Threshold of Fire (6 page)

I can never deny that through the Nazarene’s teaching a desire for inner perfection has taken root in the pagan world. But the way in which the doctrine lends itself to a fusion with idolatry and with many kinds of interpretation, the way it has given itself up to an encroaching sectarianism — that is completely alien to me. The faith of my forefathers is determined in itself, unflinching, impenetrable: the only place for Israel is within the boundaries of the Law. Under the delusion that the Writings ordered it, the Nazarene has propagated the faith as if it were a sponge soaking up indiscriminately everything into which it is dipped.

Now take this Hadrian, a man who has
not been shaped by a long tradition of observance of an immutable law. Centuries of superstition are in his blood, blind fear of the beast in men which must be exorcised by magic; awe before the secrets of reincarnation represented by Isis and Osiris; the desire to solve the mysteries of heaven and hell which are propounded by the cult of Serapis … he finally encumbers himself with badly digested book knowledge borrowed from a dozen philosophers and poets. Discontented, filled with insecurity, he longs to quell the chaos in himself. In Christianity, he obviously finds satisfaction for all the good will that is in him, and consolation and hope where insight into himself is impossible or intolerable. Evil is in him no longer; he believes himself to be saved; all around him he sees forms he can combat, cross in hand.

He wants to be a Roman with the cross in his hand: a man of action, convinced of his mission to impose laws upon others. There are no Romans more fanatical than those from outside Rome who have been
converted to the Empire; the greater the distance they have come, the more intense their fervor.

This Hadrian: a man still young, in the prime of his life. Roughly the same age as my son. I hardly understand my son; I have little patience with him. But despite all his shortcomings and weaknesses, he is a warm-blooded man and his standards are human standards. More interested in possessions and profit than in treasures of wisdom, shrewd and businesslike, passionate, sensual. But he knows himself. He doesn’t pretend to be better than he is — the opposite in every way to this Egyptian who is so proud of his piety and integrity, whose contempt for the body and the senses stems from his own secret fear and guilt. He goes out of his way to let it be known that he lives without women and holds fast to the precepts of his faith which forbid sinful thoughts. I have seldom met a man so troubled with desires which he doesn’t dare to acknowledge. Seldom, too, a more ambitious man, or one with so many pretensions. What do I have
in common with him? Why does
he
seek my company when I cannot even talk with my own son?

The Prefect no longer sees the black and white of the floor of the justice hall. Claudius Claudianus. The little Egyptian, Klafthi. The thin brown boy caught in the act of sacrifice among the reeds, grown up to be a student in a toga. Encountered again by accident in the galleries of Alexandria, walking behind a baldheaded teacher of rhetoric. Later, the objections, the self-doubt: is it fitting for a high official, having just had a short conversation with the philosopher and orator Claudianus (a living encyclopedia of art and good taste) — is it fitting for the high official then to address some words equally to one of the philosopher’s pupils? Does one recognize an inferior in another man’s household, a protege whose background and status are obscure?

A trace of a smile appears on Eliezar’s lips when Hadrian tells him about the encounter. Then he says brusquely, “A brilliant student — or so I’ve heard. No, I never see him. He lives with the rhetorician.”

How long — or how soon — after that came those chaotic days when, under the tutelage of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, the temple of Serapis
was stormed and destroyed? Later, witnessing the proceedings against one of the wealthy patrons of the temple (suspected of complicity in certain obscene rites, traces of which have been discovered, supposedly, in the vaults under the debris), Hadrian recognizes once more the student Klafthi among the proteges of this Olympiodorus. Klafthi’s face is narrower, harder; all traces of boyishness have vanished from it, but there remains, more strongly, that look of dark defiance which had struck the Prefect in the canefields. That precise quality — a fleeting waft of wildness and turbidity from the sinking world of paganism — fills Hadrian with dismay and confusion.

Toward Olympiodorus and the handful of unmistakable catamites of his following, he feels nothing but abhorrence; he considers any fate too good for them and hopes that they will receive the most merciless punishment. But he is less sure about Klafthi. Disturbed, upset, he goes to Eliezar to tell him about the situation.

But when it becomes apparent that Eliezar already knows everything, and has known it for a considerable time — the death of the tutor Claudianus, the evil friendships, the temptations of luxury and
licentiousness — Hadrian can no longer contain himself. He bursts out: “And you haven’t taken him away from that? You made no attempt to control him? A member of your household, a subordinate, a foster child — what is he exactly? — delivered over to the heathen?”

Transported by emotion (Compassion? Christian charity?) he paints the corruption that he sees as a poisonous aura surrounding that clique; his agitation grows as he feels Eliezar’s deathly quiet, dark eyes on his face.

“Didn’t you do anything for him? After the incident with the cock, you rewarded him, in a manner of speaking, by offering him an expensive education at the best schools in the city. All right, good — I didn’t say anything. That was defensible — he remained in your service, you took the responsibility. But now you’re willing to put up with this?”

Eliezar (stiffly): Apparently I gave him the opportunity to play a more dangerous game than the sacrifice of a cock. But he chose those friends, that life, himself. He’s no longer a child.

“But isn’t he still under your authority? Doesn’t he still owe you obedience?”

Eliezar makes a tired gesture of rejection. “I have
no control over his inclinations. I let him do as he wishes. After all, he’s nothing to me.
^”

“He’s in danger now of being tried together with Olympiodorus and his circle.”

“Anyone who wants to, may take a hand in his destiny.”

Hadrian personally intercedes for this lost sheep, takes pity on him, takes him into service as his secretary. When, after a long time, he visits Eliezar once more, he says he believes that he has presented an example of Christian charity, and that he has reaped rewards from it. Without exaggerating, he can praise the character and accomplishment of the young man, whose name he has latinized to Claudius. Claudius’s Greek is perfect. He composes excellent letters. He has an obvious literary gift. He writes strikingly beautiful verses and recites them with talent.

“So. A Greek,” Eliezar says; he shrugs, fixing Hadrian with a sad, searching look. “A little Egyptian Greek — there are so many in Alexandria. Does he practice Greek customs too?”

Hadrian stiffens. He hurries to hide his discomfort under a flood of words.

“Every day his Latin gains in force and finesse. He would have an assured future, even in Rome.”

“As an Egyptian Roman then?”

Hadrian, suspecting hidden meanings behind these words, is stubbornly determined to show this skeptic that a soul is capable of change, that base instincts may be overcome.

Time passes. Claudius — who prefers to be called Claudianus in honor of the rhetorician with whom he studied — gradually becomes well known in literary circles. Hadrian’s visits to Eliezar become less frequent. Each time he comes, he offers to bring Claudius with him, but each time Eliezar refuses. He has sat for a long time over a much-admired work of Claudius’s, the
Gigantomachia,
which Hadrian gave him to read. In masterly language, it presents a vision of the sound and fury of the Titans, the ancient inhabitants of the earth, who rebelled against the gods.

Eliezar has never seen the boy since that day when he had stared from the dahabyeh across the water at his bloody palms. He might have brushed past him a hundred times in the streets and parks of Alexandria, may even have looked into his face without recognizing him.

His praise of the poet’s work is measured; he is aware that Hadrian is watching him. One line haunts him: “I shall never hesitate to become the weapon which brings Zeus to destruction.”

When someone is being long sought in the jungle, his footprints and other clues like broken branches tell what sort of start he has had and what direction he is taking. In the same way, Eliezar proceeds — in silent doubt — to read, in the secret language of themes and word choice, the history of a rebellion which is ignorant of its own roots.

He congratulates Hadrian on the results of his intercession and begs to be left in solitude. For some time now he has suffered attacks of sharp pain which the doctors have not been able to relieve.

When, some months later, Hadrian visits once more he is struck by the disturbing alteration in Eliezar’s appearance: this man, who had once been straight as an arrow, sits huddled in the folds of his garments; he is emaciated, withered; his eyes are glassy. The conversation doesn’t flow. After some hesitation (the subject now seems inappropriate), Hadrian reads aloud a new poem by his protege about the Phoenix — dying, its eyes frosted over (Eliezar nods imperceptibly), it mounts its burning
nest, which will be both its grave and its cradle:

In a single flight he soars, the son from the father

Who has begotten himself: between life and life

Only brief torment: a threshold of fire.

Eliezar sits without moving, his averted face in shadow.

Reports: Emperor Theodosius has moved his household from Constantinople to Milan. Administrative reforms are imminent, officials are being summoned from all the corners of the Empire. New appointments have been made. Hadrian is among the privileged; news about his merits and his religious zeal has reached the ears of the Emperor — and his Archbishop. A post awaits him overseas, at the Northern court, where he will exercise the function of Magister
Officiorum.

He prepares to take ship shortly with his staff and his retinue. A last visit to Eliezar: a last goodbye, both of them know it. Eliezar hands him a paper, a copy of a clause in his will:
“Klafthi servus meus liberesto
… that my slave Klafthi shall be free.…

“This will become legal in the hour of my death.
My heirs will not be able to claim him. Don’t say anything to him about this. Promise me. He has never been treated like a slave.”

Hadrian is assailed by mixed emotions. Something in him shrinks back, hides itself at the thought that — if he had known — he could have bought the boy from Eliezar, that the jewel of his personal staff, whom everyone in Alexandria envies, could have been his inalienable possession.

Eliezar senses the other man’s inner turmoil; for Klafthi-Claudius’s sake, he wants no misunderstanding about the nature of his benevolence and the reason for it. He gestures for silence with his sallow, bony hand and begins wearily to say what has to be said.

After the confession he does not give Hadrian a chance to react. The decision has been pronounced but more arrangements must be made.

“In his interest, don’t tell anyone that he’s a freedman. It’s only as a free-born man that he can have the future he deserves. That holds true everywhere, but especially in Rome. He’s a poet, not a clerk. Introduce him into illustrious houses where his gifts will do him justice. I’m thinking of the Anicii — there are two young men in that family who
I have heard are going to receive the highest honor. Let him become their protégé. You’ve made a half-Roman of him — now complete your work. He must not come back to Alexandria. And now one other thing, the last thing that I shall ask of you: swear by everything that you hold most sacred, Hadrian, that he will never hear about his relationship to me and mine.”

Under the spell of those lackluster eyes, Hadrian raises his right hand: I swear….

In the dream, the ship vanished behind the horizon. Whoever abandoned him there had sailed away out of his life, forever. The Prefect has only to close his eyes to stand once more on the marble steps, to hear again the whisper of the wavelets as they come to lick the steps and retreat, leaving a fringe of foam meandering about the tips of his shoes.

Just as the sea, in deepening layers of greens and violet, suddenly becomes an abyss — so those who explore their pasts find, in their memories, chasms of unsuspected darkness.

Silence at his back, the loneliness of the narrow colonnade along the precipice. In his dream, he was
aware, even without seeing it, of the fragment carved in the rock behind him — a hand raised in the gesture: I swear …

The Prefect forces himself to open his eyes, to look directly at the tangible objects of the here and now — the row of empty chairs, for example, opposite him along the wall; the bronze lamps on their pedestals, the patches of glaring daylight behind the arched openings of the windows.

“I swear that I shall pass judgment in the spirit of the law.”

At dawn, before the hearing began, he had spoken these words, the customary oath taken by every magistrate who acts as justice; he had, for perhaps the thousandth time, raised his right hand.

Now as then — thinks the man who calls himself Niliacus — now as then I am condemned to silence. Then, ten years ago, I was silent (or rather, I didn’t deny that I had sacrificed a cock) because otherwise suspicion would have fallen on my benefactor and friend Mallius Theodorus, who had in fact done it.
Now
I’m silent about Marcus Anicius Rufus (who perhaps had, perhaps hadn’t, been about to sacrifice a cock) so that his relationship with me won’t make his burden heavier.

With his face turned toward the wall of the holding room reserved for the humble (after the reading of the record of evidence he had been separated from the patricians), he laughs, a grimace of self-mockery. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from posing a riddle to the Prefect, from sowing confusion in that brain, to leave an impression there which would stimulate further investigation. Why? For the first time in ten years, he finds himself once again face to face with this foolish, this arrogant pedant. He has hardly changed, Hadrian — his hair somewhat thinner, somewhat greyer, his mouth more compressed
than ever, always wavering between affability and disapproval. He plays with his signet ring as he played with it then. No trace of recognition in his look (of course I have decidedly changed) but signs of disquiet, uncertainty, irritation.