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.“My dear,” he said, “my dear, it’s nothing, nothing.Go back.Please go back.”“Good heavens, it’s you,” said she matter-of-factly.“Yes, love, go back,” he said, “go back.Go rest.” He held out his hands, smiling tenderly.“Oh, no,” said the queen wisely, “there’s something, 1 can tell,” and she pushed past him.She began telling her husband that he really must go to bed; then she stopped, puzzled, and then a little intake of breath announced that she had seen the dying man’s face.The dead man trembled; he stood at the window where the king had stood, but saw nothing.At his back the princess gave a little scream.“My dear,” said the dead man, turning round (she was kneeling at Alexander’s side) “my dear, he’ll be quite well, I promise you,” (but she seemed not to hear him) “my dear, I promise you-” but she rushed out, crying different names out loud.She stopped at the doorway, looking right past the dead man as if she were looking through him.Her face expressed nothing but surprise, although she was wringing leer hands.“My dear,” he said calmly, “what you see’ is a delusion.The man is not suffering.At the end fever is not unpleasant, I assure you; the body sinks but the mind floats like a piece of ash, and you will only make your husband’s last moments needlessly unhappy if you cry and wring your hands and behave in an unconsidered and haphazard way.”“Aristophorus!” screamed the princess, “Aristophorus!” and she rushed out of the room.I am beginning to fade, the dead man thought, going back to Alexander.His attack of trembling hit him again and he knelt by the dying man, taking the unconscious face in his hands.“King,” he whispered urgently.“King.” Alexander opened his eyes.“Listen to me.”“No,” said the dying man.His friend, cradling the conqueror’s head in his hands, smiled with a radiant and serene joy; “Live,” he whispered.“Live.Live.”“Can’t,” said Alexander brusquely, trying to shrug.He closed his eyes.Gently the dead man let his friend’s head down onto the floor; he stood up; he moved away.Roxane had come back in with friends, philosophers, doctors; they crowded round the emperor while his friend (whom nobody saw) wandered out of the room into a passageway and down that passageway into another.In the garden (he looked out of a window) the gardener still hoed and weeded last year’s dried stalks.The dead man had carried Alexander’s wineskin with him and a cup he found near it; he poured himself a drink and sat down on the floor by the window where the pale sunlight came in.Then he stood up.“You butcher!” he shouted, “you bully, you egoist, you killer in love with your own greatness!” and then he said “How I loved you, how I admired you!” raising the cup in one hand and his other empty hand to the ceiling in an attitude of extreme and theatrical grief.His arms sank; he sat again on the floor.Now 1 die too, he thought.He thought, with a certain amusement, of that night in the Indian forests near the river and what he had shown the great Alexander.Like the demons in the old stories he had shown him all the world; he had shown it filled with Alexandrias and Alexandrettas as numerous as the stars, with carved pillars set up in the East as far as the kingdoms of Ch’in and Ch’u, farther than Han, satraps ruling the undiscovered continents on the other side of the globe, tablets commemorating Alexander in the lands of the Finns and, the Lapps, in the lands of the Alaskan Eskimos, empire up to the Arctic Circle and down into Africa, over the Cape and through the other side, Alexanders here, Alexanders there, a fulfilled empire,.a safe empire, a satisfied dream.And then two words: What then?.Legend has it that great Alexander wept because there were no more worlds to conquer; in truth, he bellowed like a bull.No one, thought the dead man, feels more despair than a man who has been robbed of his profession.Luckily I never had one.A sound from the room he had just quitted hit him and made him.catch his breath.How terrible to die, he thought, how terrible! He ; took a drink from the wine cup and noted that his hand was.shaking.From the next room came a sharp cry, little Roxane wailing for her man.The dead man, whose heart seemed to have stopped, sat motionless while his face became clear of all expression, taking on the beautiful, grave melancholy of all faces whose owners are absent, temporarily or otherwise.Gently and carefully ‘‘ he put the wine cup down on the damp, stone floor, with the E concentrated gentleness of all the times he had picked things up only to put them down-cups, flowers, jewelry, paintings and women’s hands.He thought of all the things he had touched and never owned, of all the women he had liked and avoided.The one man he had admired so passionately and so passionately envied: was dead.Nothing was left.He thought, as if thinking of a picture, of his wife-a dissatisfied Sappho who had written verses and left the court to live with some businessman.He doubled over, not in laughter this time, but as if Alexander’s blade, that had long ago stabbed through his vitals, once again tore him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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