Alexandria Part 9

'So I'll ask you again: what did you think of Theon?'

My eyes adjusted. Zenon had the quicksilver intelligence of a drover selling rustled mutton, just far enough outside the Forum Boarium to avoid notice from the legitimate traders. Any minute now he would halve his price for a quick sale. 'Theon did a respectable job. He worked hard. He had the right intentions.'

'And?'

Zenon paused. 'And he was a disappointed man.'

I scoffed quietly. 'That seems common around here! What caused Theon's disappointment?'

'Administering the Library was too great a struggle - not that he lacked the energy or talent. He faced too many setbacks.'

'Such as?'

'Not my field of expertise.' That was a cop-out. I asked if the setbacks might be caused by colleagues, specifically the Director, but Zenon went celestial on me: he refused to dish the dirt.

I tried another tack. 'Were you friends with Theon? If you saw him eating a meal in the refectory, for instance, would you take your bowl alongside?'

'I would sit with him. And he with me.'

'Did he ever talk about his private life?'

'No.'

'Did he talk about being depressed?'

'Never.'

'Were you after his job? Are you up for consideration now he's dead?' Perhaps the wrong wind blew in from the desert just then. As I probed his own ambition, the astronomer took umbrage suddenly and flared up: 'You have made enough insinuations. If I had been Theon's enemy, you would now find out, Falco! I would hurl you off the roof!.'

I was glad I had stepped back from the edge. 'How painfully normal to find suspects offering threats!'

That got to him. Maybe too much stars.h.i.+ne had invaded his brain. At any rate, Zenon snapped. It was quite unexpected in an academic. In a trice the man was on me. He leapt behind my back, locked his arms around my chest and marched me back to the head of the steps.

He would have made a good bouncer in a rowdy tavern where the stevedores are ma.s.sive, over by the quays where the grain s.h.i.+ps were loaded. If he tipped me downstairs it would be a long, hard fall. Probably a cracked skull and a premature entry ticket to Hades.

I co-operated just long enough. I was fit. I had recently spent the long days on s.h.i.+pboard catching up on exercise. Recovering myself, I dropped forward abruptly, pulled him off his feet, bucked him right over my head and dumped him on the ground. I made sure I did not pitch him down the staircase.

Zenon got up, winded, yet barely embarra.s.sed. I watched him brush down his tunic, one-handed. I think he hurt the other wrist when he landed. He was hiding the pain from me.

I wondered if I had made an enemy. Probably. Since there was no point holding back, I snapped, 'I want to see those budget figures you whipped away in the meeting this morning.'

'Not a chance,' replied Zenon, as mildly as if he was refusing a tray of pastries from a street-seller he saw regularly.

'The Emperor runs this Museion now. I can get a warrant from the Prefect.'

'I await your subpoena,' the astronomer retorted, still calm. He went back to his observation chair. I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, then I left him.

Those figures must be worth scrutiny. There was no chance I would ever see what was suspicious. Zenon was too relaxed about it. I guessed he had had that accounting doc.u.ment fixed up and fiddled to look clean, straight after he noticed my interest at the Academic Board meeting.

XX.

I was ready for a rest. Help appeared to be at hand. When I left the Museion complex, I saw Uncle Fulvius' palanquin waiting to collect me. Aulus was standing beside it. 'Olympus, I'm whacked. Transport is welcome!' I said. Then distrust cut in. 'Nothing wrong, I hope? What's up?'

Aulus chuckled as he tucked me into the curtained conveyance. 'Oh, you'll find out!' He was staying behind. He had palled up with a group who were going to see Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Lysistrata.

'It's all about s.e.x!' I said, as if warning a prude.

I did not tell him it was about men being refused refused s.e.x by stroppy wives. A twenty-eight-year-old unmarried man was too young to find out that could happen. Well, he wasn't going to hear it from me. s.e.x by stroppy wives. A twenty-eight-year-old unmarried man was too young to find out that could happen. Well, he wasn't going to hear it from me.

Aulus deserved a hiding. When he came across the bearers, they must have told him why Helena had sent the litter to speed me back home. Aulus, that jester, could have warned me.

The bearers deposited me at my uncle's house, though they made no attempt to move off again. I a.s.sumed Fulvius and Ca.s.sius needed the palanquin for another evening out with business cronies. All I wanted was a quiet night, with a good dinner and a peaceful woman to hear the story of my day and tell me what a clever boy I was.

The house was one of a group, arranged on a series of levels. There was no central atrium in any of them; all the buildings in the complex opened on to an enclosed courtyard that was shared communally. We came in through an outer gate with a porter then the bearers dropped me in the yard outside my uncle's personal doorway. For private outdoor s.p.a.ce everyone used their flat roofs. Indoors, all the internal rooms opened off the stairs, as if whenever they ran out of s.p.a.ce they just built upwards. I went up the doglegs slowly, aware from a hum of activity that everyone was gathered near the top. As I reached it, the salon door opened and young Albia slipped out. She must have been on the alert for me. She was about to speak, perhaps to give to me a chance to flee... Too late, the door whipped fully open. My children burst out: Julia was playing at crocodiles, with her arms stretched out ahead of her like snapping jaws. She was grappling Favonia, who was acting as some animal that roared and head-b.u.t.ted doors open.

'Come here nicely and give your father a kiss -'

Neither stopped. Julia twisted madly as she tried to subdue her sister, while Favonia st.u.r.dily kept on roaring. Julia twisted madly as she tried to subdue her sister, while Favonia st.u.r.dily kept on roaring.

I had been spotted from within. Ahead lay a warm glow of lamps, a blur of conversation. I heard a familiar voice, loudly deriding my commission on the Theon death: 'Murdered in a locked room? You mean Marcus has convinced himself someone got a trained serpent to slide in and stab the man, using an ivory-handled dagger with a strange scarab on its hilt?'

Helena spoke calmly: 'No, he was poisoned.'

'Oh, I get it! A trained ape crawled down a rope from the ceiling, bringing a curiously carved alabaster beaker of contaminated borage tea!'

I exploded. Albia winced and held her head in her hands. I strode in. It was him all right. That voice and att.i.tude could not be disguised: wide-bodied, grey-haired and well into a winecup but still capable of obnoxiousness, without the grace of slurring. He was tanked up and tearing into it - but he did stop when he saw me.

'Uncle Fulvius has a new house guest, Marcus!' Helena cried brightly. 'Just arrived tonight.'

'When are you leaving?' I snarled at him.

'Hades!' Albia, at my heels, hated trouble. Albia, at my heels, hated trouble.

'Don't be like that, my boy,' he whined. Marcus Didius Favonius, also known as Geminus: my father. The curse of the Aventine, the dread of the Saepta Julia, the plague of the antique auction porticoes. The man who abandoned my mother and all his offspring, then tried to snare us back to him two decades later, after we had learned to forget he existed. The same father I had strictly forbidden from coming to Alexandria while I was here.

And there was more.

We were going to a party. It was diplomatic, at the Prefect's residence, the kind no one can escape. Fulvius had accepted for me, so failure to show would be remarked upon. We were all going. Helena, Albia and me, Uncle Fulvius and Ca.s.sius - plus Pa. There was no chance that b.a.s.t.a.r.d would plead weariness after long travel, not when there was free food, drink, company and entertainment on offer, in a place where he could show off noisily, try to sell the wrong people dubious art, be indiscreet, upset the top man and amaze the staff - and above all, cause me irreparable embarra.s.sment.

XXI.

Tiberius Julius Alexander, the previous Prefect of Egypt, helped the Flavians acquire the Empire nearly ten years ago. He then made sure Vespasian rewarded him with a really worthwhile sinecure back in Rome. Helena thought he led the Praetorian Guard, though it cannot have been for long, because t.i.tus Caesar took that over. Still, it was good going for a man who was not just Jewish by birth but Alexandrian. Provincials usually struggle more.

Prefect of Egypt was not part of the senatorial lottery for governors.h.i.+p of provinces, but in Vespasian's personal gift. Private owners.h.i.+p of Egypt was a serious perk for an emperor. The intelligent ones took great care in appointing their Prefect, whose main job was to ensure that the corn flowed, to feed the people of Rome in their Emperor's name. Another vital task was gathering in tax money and the gemstones from the remote southern mines; then again, the Emperor would be loved at home because of his stupendous spending power. Vespasian's huge building programme in Rome, for example - most famous for its amphitheatre, though it also included a library - was financed partly from his Egyptian funds.

The current Prefect was a typical Vespasian man - lean, competent, a measured judge and very hard worker. I had heard no rumours of him being anything but ethical. His ancestors were new enough men for him to suit Vespasian's family, the equally new Flavians. He had a good past curriculum; a wife who was never named in scandal; health; courtesy; a brain. He went by three names, none of which I bothered to learn. His full t.i.tle was Prefect of Alexandria and Egypt, which stressed that the city was mysteriously separate from the rest, sitting like a bunion on the north coast. You don't find a governor of 'Londinium and Britannia' - and if you did, a man of this intense superiority would still think the posting a cruel punishment. But the Egyptian job made him purr.

When we arrived at his bash, the Prefect headed a formal receiving-line, where he greeted Fulvius and Ca.s.sius like wholesome commercial visitors and seemed strangely taken with Pa. My father knew how to ingratiate himself. Helena and I were received with practised indifference. His Excellency must have been briefed by his bright-eyed boy a.s.sistants, but he could not remember who I was, what I had been sent to do for the Emperor (if anything), what his centurion had got me to take on at the Library instead, who my n.o.ble wife's n.o.ble father was and whether it mattered a green bean - nor indeed whether he had already been introduced to us last week. However, after thirty years of such bluffing, his act was oiled. He shook our hands with his limp, cold fingers and said how nice it was to see us here and do please go on in and enjoy the evening.

I was determined not to enjoy it, but we went on in.

The surroundings made up for everything. This was one of the Ptolemies' palaces - of which they had a glorious clutch, all opulent and intended to intimidate. Halls and doorways were graced with huge pairings of pink granite statues of G.o.ds and pharaohs, the best of them forty feet tall. Anywhere that could be approached by a wide flight of steps was. Marble pools of awe-striking dimensions reflected the soft glimmer of hundreds of oil lamps. Whole palm trees served as house plants. There had been Roman legionaries on guard outside, but in these halls where Cleopatra once walked, we were attended by discreet flunkeys in Egyptian kilts, characteristic head-dresses and glinting gold pectoral adornments on their oiled bare chests.

Everything was done to the highest diplomatic standards. The usual enormous trays of peculiarly concocted morsels. Civic canapes: a cuisine unknown anywhere outside the lukewarm ambience of large-scale catering. Wine that was all too familiar: from some unhappy Italian hillside which even though it was in our fine home country failed to get enough sun. This mediocre vintage had been carefully transported here - our dross, imported to this city whose own superb Mareotic wine was deemed fit to grace the gilt tables of the very rich in Rome. Always insult the people you are ruling. Never take advantage of their wonderful local produce, lest it seem you are rotting with unpatriotic enjoyment of your overseas tour.

Fulvius and Ca.s.sius soon went off to canoodle with businessmen. Traders always know how to angle for invitations. There were plenty here. We shed Pa - or rather, he shed us. It might be his first night, but he already had someone to see. My father possessed the knack, which my late brother Festus also mastered, of making himself seem an habitue habitue of any place he found himself. In part, Pa was sufficiently insensitive never to worry about whether he was welcome; the rest was winning over startled locals with sheer weight of personality. Strangers took to him eagerly. Only his close relatives shrank away. Fulvius was one exception. The first time I ever saw them together I knew that Fulvius and Pa met on equal, equally shady terms. of any place he found himself. In part, Pa was sufficiently insensitive never to worry about whether he was welcome; the rest was winning over startled locals with sheer weight of personality. Strangers took to him eagerly. Only his close relatives shrank away. Fulvius was one exception. The first time I ever saw them together I knew that Fulvius and Pa met on equal, equally shady terms.

I managed to identify the Prefect's admin staff. Most were cl.u.s.tered around Albia. They probably all kept mistresses locally, but a polite girl from home with flowers in her hair was a treat. She was telling them about the zoo. None had been there; they just a.s.sumed they would get around to it later. Who goes out to work in a foreign province and ever sees the sights? Each of the plump women for whom they bought flowers and fancy necklaces was after s.e.x with some clean, virile youth, exciting because he was foreign and because he would be off home by the time they were bored with him. Going out to the zoo when they could be eating pastries in their apartment love-nests and complaining about the weather was beneath such cultured Alexandrians.

As for these young men on the brink of their public careers, they were at least more impressed by an imperial agent than their master had been. One even winked, as if my presence in Alexandria was some insider secret. 'Only a fact-finding mission,' I bluffed - and even that was pus.h.i.+ng it.

'Are you making progress? Can we smooth your path? Remember, we are here to help. 'The old lies were flowing. Every time a new boy came out on detachment, the well-thumbed bureaucrats' lexicon must be pa.s.sed on, along with the inkwells and the petty cash for bribes.

'I am bogged down working on your suspicious death.'

'Oh you you landed that!' Gaily he pretended not to know. landed that!' Gaily he pretended not to know.

'I landed that.' I was grim. 'Actually you could speed my task; something would help me incredibly -' I saw Helena flash approval of my diplomatic phrasing, though she looked suspicious. 'I need to see the financial budget of the Museion, please.' I nearly choked on 'please'. Helena smiled wickedly.

The golden bureaucrat pursed his lips. I knew what was coming. It was too difficult. To know where to lay hands on a doc.u.ment was far beyond the vague, floppy-haired senatorial brats who came out to the provinces. For them, this was a twelve-month posting that would clinch their next move up the ladder. The one I was talking to only wanted to survive it without getting Nile mud on his white tunic. He was here for a year of sun, wine, women and collecting exotic stories, then he would go home to the next elections, taking the lifetime patronage of the particular Prefect he had served and sure of a bench in the Curia. Daddy would have a rich bride waiting; Mummy would have ensured the selected heiress was, or could pa.s.s herself of as, a virgin. The new wife would face a marriage, whether short or long, full of dreary stories about Sonny's triumphal experiences in Egypt, where according to him he ran the place single-handed, fighting off local inept.i.tude and graft, plus the obstructions of all his Roman colleagues. Probably with Barbary lion hunts and a narrow escape from a rhinoceros thrown in.

Think again, highborn aide-de-camp. Who really ran Egypt for Rome were the centurions. Men like Tenax. Men who acquired geographical knowledge, legal and administrative skills, then used them. They would resolve disputes and root out corruption in the thirty or so old Ptolemaic local districts, the nomes, nomes, where appointed locals supervised local government and taxation but Rome was in overall charge. No twenty-four-year-old son of a senator could safely be let loose on embezzled land, sheep-stealing, house burglary or threats against a tax collector (especially if the taxman's a.s.s was stolen or he himself had gone missing). How could this thumb-sucking juvenile decide whether to believe the word of the witness with the scar on his thigh who smelt of sweat and garlic or the word of the man with one leg and a scar on his cheek who smelt of sweat and horses - both speaking only Egyptian, looking s.h.i.+fty and signing their names with just a mark? where appointed locals supervised local government and taxation but Rome was in overall charge. No twenty-four-year-old son of a senator could safely be let loose on embezzled land, sheep-stealing, house burglary or threats against a tax collector (especially if the taxman's a.s.s was stolen or he himself had gone missing). How could this thumb-sucking juvenile decide whether to believe the word of the witness with the scar on his thigh who smelt of sweat and garlic or the word of the man with one leg and a scar on his cheek who smelt of sweat and horses - both speaking only Egyptian, looking s.h.i.+fty and signing their names with just a mark?

'I'll check, Falco. That request might be a smidgeon tricky.'

See what I mean? Useless.

I gave the sign that he need not bother. Quickly, he sidled out of reach.

Somewhere must be a tribune, who was nominally in charge of finance. Better still, I knew from experience, in a small accounts office off a poorly decorated corridor, plying his abacus furiously, would lurk an imperial freedman who could find me what I needed.

'You're tired.' Helena had read my expression. Before we came, I had been allowed to go out to the baths, which enlivened me, but the effect was temporary. On the way here I had given her the gist of my afternoon's investigations so she knew my head was whirling with facts to digest - not to mention our joint experiences at the Board meeting and the zoo. Plucking a triangular cheese tart from a pa.s.sing tray, she fed it to me. Tiny shreds of onion invaded the gaps in my teeth. That would give me something to play with if I was bored.

'Come along; I've found out where the entertainment room is. You can loll on cus.h.i.+ons like Mark Antony and doze off while someone plays a lyre at us.'

Helena jerked her head; Albia shed her covey of admirers and scampered after us. I was sure I heard my foster-daughter mutter 'Prunes!'

'You are talking about the cream of Roman diplomacy, Albia,' I said.

'Not all young men are idiots,' Helena soothed her.

'No; I remain an optimist.' Helena had taught Albia the knack of sounding strait-laced while being satirical. 'Thanks to you, I am travelling large distances and seeing very many foreign lands. I am sure one day I shall meet the only fellow in the world who has a drip of intelligence. I learned today,' breezed Albia, grazing a salver of almond fancies as we pa.s.sed, 'the earth is a sphere. I only hope the one man with a brain has not fallen off the other side while I am looking.'

'You made her like this,' I grumbled at Helena.

'No, the men she knows did that.'

'Your views are just as scathing.'

'Perhaps - but I believe my role as a mother is to instil fair-mindedness and hope. Anyway -' Helena's fine dark eyes gleamed with reflections from many lights on a mighty candelabrum - 'I know men can be good, bright and honest. I know you, dearest.'

You could rely on a Ptolemaic palace to have long, wide, apparently deserted corridors, with handsome statues on enormous plinths and with s.h.i.+ny floors up which you could chase women, sliding along and larking about with squeals of glee.

'There is probably a wily eunuch spying on us!' Helena whispered, pulling up.

'A priestly conspirator, who will send us to a lingering death to satisfy his raven-headed G.o.d's demands!'Albia must have been reading the same myths. She was enjoying herself this evening and darted around us like a scatterbrained b.u.t.terfly. More attendants appeared, so we all slowed to walk more sedately; I placed Helena's right hand formally upon my own as if we were a pair of bandaged corpses going to the Egyptian underworld.

'Nuts, Albia. Your conspirator is going to be that man who lurks outside Uncle Fulvius' house, forever trying to guide us to the Pyramids.'

The women collapsed, giggling, until Albia became serious. 'He followed you and Helena Justina when you went out to the Museion this morning,' she told me, a little anxiously. I had taught her that my work could involve danger, and she must report anything suspicious.

'Uncle Fulvius calls him Katutis.' I never saw him tailing us. We must have lost him along the route. I gave both my girls a rea.s.suring squeeze.

We let ourselves be steered by the hired-in party managers, who shooed us into the great hall where music, dancing and acrobatics were to take place for our entertainment. Half-naked Nubians waving ostrich feather fans confirmed the cliched taste of the current Prefect. Fortunately there was more wine; by now I was ready to drink anything that came along in a goblet.

A large group of Alexandrian gla.s.s exporters had arrived ahead of us and ensconced themselves in the best seats. They were perfectly friendly, however, and happy to move up for a pregnant woman and an excitable young girl; even I got a look-in, because they thought I was Helena and Albia's escort-slave. They were talking in their own language but we exchanged greetings in Greek, then nods and smiles, and pa.s.sed each other t.i.tbit bowls from time to time. Less approachable were a pair of well-dressed women, in attire so expensive they had to keep rearranging skirts and bangles in case anyone had missed their price-tags. They continued gossiping together the whole time and never spoke to anyone else. It could be that one was the wife of the Prefect, or they were just from that tiny top layer of society in Alexandria who were settled Romans. They could not be senatorial, but they were solidly wealthy and incurably sn.o.bbish. Apart from commercial visitors, everyone else here was from the next layer down, either Greek or Jewish - people with enough money and status to become Roman citizens (they had to call themselves Alexandrians). Needless to say, I saw none of the native Egyptians who toiled at useful trades and were stuck fast at the bottom of the social pile.

The two women eyed up Helena Justina coolly. They were absolutely blatant, taking in each detail of her silk gown with its deep embroidered hem, the way she draped her l.u.s.trous stole, her gold filigree necklace with pendant oriental pearls, the gold net with which she attempted to control her fine, flyaway dark hair. She let them stare, murmuring under her breath, 'Right clothes, right jewels - I am doing well - but no; a desperate error! See their fascination dwindling now... Marcus Didius, this is just no good. Your generosity must become much more elastic - I must travel with a hairdresser.'

'You look adorable.'

'No, love - I am d.a.m.ned. Wrong hair!' Wrong hair!'

Albia joined in, exclaiming that n.o.body in polite Alexandrian society would now invite them to a poetry soiree or a mint tea morning. We were shamed; we must go home immediately ... It suited me. Sadly, she was only winding the joke further. Besides, the music was starting. Until we were saved by an interval, we were unable to leave.

More people arrived to swell the audience. Among them were Fulvius and Ca.s.sius, who waved to us across the room grandly. They must have made friends with a flunkey, because extra-plump cus.h.i.+ons in expensive-looking fabrics were obsequiously laid for them to recline upon, while a small wooden table with satyr's legs was positioned before them. Upon this, drinks in elegant cups and saucers of nuts appeared, placed with graceful gestures. My uncle and his partner picked at the saucers politely. They looked as if they enjoyed this kind of attention all the time. Every few moments the saucers were removed and replaced with full ones. Once Ca.s.sius smilingly refused the replenishment and signalled for the little dish to be brought across to my party. We were given more wine, and it seemed better quality. Everyone else leered jealously at this special treatment.

The music was bearable. Jugglers juggled with not too many foul-ups. The room grew warm. My eyes were heavy. Albia wriggled. Even Helena had the set expression of intense interest that meant she was growing restless.

One of the gla.s.s exporters leaned across and imparted eagerly, 'Special dancing!' 'Special dancing!' Bright-eyed, he nodded at the curtained arch through which the various acts were being released to amuse us. Could it be that even at this farthermost point of the Mediterranean, we would find the ubiquitous Spanish girls? Would the sophisticated Alexandrians like their back-breaking romps with tambourines, even though they had the option of scintillating Syrian flute-players, who could whiffle and undulate at the same time? Bright-eyed, he nodded at the curtained arch through which the various acts were being released to amuse us. Could it be that even at this farthermost point of the Mediterranean, we would find the ubiquitous Spanish girls? Would the sophisticated Alexandrians like their back-breaking romps with tambourines, even though they had the option of scintillating Syrian flute-players, who could whiffle and undulate at the same time?

My father shouldered his way through the main doorway, looked around as if he owned the place, then joined Fulvius. Clued in to our presence he gestured towards the arch and jerked a thumb at his tunic proudly, as if whatever was about to follow was his responsibility.

'Are we going to like this?' enquired Helena apprehensively. 'Does Geminus dabble in entertainment, Marcus?'

'Seems so. Is it an advert for his business?' I could picture my father putting on a show that had touts handing the audience flyers for statues that idiots could add to their art galleries. 'Can he be selling cut-price Is it an advert for his business?' I could picture my father putting on a show that had touts handing the audience flyers for statues that idiots could add to their art galleries. 'Can he be selling cut-price moving moving statues?' I groaned. We were in the city where automata had been invented. 'The combination of Pa and the dread words ''special dancing'' suggests we should start gathering ourselves for a discreet departure...' statues?' I groaned. We were in the city where automata had been invented. 'The combination of Pa and the dread words ''special dancing'' suggests we should start gathering ourselves for a discreet departure...'

No such luck.

The audience livened up, full of expectation. Possibly prompted, the Prefect chose that moment to drop in. He and his private entourage now blocked the exit; there they smiled and waited for what was clearly to be the high spot of this otherwise rather staid reception. I hoped whoever made the booking had thought it wise to ask to see a demonstration. If they had, they must have been stuck without a cancellation clause in the contract. Knowing Pa, though, there was not even a written contract. Just some blithe words on his side and a vague understanding of the kind that with my father could so easily go wrong...

Exotic instruments stepped up their fevered beat. Tambourines of a st.u.r.dily non-Spanish kind. Desert drums. The hissing rattle of sistrums. Soft-booted tumblers leapt unexpectedly into the room, leading other performers in odd shapes and sizes. Insofar as they were wearing costumes, these were brightly hued and spangled. Spangles inevitably fell oft. Anyone who knew how to wear a feather in their hair was doing so with panache, even if the routine involved somersaulting in a large circle all around the room. There were child dancers. There was a small troupe of monkeys, some of whom sat in miniature chariots pulled by well-trained performing dogs. The standard was high and, to me, somehow reminiscent of other occasions. Only one of the chariots had its little wheels stick and only one dog ran after a treat someone threw to distract them.

His monkey got him back in line. We were still cheering that when the main spectacle started. A cod Roman general in painted Medusa armour, rather dark-skinned, strutted across the performance area. His scarlet tunic was rucked up. by a rather large backside. He struck a pose, efficiently covering up his a.r.s.e with a luxuriant circular cloak. Next, a man-mountain with a whole amphora of oil splurged on his bulging muscles broke through the curtain. Intimidated, we cheered. Over his shoulder he carried a vast rolled carpet. The carpet looked bedraggled, as if it belonged to a travelling theatre group at the end of a long season touring very hot countries. Fringe hung off one end raggedly. In fairness, it was rolled inside out, as a carpet must be when it is meant to be unrolled as a moment of drama.