The Kingdom of the Wicked (40 page)

       'I heard you yesterday. I look forward to hearing you on the Sabbath. Not that I'll be easy to convince. This is my wife, Priscilla.' A smiling woman with a superior air about her, rinsing a cloth on to the pavement. 'This is Paul, who preaches the Nazarene gospel. Oh, my name's Aquila. That means eagle. The nose, see. Some wine, or is it too early?'

       'Some water, if I may. This is thirsty weather.'

       'And you're off to do that thirsty business again?'

       'Corinth seems promising.'

       'A very fleshly lot, if you catch my meaning.'

       'I catch it. Korinthiazo — I fornicate.'

       Aquila looked shocked. 'Surely not.'

       'No, no, the word. As though fornication had been invented in Corinth.' He looked at some women passing, perhaps temple prostitutes off duty; they seemed specially bred in some erotic stable that their rotundities of seduction should painfully provoke. But there was no pain in it save for Paul: they provoked only that they might satisfy. And the walk: undulant, the buttocks awag, the breasts thrust upward by some ingenuity of corsetage. The mouths very red, the hair crackling black from recent washing. Paul sighed, recognizing that the impulse in himself could not be evil, not unless one admitted the dualism of John Mark's Zoroastrians. What did one do about it? One turned Christ into one's bride, which produced its own complications; one married. He, the preaching tentmaker, married. It was not possible. His groin whimpered resentment. But Aquila was saying something about the stress of work, the city full and rich, partly because of the inflow of Jews exiled from Rome, though some were going back. A trading town this, big port, rival to Athens. Paul did not want to hear the name Athens. He said, looking at Aquila's stitching fingers: 'I don't think I ever saw that double-over lock in Tarsus.'

       'It's the Roman way. Though it's more awnings and bed hangers in Italy. You seem to know about the trade, knowing the double-over.'

       'It's mine. My only living, except for charity. A man has to make a living somehow.'

       'You plan to stay long in Corinth?'

       'There's a lot to do.'

       'So you wouldn't mind practising the trade here?'

       'Making tents? Are you offering me something?'

       'There's enough work for two. And there's a little room at the back of the shop. Very little.'

       'I'm grateful.'

       'Of course, we shan't be staying here for ever. My wife's of a better class than I am. A good Jewish girl but a true Roman. She wants to get back. So do I, for that matter. But we thought of training some grown men, not young apprentices, and putting a manager in charge. Both here and in Ephesus. There's money in the east. But Rome's the place for spending it. You don't know Rome, do you?'

       'No, but I will.'

       So, fortified by good meals from Priscilla, Paul smote vigorously at Corinthian fornication, grew visibly elated in his invocation of the new faith, angered the Jews, baptized the pagans, and opened a chapel which was a kind of rival synagogue. A certain Titus or Titius Justus, an Italian who had been in the trade of exporting dried raisins, called currants after Corinth, and now a retired widower, owned a large house quite near to the synagogue, too large for his own use, and offered it to Paul for his preaching and the ceremony of the supper of the Lord. The Church is the body of the faithful, but a church is where the faithful may meet. This was the first of the brick-and-mortar churches. To it one day came the Jew who was in charge of the synagogue, much troubled. His name was Crispus. He said to Paul:

       'I'm convinced. God help me. I say that because it puts me in dire peril. Physical, that is. My former fellows — what are they going to think, do? My own feet have started to take charge. I walk towards the synagogue and then they make me bear left and I finish here. For God's sake, what am I going to do?'

       'Some of us Christians remain Jewish,' Paul said. 'It's only the bigots who insist on the schistna. Take your baptism in secret — it can be done here in that kind of fountain in the back garden — continue your synagogue duties. I'm still a good enough Jew to wish to go to Jerusalem for Passover — this year, next. The new faith is only the fulfilment of the old.'

       'I wish to God I could make some of the others see that.'

       'I've tried. You know I've tried. One can't try for ever. Life is short and there's the whole known world to cover. Will you be blessed now with the baptismal water?'

       'Yes, God help me.'

       Paul sat in the evenings in the living room of Aquila and Priscilla. She sewed delicate fabrics; he drank wine, his due after a hard day, and chewed currants out of a silver dish. Paul recounted his adventures. Priscilla laughed at some of them, and he could not see why. He was saying one evening: 'Silas and I were at Lystra — Silas should be here soon, by the way — and a man in our congregation was a cripple more in mind than in body. His limbs were unshrivelled, they looked sound enough to me. He was not difficult to cure. The people were ecstatic, they said it was divine magic, and then — ah, they insisted on identifying Silas and myself with two of the pagan demons — he was Jupiter and I was Mercury. They even brought in a couple of white oxen garlanded with flowers. Of course, Lystra is the centre of the Zeus and Hermes cult — why are you laughing? You find this blasphemy comic? I work in the Lord's name and they hail me in the name of Mercury —’

       'The god of thieves,' Priscilla said with wet eyes, 'but also of fine speech. I find the story has humour in it. Like the other one you told — of being put in prison and then having an earthquake open the door for you. I always knew that God had a fine sense of the comic.'

       'I don't see it,' said Paul.

       'Perhaps you will when the stories are written down. They mustn't be lost to the future, they're too good.'

       'Precisely the words of Luke,' Paul said grimly.

       'Who's Luke?'

       'A Greek physician I converted in Antioch. He has a taste for writing. And also for what you would call the comic. I see. I become a character in a Greek tale.'

       'But who,' Aquila said, 'is more real than some of the Greek heroes? Why should the pagans have the best heroes for themselves?'

       'The Pauliad.' Priscilla laughed again.

       'No, no, no, no.' Then there was a thunder of knocking at the shop door.

       'They're here again,' Aquila sighed. 'I wish they'd leave us alone.'

       'My apologies,' Paul said. 'It isn't you they're after. It never is, I'll go.' He went and unbolted. Three Jewish elders were there, frowning in the mild light of early evening. The chief of them, Amoz, said:

       'Saul or Paul or whatever your name is, the governor is ready to see you.'

       'But I,' Paul answered, 'am not ready to see the governor. Can the matter not wait, whatever it is? A man has a right to rest after a long day.'

       'A teacher of blasphemies has no right to rest. Gallio is just come from Achaia and is anxious to try your case.'

       'Meaning that you people are anxious for him to try it. Not that you have a case.'

       'Under Roman law ours is a lawful faith. Yours is not. From the mouth of a Roman consul —’

       'Proconsul,' Priscilla corrected. She had come to listen. She was smiling broadly.

       'I don't need to be put right by foreign women who give lodgings to heretics,' Amoz growled. 'All right. From a Roman proconsul you will hear the judgment. Come.' Paul went. Priscilla laughed very merrily. All this fuss. And all because men were concerned about the cutting of their foreskins.

       Gallio's real name was Marcus Annaeus Nova tus . Born in Cordova and educated in Rome, he was adopted by the great expert on rhetoric Mucius Junius Gallio and so took his name. He was a man of charm, wit and some tolerance, tolerance meaning that he considered religion to be an inconsiderable toy. Tired from his journey and his chronic lung weakness, which he had saved from turning to phthisis by winter sojourns in Egypt, he was yet goodhumoured enough when his deputy reported the arrival of a gang of Jews who wanted judgment on something or someone. He sat in his library, looking over a scroll of new verse that had come from Rome. Furfur caelestis. Heavenly dandruff. Why couldn't these moderns say snow and have done with it? 'They won't be heard in here? No, of course, the house of the infidel. Ah well, I must bow my head in my impurity. I see they have brought their own torches.' Their light could be seen through the casement, marching under the oleanders. He went out to his garden which, being God's and not a Gentile's, was pure. The gang was there with a small bald man with calm eyes. The rest stamped and neighed around him. The old Jew named Amoz spoke loud words:

       'Gallio, proconsul, greetings and long life. This is the man Paul we have spoken and written of. He continues to persuade men to worship God contrary to the Jewish law. Now the Jewish law is decreed by the Emperor to be religio licita —’

       'Has he spoken some villainy? Theft — murder — treason — has he committed any of those? Has he spoken against the Emperor?'

       'No, but he blasphemes by saying the new heresy supersedes the law of Moses —’

       'I have,' Gallio said, 'no concern with the law of Moses. That is your own affair. Your religion, as you rightly say, is under Roman protection. And so are all variants of your religion, heretical and otherwise. We Romans therefore have no right to meddle with their inner workings or dissensions between them. That would be breaking the law. And so I will not be a judge of these matters.'

       'Think carefully, Gallio,' Amoz said, insolently it seemed to the proconsul. 'What decision you make here establishes legal precedent in the Roman provinces and must be upheld in Rome itself. If the man Paul is made free to preach his doctrine as he calls it, that doctrine or abominable perversion of a doctrine becomes allowable under Roman law.

       'I have thought as carefully as the matter seems to warrant,' Gallio said. 'Which means I have thought for twenty seconds or so. And I say with the Roman weight you seem to demand: So be it.'

       Naturally a number of Nazarenes had followed the torchbearing orthodox into Gallio's garden. These now let out whoops of glee and began to beat the sour vanquished as they left. There was one decent elder named Sosthenes who was taking over the leadership of the synagogue in succession to Crispus (who had resigned discreetly on grounds of ill health), and he came in for most of the battering. Paul used his authority, calling: 'Stop that. Brotherly love. Tolerance.' But the batterers went on battering as the company, loud in its discomfiture, passed down the garden walk and out of the gates. Gallio said to Paul:

       'I've heard of your religion. Through my brother. He's a philosopher. Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Do you know of him?'

       'I see. You're a son of the elder Seneca. My father spoke once of meeting him. That would be in Spain.'

       'We're a Spanish family. And what was a Jew doing in Spain?'

       'You're Spanish and Roman. We're Jewish and Roman. It was a matter of trade. The wings of the eagle are wide, as they say. What have you heard of Christianity?'

       'That it comes close to the philosophy my brother teaches. The philosophy of the stoic. Do right, even when the state counsels wrong. Be prepared to suffer for the right. Be proud in your knowledge that right prevails, even when the state crushes it.'

       'I don't teach pride.'

       'It's a proud man who dies for his faith — like this man of yours.'

       'He went like a lamb to the slaughter. We follow him. The Stoic has no God, so he himself has to be the guardian of virtue. The Christian's virtue is all in God. He can afford to be humble.'

       'Which God? The God of those ravening elders out there?'

       'There's only one. He loves mankind. He sent down his only son to suffer in the flesh. That's the measure of his love.'

       'You don't seem to me to be a madman.'

       'You'll find no saner faith than the one I preach. Love, forbearance, forgiveness — sane virtues. The world won't survive without them. Ask your brother what lie thinks.'

       We have been absent from Rome some little time, and now that the name of Lucius Annaeus Seneca has been sounded we may as well look on the owner of the name, seated firmly in the Palatine as the confidant and adviser of Agrippina and the tutor of her son. He has haunted eyes and a mouth as it were set in suffering, his lank hair falls carelessly over his forehead as if he scorned the combed order of the world, but he is shrewd enough in the ordering of his estates, and the look of the ascetic is delusory. He is acting one of the characters of his own closet tragedies, surviving voice of virtue in the face of wrongs done not only by men but by the gods. But what wrongs have been done him? The Emperor Claudius banished him, true, for an impudent mock in one of his moral essays, but Agrippina soon had him recalled. His wealth is enormous. His influence in the state will, if he is discreet and prudent, be considerable. We see him for the moment seated in one of the schoolrooms of the palace, a spare room with maps and scrolls and the scent of a pinetree outside the casement reminding the moral philosopher of the wild grace of the natural world. His pupil lounges next to him, interrupting a discourse on the philosophy of Zeno by saying that he has had enough of this skeletal unreality and it is time for his music lesson.

       'You will need philosophy more than you will need music.’

       ‘In what?'

       'In whatever position in the state you are to hold. You must prepare for responsibility.'

       'I want to be a great actor, dancer, singer. Isn't there such a thing as responsibility to art?'

       'It is not a moral responsibility.'

       The pupil's name is Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus the brother of the Emperor Claudius, is his mother. His father, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, died in suspicious circumstances into which the son, though aware that his mother may have had something to do with it, has never too closely inquired. Morality does not interest him. He says now: