The Confessions of X (25 page)

Perhaps it was the kindness of her words that broke my silence, perhaps the memory of when she reached inside to turn my child so he could be born. The time had come to do what I knew I must do but could not bring myself to do, like a soldier who must tell the surgeon to amputate his sword arm if his life is to be saved.

And so I told her of Symmachus's words and the sorrow I had been harboring burst out and I laid my head on her breast and wept.

Augustine must have heard me for he came running. “What have you found?” he said. “Tell me. What is it?”

I felt his arms about me but I would not look at him. Monica released her hold on me and sat up straighter. I raised my head and looked at her. She nodded.

And so I told Augustine what I had overheard after the dinner and of what Nebridius had said.

He sat down heavily on the bed. “I did not tell you because I knew it would only have caused you grief.”

“Hearing it from that man's lips has caused me more,” I replied. Then when he did not answer, I said in a calmer voice: “What are we going to do?”

“I will resign my post and resume teaching.” As he spoke his
shoulders slumped forward, his arms dangling loosely between his legs. I had seen him look that way in Carthage and Rome after a day of teaching. It reminded me how elated he was when we heard he was to become Orator of Milan, ending the teaching work he had grown to loathe.

When he turned to me he was smiling but in his eyes I saw a kind of hunted look, a despair that reminded me of how he had likened a man to a mule forced to carry a heavy burden against his will.

That he would give up all he had striven to attain and return to the teaching he hated, I had no doubt. But I was equally determined that he should not cripple himself for my sake. His own gift for language—his powers of eloquence and expression—had remained pent up too long. I knew he also hated using his eloquence for the purpose of flattering those in power, but it seemed to me that if he had no outlet for his passion he would go mad.

And so we reached a kind of impasse, Augustine determined to resign his post and I equally determined to prevent him though I dreaded what would follow if I prevailed.

In my memory, that last winter in Milan passed like night when dawn seems impossibly far off. Only once did the clouds part and a shaft of pure moonlight illuminate the darkness.

One morning in deepest winter, we awoke to a strange and eerie light, the morning muffled as if our house lay linen-wrapped like some rare and delicate glass. When we looked outside we saw the world had overnight become a thing of white, soft-swaddled
with all its edges gentled by an endless feathered falling from the sky. It was my first snowfall.

Adeodatus was instantly transformed into a four-year-old boy again and went whooping and sliding barefoot in the courtyard until I called him in and bade him dress and put on sandals and warm socks. Then Augustine and I and Nebridius, arms linked to steady us, followed him outside where children played, their faces ruddy with the cold, eyelashes filigreed with white, as if it were a holiday. Monica watched us from the front steps, calling that she would heat wine, for we would be freezing when we returned. All the unsightliness of mud and refuse, the broken ruts that carts had scored in the spongy ground, the charcoal-streaked roofs, was smoothed away as if a kindly god had expunged the ugliness of the world to start afresh. The trees' stark bones, even the smallest twig, each bore a perfectly heaped molding of itself as if its opposite, a tree of snow, had grown there overnight. In the still and frozen air, the smoke from braziers hung motionless. And lettered on the snowy ground a crazy rune of birds' feet soon smoothed, then renewed, then smoothed again as still the snow fell.

That morning of all mornings remains imprinted on the landscape of my mind—my son running, his breath pluming in the frosty air, the warmth of Augustine's arm, his solid bulk on which I leant.

None of us had ever touched snow before though we had seen it on high mountaintops. Lifting my face to the sky, I felt it settle on my skin like duck down loosed from a pillow. Bending, I scooped it in my hands and offered it to Augustine who licked it from my palms. Adeodatus threw a snowball at Nebridius and Nebridius
chased him down the street. We were laughing, Augustine and I, and for a brief moment, I forgot the sorrow lodged deep inside my heart. Augustine kissed me and his lips were cold but his breath was warm in my mouth.

Then a hail of snowballs rained down on us and we spied Adeodatus and Nebridius crouching behind a nearby wall. Ducking behind the columns of the porch, we fought back, Augustine yelling mock imprecations, I shrieking when snow slithered down the neck of my cloak, my hair and dress now completely soaked, all four of us helpless with laughter. Monica was smiling in the doorway. At last I gave up and sat down on the ground, breathless, freezing in my wet shoes and clothes. Yet I knew this moment, this day, would remain with me forever, perfect as new fallen snow is perfect, as pure as the sound of my son's and lover's and friend's laughter on a snowy day in deepest winter in Milan.

CHAPTER 25

W
hen early spring arrived, I knew the shipping lanes between Italy and Africa would soon reopen. Augustine had recently been given an important speech to write for the emperor and was told by Symmachus that if it found favor, Augustine would be strongly considered for the post of imperial orator, a position that would effectively make him the mouthpiece of the emperor himself. As a woman with child knows her time approaches by the heaviness of the baby within, its stillness where before it was all restlessness, I knew Augustine and I could delay a decision no further.

Nebridius, Monica, and Adeodatus had left the house at dawn, gone for the day to visit an aged kinsman of Nebridius's who was ailing. Several days before, Monica had overheard Nebridius telling Augustine and had volunteered to accompany him.

“I will make him some strengthening broths and herbal remedies,” she said. “And Adeodatus can come too.”

She glanced at me and I knew she was clearing a path for me to be alone with Augustine.

As they were leaving, Nebridius drew me aside. “Do you mean to talk with Augustine?”

I nodded, my heart too full to speak.

“Then remember what I told you. The farm is yours if you should need it. I have only to draw up the papers. Augustine knows of it.”

Before I could reply, he was walking to the door. “We will be home by dusk,” he said.

When the house was empty I sought out Augustine in his study, a tiny windowless room, formerly a storeroom at the back of the house. Standing silently at the door I watched him writing the speech for the emperor. He had his back to me, bent over his desk, papers and books strewn about the floor, for there was nowhere else to put them. I could hear the rhythmic scratching of his pen and feel his concentration like a vibration in the air.

“Augustine.”

He finished writing a sentence and then twisted round to look at me, the remnant of a thought still shadowing his face.

“I need to speak with you.”

He saw at once that what I had to say was serious, for I would never interrupt him for a trivial household matter when he was working. Immediately he laid down his pen and getting up, stretched his arms above his head, bending from side to side. I knew his back had been giving him pain since he began working in this cramped and cluttered space.

“What is it, love?” he asked, taking my hand as we walked into the small living area off the atrium. It was still too cold to sit outside and I had asked one of the servants to bring a brazier in earlier so the room would be warm.

“Sit down,” I said, handing him a cup of wine and honey I had
set to warm near the brazier. There was a cup for me but I did not touch it.

He sat back and crossed his legs, relaxed, looking up at me for I was standing. He patted the couch beside him but I shook my head. I needed to say what I had brought him here to hear before I sat near him. If I felt his closeness, the heat from his body, I would not have the courage.

He was frowning now, tense. He put his cup down on a table and uncrossed his legs. “If you are pregnant, Little Bird, you have no need to fear telling me. I am delighted. I have always wanted a daughter, if you recall.” He smiled but his voice was brittle underneath the lightness.

“I am not with child,” I said. If only I had been, I thought, with a sudden stab of longing. A child I could carry away with me to Africa, a piece of him, a daughter, a piece of my son, a sister, that I could hold warm and tiny and alive in my arms like a newborn kitten.

“We can delay a decision no longer,” I said.

He frowned. “I thought we had settled that,” he said.

“Nothing has been settled.” I began to pace. “You are even now writing a speech for the emperor.”

“What is it you think I should do?” His voice had risen, not so much in anger as in frustration. “I must make a living.”

I stopped pacing and once more stood before him. “Marry,” I said.

I did not mean for it to come out so bluntly, but the word was spoken and could not be recalled.

“What?”

“Marry.”

“We cannot.” He stood and came toward me but when he tried to take my hand, I stepped back. The look of hurt and bewilderment on his face almost finished me. I turned my back on him so I would not see his pain.

“I am not speaking of myself,” I said. “I am speaking of a proper wife for you, someone of your own class. Someone Symmachus and the emperor would approve of.” This last I regretted as soon as it was spoken, the reminder that I was but a poor, journeyman's daughter from the provinces with no dowry, no legal status, not even Roman citizenship whereas he was a patrician's son, known and admired at the imperial court.

He took my arm and swung me around so I was facing him. I tried to twist away but he held me there. “What are you talking about?” he said. “I have never wanted any but you. You
know
this.” He was shaking me, but out of fear not anger.

“You have wanted many things,” I said. “And always when you have them it is not enough.”

He turned away from me then.

“Listen to me, Augustine,” I said, grasping at his sleeve. “You are stuck here. You will never be considered for that post if you remain as you are.” I gestured at the room, at me, at him. “You will be shut out of the highest positions. Positions which you
deserve.
But it's more than that. You cannot go back to teaching because you must write, you must speak. If you cannot use words to speak the truth you will be miserable.”

He gave a despairing laugh. “My God,” he said, “I am caught by my own logic. All those years when I complained of my students,
when we talked of how I could rise in my profession. And this is your solution?”

“It is not mine nor yours,” I said. “It is the world's solution. It is the only solution.”

He turned back to me, his face drawn, drained of color. “There must be another way.”

“There is no other way. For us to love without measure is not enough. The world has a measure. It has weighed us in the scales and found us light.”

He was shaking his head.

“Yes,” I said. “You know it is true. That is why you have delayed resigning your post. You know you cannot go back, only forward.” I caught hold of his sleeve again, desperate for him to understand. “We are not wanting but the world judges us so. And we must live in the world.
You
must live in the world. Do you see?”

A great calmness had come over me now the words had at last been spoken, the permission to the surgeon given, the sword arm amputated. I knew it was a kind of numbing shock I felt, that the pain would soon return tenfold, worse because it was so useless, a pain so utterly without remedy, the phantom pain of an arm that my mind told me was there although my body knew it was gone. Such I have overheard beggars tell each other in the street, crippled legionaries missing limbs.

Like a sacrificial ox struck between the eyes by the priest's sacred hammer, Augustine was silent now, stunned.

I put my arms about him and rested my forehead against his. “Do not grieve,” I whispered. “Oh, my love, do not grieve. I knew what I did when I accepted you. Neither of us could imagine
denying our love for an impossibly distant future. But that future is now here. I chose to do it. I would do it again now, this very instant. Never have I regretted it.” I shook him slightly. “Do you hear me?
Never
. And never have you given me cause. I said then that I did not care what others think of me. That is true. But I care what others think of you, of our son. They think—Symmachus thinks—you are weak to bind yourself to me.”

“I do not care,” Augustine said in a low voice.

“Yes,” I said. “You do.”

“You think I am ashamed of you?”