of our dynasty infuriated me. Her mournful silence disarmed my rage. She made my life unbearable.
One night in a dream I saw my queen. She lived in a temple built on the pinnacle of a rock. Dressed in fiery red, she stood in the first row of a group of young girls all in white. She wore a necklace of Byzantine gold and scarlet pearls from some rich, unknown land. She was reaching up to the heavens, and a slow, reverberating chorus rang out, praising the glories of some unfamiliar god. Like water flowing over burning embers, her song soothed my fevered soul.
When I woke, my sense of wonder turned to doubt. Plato taught that each of us is part of a celestial entity that breaks in two as it falls to earth, thus beginning the quest for love. Without a doubt, this princess was mine as I was hers. Where was that rock? Did she know I even exi
sted, that I had seen her, that I already loved her even before I knew her? Was she waiting for me? Had she seen me? Had she dreamed of me? Would she commit the terrible mistake of binding herself to another soul?
I announced my imminent departure to Olympias. Her eyes shrouded themselves with tears.
“No one can challenge the barbarian empire,” she murmured. “Our men will be no more than droplets of water spilled along a shoreline. They will all be absorbed and erased.”
It was not in pursuit of victory that I wanted to confront danger! Tired of accusing him, I wearily cited Philip once more:
“My father failed; I must carry on.”
“Your father did not fail. He was a thoughtful king. He listened to Zeus and managed to avoid disaster.”
Hearing her speak well of Philip infuriated me.
“I’m not a man of reason,” I said, raising my voice. “I will go beyond where my ancestor Achilles fell. The gods on Olympus didn’t choose Philip to bear their glory. I am the chosen one! I am the son of Apollo, and Artemis drew me from your belly, that’s why she let her temple burn the night I was born. There’s no point in discouraging me; I shall reach the ramparts of Babylon.”
“You would rather challenge the power of foreign gods than govern,” she said menacingly. “I never succeeded in stopping your father, and I won’t be able to stop you. I shall lose you. Your heart will forget me and I shall die alone….”
I sighed. “You have done enough intriguing to keep me in this palace. Dry your tears, your king commands it. Being born the wife and mother of warriors is a sad fate. But show yourself worthy of your name. Let me go.”
Olympias said nothing. She knew all this was inevitable.
I arranged for Apollo to pronounce a favorable oracle. Speeches were made before council. Never mind the rumors that Alexander wanted to prove to the world that he was not Olympias’s daughter. Hephaestion, Perdiccas, Cassander, Crateros, Lysimachus, the lovers of my youth and my longtime companions, cut open their arms and let their blood mingle with mine as an oath of eternal loyalty. In keeping with the treaty of Corinth, all Greek cities sent us their most valiant men.
Horses gleaming, troops roused, our war cries rang out. The great army set out upon its earthly route. Some detachments set sail by sea, their mission to plague Persian ships and make them believe our allied armies would attack from the coast.
Begone, the gilded prison where Philip locked me away in his glory and his misery. Begone, kisses from Olympias, who wanted me to be her little girl forever. Begone, Macedonia that gave me life, Aristotle and Homer who watched over me as I grew. I, Alexander, am destined for the mysteries of civilization, for the vastness of this world. I run, I gallop, I fly toward the land of the pharaohs.
Open your arms, Osiris and Isis, gods of my rebirth, givers of life and strength, I am coming with my wound and my nightmares.
THE HOT WIND blew as I watched the sun sink over the ramparts of Memphis. The wind from the Nile—heavy with the smell of wet earth, of reeds and grilled fish—erased Olympias’s perfume and the rustling of her tunic. The sun had not yet disappeared behind the horizon; the moon had already risen, pale, transparent, and round.
My soldiers were preparing for a Macedonian feast day in the encampment but, so far from Pella, it did not have the same gaiety, the same feel. Even though the moon of the pharaohs was more majestic than that which rose over Greek soil, Memphis—a bustling trading city—exhaled the same stench of decadence as Athens. I searched in vain for splendors recorded on papyrus. Time continued to trickle through the hourglass, but the Egyptians already had the weary expression of a kingdom that has lived too long in eternity.
Ammon had supplanted Osiris. The god of the sun demanded exclusive adoration and obedience. I considered it essential to appear at his sanctuary if I was to convince the Egyptians to submit to my authority for any length of time. I was told of a desert stretching as far as the eye could see, of hills of flames and nine-headed vultures. I heard of an army of shades advancing as columns of sand blown by the wind, an army that once destroyed the powerful Persian troops. I knew no fear at all. Dangers merely heightened my will.
Four days wandering through that ocean of dunes, four nights of forced marching beneath the stars, I turned a deaf ear to the soldiers’ complaints. The sun burned down on me. I shielded my eyes with straw and saw the waves of sand twisting, breaking, and reforming, but never once did I think of retreating. Retreat would mean forever abandoning the sphinx and the pyramids.
In the heart of the oasis Ammon’s guards exhausted me with ritual dancing, chanting, and praises, then they let me into the low-ceilinged hut with its roof of palm fronds. The high priest, decked in jewels and bought with my gold, predicted what I wanted to hear: their god appointed me king of kings. He announced that, with his benediction, Alexander would be invincible among men.
We made the return journey without stopping once. Carried by the uplifting oracle, my soldiers braved the desert in jubilant mood. I slept in the saddle astride Bucephalus. I pictured myself back there, facing the disc of the sun. I had asked this question of the high priest: “Why was I born when the end of the world had already begun?” Taken aback, he sat in silence. I was gripped with the urge to laugh, and left the sanctuary lighthearted. The end of the world had already begun because I was born to burn it down, to destroy it.
On the banks of Lake Mareotis I used the point of my lance to draw out a new city on fallow land. I gave it my name.
Alexandria of Egypt, you shall prosper after this ancient world has perished in flames with me!
CHAPTER 2
T hey call me Tania. They also call me Talestita. I am tall and slender. I have a pet bird. I gather my hair in two braids and dress in red. I am often seen frowning and thinking—it is what I like best.
Other girls used to make fun of me because I was not happy like them; my body was more fragile. I was the queen’s serving girl, and she liked my air of melancholy. She told me I had a more restful presence than the others, who were too playful and chirpy. They all teased me because I have white skin, golden eyes, and fair, curly hair. They laughed and called me “the foreigner” because the elders said I was the daughter of a foreign king and my family had perished in a massacre. A foreigner among girls with dark eyes and black hair, and yet I was the only one my queen trusted as her scribe. I wrote down her words on flat pieces of stone, using tinted water and a reed cut on the diagonal. The ink dried a yellow color for orders and orange for tallies of horses and sheep.
Few people in our tribe could write. We had no books. My mother, a servant to the previous queen, taught me the secrets of written signs. She told me our language had the strength of concentration, and that each of our signs was worth ten words in any other tongue.
In the evenings the queen would lie on the ground and read the stars, telling stories that developed as the stars moved across the sky. She dictated them to me, and I, Tania, wrote them down by the light of a lantern. We hid these pages of stone so the other girls would not find them. The queen told me I should wall up our book in a cave the day she died. At the time I could not know that our lives would be so brief and so intense.
The ink turned white for the stories from the stars.
That year the queen was fifteen years old, in keeping with our customs. I was a little older than her. I may have been melancholy, but I was a stranger to sorrow.
ON THE STEPPES we were known as the Amazons, which meant the tribe of girls who loved horses. We reared the swiftest, hardiest horses with the most magnificent coats. Like other nomads, we strayed beneath the skies in search of tall grass and limpid water. We were tough, solitary girls, forging no links with other peoples. No one knew where we came from; no one knew of our divinity; no one knew the Amazons, who kept the secret of their origins to themselves.
Millions of years earlier our ancestors lived on a luxurious mountain called Siberia where the trees blossomed all summer long. They knew how to tame men
and horses, and lived in harmony with nature, but one day nature betrayed them and forced them down from the mountain onto the plain. Our ancestors walked and walked and walked. They walked for decades on end before discovering the fertile steppes.
In those far-off days there was a queen known as the Great Queen. She established the tribe’s laws and devised its writing. She observed nature: birds in flight, the intelligence of leaves, flowers opening. Inspired by these moving things that gave life its animation, she invented our written language, which looks sometimes like flowers, sometimes like leaves, sometimes like birds twirling in the sky. The Great Queen was the only woman in our tribe to bear children. There was a tribe on the other face of Mount Siberia and she obtained their king’s seed. Before their union the two tribes had never met, for the mountain was almost impassable.
The king managed to cross the treacherous pass and met the Great Queen on a mountain path. The queen, who was in pursuit of a boar, lowered her bow. She had never seen a man like him in her forest. She knew nothing of him, his name, his origins, his race. Devastated by his beauty, she decided to capture him in a net. She brought him back along with his followers, and paraded them before her women like trophies. The king was taller than the men our ancestors used as slaves, and in his nakedness, he glowed like the sun itself.
The queen fostered a terrible longing to couple with him. She bathed him and called for serving girls to massage him. She had him thrown into the middle of her enormous bed, a carpet of the most tender grasses, the most fragrant flowers, and the silkiest feathers. She dressed in a veil stitched with bird scales from a species that has since disappeared but that once dazzled with beams of reflected light. She put a crown on her head, a tall arrangement of tree blossom like an invisible forest reaching up to the skies, and she walked over to him to begin her seduction. Fascinated by such splendor, unlike anything he had ever known, the king made love to her for three days and three nights without interruption.