Cleopatra stroked the walls of her tomb as she had done a million times. The sensation of the stone against her fingers provided some entertainment, after all. She preferred her human form for these kinds of activities, since her fleshy hands were more sensitive.
When she’d first woken up in her own tomb, she’d thought it must be a nightmare. She had screamed and pounded against the sarcophagus. Gradually it became clear that she was not dreaming, and that nobody was coming to rescue her. After a long struggle, she managed to push open the heavy stone lid of the sarcophagus. She had been extremely lucky, really. It had not been sealed and, thank the gods, she had not been mummified.
That was where her luck had ended. The tomb itself was thoroughly sealed. Bitterly, she thanked her servants for burying her with various weapons, jewels, and religious trinkets to guide her in the afterlife. She had not expected that she would get to keep them so literally.
She had also discovered that she was a corpse. Then, she had discovered that she did not have to stay a corpse. She could switch between her living body and her dead one at will. Mostly. If she tried to stay in her living form all the time, sooner or later, the other would take over. So she cycled between them at more or less regular intervals. In ordinary circumstances, this would have been horrifying. Under the circumstances, it was a minor detail.
The beginning had been agony. She had screamed, wailed and wept, pulled out her hair, and scratched at her skin. She’d begged for Osiris’ mercy, and then for Hades’ mercy and then for anybody’s mercy. She had cried out for Marc Antony, and prayed that his soul, at least, might be free. She’d cried out for her children, who had been the shining lights of her life. They were so young and innocent. She prayed fervently that no harm would come to them, though in her heart she feared the worst.
As the initial shock wore off, the seriousness of her predicament became clear. She was trapped without food or water, and yet she lived on. At times, she worked on digging her way through the thick stone walls with a knife. However, it was demoralizing work, as the knife seemed to wear down as quickly as the stone. She was determined to get through someday, although she feared that an opening would merely cause sand to pour into the tomb, which she knew to be underground.
It was a wonder that she managed to keep her sanity. Her mind was a powerful tool and it always had been. She’d been a precocious child, and her tutors had been world-class scholars. In life she had known nine languages, and memorized many poems and histories. To pass the time she recited what she could of these, and improvised what she couldn’t. She wrote her own poems. She wrote a stage play, and performed it for no one. She performed elaborate magical rituals to honor the gods. She memorized strings of numbers. She even invented her own rudimentary language. She also perceived that she could speak an altogether new language fluently, though she’d never heard it nor heard of it. She knew intuitively that it was called Gutterspeak by some, or the Language of the Dead by others. Who these others were, she did not know.
It turned out that the boring days were the better ones, for she really only had two kinds of day: those filled with boredom, and those filled with despair. She oscillated between them like a boat lost at sea. She tried not to dwell on her failure, but the memories flooded in anyway. Always her mind returned to Egypt, to Antony, and to the empire that might have been. Perhaps if she had returned to Egypt when Antony had begged her to, instead of insisting upon being a part of his campaign in Greece, things might have ended differently. If only certain allies had not abandoned them at the end. If only the world had not greedily drunk up Octavian’s smear campaign against her, so desperate were they for some explanation for this extraordinary Egyptian woman.
She despised Rome. It was an ugly nation. It did not appreciate beauty like Egypt did. The Romans were hopelessly pragmatic. Their constructions were crude, their art was plain, and their libraries were small. Their empire grew out, not up. It was growing bigger and bigger all the time, but for what purpose? The Ptolemys had ruled with a purpose. Well-considered investments in art and science had attracted the world’s greatest hands and minds to Egypt. Admittedly, for all its apparent wealth, the Egypt she’d inherited had been deeply in debt. If only she had had more time. She could have turned Egypt into a military power without sacrificing its cultural treasures. If she’d had more time, things would have ended differently.
Or would they? At times, a nagging doubt pressed on her breast like a heavy stone. Perhaps the war had been unwinnable from the very beginning. She had devoted nearly all her waking hours to political business. She had never allowed herself a friendship that was not to her political advantage. She had indulged in worldly pleasures only insofar as they would help her to fight another day. But all her efforts, her political acumen and her charming personality were not enough. Rome had had more military might than the rest of the world combined. Perhaps it was inevitable that sooner or later, gradually or suddenly, Egypt would have fallen to the Roman war machine.
Perhaps this was simply the way of the world: cruelty gets power, and power wins. Was there no justice, no point in striving toward a more beautiful world? Does the world simply belong to those who carry the bigger stick? Is the only progress that matters simply the invention of bigger and bigger sticks?
This was a cruel afterlife. As if it were not bad enough that she had had to watch her dynasty crumble, now she had to sit and ruminate on it like a reprimanded child, swallowed by silence yet unable to find peace. Images of her worst moments haunted her. The darkness pressed in all around, until her limbs felt heavy and her head throbbed. She could not tell where her body ended and where the darkness began. She made herself small, wishing she could simply disappear. How she longed to run and laugh, to see the sun, to feel happy and healthy and human again. But she could not, and perhaps she never would. So she merely curled up in her sarcophagus, sobbing past the point of exhaustion, past the point of remembering what she was sobbing about this time.
She had thought that losing Egypt was her worst fear. Now, with the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom of pure agony, she discovered that political humiliation was not her worst fear. This very moment was her worst fear. To be trapped and powerless, with absolutely no way out. Why was she here? How long would it last? As long as one was able to fight, there was still some hope of progress, or at least change, and so life had meaning. The senselessness of her present position was a torment. She could not stand this pointless lingering. She’d impaled herself on a spear, slit her own throat, and even bashed her head into the wall. It was no good. The wounds always healed.
She needed a purpose, a reason for living that was as immortal as she was. Of course, being trapped in the tomb limited her options considerably. In a way, though, it almost didn’t matter. Not that she wouldn’t have gladly slit the throats of every man, woman and child and Egypt with a dull knife if it meant escaping the tomb. The tomb didn’t matter in the sense that even if she were free, she would still have to find a purpose.
In her present exile from political life, she began to see what politics had always done for her. Politics was more than just a duty or a chore or a game. It was a way out of this despair. Politics offered the individual the chance to live a meaningful life and to die a meaningful death. It meant that no matter how bad things got, ordinary people could at least work toward a future worth fighting for. This was the only thing that mattered in life: to be able to fight for what one believes in. The converse, to deprive others of their right to live and die for a cause, was the greatest violation of human dignity.
A seed began to germinate in her mind. Utopia. A just society. This had, in a way, always been her project. As a child she had been groomed for it. As a teenager she had begun it when she ascended to the throne. At the age of 21, she had begun in earnest by conspiring with Julius Caesar to murder her brother-husband and become the sole ruler of Egypt. It had remained her life’s project until her dying day. She had been born with a grand destiny and failed to achieve it. Now that she was apparently immortal, perhaps she had an even grander destiny. She would escape from this tomb and build a stable and just society, even amid the realities of uncertainty, change, and human difference. Everything she knew about human nature suggested that such a dream was impossible. People were too short-sighted, too selfish. And yet, surely she had more reason than anybody to believe in miracles.
In her society, there would be justice. Women would not be subjugated because of men’s irrational fears. She would not tolerate slander nor propaganda, nor any entertainments that make the common folk feel smart even as they are made more stupid. Her people would be well-educated, clever and strong. They would think for themselves, but they would honor their familial and civic obligations. They would have rights and freedoms, and they would accept certain compromises.
Her society would be just, but this did not mean that it would be loving, peaceful, or soft. She would rule with a strong hand. One does not build utopia gently. Violence is a necessary and inevitable part of growth. War and peace are just different stages of the same process, the winter and summer of social life.
Her dream of a just society represented a certain kind of faith. Not in people—no, she had very little faith in people. She had faith in justice. She concluded that humans are not just dumb animals slogging through existence with no point and no certainty. There is an order to the universe, and that order courses through our bodies and our souls. Beauty, fairness, and flourishing don’t just feel good. They are good, and it is in our nature to build them. Life on earth has a purpose. Humanity is making progress all the time toward some glorious destination that will one day be reached.
Perhaps she was being naive, but in her despair, pessimism was a luxury she could no longer afford. She’d been the richest woman on earth—no, the richest person on earth—and she had not even realized that all along, her most precious possession had been hope. She had always derided hope while she’d been alive. Power, she’d said, belongs to those who strategize, not to those who hope. Now that she was utterly bereft, she finally understood the value of hope. Hope sustained her as food sustained the living. Even though she was trapped and powerless now, she might one day be released from her dark prison and bring a new light to the world. Like a beggar who clings to the empty bowl that is his only possession, she clung tightly to hope. And she dared human nature to pry it from her cold, dead hands.
~
Suddenly, as she stroked her stone walls, something happened. For the first time in a very long time, something happened! She heard digging. At first she dismissed the noise as just another delusion. She heard phantom noises all the time. Always they were just in her head. But the sound grew louder. It was coming from the entrance above her. She heard scraping, then pounding. Could it be? Tomb robbers! Trembling with excitement, she grabbed her knife. In some flight of instinct, she willed herself into her undead form. She crouched off to the side of the entrance, behind a chest and a barrel. She scarcely dared to breathe, though inside she was screaming.
She waited while they hacked at the stone. It occurred to her that she might gather some of her trinkets and bring them with her, particularly the jewels or the gold. She could not bring herself to do so. She remained glued to the corner by the door, as if any movement from her might disturb the events that were unfolding. She did not need gold. She had her knife, and that was enough.
Stone ground against stone. Haltingly, the invaders tugged on the door, until finally it opened. Dust flooded the tomb. The small shaft of light that penetrated it was almost blinding. Her throat filled with dust and her eyes watered. Still she crouched. Every muscle in her body was tense, ready to spring. Two men were speaking to each other. A man made his way down the short stairs into the tomb. When he spotted the open sarcophagus, he began looking around. His eyes lingered on her hiding spot, and he took a few steps toward it. She sprung toward him and dealt him a hard kick to the gut. He toppled over. She scrambled up the stone stairs and collided with the second bandit who stood just outside the entrance, knocking him to the ground. Just like that, she was out. The sun was so bright she could barely stand it. She locked her watering eyes on the terrified bandit beside her. She did not catch what he was saying. She was fascinated by the fear on his face. How long had it been since she had seen a human face? She pulled him in close by the front of his shirt, brandishing her eroded knife. He stared down in horror at the rotten, decayed hand that clung to him.
“What year is it?” she asked.
He told her.
She let him go. He backed away on his hands and feet like a startled crab. His friend in the tomb called up to him for help. Distraught, the bandit looked from her to the hole. She calmly stepped a few paces back, still watching through narrowed eyes. He darted toward the entrance, and suddenly she felt that he was moving slowly. But then she realized this was wrong. Time was moving slowly. She could feel her own breath and her own heartbeat slowing down as well. Almost with boredom, she watched him dive into the hole unnaturally slowly, and then reemerge with his friend some moments later. The two of them scrambled sluggishly. Sand fanned out behind their clumsily struggling limbs like a distant fountain. They stood and began to run without bothering to pick up their tools. Then, the feeling passed. They were running at a normal pace, and time was too.
She took a deep breath and collected herself. Time could not possibly have slowed down, she reasoned. After a century and a half in the tomb, of course her sense of time would be distorted. A century and a half. She did not know whether that was longer or shorter than it had felt. She was certainly less moved by the information than she would have expected. Yes, she felt strangely unmoved. She simply stood there, watching the bandits recede into the desert, feeling the warmth of the sun, its brightness stinging her eyes.
She thought she might turn around and take one last look at the tomb. But then in the next instant, she felt behind her a great swelling evil. It struck her with terror such as she had not experienced since the day she’d woken up in her sarcophagus. Surely there was some beast rising from the sand behind her. Its great maw was about to consume her. She must never look back, or she would be snatched up by the beast. She bolted.
Terror clutching at her breast, she ran as fast as she could, like a mouse from a falcon. But the sand slowed her down. Each stride took ages. She felt as if she were running through the sticky sap of nightmare. She struggled with all her might, but she could only move at a snail’s pace. Still, gradually, one agonizing footfall after another, she was putting distance between herself and the tomb. It had not caught up to her yet.
As she continued running, she began to fully comprehend that she was free. Free, finally free! The nightmare was over! The longer she ran, the more it felt more like flight. She was the falcon now, and the yawning pit was far behind her. This was no dream. She greedily gulped the fresh air. She ran until her joints ached and thirst and exhaustion compelled her to slow down. The desert sun beat down on her. Finally she stopped, gasping. She bent over and put her hands to her knees. Dry-mouthed, heart pounding, she collapsed on the hot sand. She was trembling violently in spite of her fatigue.
A chill came over her then, as she lay curled on the sand. Could it be? The terror was still lurking behind her! Frantically, she looked back, then all around, but she saw only golden dunes and clear blue sky. The tomb was gone. Yet she felt it watching her. The lumbering beast was just beyond the horizon, stalking her with steady footsteps. Any moment now she would wake up in the darkness again, at the bottom of a great abyss, screaming uselessly at deaf and dumb gods. She was afraid to close her eyes. She would not sleep tonight. She would never sleep again if she could help it. Gradually, a terrible realization dawned on her, the final lesson of her underground exile. She was no longer inside the tomb. The tomb was inside her. And it would be for as long as she lived.