Threshold of Fire (10 page)

He snapped his fingers over his shoulder, a signal for the others to follow us. We were standing on the pavement now, among the strolling passersby. I wanted to turn in the direction of the Subura, but
Pylades put his hand on my arm.

“May I offer you a beaker of wine on the other side, in Apicius’s tavern?”

At that moment I should have refused curtly and gone on my way. He filled me with aversion and resentment and uneasiness at the same time, because he had awakened my curiosity. There had to be a connection between his sudden appearance, the cry of “
Munera! Munera!
” and the second entry of Honorius. Yesterday something came within my reach; I don’t know what it is, or whether I should welcome it. There are changes in the air; now the signs must be interpreted.

In the past, when I was in Honorius’s retinue, I was present day in and day out at the spectacles offered by the City to the Emperor in honor of his first formal entry. The performance of this same Pylades, who had the privilege of being the third in a series of illustrious holders of that name, was heralded as a high point of the festivities. And that would certainly have been the case if the passions which it provoked had not unleashed a commotion far more memorable than the spectacle itself.

After a wild ballet of bacchantes and satyrs in an exceptionally sumptuous setting (it was, under the
circumstances, an insane waste of money), Pylades sprang from a litter of interlaced vines: the god of wine, naked except for a loincloth of panther skin and crowned with clusters of grapes.

From a distance he seemed, even more than he did today, to be a youth, an ageless creature; his body quivered like a young tree in the wind; when he moved in a certain way, the gleam that ran over his skin suggested the play of sunlight on water, or light splashing on wind-tossed leaves. He leaped like a deer, stalked like a beast of prey or whirled and swayed in dances which were more sensual and shameless than those of Syrian harlots.

Confusion and disapproval could be read on the faces of Honorius’s courtiers, who had not been in the habit, in Milan or Ravenna, of attending spectacles like this. The situation grew worse when the bacchantes rushed forth en masse onto the stage, stamping their feet and, after having surrendered themselves to lewd games with the god, began to tear at him in a frenzy.

The manner in which Pylades mimed the martyr’s death was incomparable: shaken by voluptuous spasms, while blood from artfully concealed hogs’ bladders streamed over his face and limbs, he fell all
at once into what was finally no more than a shapeless heap of debris. The public on the highest benches roared with enthusiasm; a rustling and murmuring of continual excitement went through the rows of patricians in the lower seats. There were glances at the platform where Honorius sat with his court.

The Emperor was visibly impressed (the eunuchs in Constantinople who had raised him and his brother had spent much time on the formation of his aesthetic tastes, a circumstance from which I too enjoyed the benefits); many of the courtiers and high officials sat with set faces, but naturally no one had the courage to show his displeasure by leaving.

The next number on the program was a gladiatorial combat, trident and casting-net against sword and shield — one of the mass exhibitions in which twenty or thirty pairs were in the arena at the same time, and the victors immediately competed against each other until finally only one of them survived. The spectators, still fired up from Pylades’ performance, cheered on the combatants, shrieking for blood. When the first victims had fallen, the crowd could not contain itself; even the Emperor clutched the balustrade tightly. All around him and his
retinue, who knew how to preserve decorum, tens of thousands bellowed and howled, sweeping themselves into an emotional maelstrom.

Suddenly it was noticed that someone was standing in the arena who did not belong there. It took a few minutes before the gladiators became aware of this intrusive presence and began to hesitate. Some of them let their weapons fall, the net-throwers withdrew to a safe distance. The roaring in the stands diminished. The intruder moved about in the middle of the sand, waving his arms, exhorting the combatants in a voice breaking with emotion. He wore a habit, he was sunburned and unkempt like a hermit come from the desert. Fragments of his argument came through to where I sat; he could not be understood in the higher stands, where people were becoming restless again, the ill-natured restlessness caused by interrupted tension, which quickly reached its boiling point and inevitably erupted into threats and violence.

“Go on! Fight!” screamed the
nobilissimi
in the first rows, while the man below, his arms raised, attempted to drive the gladiators from the arena with a torrent of words. Trainers and overseers came running from all sides, but they could not silence the
monk whom they dared not seize, nor move the irresolute, waiting gladiators to fight again.

Courtiers of various factions crowded about the Emperor, arguing and disputing with one another at the tops of their voices. I could not see Honorius himself, but I had a clear view of the man who bent over him, talking and gesturing fiercely with his long, pale hands: the poet Prudentius, a recent convert to Christianity, bursting with religious zeal and ambition. Everyone knew that the Emperor was not particularly fond of the man and his work, but he did not have the courage to keep him at a distance because Prudentius was a protégé of the bishops.

Stilicho and Serena were sitting on the marble seats behind Honorius. As Prudentius pleaded more and more vehemently for the immediate cessation of the performance, attention in the Imperial company was fastened sharply on Stilicho. Every now and then I caught a glimpse of him through the milling courtiers: erect, motionless, self-controlled, he waited to be brought into this affair; but something in the way he held his head and in the tense line of his neck and shoulders (I was familiar with his reactions) betrayed his complete — although vigilant — absorption in deciding his strategy.

Serena leaned toward him, but they did not speak to each other. She too was vigilant, listening without showing any emotion, but I could see the jewels of her earrings sparkling against her apparently immobile cheek. This time Stilicho made a mistake: in evaluating the situation, he had not taken into account the passions aroused by Pylades’ performance. What he expected — that the Emperor would finally turn to him as usual to resolve the crisis, giving him the opportunity to present Prudentius’s proposal in his own somewhat modified, more diplomatic form — would surely have happened under other circumstances, but then it was too late.

I didn’t believe that Stilicho really grasped what was going on among the eddying mob in the stands. It was one of those instances which I myself had experienced repeatedly in the past — where the intrinsic difference became perceptible between his nature and that of the native-born Romans. He did not realize what was clear to Prudentius — that the monk must, for his own protection, be made to vanish somehow from the arena and that the only way to accomplish that was to call off the gladiatorial contest. Stilicho had no instinct for the cloudy or ambiguous — that was later to be his un
doing. Looking back on that day ten years ago in the Colosseum, I now believe that that was the turning-point of Stilicho’s career and destiny, and that it was an event which had an equally decisive effect upon
my
life.

I remember how I stood up along with the multitude when somewhere from out of the highest galleries a demented horde came pouring down the stairs and over the balustrades and railings, to throw themselves into the arena. To my knowledge it had never happened before that the spectators had actually intervened when something went on in the arena that wasn’t to their taste. It was this fact — that the situation was unprecedented, completely unexpected — that made it so terrifying.

The gladiators and overseers drew back behind the barriers which normally served to protect the public from escaped wild animals. It was only much later that soldiers from the Emperor’s retinue succeeded in dispelling the raging mob, which could not stop kicking the mutilated corpse through the arena. The theatre emptied amidst indescribable confusion. White as chalk, leaning on his bishops, Honorius tottered from his loge. On that same day, he issued the order to ban the games permanently, and
proclaimed the unfortunate victim to be a martyr.

As I accompanied Pylades through the streets behind the Aemilia basilica, it occurred to me that I was walking next to my tangible destiny. I found his mincing gait annoying along with the coquettish way in which from time to time he shrugged his mantle more closely about him. Before he turned corners, he slackened his pace and gestured invitingly to me as if he were a host leading a tour of his property. He didn’t speak to me; the bustle in the street forced us to step aside continually, separating us for some distance. When I looked back I saw the gladiator and the dwarf in our wake.

I knew now what memories, repressed for more than twenty years, determined my attitude toward Pylades. Something about his appearance, his glance, his movements, above all his aura of theatrical make-believe, his capacity for ambiguity, the embodiment of perversity, called up things which I had wanted to forget: old doubts and shame, my life in Alexandria under the roof of my benefactor, Olympiodorus. When I let Pylades lure me to that tavern, I still did not know exactly who or what he reminded me of, but at every step my reluctance
grew. I needed to shake off my uneasiness the way a horse ripples its flanks to drive away stinging flies.

I stopped him on the threshold of Apicius’s public house.

“I used to admire your artistry, but that’s no reason for us to go drinking together.”

“What are you really afraid of?” he asked over his shoulder.

Although the time for the midday meal had already passed, there were still many people eating in the tavern, a natural result of the large turnout for Honorius’s entry. I knew the cellar by reputation; the proprietor had a bad name. The place was murky, like a cave. Reddish smoke hung in the rear, above a row of portable charcoal cookers. I pushed my way to sit facing Pylades at a free corner of one of the tables. The dwarf and the fat man looked for other places. I found it difficult to eat the pieces of meat and fish without bolting them down; I controlled myself mostly because Pylades did not take his eyes off me.

“I still don’t understand why I am being honored,” I said, drinking to him.

“I can see immediately … whether someone belongs with us.”

Carefully, he licked his lips, like a great cat.

I contemplated my beaker without answering.

“Listen, don’t act as if you don’t understand. You’re one of us, you hold the old beliefs, in
Liber Pater
, surely, at the least, in the god who gives himself freely and joyously …”

As he spoke these words, he shoved his beaker against mine so that the wine spattered over the table. Although nothing around us appeared to change, the noise seemed to lessen as if there were secret listeners, as if we were being stealthily watched.

I lifted my beaker and drank.

“Bacchus will never again be more to me than this,” I said, “but that’s not negligible when it’s a question of a decent wine.”

“Everyone here is a good sort.” Pylades was becoming impatient. “You don’t have to try to evade the issue.”

“I don’t equivocate. I say what I mean.”

“But you’re not of … this,” he said. He dipped a finger in the wine and traced a cross on the table top.

I shook my head.

“So, what then?” he insisted, suddenly angry.

“Isis? Mithras? The Syrian gods? Say it! Are you a coward?”

“I’m nothing,” I said, shrugging.

“A philosopher?”

“I feel flattered.”

“And the death then, the resurrection, immortality?”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

Now his face became a mask of resentment; his eyes glittered with hostility.

“I curse your sort, that pride, that superior little smile. They have no need for mysteries, oh no! A rational explanation for every secret, and what cannot be explained does not exist. You go through life deaf and blind. You don’t even realize what you’re missing.”

“Save yourself the trouble. The secrets and riddles of the so-called commonplace are enough for me — and, by the way, I have no desire to solve all of them, even if I were to be granted the ability to do it —”

Pylades tried another tack.

“I haven’t asked your name. Something tells me that in your case it’s not very important to know what you’re usually called. But you can’t fool me, even though you walk around in rags. You’re an
educated man, you belong to a distinguished house. I have eyes and ears for things like that.”

I shrugged. “It’s unimportant, my friend.”

“Do you think so?”

I didn’t like his look — appraising, sly, full of secret satisfaction … a desire to run away came over me: to slip sideways from the bench like a crab, to vanish far from Pylades into the labyrinth of my distant quarter and so to my safe corner in the insula Iulia. But with the man’s infallible seventh sense, he read my intention; before I could move, he put his hand on my arm.

“One word, one gesture from me, and you disappear, quickly and quietly, into the sewer—an intruder who denies the existence of the mysteries, perhaps a potential spy for the authorities …”

“What do you really want from me? In the district where I live, they sometimes call me
Pro
Se
because I never meddle in other people’s affairs. I’m just a seedy clerk. Years before the Gothic invasion, I lost my post and my connections. Now and then I earn a little money giving lessons and writing letters and petitions. That’s all there is to know about me.”

Pylades fingered my threadbare toga and shook his head, smiling.

“You meddle with nothing and no one. But that didn’t prevent your pointing out to my friends and me that we had committed a minor infraction of the law, did it? You would have done better not to have seen us when we came through the wall.”