The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 150

humanly, and hated her most humanly. It was she, not his “agenda of history,” that gave Lazarus strength. It was she, not the ice or the rebellious Hielistos or the grueling Ice Cross, that could weaken Lazarus, disrupt his will.

I have mentioned—when I wrote of that day I met Germanicus at 2 de Diciembre—how I believed Lazarus and Cleopatra were lovers when they arrived in Stockholm, and how I believe they continued their passion on board Angel of Death. Their union was a maze to me. So was their reunion on Anvers Island. I risk incoherence to report: Lazarus depended upon Cleopatra while she tolerated his attention; Lazarus ignored Cleopatra while she venerated his genius; Lazarus spoke against Cleopatra while she trusted his heart. He could denounce her in front of my council as a victim of self-delusion, mocking her claim as the “queen of slaves.” He could also worship her openly before my council as the most durable and determined warrior in the fortress. He gave her no pity when she ranted and wept for Charity, or for Cesare; he was courtly to her when she drifted from us to care for the children.

There was the dark side of their reunion, and I puzzle if I have overlooked it purposely in my appraisal of Lazarus: Lazarus was jealous of me. If he was a usurper to me, so was I to him. I took his Cleopatra and made her my queen, and my slave. Lazarus could shudder into silence whenever Cleopatra announced that she would share my bed, which she did when she willed. And yet he could also come to me in somber measure and urge me to go to her because she needed comfort.

Were those two what the philosophers call a marriage of true minds? I cannot answer this. Was I their dupe, or was I their child, or was I their victim, or was I their battleground? I watched them for five years at Anvers Island—once I was relieved of my berserker dreaming—and they appeared to me closer than any two people I ever experienced, Peregrine and Charity, Earle and Guy notwithstanding. Is that what Grim Fiddle was to them, then, an interloper, an adulterer?

For all my talk about Lazarus the rock and traitor and Cleopatra the “queen of slaves”, it might come to this, then—that they used me as I used them. There was a man, Lazarus, who thought he had vision of the future; and there was a woman, Cleopatra, who thought herself shackled to the past that she shackled to herself, and who found in Lazarus a liberator. And what happened? Grim Fiddle cut them apart and made one his right hand and one his left hand, made one his pain and the other his pleasure. This cannot be all there is to say. I must look to Cleopatra.

If Cleopatra did rule Lazarus as would a queen, then I indulge myself to say that Cleopatra, more than Lazarus, was the imperial seat of my corruption as a warlord king. It was of a piece, Cleopatra the queen, Cleopatra the victim of the vengeance, Cleopatra the engima. I turn from Lazarus, my rock and my traitor, to Cleopatra, my lust and my cipher. There seems pathetically little to say, as there is time left to say it. I tell the truth: Grim Fiddle did not love Cleopatra Furore. That is the tale, beginning and end.

And yet my loveless adoration of her, my possessive passion for her, seems a flood of woe-singing. I have tried to convince myself that I loved her from the first, on that ballroom floor, amid swirling privilege and indifferent learning, me the oafish lackey, she the sleek inheritor. Did I love her then? It is a lost notion to me now. If it was love, it did not grow. It lingered where it commenced, immature obsession with the unattainable and unknowable. Perhaps when I claimed I loved her, I was bluffing love, dimly aware that it was futile. There was false joy in it, purposeless abandon. I have written, in romantic hyperbole, that our love was from the first as unlucky as it was hopeless. I strike that thought now. It was delusion. If that was love—angry lust, fighting and hurting and twisted, fleshly, lurid coupling—then what was my unshakable love for Grandfather, my sweet love for Abigail, my enduring love for my Sam?

I confess my failure to love Cleopatra. Why pursue it? I am old. She is gone. There seems only misery to speculate how she regarded me. That it fetches me is a sign to me of how lewd was our intercourse. Back then, she was a hunger, yet now she is a stinking gluttony. What can I say of her nature now that could be more succinctly telling than how I envisioned her in my berserker dreaming? She was the dark-haired queen, Hard-Heart. When I changed shape, I saw what Cleopatra had become. Her pain was her purpose was her pleasure was her pain. I did not trust my insight, not even in hallucination, and wrongly believed her name changed to Glad-Heart. This was childish yearning. Cleopatra was Hard-Heart, and remained Hard-Heart. Cleopatra Furore was hard, and hard enough. Have I once in my record of her provided any cause to think of her as glad?

And why did God harden Cleopatra’s heart? God has the answer. My guess seems self-serving; it is mine. Through Cesare Furore, Cleopatra was born to luxury. Through me, she inherited degradation. She must have hated many, wanted revenge on multitudes; however, she must have completely hated me and wanted total revenge upon me. I would like to write this as final. It may be. I recoil at the depth of her call to hate Grim Fiddle. How could I call myself her lover? I was her persecutor. I was the thrust of her torment. How did I ravish her? Most vilely. Look at it for what it was, Grim. Better that