Colosseum (4 page)

But above all it is his fragile soul that has crossed the desert, discovering itself to be hungrier for life than ever.

Since the night of the massacre and the deportation, only pieces remain of what he was.

Even his voice has been shattered, chewed up by the flames along with his blood.

For four seasons the boy did not say a word, as his jailors changed and the road continued to flow beneath his feet, heavy steps with hardly enough time even to take a piss.

Frontino's legionaries, following the ambush on the village which marked the final conquest of Britannia—and the consequent delivery of the longed-for province into the hands of Vespasian—stayed for a few months in the growing town of Eboracum, future capital of the north, but were soon sent home along with their noble commander. The latter barely had time to unpack before he was sent word that a trireme bound for Asia awaited him, with his wife and servants already aboard. He accepted the position of proconsul with a smile full of gratitude, realizing very quickly that the time for hobbies and architectural contemplation had been pushed depressingly far off into the future.
The Eagle demands total dedication, Sextus—no room for distractions.

The booty from the last night of Ordovician blood—namely the boy and five other battered survivors, three of whom, due to their wounds, did not survive the sunset that followed the massacre—was quickly abandoned to its commercial destiny. At the fortress of Deva Victrix the men were bought by slave merchants headed south, who knew how to look after their investment. At no point during the long journey did the prisoners want for grain or clean water. But in terms of discipline, his new masters were even worse than the bloodthirsty centurions. The boy took a beating that very nearly cost him his right eye for failing to respond when called by one of the merchants, a small, thin man like a shaved monkey. In any case, even the beatings did not convince him to utter a word. On the road that led from there to the sea, the boy spoke to nobody. Nor did he listen to that other voice, the one inside his head. A mix of guilt, anger, misery, and blind rage pressed down on him day and night. He could not face the world, afraid of finding it so changed as to be terrifying.

More than anything though, the memory of the flames stayed with him. The fire, which had magically left the boy unharmed while everything just a few steps from him had burned, had worked its way so deeply into him that it drowned out his soul. During the dark nights of the journey from the provinces to the heart of the Empire, it was not rare for him to wake up screaming, as though a serpent had bitten his heel before wriggling into his innards through his mouth and devoured him from the inside out.

Those were the only occasions when his fellow prisoners heard his voice, which stayed locked away the rest of the time, at the bottom of a heart with no past.

The dream was always the same. He was running and running, but the flames—liquid fire, hot wind, red straw, and smoke—reached him with white-hot fingers, clasping and tearing his flesh at will, consuming it one palm after another: roasted skin, hairs singed like worms squirming away from certain death. His life was burned away but his consciousness was still alive, until the pain became so great that it tore him out of his dreams, catapulting him back into the traveling nightmare that his life had become a few months earlier.

Silence, at that point, had become a blessing, a screen to protect him from the insult of his existence, from the abuse, from the daily violence. The boy hardened, mile after mile, like iron tempered in a furnace and freezing water.

Fortune smiled on him soon after arriving in Gaul: he was separated from the group of slaves and loaded onto a wagon filled with Thracian women. They told him in no uncertain terms, albeit in a language he would not understand until much later on, not to get any ideas. The flesh merchant's two-handed sword, drawn without hesitation, explained better than any interpreter could have. In any case the boy had nothing going through his head, least of all love. The journey became simpler, the scent of women reassured him and kept his senses sharp. Unfortunately, the caravan fell prey to bandits near to Mediolanum. The damned Gauls had never really come to terms with losing their own land to the Romans, and continued to unleash surprise attacks from the high ground surrounding the city in the hope of avenging their ancestors, long since torn to pieces by the Eagle and the She-wolf.

The first to fall beneath the barbarians' axes was the merchant himself, although not without dragging a couple of them down to Pluto with him, hacking at them with fury and the aid of his thirty-pound double-edged blade. The women were seized and raped of course, but set free in the end. Some of them even decided to follow their attackers into the mountains, giving up their freedom for the umpteenth time in exchange for an illusion.

The boy came through it unscathed; a man with nothing to lose dies hard. He did not react to the violence nor did he understand the offers. The only thing he did was to faint after being pummeled black and blue by a couple of brutes. When he awoke, dehydrated and covered in bruises, he followed the fragrance of bread to the outskirts of the city. He did not have the chance to be amazed by the splendor of the
municipium
. Thanks to the thick chains still hanging from his wrists, he had barely left the city when he was recognized for what he was—a body for sale. He was captured once more and thrown into a cage.

A week later the final leg of his journey began, which would take him beneath the sun of Pompeii, two steps from the sea, the air filled with completely new smells. All due to a chance meeting with a certain Demetrius, builder of villas and sub-contractor for public works of some importance, who occasionally made the return trip up the Italian Peninsula in search of laborers.

Demetrius is no slave merchant, but he knows all about getting his hands dirty. His family made a name for itself at Vespasian's court, but his father, when he started out, was little more than a freedman. Before he died, the old man left Demetrius with a small fortune in
sestertii
and some good advice: do not let anyone else take care of your business, even while you asleep. Otherwise one morning you will wake up alone, and there will be no more business to take care of. And so the young man of stone has never lost the habit of staying in control, even if that means spending a couple of months each year traveling up and down the Apennines in search of good workers. Demetrius is an authority in Mediolanum. He has spent good money recently greasing the right palms and knows just who to turn to when he is in need of some first-rate muscle.

He noticed the boy immediately: even in the half-light of the cage he had been flung into by the meat merchant, a single glance was enough to see that here was some unusual merchandise. He bought him for a handful of
assarii
after having a good look down his throat and at the whites of his eyes, just like with a beast of burden.

The boy was taken to a long line of unfortunate men much like him and tethered to the end of a chain of wrought-iron rings. The skillful crack of a whip against the ground told him it was time to get a move on.

And that was that, from Mediolanum to Pompeii. The stops few and hurried, the food nourishing but stodgy, never quite enough water. Demetrius learned from his wise father that a good way of keeping slaves healthy is to cater to their needs without scrimping on the things that build muscle and increase endurance. But woe betide anyone who fills those servile mouths with anything tasty, even on a whim. Or, worse still, anyone who humiliates them by doling out stale or spoiled rations. Many of his competitors do it all the time: they do not take care of the men they have just bought, and end up with their workforce halved by illness and malnutrition.
Slaves are not dogs, my boy. They are lions, donkeys, or tortoises. You can tame them with force, coax them with carrot and stick, or fry an egg on their stony backs. But never let them grow fond of you or you will never get rid of them…
That had been his father's advice. And Demetrius has memorized those words of travertine.

The caravan reached Pompeii in June. The boy was put to work with the other slaves in a quarry. He had to learn fast but he never got into trouble. Apart from his stubbornness: the vow of silence continued. But along the road something had changed in the Briton's mind. Latin, the cursed language of the murderous invaders, no longer sounded foreign. With the constant hum of it in the boy's ears it had planted its eggs, like some damned insect, tenacious and fertile.

The Briton had started to notice it by chance when he turned his head to listen in on an exchange of dirty jokes between two
vigiles
patrolling the quarry. “And so I say to her: ‘Seventy
assarii
to hoist your skirt, my dear? For that amount Oreste would repaint my whole house! Either we make a deal on thirty or you'll have to get hold of a brush and a bucket of paint…' ”

The boy had burst out laughing like a fool, waking up a couple of his companions who had then given him a piece of their mind in no uncertain terms.

Another time, he was standing in line waiting for his rations—hand resting on the hard, dusty bar where the food was doled out—when a tall, well-built Numidian pushed in front of him murmuring: “Get out of my way, you shitty, mangy dog!”

Thus it was that the son of Ordovician blood had broken the brute's nose with a head butt, convincing him to reconsider his manners. But he had not done it instinctively: for the first time, he had calculated his attack, channeling his anger from the affront into his muscles, his veins, his knuckles and the tendons in his neck, building up to the brutal lunge that had put the gorilla back in his place.

Even if the thought of it made him sick to his stomach, Latin had become his new language. There was nothing he could do about it. And that was how, one intuition after another, his silence slowly crumbled.

Behind bars, solitude is a boulder. In the end its weight begins to crush you, day after day. Your bones break apart and hope falters, especially when the obsession with keeping it alive has flickered out.

One afternoon when the sun was low in the sky, hotter than usual, the boy decided that the moment had arrived to come back to the world. It was with difficulty that he addressed his companion. It was the same African whose nose he had taken the trouble to break no more than a couple of months earlier. In all honesty it was not very original. He simply asked: “How are you today?”

The man opened his eyes wide—far too white for that face, as black as night. He thought the boy was making fun of him, but remembered all too well how deftly he had been beaten, so he did no more than scratch his head and stare at the boy in puzzlement.

So the boy cleared his throat and launched into a grammatically perfect series of words, all impeccably pronounced.

“Excuse me, I do not speak very well. I asked you: How are you? But I meant: How are you today, you shitty, mangy dog?”

The Numidian stared at him for a very long time, unsure as to whether he was on the verge of yet another fight or simply facing somebody who had completely lost his mind. Then, when the boy flashed him an ear-to-ear smile and hugged him tight, starting to chuckle like a possessed haruspex, the African relaxed, returned the hug and knew he had found a friend. A pretty strange friend, but a friend nonetheless, by the balls of Hercules!

It was certainly no small thing, beneath the sun in that open-air prison.

When they parted company, the African looked the boy straight in the eyes.

“I am Massinissa. I bear the name of a great king of the past…”

Now it was the boy's turn to scratch his head and stare at his friend in embarrassment. There could hardly be a less suitable name for a slave in chains, he thought, but said nothing.

“And you?”

“Me what?” answered the son of the Island, amazed even more than the Numidian by his own sudden talkativeness.

“What's your name? Me and the others have been betting on what you're called for months! Come on, out with it!”

For the first time since the night of the massacre, the boy found himself face to face with reality: the past is finished, the future stinks, but silence is not an answer.

In that moment he decided he would never turn back. Because old wounds cannot heal.

“The man I was died a long time ago, Massinissa. I no longer have a name.”

The Numidian opened his mouth dumbly. He was not accustomed to complex ideas.

In that very moment Demetrius—man of stone, son of the arts, master of the quarry and of every one of them—approached the group that had suddenly formed around the Briton, who had miraculously regained the power of speech. He placed a hand on his shoulder and said decisively: “Well then we shall have to find you one. It brings bad luck, you know? The gods do not love those they cannot curse by name…”

He laughed, Demetrius. By force of habit Massinissa laughed as well, quickly followed by the rest of the muscle-bound rabble. The only one who stayed silent was the boy himself, his master's hot palm still against his shoulder.

Demetrius turned serious again and said coldly: “You will be called Verus, from this day forth.”

The boy accepted the news as he would a meager win at dice.

Before leaving the men in the dust and blinding heat, his master added: “I had an uncle called Verus. A real son of a bitch. As silent and lethal as a wild beast. Just like you, boy…”

Demetrius disappeared into the long shadows, the men went back to work at a crack of the whip from the guard on duty. The boy reflected on the new life he had just begun, on the name loaded with lies that he had been given.

Verus.
True
. Absolutely perfect for a false name.