The Far Arena (62 page)

'Now I have good news for you. Olava. I have been saving it. I did the
Aeneid
,
the poem you love so much.'

She turned from her driving, even as the automobile went forward.

'You did what?' she asked, shocked, her face confused yet verging on anger.

'I did the
Aeneid
.
I was not going to tell you, but since we are establishing something here, I will allow it. Yes. I did the
Aeneid?

'1 didn't know it was made into some form of play, or that you were an actor.'

'An actor? Never. I did the
Aeneid
in the arena.'

'Really? And how could that be?' she asked with some contempt and amusement in her voice.

'I am glad you asked,' I said. 'We were quite inventive. Dido was a prostitute who could fornicate with bulls, I was Aeneas, and—'

'Stop ...'

‘I
'm going to tell you about the
Aeneid?
"That was not the
Aeneid.
That was using the poem for your own selfish ends. Eugeni, don't you know the poem?' 'I had people who knew it'

'You should know it yourself. It is beautiful. It is such a beautiful poem, such a beautiful language that I could lose myself in it. It was such a danger to my own faith and my service, this love I had. Most look at Greek as the language of arts, but I always loved Latin.'

it was a better performance than the kitchen,' I said with some sullenness.

She said she would show me the Flaminian Way. And while we looked for its entrance, I tried to remember things about the priest - the fisherman. But all I could remember was how happy this made Miriamne, and how the other slaves were happy too, and how she said this ceremony was the greatest gift I could have given her.

In her happiness I knew joy like I had never known before, and I wondered if Olava would be interested or if she cared. I wanted to. tell her, but I was afraid she might ask a cold question about this, and I did not want coldness in this most precious moment.

'Why are you crying, Eugeni?'

'I remember something beautifuL
’

'Will you share it?'

‘I
t was beautiful and tender.'

'Will you share it?'

‘I
was remembering how happy I was in Miriamne's happiness. I lived it again. It may have been the happiest, or one of the happiest, moments of my life.'

Olava stopped the automobile. She leaned to me and kissed my cheek.

'God bless you, Eugeni.'

And I cried some more. 'He did that, too. Peter did. And said that,' I said.

Olava kissed me twice, loud, smacking kisses with much gusto.

'You know, Eugeni,' she said with much joy, 'perhaps Saint Peter has been protecting you.'

'That sort of protection I will live without, because before his kiss, I was a wealthy man. What do I own now?'

'You own time. Look, the Flaminian.'

We had been parked near it. But it was a horror. To describe it as being in disrepair would have been unduly complimentary. Grass grew on its stone. Blocks were worn down. The beautiful, even, smoothed road was gutted beyond belief. Stone had surrendered to time.

But this had been one of the better preserved roads. Some were worse.

'Are we near Vindobonum?' I asked.

‘I
don't know. But we can get books. That would show us.'

It was a moist and warm day. The trees were in leaf and the sky so pale blue, like Olava's eyes, and little puffs of white clouds, like clouds so long ago, hung in the sky waiting for the winds of the gods to blow them away.

'Are you all right, Eugeni?'

'Yes.'

'You look so sad.'

'I am sad. There was a saying that Jupiter blows all clouds away and by that it meant all things bad pass. You see those clouds,' I said, pointing to the sky which this age had conquered, 'they have been blown away and come again. But Jupiter is not here. Nor is Mars. Nor is Apollo. They are not here. Just Eugeni. Only Eugeni is here.'

There were three contiguous latifundia I had owned near here. I was sure of it. Now the town's name was Vindobonum and I had donated the baths there, to the town.

By law, Vindobonum citizens had to return slaves who escaped, and vigilance rewarded is vigilance pursued. I did not know if we were near Surmius, and Olava took me away from the ruined road, and we took other roads. The buildings were old and yet new. And by the features of the people, it looked as though all the slaves had escaped, leaving only occasional Romans.

On toward Rome, but after two days' ride, we came to a town called Assisi, which I was sure was Asisum. The hills nearby were right. The road was the same. I had not owned property here, but I knew the town.

And amid the new rubbish of buildings was the old, faded temple of Minerva tucked in like a precious old friend between two strangers.

Olava warned me not to go in.

'It has been changed. My cult has taken it over.'

'Sacrilege. How dare you?'

'No one worships Minerva today.'

‘
I will.'

'You never did before.'

'I want to now. She is so forgotten. So alone.
’

'I cannot let you do that. I cannot let you make a prayer to Minerva in that temple of my God.'

'I will do
it,' I said pushing her aside. She had good speed and bulk, but she was not athletic, and I pushed her away easily. And she fell. The forum was quite reasonable, surrounded by many buildings, a far finer arrangement than in the northern countries. Yet in this square were the leavings of water here and there. Olava fell in one. And people looked out from windows, for nothing entertains like someone else's distress. I marched forward to the little temple, stripped of much of its external marble. I could feel Olava run after me, clumping along with her big body.

I let her grab me and carried her forward. She held on. Men with broad felt hats came, yelling things. Someone threw something at them. I slipped my blade out of my pants leg. This forum was as good as any place to honour the dead.

It was, of course, chaos. Sister Olava had to put herself between Eugeni and the carabinieri, who thought their size and authority gave them an advantage.

She had noticed that the respect had disappeared with her black nun's habit, to be replaced by a sexual concern, an almost hovering, hidden agenda for bed with so many passing men. It was tiring at first, and somewhat strange, then complimentary, but more often annoying.

Now the carabinieri were at it, going to impress her, she knew, with the way they handled the little man who had thrown her in the puddle. But Eugeni had that blade and what they could not know was that, with all their size and numbers, they would more than likely be only victims, fast and bloody victims in an ancient game for an ancient reason they did not know.

The carabinieri threatened him with gestures. The townspeople, now looking out of their windows around the square, were yelling down. Eugeni was yelling back. It was drama to him.

One carabiniere started to close on the knife. She got in the way. And obviously he thought she was protecting the little fellow instead of him.

Her right hand stinging from where the heel of it had scraped the stone paving, and the mud tasting bitter in her mouth, Olava kept easily in front of the carabinieri with fast moves, which seemed sluggish for Eugeni, who was around her with ease.

Eugeni, apparently feeling the crowd, became someone else again. A grin came to his hard face, so wide it hardly looked as though a mouth could contain it. He made sweeping hand gestures to the people looking out the windows. Some started to clap. Others yelled. He ran to the central fountain, right through the legs of one of the carabinieri.

He leaped on the fountain, then ran around the rim of its basin, then jumped on the back of one of the carabinieri. Olava knew someone was going to get killed. They did not understand he was only exercising them for the slaughter.

They could only think of him as some agile miscreant they were going to fine or jail when they got their hands on him.

The carabiniere Eugeni had mounted tried to spin off. In desperation he lunged backward, but Eugeni was off his shoulders and dancing around. He offered the blade handle first to another carabiniere, running up for support. The man reached for it, and got air, the blade was at his throat, and then it flashed, and it wasn't there again. The people knew a performance when they saw one. The carabiniere, who could have been killed, wasn't.

Two thousand years and a crowd was a crowd, and this man came alive for it. He pretended to fall. He lay stricken, on the stones of the square, until a carabiniere tried to get a handcuff on him. Then his legs closed around the caribiniere's head, and it appeared as though the man were performing a homosexual act, but Olava noticed that the groin area really pressed against the bridge of the nose. The little gladiator would never risk so sensitive a part of his body to teeth.

While hiding this fact easily, Eugeni undulated his body as though in sexual rapture. Laughter filled the square.

Eugeni was up and running, falling to his knees, supplicating the carabinieri until coins rang out, hitting the stones with sharp little pings. People threw paper lire, also, and the carabinieri, no fools, decided to retrieve their self-respect by pretending to be part of the act. They knew he was too much for them.

Olava told Eugeni to give them the knife, and she would get him another. He asked if there would be one as good elsewhere, and she told him there were many in almost any kitchen.

But he would not give up the knife. He made great comic gestures and the carabinieri, now playing along, did not try to take the knife but treated it as a stage prop. For if it were a stage prop and not a weapon, they would not have to risk embarrassment.

And thus they drove from the town and the once temple of Minerva, and Olava, her nerves shredded by these frightening and strange new duties she had, finally pulled the car to the side of the road and told Eugeni exactly what had happened to Christianity. It was about time.

The old gods of Rome were dead. Gone many, many centuries. In its place was Christianity and its many sects, no longer a Jewish sect, but a far bigger religion than the worship of any god Eugeni ever feigned worshipping. Any cult ever.

It was a desecration t
o make sacrifices to Minerva in a Christian church, just as much as it would be to smash a statue of Minerva when the temple belonged to Minerva. Did Eugeni understand?

What, he asked, was her god afraid of? It must be a weak god to be so fearful of one small prayer to Minerva, now dead these centuries.

She knew he was jousting with her, but she could not control her rage. She screamed out helplessly that Eugeni was not cooperating, that he could understand if he wanted to understand, and he wasn't trying. It did no good. He answered that he had made his prayer to Minerva by the little games to mark her passing. She was a nice goddess, he said. Nicer than Olava's god.

She knew this was a challenge, but she was too tired to take it. She found a hotel and begged Eugeni for no more games. He practised shaving with a razor, while she slumped on to the bed and tried to think.

She had no idea what would happen next, other than that it was something she could no more handle than could an emperor with a riot on his hands. Already everything felt beyond her grasp, or even reach, it seemed. She was so unprepared for this sort of test. And in a moment of fury she prayed, not as she had been taught to pray, but as a Roman might pray who had just built a temple to a god and now demanded performance.

God, she said in her mind, you will help me tomorrow because I won't be able to handle it, and I can't handle things right now. So do it. It is a real effort being chaste. But I'll do it. But you've got to help me tomorrow. There's just no other way. I am not getting through tomorrow without your help. So do it. Because your performance has been minimal until now.

Minimal, she told God, and sleep became easier. She longed for morning prayers and evening prayers, and most of all she longed to go to the altar and open her mouth and receive God on her tongue in the form of the eucharist. She longed for people who prayed as she prayed. She longed for the mass. She longed for the convent. She even longed for the familiar acts of penance. This was so hard, and tomorrow would be the hardest

She felt a peace come over her, having given the responsibility for that next day to God. And if anything went wrong it was his fault, primarily for choosing her and giving her this test which she felt was beyond her, especially when it was said he never gave a test beyond what a person could do. The score so far was one dead, one in Russia, probably in prison, and she herself being whittled down to the emotions and stability of a child.