Dear and Glorious Physician (40 page)

None of the young men had seen a lady at the distant end of the terrace who had emerged from her apartments at the sound of contentious voices. She had stood there, watching, her beautiful face expressionless in the sun. When Plotius appeared, she retreated back into her apartments, smiling. She went to her mirror and studied herself intently, and hummed a song under her breath.

Nemo assured Lucanus that he was as ‘radiant as a god’ after the bath and anointing, from which Nema was banished, and the garbing in the white and gold garments. Lucanus had dismissed the accolade, though not after a surreptitious glance in the mirror. He was obsessed with a curious excitement. He never admitted it to himself, but the world of men and strange new experiences now invariably stirred him, as though he were newborn. He was about to be initiated into an atmosphere of which Diodorus had spoken with raging contempt. What Lucanus had seen so far had reluctantly moved him to admiration, for his Grecian eye was not insensible to beauty, and his soul was not so stern as to be displeased by the sight of loveliness and grandeur.

Now Lucanus stood alone in the sunset, looking down at the Imperial City from his height in the gardens outside his chambers. The city fell down before him like a dream, purple, gold and violet and white, swimming in a rosy mist through which occasionally ascended a winged statue on its high pillar, an incandescent dome, a snowy wall struck into light by the last beams of the sun, a carved and powerful arch, or the enormous stone fan of a rise of Olympian stairs. All that was unsightly in the city was hidden in that roseate mist which was beginning to flow not only in the skies but over the whole face of the city, so that it was like a diffusion of millions of roses melting into one vast drift through which emerged the shapes of visions. The winding Tiber curved in a vein of polished scarlet fire, pulsing through the soft pink fog, its bridges fragile, seemingly composed of silver and ivory. Even the distant hills flushed faintly and had no substance. And now the columns of the palace about Lucanus lifted in smooth and soaring pearl, their western sides blushing. The sound of near fountains muted to frail music; the birds’ voices murmured in pure reverie. A scent of blossoms and jasmine and lilies suffused itself in the sweet and colored and ethereal air. The leaves of the myrtles gleamed like metal; the grass became an amethystine glisten.

Beguiled, and caught up in the tinted mirage which was the colossal city, Lucanus leaned against a column and listened and gazed. Then he became aware of the voice of Rome, below and yet above the voices of the birds near him. It was like the turning of a giant wheel, a muffled, Titanic thunder, constant and unremitting. Slowly Lucanus became impressed by a very odd perception. Pervading though the voice of the city was, it lacked a certain strenuousness, a certain ardor, a certain intensity, a certain masculinity. Lucanus then remembered what Diodorus had once told him: “It is an angerless city now, a city without manliness or heroism.”

Diodorus, that most angry, heroic, and manly man, had spoken well. The hushed roar of Rome was a surfeited roar. Its imperial splendor and might was a fatness. Monstrous and cruel it might be in its many aspects. But it was the monstrousness and cruelty of an aging man who had gorged himself too well and had forgotten the strength of limbs and the eagerness of the heart. It lay in the center of the world like a bloated if still potent satyr, reclining on a couch of crimson silk and gold, his hand grasping a sword, his other hand wearily lifting another goblet of wine to his mouth, the garland slipping on his head, his heavy chins resting on a bosom swelling like a woman’s.

Angerless. Unmanly. That could be the epitaphium of Rome. It had fallen in no battles. It had won them all. It was the same. Triumph became death no less than defeat. If a man died valiantly in armor on some battlefield of principle or patriotism or in the protection of what he held most dear, then he had not lived in vain. But those who won battles for power and baubles lived ingloriously and died as ingloriously, the object of later satires or a warning to the ages. It was strange that empires never learned that lesson, thought Lucanus. It was strange that men never learned anything at all. All at once, gazing down at the rose-drifting city, Lucanus was filled with a tremendous uneasiness, an ominous surety. He felt that he stood on the abyss of something which he could not yet discern; it was as if something had changed, quickened, from the immense eternities.

The rosy mist over the city diminished. A lilac dusk, like a vast eddy, glided over Rome, flowed into the gardens where Lucanus stood. The moon lifted slowly into the hollow sky. The birds were silenced, the fountains clearer. Nemo touched Lucanus’ arm, and the young Greek started and turned to the slave. “It is the eighth hour, Master,” said Nemo. Lucanus glanced once more down at the city. He murmured, “No. It is the eleventh hour.” A flare of red torches licked up from the violet dusk below, thousands upon thousands of torches like quick and restless tongues. To Lucanus it resembled the beginning of a conflagration.

A few moments later he was part of a white-robed throng of men and women moving through the halls and the vast rooms, which were now lighted with hundreds of lamps. The women walked with hard assurance among their men, for Rome, as Diodorus had bitterly remarked, was now a woman’s city, with arrogant women directing their men in shrill and insolent voices. It was a covert matriarchy, corrupt, selfish, brazen-breasted, insistent, and greedy. It was for Roman women that Roman legions fought; it was for Roman women and their idle bodies that galleons streamed from every port with their burdens of luxuries and foods and silks and jewels. It was for Roman women that the banners burst over cities and towns and the trumpets blazed. They could not invade the Senate, but they were there in the persons of their husbands or sons or lovers. The marts and the markets, feverish with the exchange of gold and the fury of investments, might be sounding with the voices of men, but the strident echo was the echo of women. They owned the wealth of Rome. Their soft brutality sounded in the clangor of the chains of millions of slaves.

As Lucanus walked among the throng towards Julia’s court he was aware that those hastening to the festivities were becoming more numerous. It was as if the statues of gods and goddesses in togas and stolas were leaving their porticoes and niches and joining the men and women, and as if the few who remained in their places looked down with contempt or celestial indifference at the deserters. I have heard only of the world by hearsay, Lucanus marveled to himself. He looked at the beautiful, depraved faces of the women, overlaid with cosmetics; he saw their jewels, their black, brown, gold, or bronze hair held in jeweled nets or bound in ribbons, in the Grecian manner. A mist of perfume floated from their bodies and their garments. Their white or honey-colored necks shimmered with gems, and their glossy arms were circled with gold, and their fingers glittered. Among them were famous courtesans and former slaves freed by besotted masters, and notorious women. It was impossible to tell them apart from the ladies of great houses and of great names. The married women could be recognized only by their stolas from the unmarried, whose dress had a false simplicity, and whose faces were as worldly and as disillusioned as the matrons’ and the infamous women’s. There was not a shy eye, a wondering young smile, or a tender glance among them, only boldness and greed and a looking about to see if they were admired. A high hum of incoherent conversation hovered over them.

The men were no less ambiguous. The senators could be recognized by their red sandals, but Augustale was not distinguishable from gladiator, or freedman from patrician, merchant from men of brilliant name. Lucanus wondered if those who wore the haughtiest airs were not the basest, and if those who were the daintiest might not have risen through fortune from some gutter. Diodorus had often said that Augustus, Gaius Octavius, would never have permitted the lowborn into his palace, no matter his present wealth or position. But his degraded daughter, Julia, wife of Tiberius, frequently declaimed her democracy. To her, she had declared, a gladiator of fame was as welcome as a senator. She asked only that her women guests be amusing, and hinted that among concubines and courtesans she had frequently discovered more wit than among the wives and daughters of noble houses.

Her own father once exiled her for her strumpet behavior. Why he had forced her upon Tiberius remained an enigma, for Augustus had had some affection and admiration for the present Caesar. It was possible that Augustus had believed that Tiberius, cold, just, and noted for his lack of susceptibility to women, and his private virtue, might have a quieting effect on Julia.

The sound of hurrying rose above the strains of distant music. Lucanus caught glimpses of feet shod in silver or gold slippers or jeweled and brocaded material. The men laughed and murmured, staring about them insolently. The white river flowed up a low wide staircase and through long courts. Some of the ladies, in particular, looked at Lucanus curiously through lashes heavily coated with kohl, or smiled at him invitingly. Once he saw a pair of violet eyes startlingly like those of Sara bas Elazar’s, and he was suddenly shocked. Once a profile reminded him of Rubria, and he was shocked again. It angered him that any of these women could resemble the girls he had loved, and whom he still loved. He bent his head so that he could no longer see them. The men darted suspicious glances at him and asked each other who he was. The lamps poured down their shifting light on the throng, and the jewels danced in it, and the predatory eyes.

Lucanus thought: Cicero had lamented that though the forms of the Republic were still celebrated the Republic no longer existed. Among these men and women there was no love for their country, no celebration of freedom, no honor for the mighty dead who had founded their nation and their institutions. Their mouths exhaled perfume from the lozenges they had sucked. To Lucanus they exhaled corruption. All at once he was profoundly depressed. He thought of his home longingly. He had the impression that he was naked in the throng, that every part of him was vulnerable.

A sweet wind blew in his face, and he looked up to see that he was being borne along a vast open portico, where, because the weather was so mild and fresh, the banquet had been laid. The portico looked out on a great garden, decorated with a tangle of shining lights which reflected themselves in the dew on the dark grass. The very statues had been illuminated in various hues so that they stood in colored waters like figures of pale fire. Flowers had been strewn upon the earth, or stood in tall vases, so that the warm air palpitated with their scent. The portico, also illuminated, shone like carved snow against the black sky, and about it had been erected artificial grottoes of mosses and flowers, in which stood the most exquisite statues, slyly beckoning, and glimmering in the moonlight. Musicians played unseen, with flute and harp and lute. The tables set in the portico were covered with crimson cloths, banded with gold, and elaborately embroidered with brilliant threads, and the divans about them were similarly decorated, and waiting. Far below lay the vociferous city, trembling with lamps, the red torches licking, and from it came a distant growling sound like a forest of beasts.

The guests began to seat themselves with much anticipatory laughter, and Lucanus stood, uncertain, near a glowing pillar. He looked at the trees encircling the gardens as if waiting for someone; the branches swung with lamps of strange and fantastic shapes, and the light poured through tinted glass. Slaves, male and female, beautiful as young gods and sirens, and naked as statues, stood waiting for the guests to take their places, the women in chairs of ivory and ebony inlaid with precious metal, and the men on the divans. Lucanus did not know what to do, for all seemed to know their places. The voices of the guests became vehement with excitement, so that the garden and the portico echoed as if with parrots, or lustful monkeys. The music was obliterated; only occasionally, like a harmonious mendicant, was it heard, when the clamor momentarily dropped. The faces of the slaves were impassive and lovely. A bevy of little girls now appeared, to anoint the feet of the guests with balm, and there was an innocence about their nakedness. Stewards appeared, bearing large silver bowls full of snow in which had been inserted bottles of wine, and they poured this into jeweled goblets wreathed with green ivy. The scent of the gold or ruby liquid mingled with the scent of the flowers and the grass. The guests tipped a little wine in libation, and Lucanus remembered the offering to the Unknown God, and it seemed to him that his whole body winced with bereavement and loneliness. He still stood by the pillar. Though the stewards served wine, there was nothing as yet on the silken tables but flowers and goblets. The guests were waiting. They talked of the latest divorces, the latest investments, of the races and the games, and looked to the robed gladiators for comments. Their vivacious chatter, so trivial, so malicious, was as alien to Lucanus’ ears as the chattering of a multitude of raucous birds. He heard famous and ancient names mingled with scandal of the most debauched kind. A great lady, it was asserted with much laughter, had just taken her tenth lover, but this one was a female slave. A girl vehemently asserted that Cupid had visited her one night, and she described the visit with lascivious details. A senator began to quarrel with another senator about his investments in the Land of Israel; he declared that his men had discovered the mines of Solomon. The second senator assured him that he had been defrauded, and that he should bring back his discoverers in chains. A gladiator, gulping his fine wine, declared that he could strangle a lion with his bare hands. Bets were immediately made for the next games.

The air became oppressive; the gardens had a secret and lecherous appearance in the light of the moon. The guests drank more and more, and became restless, and their voices stretched for higher volume. A few ladies nearby eyed Lucanus with sudden interest. All the women had now discarded the classic stola; they sat revealed in the thinnest and finest of colored silks and linens and gemmed brocades, which, though they covered their breasts, revealed every detail of curve and nipple. Their smooth shoulders glistened in the lamplight; their foreheads were damp, their lips becoming more full and lustrous and red. Some leaned from their chairs and reclined their bodies against the men, inviting kisses on throat and shoulder and mouth. Slaves had placed garlands of roses on all heads, and now the perfume of garden and grass and flowers and balsams flowed through the portico. The shimmer of jewels hurt Lucanus’ eyes; the lamps seemed to take on a greater blaze and intensity of hue. He was hungry, and embarrassed in his isolation near the pillar. The music mingled with the fragrant clatter of the fountains, when it could be heard over the voices. He noticed that at the head of the U-shaped table stood a large divan covered with imperial purple and filled with Syrian cushions. So the guests were waiting for the Augusta, Julia. He did not know that it was her custom to permit her guests to become quite drunk before making her appearance, so that the fact that she was no longer young would be lost in a haze. The Alexandrian vases which held the table flowers began to sparkle with too much color to Lucanus. He was very bored. Diodorus had spoken of orgies and ‘debauchery’. It seemed excessively dull to the young Greek. The hoarsening voices of the men annoyed him; the shrill and insistent tones of the women were like the scratching of a fingernail on his eardrums.