Spartacus (35 page)

(“But you and I don’t weep, and some day I will be like you, Spartacus.”

(“You will be a better man than I am. You are a better fighter than I am.”

(“No, I will never be one half of what you are, but I think I fight well. I am very quick. Like a cat. A cat can see a blow coming. A cat sees through his skin. I feel like that sometimes. Almost always, I see the blow coming. That is why I want to ask you something. I want to ask you this. I want you to place me by your side. Whenever we fight, I want to be at your side. I will keep you safe. If we lose you, we lose the whole thing. We are not fighting for ourselves. We are fighting for the whole world. That is why I want you to keep me at your side always when we fight.”

(“There are more important things for you to do than to stand by my side. I need men to lead an army.”

(“The men need you. Am I asking so much?”

(“You ask very little, David. You ask it for me, not for you.”

(“Then tell me it is what you want.”

(Spartacus nods.

(“And you will come to no harm, ever. I will watch over you. Day and night, I will watch over you.”)

So he became the right arm of the slave leader. He, who all of his young life had known only bloodshed and toil and violence, now saw shining and golden horizons. What would be as a result of their rebellion became clearer and clearer in his mind. Since most of the world were slaves, they would soon be a force that nothing could stand up to. Then nations and cities would disappear, and it would be the
golden age
again. Once upon a time, in the stories and legends of every people, it was the
golden age,
when men were without sin and without gall, and when they lived together in peace and in love. So when Spartacus and his slaves had conquered the whole world, then it would be so again. It would be ushered in with a great clashing of cymbals, a sounding of trumpets, and a chorus of all the voices of the people, giving praise.

In his fevered mind, he now heard that chorus. He heard the swelling timbre of the voice of mankind, a chorus that rocked back from the mountainsides . . .

(He is alone with Varinia. When he looks at Varinia, the real world dissolves, and there remains only this woman who is the wife of Spartacus. To David, she is the most beautiful woman in the world and the most desirable, and his love for her is like a worm in his belly. How many times, he has said to himself,

(What a contemptible creature you are, to love the wife of Spartacus! Everything you have in the world, you owe to Spartacus, and how do you repay him? You repay him by loving his wife. What a sinful thing! What an awful thing! Even if you don’t speak of it, even if you don’t show it, nevertheless it is an awful thing! And furthermore, it is a useless thing. Look at yourself. Hold a mirror up before your face. Was there ever such a face, sharp and wild, like a hawk’s face, one ear missing, cut and scarred!

(Now Varinia says to him, “What a strange lad you are, David! Where did you come from? Are all your people like you? You are just a boy, but you never smile and you never laugh. What a way to be!”

(“Don’t call me a boy, Varinia. I’ve proven that I’m sometimes more than a boy.”

(“Have you indeed? Well, you don’t fool me. You’re just a boy. You should have a girl. You should put your arm around her waist and walk with her when the evening is early and lovely. You should kiss her. You should laugh with her. Aren’t there enough girls?”

(“I have my work to do. I have no time for that.”

(“No time for love? Oh, David, David, what a thing to say! What a strange thing to say!”

(“And if no one put his mind to anything,” he answers fiercely, “where would we be? Do you think it’s just child’s play to lead an army, to find food for so many thousands of people every day, to train men! We have the most important thing in the world to do, and you want me to make eyes at girls!”

(“Not to make eyes at them, David. I want you to make love to them.”

(“I have no time for that.”

(“No time. Well, how would I feel if Spartacus said he had no time for me? I would want to die, I think. There is nothing more important than being a man, just a plain, ordinary, human man. I know you think Spartacus is something more than a man. He isn’t. If he were, then he wouldn’t be any good at all. There is no great mystery about Spartacus. I know that. When a woman loves a man, she knows a lot about him.”

(He takes all his courage in his arms and says, “You do love him, don’t you?”

(“What are you saying, boy? I love him more than I love life. I would die for him, if he wanted me to.”

(“I would die for him,” David says.

(“That is different. I watch you sometimes, when you look at him. That’s different. I love him because he’s a man. He’s a simple man. There’s nothing complicated about him. He’s simple and gentle, and never did he raise his voice against me or lift a hand against me. There are some men who are filled with sorrow for themselves. But Spartacus has no sorrow for himself and no pity for himself. He only has pity and sorrow for others. How can you ask if I love him? Doesn’t everyone here know how much I love him?”)

Thus, at times in his suffering, this last gladiator remembered with great clarity and precision; but at other times, the recollection was wild and horrible, and a battle became a nightmare of terrible noise, of blood and agony, of wild masses of men in wild and uncontrolled motion. At one point or another, in the first two years of their revolt, the realization had come upon them that the masses of slaves who peopled the Roman world would not or could not rise up and join them. They had then reached their maximum strength, but the power of Rome seemed to have no end. He remembered, out of that time, a battle they had fought, an awful battle, so great in its size, so vast in the numbers of men engaged, that for most of a day and a whole night, Spartacus and the men around him could only guess at the course the battle was taking. During the time of this recollection, the people of Capua who were watching the crucified gladiator saw how his body writhed and twisted and how white spittle flecked his lips and how his separate limbs jerked in convulsive agony. They heard the sounds come out of his mouth, and many among them said,

“He’s not for long now. He’s pretty well done in.”

(They have taken position on a hilltop, a long hill, a long rolling ridge on either side, and their heavy infantry is spread out on the crest of the hill for half a mile in either direction. There is a pretty valley, with a shallow little river running through the center of it, a meandering little river that curves back and forth, with green grass on the valley bottom and cows heavy of udder munching the grass, and on the other side of the valley, there is a ridge of ground where the Roman legions have taken their position. In the center of his army, Spartacus has established his command post, a white pavilion on a hummock that overlooks the whole area. Here have been put into operation what are by now routine necessities of a battle command post. A secretary sits with his writing materials and paper. Fifty runners stand ready to dash at once to any part of the battlefield. A mast has been erected for the signal man, and he stands by his mast with his variety of brightly-colored flags. And on a long table in the center of the great tent, a large map of the battle area is being prepared.

(These are methods which belong to the slaves, and which they have worked out in the course of two years of bitter campaigning. Just as they have worked out their tactics of battle. Now, the leaders of the army stand around the table, looking at the map, and sifting information as to the size and quality of the force which opposes them. There are eight men around the table. At one end, Spartacus stands, David next to him. Looking at him for the first time, a stranger would say that this man, Spartacus, is at least forty years old. His curly hair is streaked with gray. He is leaner than before, and there are dark circles under his eyes from want of sleep.

(Time is catching up with him, an observer would say. Time is sitting astraddle of his shoulders and riding him . . . That would be a keen observation, for once in a while, once in a bag of years, of centuries, a man calls upon the whole world; and then as centuries pass and as the world turns, this man is never forgotten. So short a while ago, this one was just a slave; now who is there who doesn’t know the name of Spartacus? But he has not had time to pause and fully reflect upon what has happened to him. Least of all has he had time to reflect upon what happened, in two years, inside of him, changing him from the man he was to the man he now is. Now he commands an army of almost fifty thousand men, and in certain ways it is the best army the world has ever seen.

(It is an army which fights for freedom in the most simple and unvarnished terms. In the past there have been armies without end, armies which have fought for nations or cities or wealth or spoils or power or control of this area or that area; but here is an army which fights for human freedom and dignity, an army which calls no land or city its own because the people within it come from all lands and cities and tribes, an army where every soldier shares a common heritage of servitude and a common hatred of men who make other men slaves. This is an army which is committed to victory, for there are no bridges over which it can retreat, no land which will give it shelter or rest. It is a moment of changed motion in history, a beginning, a stirring, a wordless whisper, a portent, a flash of light which signifies earth-shaking thunder and blinding lightning. It is an army which suddenly has the knowledge that the victory to which it is committed must change the world, and therefore it must change the world or have no victory.

(Perhaps as Spartacus stands brooding over the map, the question arises in his mind as to how this army came into being. He thinks of the handful of gladiators who beat their way out of the school of the fat
lanista
. He thinks of them a spear thrown that sets a sea of life into motion, so that suddenly the enduring calm and stability of the slave world explodes. He thinks of the endless struggle to turn these slaves into soldiers, to make them work together and think together, and then he tries to understand why the motion stopped.

(But there is no time for much of such reflection now. Now they are going to fight. His heart is heavy with fear; it always is before a battle. When the battle starts, much of that fear will pass away, but now he is afraid. He looks around the table at his comrades. Why are their faces so calm? Don’t they share his fear? He sees Crixus, the red haired Gaul, his little blue eyes sunk so deep and calm in his red, freckled face, his long yellow mustache curving down below his chin. And there is Gannicus, his friend, his brother out of bondage and tribal brotherhood. There is Castus and Phraxus and Nordo, the heavy shouldered black African, Mosar, the slight, delicate, keen-witted Egyptian, and the Jew, David—and none of them seems to be afraid. Why, then, is he afraid?

(He says to them now, sharply, “Well, my friends—what are we going to do, stand here all day, playing guessing games about that army across the valley?”

(“It’s a very big army,” Gannicus says. “It’s a bigger army than anything we’ve ever seen or fought. You can’t count them, but I can tell you that we’ve identified the standards of ten legions. They’ve brought down the Seventh and Eighth from Gaul. They’ve brought over three legions from Africa and two from Spain. I’ve never seen an army like that, not in all my born days. There must be seventy thousand men across the valley.”

(Always it is Crixus who looks for fear or wavering. If it were up to Crixus, they would have conquered the whole world already. He has only one slogan, to march on Rome. Stop killing the rats and burn down their nest. Now he says, “You make me tired, Gannicus, because it’s always the biggest army, always the worst time for a battle. I’ll tell you what. I don’t give two damns for their army. If it was my decision, I would attack them. I would attack them now and not an hour or a day or a week from now.”

(Gannicus wants to hold it off. Maybe the Romans will split their forces. They have before, so maybe they will again.

(“They won’t,” Spartacus says. “Take my word for it. Why should they? They have us all here. They know we are all here. Why should they?”

(Then Mosar, the Egyptian, says, “For once I am going to agree with Crixus. That is a very unusual occurrence, but this time he’s right. That is a big army over there across the valley and we will have to fight them sooner or later, and it might just as well be sooner. They can outsit us, because they will eat, and after a while we’ll have nothing to eat. And if we move, they will have the opportunity they want.”

(“How many men do you think they are?” Spartacus asks him.

(“A lot—at least seventy thousand.”

(Spartacus shakes his head somberly. “Oh, that’s a lot—that’s a devil of a lot. But I think you’re right. We’ll have to fight them here.” He tries to sound light, but his heart is not light at all.

(They decide that in three hours they will attack the Roman flank, but the battle is joined before then. Hardly have the various commanders returned to their regiments when the Romans launch their attack at the center of the slave army. There are no complicated tactics, no skillful evolutions; a legion spearheads the attack on the slave center, like a spear thrown at the command post, and the whole mighty Roman army rolls to the attack behind the legion. David remains with Spartacus, but for less than an hour are they able to direct a coordinated defense from the command post. Then the fighting is on them, and the nightmare begins. The pavilion is smashed. The battle bears them along like a sea, and around Spartacus a cyclone rages.

(This is fighting. Now David will know that he has been in a fight. Next to this, everything else is a skirmish. Now Spartacus is not the commander of a great army, but only a man with a sword and the square shield of a soldier, and he fights like hell itself. That is the way the Jew fights. The two of them are a rock, and the battle churns around them. Once they are alone, and they are fighting for their lives. Then a hundred men come to their help. David looks at Spartacus, and behind the blood and sweat, the Thracian is grinning.