The Dream of Scipio (57 page)

“My friend . . .” Manlius said, resting his hand on Felix’s arm.

“You are no friend of mine. A man of honor would have preferred to fight to the last, side by side with his friends. Not sell them into slavery to save himself and his estates.”

“The way is open for you to bring troops from Italy. Did you find any?”

“There is no time now. The moment Euric hears the Burgundians have moved, he will move as well. He must. You know that, don’t you?”

Manlius nodded.

“Not that it will concern you. You will be safe, all your lands protected by Gundobad.”

“And if I hadn’t? What then? Do you seriously think that even if you had a year, or two years, you would have found any troops worth having?”

“Yes.”

“You know there are none. Any you found would have put up a paltry show of fighting then joined the winning side. And the Goths would have destroyed everything in vengeance. As it is now, they will be blocked. The sea on one side, the mountains on the other, and the Burgundians on the third. They have to keep moving. Eventually they will wither and die.”

“And will anything be left when they leave?”

Manlius shrugged. “There is a chance.”

“Yes. There is one chance.”

“What do you mean?”

“A show of strength, to demonstrate that we are not to be walked over. If we can throw back the Burgundians, then Euric will think twice about trying as well. He is besieging Clermont still. He cannot commit his forces to little wars all over Gaul. It will give him pause. And in that time we can raise troops from somewhere, even if we have to melt down every statue in the land to pay for it. That is our chance. Give me your aid, your money, and your men. We could leave in a few days, you and I, and others would join us.”

“I have already given my word.”

“The Bishop of Vaison gave his word. After tomorrow, you may not be the bishop. You have called a meeting. Very well, then. We will see who is the more persuasive.”

Manlius nodded, distracted by the noise of two slaves standing nearby, hewing at a log with a long-handled axe.

“We must not argue now,” he said sadly. “Too much is at stake for heated words. Let us pause and think, and talk again later.”

 
 
 
OLIVIER COLLECTED the authorization from Clement’s secretary, dictated brusquely and signed with a blotchy blob of wax, then ran off to the section of the palace that was being used as a prison. He stood there, haranguing the guards as they shuffled about, unlocked the door, and let the prisoners out, their release as abrupt and as unexplained as their initial incarceration.

When she came out, dirty and disheveled, she looked confused, uncertain, and frightened, not knowing whether she was being released or taken off to be tortured or killed. Then she turned, ever so slightly, and saw Olivier. She couldn’t even smile, she just ran to him and gripped hold of him so tightly it seemed that they must become one person, inseparable and indistinguishable. He bent his head down and smelled her hair, felt it against his cheek, rocked to and fro delighting in her touch. Neither said anything; even the guards stood back and let them be.

With the greatest reluctance, they had to pull apart; such moments do not last in this world, they merely offer a hint, then are whisked away.

“You are free. I’ve come to take you away.” It was all he said; he had used up all his poetry and needed to say nothing else. “Come quickly.”

The old rabbi, standing by and seeing all, needed little encouragement. He had no idea what had happened to him; it was what Christians did. He sought no further explanation. Philosopher he was, but no fool; he now wanted to get out of the palace and the town as swiftly as his old legs could carry him. He had no money, and no donkey or horse. Weighed down with books and manuscripts—for these he refused to abandon—the three of them walked up to the ground and out into a courtyard. It was still morning, a fine and beautiful day, the most beautiful there had ever been.

They walked slowly through the streets of the town until Olivier made them sit down and wait while he ran to find a donkey. As he left them, he was overcome with a fit of shivering despite the heat of the morning sun. The realization of what he had done came over him like a sickness, and he felt the chill of loneliness. He was alone, and without any protection. He had no one to go to for help. As he walked he felt hunted already, knowing that retribution would be swift and hideous. He dared not go back to Ceccani’s palace, his home for the last ten years, but could not behave as Pisano had done and run away. He wanted to, though, wanted to race across the countryside as fast as he could and catch up with his friend Pisano. Then they would journey to Italy together, and Olivier would—what? He did not know; all he knew was that the greater the distance between himself and Avignon, the safer he would be.

But what of his other friends? What about this woman he had fallen in love with, and her master, grumpy and ill-humored though he was? If he left, they would die sooner or later, and it says much again for the limitations of Olivier’s vision that this was the way he saw it. If all the Jews died, so would they. He was making no grand gesture, did not want to guarantee his own eternal fame. He did not even want to save the Jews; they were not his business. All he wanted to do was make sure that these two people were not harmed when they deserved to be left in peace. A foolish, wasteful, and futile gesture; even he knew that.

He came back with a donkey, after giving all the money he had in exchange. He walked it back to them in bare feet, and helped load Gersonides’s books—he was coming to hate books, he thought as he struggled to tie them in place—then the old man himself. And he handed the halter over to Rebecca.

“Leave the city immediately. Do not go home, or anywhere where there are Jews until you are sure you can do so safely.” He said it brusquely, without detail. He knew that if he started talking to her properly, he would never be able to stop.

“But you are coming with us?”

“I have things to do here.”

“What things?”

He shrugged. “Important things. Things which don’t concern you. I would like to go but I can’t. And you must. It is too dangerous to stay here.”

“No,” she said. “You have to come, too.”

He turned to Gersonides, sitting as patiently on the donkey as it was bearing his weight. “Sir?” he appealed. “Tell her to go with you.”

“I think it would be best, my dear,” he said gently. “Olivier will no doubt race to catch up once his business is done.” He looked at Olivier and saw there was little chance of it, whatever he had planned.

“Of course,” Olivier said stoutly. Then he moved over to talk to him quietly.

“You will make sure she stays with you and doesn’t come back here?”

“Of course. A counterfeit Jew can die as readily as a real one, I think.”

“I cannot say goodbye to her properly.”

The old man nodded. “Probably not.”

Olivier smiled. “Goodbye, sir. I think you sense how much I have valued knowing you.”

“No. But I will comfort myself with guessing until you return.”

Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something.

“That manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement. That action is virtuous only if it reflects pure comprehension, and that virtue comes from the comprehension, not the action.”

Olivier frowned. “So?”

“Dear boy, I must tell you a secret.”

“What?”

“I do believe it is wrong.”

 
 
 
 
JULIEN COULDN’T SLEEP, of course; there was never any chance of it. Instead, he walked around the apartment, so beautiful and usually so reassuring, but found no rest or respite. Not that he was thinking; a dullness had settled over him the moment he was told that Julia had been arrested, and had never lifted. He had not thought or felt anything since then. He found himself looking at the four pictures she had given him so proudly, so full of promise; she had solved her problem, but he had not managed to find any answer to his own, and she had now paid the price for it. His understanding, such as it was, only came when she was taken. Marcel had been right, of course; just as Pisano had turned the blind man and the saint—Manlius and Sophia, as he now thought—into Olivier and the woman he loved, so Julia had found her solution by continuing what he had done, transforming them once again into herself and into him. A triple portrait, around the same theme: making the blind see.

He looked out the window, hoping for distraction in the ordinary bustle and movement of the city, but there was virtually none. No people walking up and down going about their business, most of the shops shut. Only one car, its driver leaning against the bonnet smoking a cigarette. Where did he get that from? Julien thought. And he looked again, more carefully, and realized.

Friendship had its limits. Marcel had sent the police to watch him, make sure he didn’t try to leave and warn Bernard. He was to be, once more, an accessory to a murder. The realization snapped him awake; he could feel the surge of thought through his mind as he grasped what was going on. He had not gotten to the station on time, managed to achieve nothing to save Julia. But he could at least refuse to accept this as well.

He made his preparations quickly; changed his clothes, put on his stoutest shoes, ate what little food there was in his kitchen—some olives, a piece of hard, dry bread, a tomato, a small piece of cheese; they had all been there for a week or more and were scarcely edible. Drank a glass of wine that was close to being rancid, and wondered if he had ever had a meal that tasted quite so unpleasant.

Then he left the apartment, walked down the stairs and into the courtyard. There was a high stone wall that separated the house from the one behind; too high for him to climb. He went to the concierge and asked to borrow a chair.

“I am going to climb over the wall and go into the next street. There is a policeman outside. I want you to do something for me. If he asks, say that I went upstairs to go to sleep. Say I have not come down again and you have not seen me since. Will you do that?”

The concierge nodded, a little twinkle in her eye. Her husband, he knew, had spent years in jail for robbery before he had died; she herself had been in enough trouble with the police over the years for her nearly to have lost her position when one of the building’s occupants discovered it. Julien had argued for her to be left in peace. Had she ever done anything wrong? Then let her be. She knew of it, and was grateful.

“You’ll never make a good burglar, Monsieur Julien, if that’s what you’re thinking of doing. Best give it up before you get into trouble. Some people are just not made for it. My Robert, now, he was hopeless, so I know.”

He grinned at her. “I’ll bear it in mind. And I’d better go.”

“I’ve not seen you. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t talk to a policeman even if my life depended on it. Never have. Don’t hold with them.”

He nodded, and climbed the wall, making such a bad job of it that the last thing he heard as he fell heavily to the ground on the other side was a sarcastic cackle.

Then he started walking, passing through the gates of Avignon as the sun was beginning to set, doggedly pounding along the road as it grew dark. He reached Carpentras at about one in the morning and thought of stopping for a rest, lying down somewhere for a few hours’ sleep, but kept going; he had had enough sleep in his life and needed no more. Instead he headed north, and as dawn broke he passed close by the hill with the shrine of Saint Sophia at the top.

He was far too early to go to his house; Bernard was not due there until the afternoon. So he climbed the hill and took refuge in the place where Julia had been so happy. As he reached the top and saw the chapel nestling in its little copse of trees, he saw also the bits and pieces she had left behind the last time she had been there—a bundle of papers, an old tin can she used for washing her brushes, a scarf she wrapped around her head to keep the sun off. Julien picked it up and felt it, then put it to his face and smelled her for the last time. And her smell finally made him break down as he had not managed to do before at the train station, or with Marcel, or in his apartment. There he had still been in command of himself. Now he was no longer; he sank down onto the grass, his whole body shaking and his whole mind overflowing with grief.

It was only the heat as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the realization that time was passing, that eventually forced him to banish all such thoughts; but when he finally stood up he had accepted that she would not come back and he would never see her again.

He went into the chapel and looked at the pictures she had studied, and saw them through her eyes. He looked at the picture of the blind man and Sophia, her gesture so tender, his so responsive, and saw again how she had made it her own. She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set free. The immortality of the soul lies in its dissolution; this was the cryptic comment that so frustrated Olivier and which Julien had only ever grasped as evidence for the history of a particular school of thought. He had known all about its history, but Julia knew what it meant. He found the realization strangely reassuring; she, it seemed, had come to understand everything that Sophia had tried and failed to teach Manlius, and which he had never understood himself.

Did that make it any better? Did it lessen the horror of what she was enduring? Or of how he had contributed to it? Of course it did not; nothing ever could. She was on a train, in the hands of monsters, and while she journeyed to her death he sat here, looking at pictures. Julien had sunk into complete impotence, where he had nothing left he could do. Everything he had ever thought or learned, all his tastes and cultivation had gone, stripped away by this one fact: She was gone, and he could not prevent or change anything that was to happen.