Threshold Of Fire Part 6

"As you wish," he said. "One thing is good - this will not last much longer. A few years more and my consciousness will be extinguished. I don't want to go on witnessing this degradation. Sometimes I think about Socrates - when he was dying, he charged his friends to offer a c.o.c.k to Aesculapius in thanks for the healing, the deliverance, which death would bring to him."

At that moment the door to the tablinum slid open; the slave who had ushered me in asked his master what he wanted. I did not hear Marcus Anicius's reply, and when the man left I started to follow him. Marcus Anicius stopped me. "One moment."

I turned aside and waited. We did not exchange another word. The slave reappeared and handed me a scroll in a cylinder.

I, who have sworn never again to put pen to paper except to teach the illiterate to read and write, behave as if nothing has happened. No, that's not true. It's impossible to imagine a greater contrast between the past and the present. The Imperial clerk, busily composing his work in the palace libraries, a sort of high functionary, official magistrate of the poetic art, no longer exists. I am surrounded by the four walls of my tenement hole. Through the door, which I have to leave ajar in order to get a little light, seeps the stink of pickled fish and of the cesspool beneath the stairs. The G.o.ds of Olympus would not feel at home here.

But what is left to write about, now that the lofty scribbling in the service of the Empire is a thing of the past? I am surprised and disturbed by this sudden need to put into words what has happened to me over the last few days. The silence - the refusal to go beyond the here and now - which has become second nature to me, is broken. I realize that for ten long years I have considered myself to be worthless - if by "myself" one means the series of metamorphoses that I have undergone since my youth, from the barefoot Egyptian country boy to the famous writer of flattery whose verses were as stiff with glittering metaphors as his tunics were with embroidery, and, finally, the pedagogue, under his various surnames, who teaches the seedy residents of his quarter to read and write.

Everything is immediate and inevitable, as well as richer in possibilities, viewed from street level; he who stands on a pedestal does not see what is happening at his feet. The sausage makers, tanners and blacksmiths in the Subura react no differently from the occupants of the palaces of the clarissimi and ill.u.s.trissimi - except that the former do not have the slightest interest in hiding or disguising their feelings; they curse, kick, kiss, weep, scold, with complete abandon. They lack self-control because they have not learned to think about it. But at least with them one does not find the hypocritical exploitation of self-control which often follows awareness of it. Their hatred, as well as their affection, is expressed openly, with noisy violence; but it is less dangerous than intrigue.

As I write these words, one of the innumerable daily disputes is exploding on a lower floor; the stairwell is filled with the screeching of women and children and the sound of dishes breaking. At moments like these I do perhaps look back wistfully at the cool galleries and cypress-lined avenues where once, in tranquility, far removed from filth and discomfort, I could ponder appropriate metaphors for a panegyric. But this is reality, this has given meaning to my life. My place is here in the ant hill of the Subura-thanks, perhaps, to what I carry within me without conscious memory: the life experiences of my parents and grandparents - slaves, tillers of the soil of the Delta or the Fayyum, accustomed to windowless mud huts and the stench of the dunghill.

My twilit room is stifling; my few possessions (a little cheap paper, writing gear for teaching, a lamp, a winter tunic hanging from a nail in the wall) are also the only moveable objects in the room: the stone bench serves as bed, chair and table. It has been ten years since I last held in my hand anything as luxurious as the volumen in which I am now writing. I can't eradicate the seal, in the upper left-hand corner, stamped with the initials of Marcus Anicius Rufus.

I should perhaps have turned tail, should have bolted from the procession when his cortege was moving through the Forum of Trajan. I knew that the confrontation with him would be an ordeal in many respects. I thought above all of the possibility of being recognized, of an unexpected reaction on my part. At the same time, I wanted to be recognized. But whatever I had expected, it was surely not this: a scroll of blank parchment between two ivory cylinders - a gift that was a challenge, a goad. And my response to it was the feverish urge to consign to that parchment the experiences, minute by minute, of a single day - the day of the second entry of Honorius.

There was a singular element of repet.i.tion in these events, as if I had lived through them once before. I know why: what happened to me was part of a network of various possibilities which, in the days of fame and tranquility, I had rather playfully envisaged. I had asked myself, when I was proceeding to the Forum at the Emperor's side during his first entry, how that magnificent spectacle should strike me if I were watching it as a disillusioned outsider. And when the Roman magistrates unveiled my statue in the midst of the immortals, I saw in my mind's eye that marble in ruins, that place empty.

Stilicho and Serena - they seemed to me to be demiG.o.ds, the most powerful people in the realm of the Emperor Theodosius. When, on the recommendation of Mallius Theodorus, I was appointed to Stilicho's personal staff, I obtained a privileged post. I lived in Milan, in his house which was part of the Imperial palace. The old Emperor doted on his family: always, wherever he was, he was surrounded by relatives. He looked upon his niece Serena as his own daughter and therefore on her husband as his son.

It was claimed later that Stilicho had cleverly exploited a private conversation with the dying Emperor to have himself named guardian to Theodosius's two sons - seventeen-year-old Arcadius and ten-year-old Honorius. There were no witnesses; no one could disprove it. Rufinus claimed the guardians.h.i.+p of Arcadius and dominion over the Eastern Empire, but everyone knew that Rufinus was a scoundrel. Even if it were true that Stilicho had contrived his appointment, he was still in the right: he acted in the spirit of the Emperor who had lived long enough in Constantinople to be well acquainted with the courtiers and eunuchs - their appet.i.te for luxury, their corruption, their mutual spitefulness - and who wanted above everything to maintain the unity of the Empire.

Although he was widely respected and admired, Stilicho was not loved. Many of those who praised him the loudest - because they needed him - must actually have hated him. He gave an impression of infallibility; he never seemed to make a mistake and he appeared in complete control of every situation - people will not forgive such perfection. He was in perfect health, indefatigable; in middle age, he still looked like a young man. And, in addition, he had a disarmingly naive air that had often struck me among people of his race. He had the easy manner of a man of the world; he had, after all, grown up in a villa on the Bosphorus, near the Eastern capital where his father was a military functionary at the Imperial court.

His hair and eyes were light, but he had the smooth brown skin of a Greek, not the Vandal's ruddy complexion. He spoke Greek and Latin without an accent; I believe he could not understand his father's language. I used that in a poem as an argument defending him against the repeated accusation that he maintained secret contact with the chiefs of the Vandal hordes on the Thracian frontier.

He never allowed himself to appear ridiculous; he had an undeniable air of authority. There were many who resented that: one of the deepest grievances against him was undoubtedly the fact that it was impossible to look down on him, even though he was of foreign origin and h.o.m.o novus. His worst enemy could not accuse him of stupidity.

In Stilicho I saw the embodiment of what, since my childhood, I considered true masculinity, qualities which I myself aspired to: calm courage, self-a.s.surance without bravado, a dislike of deceit and corruption which was genuine and not rooted, as with so many people, in hypocrisy. What has been called his "twisting and turning", his unpredictability, came, I believe, from the nature of his intelligence. He saw everything in a wider context than most people; his idea of reality encompa.s.sed much more than the narrow reality of others.

When I first came to Rome, I thought that currents of opinion and political factions should be easily recognizable. I did not have the slightest idea of the diversity and complexity of the possibilities for and against the Emperor's policies, for or against the Church, for or against what you will. Those who are friends and companions today become sworn enemies tomorrow and vice versa. Personal feuds transcend group interests. Words and deeds are seldom in accord with each other.

Stilicho had continually to deal with all those personalities and all those opinions; to become explicitly involved in those relations.h.i.+ps and internal situations was self-defeating; the only result could be deadlock. One made oneself vulnerable when one supported one man or one party. But as important as all these things seemed (because one was close to them), they hardly counted for Stilicho in comparison with real problems: how to prevent the threatened rupture between the Occidental and the Eastern Empires, how to stop the aggressive barbaric tribes on the northern frontier from taking advantage of unrest at home. He was able on short notice to bring opposing factions together so he could resolve difficulties as quickly as possible. There were few who understood this, and later, after his death, there were fewer still who appreciated what he had accomplished in spite of everything.

Time after time he was frustrated by treachery, lack of understanding, born stupidity or the blind hatred felt toward him by members of the Senate and the court. Without lightning-quick responses and an ability to take the long view, he would not have been able to succeed as often as he did. And it was those who were closest to him (Theodosius, Honorius, Serena and, in a certain sense - alas! - I myself, his personal poet) who were the first to oppose him.

I have never been at a loss for words, but a feeling of impotence verging on despair seizes me whenever I attempt to express the complexity and ambiguity of my att.i.tude toward Stilicho. I wish that I could be dignified and pragmatic as a true Roman and declare my deep-seated allegiance to everything clear, correct and well-ordered ... and I wish that the intellect and the ability to integrate and deduce that I owe to my Greek education had granted me the calm certainty that, under the sun that lights the world of mortals, everything can be explained. But I am neither Roman nor Greek.

Although Serena was small and slender, she was imposing because of her bearing and her choice of dress and ornaments. It is impossible to imagine greater elegance. She aspired to perfection in everything that she undertook. She had a pa.s.sion for beautiful and costly things (a characteristic that had brought Stilicho more than once to the verge of bankruptcy). In addition she possessed naturally what Proba, the mother of the Anicii (often considered her rival) had never succeeded in acquiring, despite her zealous efforts: a strong apt.i.tude for learning and fine taste in the arts.

He who has never seen Serena reading or playing the zither, leaning back in her chair amidst flowering oleanders, the asymmetrical folds of her gown - in crocus yellow and violet - flowing from shoulder to hip, from knee to foot; with cameos at her throat and in her hair - he who has never seen Serena thus will never be able to appreciate the inordinate grace of a Roman n.o.blewoman. However one could not call her amiable in the usual sense of that word. She was royally generous to her favorites, royally harsh toward those who no longer pleased her, royally capricious and royally self-willed about those whims, as if she were the only person in the world.

Some of her friends, after they had become Christians, decided to convert their property to cash and give it to the poor. Without hesitation, Serena offered a fortune for their palaces, parks and art treasures. But at that moment Stilicho did not have the requisite amount of money; he was forced to break the bargain. It was he who was blamed, while Serena was forgiven in advance.

Then there was the affair of the Magna Mater. Did I plant that outrageous notion in Serena's head? Once, half in jest, half from a desire to flatter her, I said she was the only woman on earth worthy of wearing the priceless necklace which, on ceremonial days, decorated the neck of the G.o.ddess.

At that time there were many who, influenced by the bishops, openly voiced their suspicions of Stilicho - he was suspected of being in league with Eugenius, the candidate for emperor of the non-Christian party - and conspired to destroy him. After Eugenius was defeated in a brief campaign (Theodosius's last), Stilicho had to prove his loyalty to the Christian party. Serena, who from childhood had stayed on friendly terms with the families of non-Christian Senators, received her customary invitation to attend the annual festival of the Magna Mater as honored guest.

She went there and sat in the front row, wearing a rich garment; it was noted that she wore no jewels. At the highest point of the ceremonies, she stood up, took the five-strand golden necklace from the statue of the G.o.ddess and hung it around her own neck. Those who were present said later that all the women were paralyzed with terror and remained frozen in their places. Serena walked out of the temple, followed by her companions.

I saw her coming from where I was waiting with the rest of the retinue of Stilicho's household. She was white as chalk; her eyes were gla.s.sy; she was propping up the necklace with both hands to ease the weight of those rows of heavy golden beads. What could one read in her face? Pride, defiance, understandable excitement, perhaps even the awareness that she was more beautiful than ever with this ornament which no mortal woman before her had ever worn. But she looked like a corpse, like her own ghost. Her face resembled the face that I recognized in horror many years later, in the b.l.o.o.d.y debris nailed to the Aurelian wall.

At the time I heard some wors.h.i.+ppers of the G.o.ds say that in perpetrating that shameless theft, she had drawn the executioner's axe to her own neck. What is certain is that from that day forward many very influential Senators nourished a deadly hatred toward her; others, who were not attracted to any particular form of religion and who understood her secret motivation nevertheless openly deplored her lack of tact. All the blame was flung at Stilicho, although it was said that he had not known what she was going to do. But the result of that bizarre act was the opposite from what she had intended: the Christians mistrusted Stilicho more than ever.

Nearly some ten years later, with her sharp feminine intuition, she had a presentiment which no one - I least of all - had even dreamt of: that my luck had changed; that I had become a millstone around Stilicho's neck.

I was known far and wide as Stilicho's poet. Anything that put me in an unfavorable light had to hit him twice as hard. His attempt to come to an accord with the neighboring Goths (he knew that Rome stood no chance in a war) had shocked both Honorius's Christian and non-Christian advisors into frantic opposition. Serena understood that at that moment Stilicho could ill afford a scandal centering around his eulogist. With the resourcefulness and energy that was characteristic of her, she succeeded in recruiting a bride for me in Libya (a respectable distance from Rome) along with a position there: the first was a guarantee that I would not abandon the second.

She caught me off-balance with these accomplished facts. Her att.i.tude was affable but relentless. Stilicho was with the court in Ravenna; I have never known whether he was aware of this plan of Serena's. In a final attempt to soften her, I dedicated a poem to her in which I thanked her for all the favors she had shown me and pleaded for the opportunity to return to the city. Something must have leaked out about my imminent departure: not long after that, I was arrested. While I write, I am struck by the form of this essay: I am writing it as if it were a letter (as I presently write so many letters in the names of others - relating experiences, arguing, explaining) to a reader whom I do not know. Is this perhaps myself? What do I have in common with the man who vanished ten years ago in the dungeons of the prefecture? Who was Claudius Claudia.n.u.s?

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: who, what? An exceptional mastery of the poetic art. A mind steeped in the exercises of the Progymnasmata of Libanius. An imagination which accepts confinement to stated themes and prescribed forms. A luxuriant vocabulary, a striking ability to improvise. An ideal product of the schools of rhetoric in Alexandria.

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: ten whole years - no more - reckoned from the moment I set foot on the sh.o.r.e at Ostia to the moment at which I was condemned to vanish from society. An existence by the grace of those whose praises I sang. I myself not to be found in any of these verses, unless in the personages of Stilicho, Serena, Honorius, Rufinus, Eutropius, Gildo, heroes and villains into whom I blew the breath of life; or behind the allegorical figures, the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, the whole mythological puppet show which I gathered around my human subjects in order to elevate them above a drab, unheroic reality.

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: A moment of awakening, once, on the Alpine slopes, at the first dazzling sight of ice. A frozen mountain stream, crystal fringes hanging from the rocks, chains of cold lace - this made me aware of what poetry really is: living emotion, rendered in a form allied to ice; flowing, elusive, imprisoned in something hard but transparent, colorless but reflecting all the colors in the rainbow. Before this s.h.i.+mmering display, I stood as if I were nailed to the earth. From that moment, I no longer believed in what I did whenever I put pen to paper.

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: he who, despite all this, continued to write verses. Betrayal of the ice crystal of poetry. At the same time betrayal of something else: of the bright inner lucidity from which poetry springs. From the ice cold clear light, I turned back to Milan-on-the-plain. I forgot what I had discovered - worse still, I repudiated it.

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: the ambitious, zealous architect of a composition in black and white about the power struggle between the western and the eastern parts of the Empire, Stilicho against Rufinus. I put my imagination at the service of politics. In order to justify Stilicho's angry aversion to the praefectus praetorio Orientis, I inflated Rufinus's hatred for Stilicho to the dimensions of a natural catastrophe. I convinced myself as I wrote. Once convinced, I set out to win over others. The verses, recited in the Senate and the court, copied and disseminated, had a great success. On the authority of Claudius Claudia.n.u.s, Rufinus was referred to far and wide as a monster.

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: when, far away in Constantinople, Rufinus was murdered by a handful of soldiers, torn apart and the pieces carried through the streets for the edification and amus.e.m.e.nt of the populace - the head here, a hand there - I used this nasty story in order to praise Stilicho once more. The result was a storm of rumors: Stilicho had had his most dangerous rival in the Empire put out of the way.

Precisely because I did not believe for a moment that Stilicho was really involved in the murder, and because I was convinced (by whispers among some insiders) that other enemies of Rufinus had cleverly exploited the prevailing mood, I decided to make a virtue of necessity and give Stilicho the full responsibility for the a.s.sa.s.sination. I considered it an audacious move. In order to present that act as acceptable, necessary - even righteous - I needed only to paint in the blackest colors the abyss of depravity which had engulfed the late Rufinus and others - still living, no less dangerous rulers - in the Eastern Empire and elsewhere.

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: he who had taken a step on the road from which there was no turning back. When G.o.ds fall from their pedestals, those who have created those G.o.ds cannot watch with impunity. The day would have to come when I would realize that Stilicho was a man like other men, not the Apollonian upholder of justice and order which I had made him seem, the hero without fear or blemish; that he could make mistakes, sometimes had unclean hands and often remained silent when frankness would complicate the situation.

There did indeed come a time when I could no longer swallow this behavior of his because it cast a shadow on the image which I had shaped in my poems and in which I actually believed. In the epic climate of my verses he might be the avenger who had saved the world from Rufinus: but in reality I could not bear the idea that he had most probably given the order for the murder when he learned that others were plotting to do it. There was no certainty of this, all suppositions were possible, but especially those unfavorable to him. However, he still elicited admiration; he could not be accused of deceit, even under the surface. Everything was different from what one believed. This put my occupation in a different light. He appeared to shake off these dark questions with ease; they clung to me.

I could not in fact forgive him for that, any more than I could forgive Serena for the coldness at her core, her calculating nature - this was the creature whom I had once glorified in an ode: "O maxima rerum gloria! O glory of the world!" I doubted Stilicho and Serena, but I went on putting my work at their service. I did not succeed in detaching myself from them with the ease with which they later rid themselves of me. My statue had already been erected in the Forum of Trajan.

Claudius Claudia.n.u.s: This marble doll, a symbol of the poetic spirit, bore only a surface resemblance to the crystal of poetry; in substance it was colder and harder than the Alpine ice.

The condemned man who was taken under military guard beyond the hundred-mile marker outside Rome, was no longer Claudius Claudia.n.u.s - nor was the tramp who, under cover of the chaos created by the Gothic occupation, returned to his beloved City.

And after that? After that I (the unknown, the nameless, born on the banks of the Nile) began to learn what life is. No theory, no convention, not the formality of court life where (as any keen observer can see) anarchy prevails. Ordinary people: men who practice their trade in the workplace as long as it is light, who make good use of years spent in their youth learning to earn their bread: tanning hides, woodworking, beating copper, painting, firing pots, boiling garum from fish, weaving cloth. Women who bear children in the caves and cellars where they live, suckle and feed them and do household tasks until the children in their turn stand in the workplace. That is daily reality for the people of Rome.

Since I wanted to make use of the veneer of culture which I had been able to acquire, I opened a school to serve these people. I offered them my ability to set thoughts on paper. I have not been unhappy - on the contrary - but perhaps I should have been because I realized that one man, by himself, cannot alleviate the ignorance - occasionally amusing but nearly always distressing and sometimes even frightful - of thousands of people.

Whenever I emerge from the Subura, I see the villas of rich Christians and I come across a procession led by a priest who is transporting the recently exhumed remains of another holy martyr to one of the basilicas or to a hastily constructed chapel. I can hardly believe my eyes. I ask myself, why this feverish pursuit of the bones of idealists when one could, day after day, hour after hour, make practical application of that idealism by helping to bring about a decent existence for those ragged fellow-creatures huddled in the rat's nest of the Subura? Of course the very poor can be recruited as converts, not by giving them food, but by tricking them into believing that if they pray to the earthly remains shut up in a sarcophagus or shrine (whether these are actually the remains of real martyrs is another question), they can bring about miracles.

I am well acquainted with a handful of Christians here in the quarter who condemn this abuse of credibility (pointing out that it is no different from the most blatant superst.i.tions of the past). These are people whom I respect: they don't make a display of their convictions, but they live their faith. Nothing human is alien to them, and they are unusually cheerful and self-disciplined. I believe that they are much more concerned with examining their own souls than with converting their neighbors. I have no access to their religious life: they do not volunteer any information. It's possible that they are Arians and therefore prudent out of self-protection. But they do not hide: in case of need, they never refuse a call for help.

The Church, with its impressive rituals and clouds of incense, plays no role here in the Subura; no more than the practices of the anchorite, that other emblem of sanct.i.ty which is becoming more popular every day. If by chance a monk strays from his cloister or a hermit from his cave, and finds his way to this part of the City, he is jeered at and spat upon because he has fled from the world and has chosen to live in wanton filth.

Life here does not rise above the level of the rooftops; it consists essentially of the pavements, the sewers, the stained and moldy walls, constant din of voices, peddling and squabbling, shrieks of pain and of laughter, stink and smoke, darkness behind the doorways, garbage and stray animals, swarms of adults and children. If this sort of existence changes at all, it changes very slowly. Disruption from outside too, has very little effect here. When the Goths were in Rome, they left the Subura alone. Here I am no longer in the present; I am outside time but up to my neck in material reality. I know so well the power of need; the all-consuming search for basic necessities.

For the first time in many months, I left the labyrinth, impelled by curiosity. Honorius went by, a voice cried "Munera, Munera!" between the temples, and suddenly everything changed.

Of course I was followed on the way back from Marcus Anicius's house. Again and again something rustled behind me in the darkness and shot away at an angle whenever I looked back. At first I took it to be a stray dog, but it may well have been the dwarf. When I was leaving the bathhouse yesterday at noon, the fat wrestler popped up out of the crowd at me: I must go with him whether willingly or unwillingly; Pylades wanted to speak with me. I thanked him for the honor and escaped into the bustle of the streets.

Then today the actor himself appeared at the shed next to the fruit market where I was teaching. I let him wait in the hope that he would soon tire of it, but an hour later he was still there, sauntering among the watermelons. In order to get rid of him, I offered him a drink. In the tavern he came out with a proposal: he was looking for an educated man capable of delivering introductory remarks and reciting poetry during his, Pylades', solo performances as the blind Oedipus, Hercules in the burning s.h.i.+rt, the enraged Ajax, Achilles mourning the death of Patroclus.

"I can dance and sing, but I am no intellectual," he said, with false modesty (his eyes remained calculating). "What I need is a man of education and refinement, with the appearance of a philosopher. I'm certain that I've found him."

I reminded him that nowadays only jugglers performed in the theatres; I thought that he was making fun of me. But no.

"In private houses, of course. The authorities allow it. There's a great demand for it. We must manage somehow with whatever is possible: the pay is good."

"I do useful work in a literary area that brings me enough to live on."

"A select public, of literary connoisseurs, or just newly-rich ignoramuses, who are ready to pay for a grain of culture. But always grateful listeners, often in the long run valuable connections, more than ever now - if you see what I mean. In the works of the great poets, the G.o.ds still live."

"It doesn't appeal to me."

"You're accustomed to quite a different life from this."

"I'm satisfied."

"I'm not," he said, with sudden ferocity. He moved nearer to me and lowered his voice. From close by, I saw his wrinkled skin, the black smudges under his eyes. The odor of his pomade was so overpowering that I had to turn away from him.

"I now have a company - what I call a company. The dwarf, the fat man, a girl I picked up in the street. You've seen me perform in the past ..." He put his hand on my sleeve; there were tears in his eyes - a genuine reaction, for the first time. "Can you imagine what it means to me to have to work - when work of that kind is possible today - with a bunch of freaks that don't know the first thing about any of it? I am a professional person and what I am doing now has nothing to do with my profession. I am betraying the artist I once was. It's betrayal enough in my field to grow old, to become decrepit. I am a perfectionist; there is nothing I find so humiliating as being forced to give third-rate performances simply because my troupe doesn't measure up. I spend hours working to prepare myself, I tune my instruments, swallow honey to make my vocal cords supple, do my exercises, paint a mask on my face. It is my practice to leave nothing to chance. But that monster, and the wh.o.r.e, and the fellow who's only good for strong-arming people - they have no conception of finesse. This is eating me up."

"I wouldn't be any better at it than they are, believe me."

"The great cla.s.sic works, without vulgar sensationalism; the solo mime in the style of the golden age - that's what I want to bring back. I'll drop the troupe. If you lecture on the text, explaining and making connections -"

"That's absolutely out of the question."

"I can force you to do it," he said, with sudden venom.

"I don't believe that."

"Don't be so sure of yourself. It could be in your own best interests to do what I ask of you. There are greater stakes involved here than just mine, that's all I can tell you right now."

I thought that this was enough, and I left him. He called something after me but I could not make it out.

A couple of days pa.s.sed. Yesterday, when I came home toward evening, I could hear the rustle of the straw mattress behind the door to my room. I pushed the door open but at first in the half-light I could make out nothing. Then I saw someone sitting on my bed. As I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the lamp and struck it into flame, I demanded that the visitor identify himself. Breathing and rustling, but no response. The wick flamed up.

A woman was huddled in the farthest corner of my couch. I saw, between the reddish strands of hair, the pale gleam of her arms and shoulders, and lower, her palla, which had slipped into a muddle of saffron-colored folds. I asked her what she wanted, why she hadn't replied. She made no sound, but glowered at me from behind her hair. I took her arm to pull her out of the corner; her clothing glided still farther down her body. She kept staring at me, with a mixture of defiance and distrust. She gathered her garments about her - or appeared to, for I had the impression that she was baring herself with every movement. I recognized her now; she was the woman I had seen in the public house on the day of Honorius's entry, the mistress or accomplice of Pylades and his cohorts. I was angry because I saw through this new scheme: since neither promises nor threats had worked with me, they had sent me a woman, thinking that I, poverty-stricken and long in the tooth, would be so eager for her free favors that I would not be able to resist yielding to them.

"Get out of here or I'll throw you out!"

I expected her to curse or spit as she had the first time. But she said nothing, drew up her shoulders, and then looked suddenly helpless and forlorn as she groped for her sandals on the floor in front of the couch. I felt the same pity for her that I feel for the grimy children on the staircase of the insula, who creep up to me to show me their scratches after a scuffle or a beating, or to beg a crust of stale bread.

"What's your name?" I asked, pus.h.i.+ng one of her sandals toward her with my foot.

"Urbanilla," she said, sullenly.

"Urbanilla, I don't want you. Tell that to Pylades. He must leave me in peace."

She stooped to fasten her shoes, looking at me over her shoulder. Eyes like stone. The flame of the oil lamp trembled in a draught, shadows moved like dark water over her back and thighs, over the curve of her arm, coming to rest on the edge of the couch.

It was as if I saw, against the backdrop of the plaster wall, a sphinx or harpy from the house of Olympiodorus in Alexandria; one of the life-sized female monsters now become flesh and blood: an ageless face, a blind stare, half-open mouth filled with darkness, a torso with youthful b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the lower body fallen into folds and coils which evoked the indistinct forms of plants, billows, animal claws.

These rapid metamorphoses overwhelmed me: first a vulgar streetwalker, then a helpless child and finally something inhuman in human form, a ghastly visitation in the night. I had felt successive aversion, rage, and compa.s.sion looking at this creature on my sleeping bench; but all these emotions left me - what remained I cannot describe.

The girl herself was not aware of these metamorphoses-I knew that, of course. She was like clay, or wax being shaped without her own partic.i.p.ation, in a form she could not understand. I saw in her everything that could lead a man to ruin: not seduction in the erotic sense, for what was there before me did not promise the satisfaction of l.u.s.t. It was something else, more than that: the temptation of the unknown, the pursuit of self-created danger, the irrepressible desire to penetrate into regions where the borders were blurred between cruelty and pleasure, life and death, man and beast.

If I had taken that woman at that moment, I would perhaps have been able to drive away the images which swarmed around me, incoherent as dreams or drunken visions, offering the unheard-of, the never-seen... Unequalled power over the powerless, the possibility of frightful suffering consuming the entire world and all the creatures in it. I can't put it into words. I don't know why, I shuddered as if I saw before me a field gnawed bare by locusts, a mutilated, depopulated city; or, again, a mob of escaped slaves (I saw them four years ago when the Goths took Rome) seeking out their former masters to wreak vengeance on them for ill-treatment and humiliation. I remembered the face of Persephone, abducted by the dark G.o.d: beauty touched by death in the full bloom of life. I saw the Medusa head of the murdered Serena, stuck on a spear above a Rome fallen into decay.

Now in daylight, it seems to me absurd - clearly insane - that because she scowled at me, because she bent over to fasten her sandals, a creature like Urbanilla could be raised to dizzying heights as the embodiment of a choice for or against humanity. This lasted, it is true, for only an instant. As soon as she stood erect, she became a young s.l.u.t like hundreds of others who stroll about in the Subura, indifferently flaunting her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s while slowly lifting her skirts. "What do you want from me?" I asked harshly, in confusion.

"Ask the boss," said the girl, shrugging, before she disappeared.

Recollection of things long forgotten. Once in the reed-lands, I had cut off the head of a c.o.c.k. A cruel game, a senseless, horrible act. The thras.h.i.+ng and fluttering of the vigorous animal in my grasp, his hoa.r.s.e shrieks and later the jerking of that headless body, gave me a thrill of curiosity, dislodging something in me - I don't know what - the desire to prove my power, to test the limits of endurance, to fill a black void with violence? Much later, at the house of Olympiodorus, I had had the same feeling; only there I was the c.o.c.k, the object of oppression, who struggled in desperate panic. The only witnesses, the stone harpies. I realize now that this time of darkness affected, in the ensuing years, my closest friends.h.i.+ps, thwarting them, undermining them. Concerning men, I knew no middle way between hatred and hero-wors.h.i.+p; one woman, Serena - who belonged to Stilicho - I elevated to the role of celestial mother: the others I mounted in cold, heartless l.u.s.t as if they were the sphinxes on whom I must avenge myself.

The Works of Claudius: lifeless ornamental plants, artificial vines in the darkness.

This afternoon, in the crush of the fruit market, someone nudged me and whispered, "Marcus Anicius Rufus asks that you come, about the fifth hour after sunset; it is very urgent!"

I could not overtake the man.