Sophia left home a few days later. Term didn’t start for another week, but she had work to do. Master’s degrees didn’t earn themselves. She packed her bags, bade her Mum and Dad goodbye on the station platform, and set off on the long journey north.
As the bare countryside rolled past, she remembered a phone call.
“I’m looking out over New York Harbour towards Liberty Island. They’re about to put the head on a certain famous statue. I was wondering if you’d care to join me.”
The rest of the memory came rolling back – the train home for Christmas, the big man sat next to her with his crisps, and Alexander’s voice in her ear. No one set next to her now. She stretched across both spaces, and stared out of the window, her chin resting on her hand.
It was the first she’d thought of Alexander, earnestly, since she had woken up on New Year’s Day. The instant she had closed the door on him she had cried, certainly, silently railing against his attitudes and his mystery, but she hadn’t really been thinking of him. It had been a whirlwind of lovelorn hysteria, not real contemplation. Over the next few days, she had concentrated on reading more articles on toxicology and editing her essay. Work had banished him from her head.
Today, though, she thought about him. Where was he now? Anywhere. Right now, on January 4th, 2014, he might not exist, or he could exist in fifty places at once. Her head ached. This, she thought, is why I do chemistry rather than physics.
And what was he doing? She imagined him sat in his library, scribbling out the latest entry in the forbidden book: ‘what I learnt about beauty from dating a 21st century girl.’ He’d write the lessons in bulletpoints, draw a big fat line underneath the completed list, and then be off looking for some other fantastical experience, or some other easily impressed girl. Off into the ether, vanishing into history.
But he had looked so devastated, back in the hotel room. He had looked so hurt.
It was a ruse. Alexander wore masks beneath masks.
She wondered if she would ever see him again. They had one another’s numbers, but that seemed a pitiful link. Looking outside, she found that the horizon was too broad, and the sky too high, for her to gaze upon, without feeling sick in the pit of her stomach. She turned away and put on her headphones.
*
“It’s Death of a Salesman this term,” said Julie. “I thought you knew that?”
“Slipped my mind,” replied Sophia, sipping her tea.
The two of them had been reunited after the holidays half an hour earlier. Twenty-nine minutes earlier, the kettle had been turned on.
“I thought I’d stay away from the leads,” said Julie, “Try and get one of the smaller parts instead, or maybe work crew. What about you?”
“I thought I’d stay away altogether.”
“What, really?”
“Yeah. I could do with the break. Need to get on with work.”
“That’s not like you.”
Sophia glared at Julie.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Julie. “Of course you work hard. I meant missing the play.”
Sophia shrugged. “Maybe. I just feel strange about the whole thing.”
“You should give it a week, see how you feel. Parts won’t get decided for a little while yet. It’d be a shame to miss out. Besides, you know you’ll enjoy it once you get going.”
“It’s not that,” said Sophia, shaking her head. “I know I’ll enjoy it, I don’t doubt that. It’s just...” She sighed.
Julie cocked an eyebrow. “Something up?”
“No. I’m just tired. Long journey.”
“Alright, go to bed then. You’ll wake up begging for the lead role, trust me. Full diva mode.” She picked up the teapot. “Another for the road?”
Sophia held out her mug. “Thanks, Jules.”
She went to her room. As she sipped her tea, a word lingered in her head. Diva. Divina. Divina?
Then she remembered the two names that Oscar Wilde had mentioned two her, two women that Alexander had supposedly travelled with: Thaïs and Imperia La Divina. She hadn’t heard of either of them. Look them up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or whatever has usurped it in your age.
Sophia fished her laptop from her bag and five minutes later was looking at the front page of Wikipedia.
‘Imperia La Divina (1481-1512) was a Roman courtesan.’ Sophia bit her lip. ‘She is counted as the first famous courtesan in Europe. The term courtesan is said to have been created for her.’
She read a little more: Imperia was the talk of Roman high society; mistress to the wealthy and influential in the Papal court; model for the painter Raphael. She had a monument in a Roman church, a sensation for a woman of her trade.
Nervously, Sophia looked up Thaïs.
‘Thaïs was a famous Greek hetaera who lived during the time of Alexander the Great...’
Oh good, thought Sophia, another ‘great’ Alexander.
‘...and accompanied him on his campaigns. She is most famous for instigating the burning of Persepolis. At the time, Thaïs was the lover of Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander’s generals. It has been suggested that she may also have been Alexander’s lover.’
Before long, Sophia found herself following the links: ‘hetaera’ was the Ancient Greek for courtesan. One sentence in particular caught her eye: ‘Although most of them engaged in sexual relations with their patrons, hetairai were not simple prostitutes.’
She turned off the laptop. Two women, two beautiful women, mistresses to the great and powerful, with stories and legends attached to their name. Two courtesans.
Sophia fell back onto the bed, shaking with anger and fear. Oh yes, they would appeal to Alexander. She wondered where through history he had taken them and whether he had seduced them.
She wondered what he had seen in her, that night at the performance of Much Ado.
*
The next morning in the post, amongst the avalanche of takeaway flyers, Sophia spotted a single crisp envelope. Her heart leapt, and her stomach churned. Before she turned it over she knew who it was from, not that he had used the wax seal this time. She took out the letter.
London, January 5th 2014
Sophia,
It is not without hesitation that I write this letter. I confess to having been greatly afraid of bringing pen to paper, so anxious was I that my words would not adequately express my innermost thought. Therefore I shall keep this note brief.
I have wronged you.
Sophia sat down on the sofa. Go on then, Alex, she thought. Squirm.
I have not been altogether honest as to my intentions or feelings. However, I beg you to know this: that New Year’s Night, more than a century ago, I took you to that hotel, I did what I did, because I loved you, and wished to make you happy. Whatever mystery I may wrap myself in, for reasons of vanity or fear, I truly loved you. That feeling has not left me these past few days.
Did you love Thaïs? Did you love Imperia?
I pray you will grant me an interview at whatever time and place you choose. Words can be easily mistaken for artifice; let me prove myself in person. I do not ask you to venture off into history with me once more, only to talk to me, and to give me this one chance to redeem myself in your eyes.
Yours,
Alexander
Sophia slowly folded up the letter and put it back in the envelope. She sat on the sofa, perfectly still, for several minutes.
I loved you. I truly loved you.
She picked up her phone.
‘Tomorrow, 5pm, Ginnel’s Cafe. S.’
Send.
*
Alexander appears to have a 'type', then. What do you think of his previous girlfriends (not that he'd be so crude as to call them that)? And what might this mean for Sophia?
The picture is Thaïs at the burning of Persepolis, as imagined in a painting by the eighteenth century English artist Joshua Reynolds. The story goes that, at a feast in the captured Persian palace of Persepolis, she gave a rousing speech that convinced the drunken Alexander the Great to burn the place down. It was certainly destroyed in 330BC, but whether this was down to Thaïs' intervention, or was done for political reasons, is contested.