Threshold of Fire (7 page)

The man must have a boundless capacity for self-delusion. Indefatigable in pursuit of his enemies, those who don’t think like him… He imagines he smells heresy, high treason, even when the air is pure. Always a morbid urge to humiliate those whom he suspects of lacking respect for his own perfection. He has hated Marcus Anicius Rufus since the day twenty-five years ago, when he obtained for me — a budding little poet — a post with real Romans, real aristocrats.

The soldier posted at the door begins to stir, his attention caught perhaps by the immobile figure of the accused who sits with his back turned. The man who calls himself Niliacus turns to face forward again on his bench, stares before him at the filthy, defaced marble of the opposite wall.

Hadrian, the light of Egypt — he was far from being the disinterested protector whom he pretended to be. He had no sympathy, no joy over his protege’s swift rise — on the contrary. The first time he did
what he intended, his interference (Slander? Half-truths? Colored account of a past that even he never really knew?) cost me my friendship with the Anicii. Then came the return of the prodigal son; at least that was the impression he wanted to give. But was Hadrian’s inclination the same as fatherly love?

The marble of the wall, discolored, red-brown and yellow, makes one think of sick flesh. What is going on in his head, Hadrian, now Prefect of the City: does he crave money, property, and above all, authority, because he cannot completely possess certain people, because he cannot impose his will on them? He demands lifelong gratitude, tries to hold a man fast in exchange for one past favor, even when the relationship has been outgrown — that’s worse than stupidity, that’s an outrage!

How refreshing and interesting, above all, how charitable and open-minded — compared to
his
phrases and platitudes — did I find the gruff, often irritable manner of Mallius Theodorus there in the North — a really learned and well-read man — and devoid of any trace of vanity or ambition. The epigram in which I compared the two of them — the uncorruptible dreamer versus the meddling insomniac — was a mistake, caused by the desperate
wish to be free, to prick his thick skin — violently, if need be. Four lines, no more; they all but cost Mallius his life — and cost me more, in another sense. For having written them, the rising poet — which I was then — had begun to weave his own destiny.

I didn’t think about that jingle for a long time after I wrote it, and for a long time after I was elevated above the crowd of Mallius’s connections and entered Stilicho’s powerful retinue. Hadrian — in the meantime dispatched from Milan to Rome under the pretext of a promotion — apparently always carried within himself this injury to his vanity like an open running wound, which would never heal.

In the marble of the wall, a confusion of threads and reddish spots, like exposed bloody tissue.

Ten years ago, only a short distance from here, somewhere in a subterranean vault, seized by desperation and rage, I smashed my fist against the wall. Not because of the sentence I could expect when I let myself be accused of
sacrificium
and
divinatio
… but at the certainty that no one — not Stilicho, not Mallius, not the Anicii, not a living soul in Rome or anywhere — would risk his own skin for me or think of me as anything but a use
fill instrument, amusing company, an interesting connection — now, alas, unfortunately led astray.

Imprisoned between sea and rock without a way out — for he could not follow whoever was calling from afar. The memory of the fear he had felt in his dream fills the Prefect with discomfort. He stands up, walks quickly back and forth; he can’t lose his shadow — the room is filled with the invisible past. The last visit with the condemned man then, ten years ago, a visit prompted by the need to explicate in detail why, after the cruel offense which he, Hadrian, had sustained, he was forced to undermine, systematically, the other’s reputation.

Suddenly the face of the man opposite him — exhausted and dirty after days of detention — flamed with a fierce look which Hadrian had never been able to forget:

“I
have
— haven’t I — asked for forgiveness publicly, in a poem, so that everyone would know about it. An apology in good and proper form. I’ve cringed at your feet like a suppliant. Isn’t that enough?”

Hadrian: What can I do with that? It comes too late. You cannot undo the measureless damage you have caused me with that epigram. I can’t undo the
fact that all of Rome now knows who and what you are: a Jew’s freed slave — and most important — found by me in the most dissolute pagan clique in Alexandria. I spared you during the proceedings. I didn’t mention your real name or reveal your background — nothing about that will find its way into the documents. It would be impossible for me to show you greater leniency. Out of respect for your merit as a poet that silence is accepted, but everyone knows the truth and those who prize the favors of court and authorities and value a spotless reputation, have forgotten that they ever opened their doors to you or applauded your verses.

The unspoken words behind this speech, carefully suppressed out of self-preservation: “I have heard your pleas. Not because they were full of pathos or because you compared me to Alexander, Achilles or Hercules. Not even because you acknowledged my authority before the whole world. Two words have touched me, have roused compassion in me for you:
misererer tuorum
… Have pity upon those whom you own. Because of these two words, I open my doors to you anew, I offer my protection anew. So you know that you have never received more attention from anyone; no one has ever shown you more
affection. I will do my utmost to free you.”

Hadrian did not say these words. Distrust and fear paralyzed his tongue. Distrust: How much of what Claudius said was sincere — how much was just rhetoric and poetic exaggeration? What were Claudius’s real feelings? Fear: if he said these words to Claudius, wouldn’t Hadrian be revealing too much, wouldn’t he be giving himself away? He had no desire to throw off the mask. He could not bear the possible consequences. He stood to lose social standing — he might even have to quit Rome. And there was also the danger that Claudius would reject him, that he would lose Claudius forever.

The lighthouse of Pharos: a warning finger on the horizon, the vanishing coastline of Egypt. On the ship’s after-deck, overcome with emotion (at the leave-taking but even more at the fulfillment of his most fervent wishes: first Rome, then Imperial Milan and advancement), Hadrian swore silently at that time to let the young man at his side share in his glory — as a son, as a brother; to serve the unfolding of his talent, to elevate the soul of the heathen — an indispensable condition to the noble harmony between the two of them.

The Prefect starts up, jarred from his reliving of the past. His clerks, his officers, the herald have made their entrance and taken their places again. How much time has passed since he ordered a pause so that he could examine the confiscated library? He is still not prepared to resume the hearing. They can wait.

He repairs to the room where he holds private conversations. Some staircases and galleries separate him from Niliacus there in the holding room. He knows that he has only to issue an order to the praetorian who has accompanied him and who waits now by the open door. And then? When the man appears before him, huddled in his threadbare mantle?

Hadrian summons Aulus Fronto, the Commander of the City guard. He brings news of what is happening in the dungeons below.

The slave Milo has admitted under pressure that on the evening of the man Niliacus’s first visit to Marcus Anicius Rufus, he — on the latter’s orders — gave the former a book roll from the library which this Niliacus took away with him.

“What text?”

“No text. A blank paper.”

“What then? Go on.”

“It appears that on the day of the entry of our august Emperor Honorius, Marcus Anicius Rufus was protecting the man who calls himself Niliacus from the City security service after he damaged a statue in the Forum of Trajan.”

“What statue?”

“Of the poet Claudius Claudianus.”

The Prefect is silent for a long time. Finally, still seated, he says, “Bring the mime Pylades and his dwarf. Not in the justice hall.
Here
.”

With a grimace, Urbanilla thrusts herself away from the gate behind which Marcus Anicius Rufus’s wife has just passed on her way to the hearing.

“Stuck-up bitch!”

“Shut up,” hisses the dwarf. Now in his Priapus costume in the clear light of day, he looks like nothing so much as a walking cucumber with a red top or an enormous stuffed sausage. He cannot take off the outfit because he has nothing on underneath, not even a loincloth; his face is shiny with sweat; he curses and rubs himself against the wall.

Urbanilla stretches; her naked breasts, with painted nipples, tremble under the five rows of cheap gilt strings. From the corner of her eye she can still see, in the distance, Sempronia at the door which opens onto the galleries of the hall of justice. A matron wearing the same ceremonial dress she had worn when she had received her guests twelve hours earlier, as much in control of herself in the halls of the prefecture as in her own
triclinium.
Urbanilla mimics the gait of the patrician lady and doubles over
with soundless laughter, her hands on her hips.

“Looks like sour grapes to me. Her style — you’ll have it when chickens have teeth. Balcho, give the bitch a kick.”

“If you’ve got the balls to come near me, Fatso, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

“Listen to her — the goddess Ariadne! Get away, you stink of the fishmarket!”

“It’s your disgusting hide you’re talking about — that’s what’s closest to your nose!”

The leader, Pylades, lying full-length on a camp bed, kicks off his stained, wrinkled stage cloak. “Shut your mouth, trash, idiot good-for-nothing….”

The dwarf comes rolling up to him as quickly as his costume will permit to pick up the covering and spread it carefully over the actor’s feet. “Why is it that all at once I’m not good enough for you any more? You’re ashamed to appear with me. You don’t need me.”

“Stop your drivel, I’ve had enough! It’s not normal for them to keep us waiting such a damned long time.”

“The two of us — Bacchus and Priapus — we have to stay together and do our ventriloquist number — that’s always a success…. What good do
they
do us
— that cheap whore and Balcho, that fat ball of grease, stupid as the hind end of a pig — the only thing he knows how to do is gorge himself. We did so well for each other with our own acts —”

“
Our
acts? Everything you do you’ve learned from me. You’re nothing, you don’t know anything, I pulled you out from under the bridges …”

“I’m not grateful enough to you for that? Don’t I do everything — all you need to do is ask? I’m your doormat, your dog. Now you want to tell me to go to hell?”

“Don’t whine! You know what I have against you. Don’t meddle with things that don’t concern you. J give the orders here. No one told you that this time we needed an extra one.”

“But I thought you had the schoolmaster in mind for the goings-on outside in the fresh air, boss. I swear —”

“You’re lying! I had completely different plans, and you just can’t swallow that. You wanted to get him out of the way. That damned venom of yours could cost us our heads. He’s not a tramp; he’s not an illiterate or a runaway slave or a backward yokel who lets himself be led like a cow to the slaughter. How did you get it in your head —”

“But we had to bring the altar and the cocks …”

“That was enough in this case. I had my arrangements.”

“This fellow got on your nerves — admit it, boss.”

“I said that he was hard to catch but I’m damned if that isn’t better than sickly jealous toadying. Anyway, I was just beginning to get a hold on him … with him I could have staged something entirely different from these miserable shows where I run a big risk because of your dangerous stubbornness. Now he can get us into deep trouble.”

“I swear that I haven’t let anything slip. He doesn’t know anything. I haven’t talked to him, I only sent him a message through a third person supposed to come from Marcus Anicius Rufus — it was to lure him into the garden…. If they make him confess the story of the anonymous message, we’re protected and the Prefect will be satisfied. He’ll be able to send all the lords into exile. It won’t be the first time it’s happened like this …”

“Idiot, you want to make everything too pretty! Don’t you realize what it means to be summoned a second time, to be subjected to a new interrogation — this has never happened before! There’s something behind it. The Prefect is suspicious, he’s
interested in this man who apparently hasn’t revealed anything about himself — and he’s given a false name too. And you choose the moment when it’s in our interest to know as little as possible about him — you choose that moment to throw out information about him — to tell where he lives, what he does and exactly what we said to him. Do you imagine that the Prefect will show mercy to informers who don’t understand their business? We’re in for it!”

“What then? What then, Pylades?” pleads the dwarf, now in tears.

The giant Balcho steps out of his corner and runs his hand with lightning speed across his throat, accompanying the gesture with a death-rattle. Urbanilla, screaming with laughter, points at the dwarf. She cannot quiet down. From behind the distant gate a soldier of the watch orders them to be silent.

Urbanilla, child of the City. She cannot remember her parents. She has always lived in the streets, under the bridges or the arches of the aquaducts, roaming from one district to another with groups of homeless people — mostly freed slaves from the provinces come to seek work in Rome; refugees from bordering territories taken over by barbarians; every kind of beggar. There are hundreds of children like her: cast out, left behind, run away, orphaned. Living among grownups, a skittish, hardened mob — street-wise, quick-fingered, with sharp nails and teeth. Their ranks are always being thinned through sickness and accidents; deformed children are seized at once by beggars; the cleverest and most agile end up sooner or later in groups of thieves or bands of acrobats. Half-grown boys and ripening maidens face other dangers: the slave market, the bordello, the press-gang for sailors.