Spartacus (37 page)
Authors: Howard Fast
Tags: #Ancient, #Historical fiction, #Spartacus - Fiction, #Revolutionaries, #Gladiators - Fiction, #Biographical fiction, #Fiction, #Romance, #Revolutionaries - Fiction, #Rome, #Historical, #Slave insurrections, #Rome - History - Servile Wars; 135-71 B.C - Fiction, #General, #Gladiators, #History
Struggle had been his bread and meat, but now he no longer struggled. Life in him had been a fury of anger and resistance, a loud cry for a logic in the relationship of one man to another man. Some are made to accept and some are unable to accept. There was nothing he could accept until he found Spartacus. Then he accepted the knowledge that a human life was a worthy thing. The life of Spartacus was a worthy thing; it was a noble thing, and the men with him lived nobly—but now on the cross and dying, he still asked why they had failed. The question sought its answer in the confusion of reason that remained to him, but the question found no answer.
(He is with Spartacus when news comes that Crixus is dead. The death of Crixus was the logic of the life of Crixus. Crixus clung to a dream. Spartacus knew when the dream was finished and impossible. The dream of Crixus and the drive of Crixus was to destroy Rome. But a moment came when Spartacus realized that they could never destroy Rome, that Rome could only destroy them. That was the beginning, and the end was that twenty thousand slaves marched off under Crixus. And now Crixus is dead and his army is destroyed. Crixus is dead and his men are dead. The big, violent, red headed Gaul will laugh no more and shout no more. He is dead.
(David is with Spartacus when this news comes. A messenger, a survivor, brings the news. Such messengers have death all over them. Spartacus listens. Then he turns to David.
(“Did you hear it?” he asks him.
(“I heard.”
(“Did you hear that Crixus is dead and all his army is dead?”
(“I heard.”
(“Is there so much death in the world? Is there?”
(“The world is full of death. Before I knew you, there was only death in the world.”
(“Now there is only death in the world,” Spartacus says. He is changed. He is different. He will never be as he was before. He will never have the precious relationship to life which he has had until now, which he had even in the gold mines of Nubia, which he had even in the arena when he stood naked with a knife in his hand. For him now, death has won over life. He stands with nothing in his face and with his eyes full of nothing, and then from the nothing the tears come and roll down over his broad brown cheeks. What a terrible, heartbreaking thing it is for David to have to stand there and watch him weep! This is Spartacus weeping. The thought goes through the Jew’s mind, thus:
shall I tell you about Spartacus?
shall I tell you about Spartacus?
(Because you will see nothing by looking at him. You will know nothing by looking at him. You will see only his broken, flattened nose, his broad mouth, his brown skin, and his wide-set eyes. How can you know about him? He is a new man. They say he is like the heroes of the olden times; but what do the heroes of the olden times have in common with Spartacus? Does a hero come from a father who is sired by a slave? And where did this man come from? How can he live without hate and without envy? You shall know a man by his bitterness and his gall, but here is a man without bitterness and gall. Here is a noble man. Here is a man who in all his life did no wrong. He is different from you—but also different from us. What we are beginning to be, he is; but none of us are what he is. He walked beyond us. And now he weeps.
(“Why do you weep?” David demands. “It will be so hard for us now—why do you weep? They will give us no peace now until we are all dead.”
(“Do you never weep?” Spartacus asks.
(“When they nailed my father on the cross, I wept. I never wept since then.”
(“You didn’t weep for your father,” Spartacus says, “and I don’t weep for Crixus. I weep for us. Why did it happen? Where were we wrong? In the beginning I never felt a doubt. My whole life was for the moment when the slaves would have strength and weapons in their hands. And then I never had a doubt. The time of the whiplash was over. The bells were ringing all over the world. Then why did we fail? Why did we fail? Why did you die, Crixus, my comrade? Why were you headstrong and terrible? Now you are dead and all your beautiful men are dead!”
(The Jew says, “The dead are gone. Stop weeping!”
(But Spartacus goes down on the ground, all in a huddled heap, with his face in the dirt, and with his face in the dirt, he cries, “Send Varinia to me. Send her to me. Tell her I’m afraid, and death is all over me.”)
There was a moment of complete clarity before the gladiator died. He opened his eyes; the focus cleared; and for just a little while he was not conscious of any pain at all. He saw the scene around him plainly and clearly. There was the Appian Way, the great Roman road, the glory and bloodstream of Rome, stretching away northward all the distance to the mighty
urbs
itself. There, on the other side of him, was the city wall and the Appian Gate. There were a dozen bored city soldiers. There was the captain of the gate, flirting with a pretty girl. There, perched up on the edge of the road, were a handful of morbid idlers. Along the road itself there was a desultory flow of traffic, for the hour was already late and most of the city’s free population were at the baths. Beyond the road, as the gaze of the gladiator lifted, he imagined he saw a gleam of the sea in that most beautiful of all bays. A cool wind blew from the sea, and its touch on his face was like the touch of the cool hands of a woman a man loves.
He saw the green shrubs that landscaped the edge of the road, the dark cypress trees beyond that, and northward, the rolling hills and the spine of the lonely mountains where the runaway slaves hide. He saw the blue afternoon sky, blue and beautiful as an ache for an unfulfilled longing, and dropping his eyes, he saw a single old woman who crouched only a few dozen yards from the cross and looked at him steadily and wept as she watched him.
“Why, she weeps for me,” the gladiator said to himself. “Who are you, old woman, that you sit there and weep for me?”
He knew that he was dying. His mind was clear; he knew that he was dying and he was grateful that soon there would be no memory and no pain, but only the sleep that all men look forward to with absolute certainty. He no longer had any desire to struggle or resist death. He felt that when he closed his eyes, the life would go out of him, easily and quickly.
And he saw Crassus. He saw him and he recognized him. Their eyes met The Roman general stood as straight and still as a statue. His white toga covered him from head to foot in its draped folds. His fine, handsome, sunburned head was like a symbol of Rome’s might and power and glory.
“So you are here to see me die, Crassus!” the gladiator thought. “You came to watch the last of the slaves die on the cross. So a slave dies, and the last thing he sees is the richest man in the world.”
Then the gladiator remembered the other time he had seen Crassus. He remembered Spartacus then. He remembered how Spartacus was. They knew it was over; they knew it was done; they knew it was the last battle. Spartacus had said goodby to Varinia. For all her pleading, for all her wild pleading to remain with him, he said goodby to her and forced her to go. She was heavy with child then, and Spartacus had hoped that he would see the child born before the Romans brought them to bay. But the child was still unborn when he parted from Varinia, and he told David then,
“I will never see the child, friend and old comrade. That’s the one thing I regret. I regret nothing else, nothing else.”
They were drawn up for the battle when they brought Spartacus the white horse. What a horse that was! A beautiful Persian steed, white as snow and proud and mettlesome. It was a fit horse for Spartacus. He had shed his worries, had Spartacus. It was not a mask he assumed. He was actually happy and youthful and full of life and vitality and fire. His hair had turned gray these past six months, but you never saw the gray hair now, only the vibrant youth of the face. That ugly face was beautiful. Everyone saw how beautiful it was. Men looked at him and were unable to speak. Then they brought him the fine white horse.
“First, I thank you for this splendid gift, dear friends, dear comrades.” That was what he said. “First, I thank you. I thank you with all my heart.” Then he drew his sword, and with a motion almost too quick to follow, he plunged it up to the hilt in the horse’s breast, hung on to it while the animal reared and screamed, then tore it loose as the horse went down on its knees, rolled over and died. He faced them, the dripping sword in his hand, and they looked at him with horror and amazement. But nothing had changed about him.
“A horse is dead,” he said. “Do you want to weep because a horse is dead? We fight for the life of man, not for the life of beasts. The Romans cherish horses, but for man they have nothing but contempt. Now we will see who walks off this battlefield, the Romans or ourselves. I thanked you for your gift. It was a fine gift. It showed how you love me, but I didn’t need such a gift to know. I know what’s in my heart. My heart is full of love for you. There are no words in the whole world to say what love I have for you, my dear comrades. Our lives were together. Even if we fail today, we did a thing that men will remember forever. Four years we have fought Rome—four long years. We never turned our backs on a Roman army. We never ran. We will not run from the battlefield today. Did you want me to fight on a horse? Let the Romans have the horses. I fight on foot, alongside of my brothers. If we win this battle today, we will have horses in plenty, and we will harness them to ploughs, not to chariots. And if we lose—well, we won’t need horses if we lose.”
Then he embraced them. Each one of his old comrades who remained, he embraced and kissed on the lips. And when he came to David, he said,
“Ah, my friend, great gladiator. Will you stay beside me today?”
“Always.”
And as he hung on the cross, looking at Crassus, the gladiator thought, “How much can a man do?” He had no regrets now. He had fought at the side of Spartacus. He had fought there while this man who now faced him, this great general, reared his horse and attempted to smash through the ranks of the slaves. He had cried out, with Spartacus,
“Come to us, Crassus! Come and taste our greeting!”
He had fought until a stone from a sling laid him low. He had fought well. He was glad that he did not have to see Spartacus die. He was glad that he and not Spartacus had to bear this final shame and indignity of the cross. He had no regrets now, no cares, and for the moment, no pain. He understood that last youthful joy of Spartacus. There was no defeat. He was now like Spartacus, because he shared the deep secret of life which Spartacus knew. He wanted to tell Crassus. He tried desperately to speak. He moved his lips, and Crassus came up to the cross. Crassus stood there, looking at the dying man above him, but no sound came from the gladiator. Then the gladiator’s head rolled forward; the last strength went out of his limbs and he was dead.
Crassus stood there until the old woman joined him. “He is dead now,” the old woman said.
“I know,” Crassus answered.
Then he walked back to the gate and through the streets of Capua.
That night, Crassus dined alone. He was not at home to any callers, and his slaves, recognizing the black mood which every so often came upon him, walked softly and carefully. He had disposed of the better part of a bottle of wine before dinner; another went with his dinner, and after the meal he sat down with a flask of
servius,
as they called a strong date brandy, distilled in Egypt and imported from there. He became very drunk, alone and moodily, a drunkenness compounded out of despair and self-hatred, and when he reached the point where he could only barely walk, he staggered to his bedroom and let his slaves help him into bed for the night.
However, he slept well and deeply. In the morning he felt rested; his head did not ache, and he had no memory of bad dreams which might have disturbed his slumber. It was his custom to bathe twice a day, immediately upon waking and in late afternoon, before dinner. Like many wealthy Romans, he made a political point of appearing in the public baths at least two afternoons a week, but this was a choice based upon politics and not upon necessity. Even in Capua, he had a fine bath of his own, a tiled basin twelve feet square, sunk below floor level, with a sufficient supply of hot and cold water. Wherever he lived, he insisted upon adequate bathing facilities, and when he built a house, the plumbing was always of brass or silver, so there would be no corrosion.
After he had bathed, his barber shaved him. He loved this part of the day, the necessary surrender to the keen razor on his cheeks, the childlike feeling it gave him, trust mingled with danger, the hot towels afterwards, the unguents rubbed into his skin, and the scalp massage which always followed. He was very vain of his hair, and very disturbed that he was beginning to lose it.
He dressed in a plain dark blue tunic, edged with silver thread, and he wore, as was his custom, knee-high boots of soft, white doeskin. Since these boots could not be properly cleaned, and since two or three days’ wear would likely as not splatter them with mud, Crassus kept his own bootmaking establishment where four slaves labored under a journeyman. It was worth the expense, for the picture he made in the dark blue tunic and the white boots was an attractive one. He decided today, since the weather was growing warmer, that he would dispense with the toga, and after he had made a light breakfast of fruit and shortbread, he took a litter to the house where the three young folk were staying. He was a little ashamed and perturbed by his treatment of Helena, and after all, he had promised to entertain them at Capua.
He had been to this house once or twice before, and he knew Helena’s uncle slightly; therefore, the senior door slave greeted him warmly and led him immediately to the plaza, where the family and their guests still sat at breakfast. The blood came to Helena’s cheeks when she saw him and she lost some of her carefully-nurtured youthful composure. Caius seemed genuinely glad to see him, and the uncle and aunt were deeply appreciative of the honor the general was doing them and put themselves out to be hospitable. Only Claudia looked at him shrewdly and cynically with something of a malicious twinkle in her eyes.
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