The Uncertain Hour (2 page)

“Is Surisca here?” Petronius asked over his shoulder.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll need you tonight, Syrus. Don’t go into town until I call for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come to think of it, tell the rest of the household staff … No, never mind. Ask Commagenus to come to me after my bath.” Syrus bowed and padded off.

Petronius entered the bathing room, stepped down into the hot water. The granite tub, ledged with Parian marble, was large enough for four, but Petronius almost always bathed alone here. There was a larger suite of baths up at the house, including a sulfur tank and a heated swimming pool, that he used only with his guests. There, the walls and floors were adorned with elaborate murals and mosaics—blue dolphins in glass tile on the bottom of the swimming pool; ibises, alligators, and palm trees in the hot room; hunting scenes in the cold; sea monsters and mermaids in the sulfur; and amorous scenes from Greek mythology in the massage room. Petronius rather enjoyed the dolphins, which were remarkably lifelike and reflected the sunlight delightfully. The rest were a little vulgar for his taste, but they had come with the house and he’d never had the heart to paint over them. Besides, they were quite famous, the venue for notorious orgies under the former owner. The empress Messalina herself was said to have debauched an entire delegation of Cappado-cian magistrates in the
frigidarium
. Having had Messalina once or twice in his youth, Petronius kept the artwork in part as a fond memorial to her appetites, which had been every bit as vigorous as the historians were already beginning to write.

Here, in the private baths, it was a different story. The walls and vaulted ceilings had crawled with the most lascivious vignettes imaginable, involving gods, goddesses, nymphs, satyrs, centaurs, Numidians, goats, and children. Petronius was not a religious man, but even he had been offended—at least, morbidly aroused, and he despised morbidity in himself as much as in any of his peers—by a scene of Cerberus being fellated by Venus, identifiable by her charming squint. Although it had all been whitewashed out some six years since, Petronius could still sometimes see, as though the image had been burned into his eye or was glowing through the paint, the dog’s teeth dripping with gore and yellow saliva, and its black lips drawn back in an obscene rictus. Now, for the most part, his private baths were a place where a man could think, and dream, and consider his options. Here, the only concession to aesthetics was the ancient marble
kouros
he had brought back with him from Bithynia, a piece of special, personal significance, and even that—with its blind gaze and groping hands—Petronius thought of more as an object of meditation upon mortality and transience than as a work of art. He considered it a moment, shivered, then closed his eyes and lowered his head onto the cushion that had been left for him on the ledge.

HE SAW HIMSELF
pacing the streets of Prusa, a dismal provincial city nestled at the foot of Mysian Olympus, in Bithynia. He’d spent a long and unhappy week with the town fathers, poring over tax rolls and payrolls and debt-related documents. That afternoon, unable to tolerate another minute of their barefaced lies and dilatory tactics, he’d pushed away from the table and taken himself for a solitary stroll to clear his head and digest his ire.

He’d walked for some time, unaware of his surroundings, his head bowed in thought. The cobbled streets were slick under a light dusting of snow, but he heeded neither the temperature nor the curious stares that accompanied his forlorn musings. Yet another day wasted, his term of office already one quarter expended, and he had nothing to show for it but frustration and nervous exhaustion.

Gradually, he became aware of a drop in temperature, and of the inadequacy of his clothing against the coming storm. He looked around; the streets were deserted, the upper reaches of Olympus shrouded in icy mist and lowering cloud. A gray, viscous evening was at hand, and he did not know where he was. He found himself on a small town square at the outskirts of the city, in what had evidently once been a prosperous quarter but had long since fallen on hard times. The plaza, ringed by squalid tenements, was dominated on one side by the crumbling façade of a decrepit townhouse stripped of all ornament, its weathered door ajar and swinging on rusty hinges. From a half-dissolved inscription above the doorway, he realized that he knew of this house; indeed, it was one that the town fathers had discussed at some length that very afternoon. It had once belonged to a wealthy merchant, who had bequeathed it to the Emperor Claudius some twelve years previously with the intention that it be converted for use as a city office. The merchant had even left an endowment for its conversion and maintenance, but that had long since evaporated, leaving the lovely old house, like so much property in Bithynia belonging to the imperial household, gradually to molder and decay. Now, to all appearances, it was beyond salvation. Without really thinking, but perhaps moved by some feeling of empathetic kinship with the sad ruin, he pushed through the broken door and entered the dark, silent confines of the house.

The interior was in a state of even worse dilapidation than the exterior. Rugged vines covered the walls, their once-vibrant murals faded and patched with damp blemishes. The flagstones were cracked and tilted crazily, water pooling on the floor where the heating pipes had ruptured. Some roof timbers had collapsed, allowing ugly stains of gray light to fall upon the degradation. No doubt, the house would have to be torn down, at further expense to the town, which would borrow money for the work that it had no intention of repaying, then borrow more to begin a rebuilding that would never see completion. A sorrowful wind whistled in the roof tiles, and Petronius had seen enough. But as he turned to leave, his eye was caught by a whitish glow emanating from the interior garden, partially visible through the vestibule. His first thought was that it must be a ghost, with its vaguely human form, and he stood rooted to the spot in apprehension, but it took only a moment to grasp that the figure was rigid and immobile.

It was a statue, of course, rising on a pedestal in the midst of a riot of plant life, a
rus in urbe
, a tiny wilderness dropped into the center of the city. Great blots of reddish thyme clung to the marble, enwrapping the figure’s feet and ankles and threatening its shins. Grapevines strangled the columns and rafters of the peristyle that surrounded the garden on all four sides. Utter silence reigned, despite the wind rising without.

At the center, the life-size statue, a boy or young man, stood on a plain cube of marble, facing the atrium. It was what the Greeks called a
kouros
, a work from the dark centuries, the very last thing one expected to find in the private home of a respectable gentleman with middlebrow tastes. It was archaic in every sense, more Egyptian than Greek, with its stiff legs, its long symmetrical braids, fists loosely clenched at its sides, its stylized musculature, the ineffable, vaguely ironic curve of its eyebrows and curl of its lips. Even Petronius, with his limited repertoire, could plainly see that it represented an idea—the ideal of physical and moral beauty, united by nobility—rather than an individual. It was beautiful, to be sure, but disturbing, like a prayer or incantation uttered in a dead language. How such a piece could possibly have found its way to this house from the ancient temple or graveyard for which it had originally been intended was anybody’s guess.

And yet, as he slowly circled it, Petronius found himself unexpectedly moved. The boy was talking to him, telling Petronius that the two of them had something in common; the boy was challenging Petronius to guess what it might be. Between the
kouros
’s era and his, a golden age had come and passed away, its glories forever faded, yet Petronius was the same as him: nothing had changed but the awareness of a hope irredeemably squandered. Now he saw the irony in the boy’s expression resolve itself into mockery, just as a man is mocked by the memory of himself in his youth, when all of nature and society seemed to be an exudation of his own mind. Petronius saw that the boy was both himself as he had been in his own prime, exulting in his ignorance and infatuation with abstraction, and as he was now, a corpse pickled in its own brine and entombed in a distant land, an oblivion so complete that even his native tongue was no longer familiar to him. As unlikely as it might seem, Petronius felt something break painfully within him as he stood before that coldhearted boy and passively endured his withering scorn.

“Does he speak to you, too?” came a woman’s voice from the shadows of the peristyle.

PETRONIUS OPENED HIS
eyes. Eight years later, looming over the bath, the
kouros
no longer spoke to him. He sighed in dismay. There was nothing for him in the hot water today, and where he waited to be wrapped in serenity he instead felt charged with enervating restlessness and anxiety, and consequently immensely exasperated with himself. He was fully aware of how fortunate he was—how few others in his position had been afforded the luxury of making plans, putting their affairs in order, making their peace—but this awareness gave him no satisfaction or rest. It was all wrong. Why were his feelings not lining up as he had trained them to do, like dutiful soldiers, snapping to attention at his command? This disquiet—it was not the Roman way, not the patrician way. Had the others gone like this, in disgraceful jitters, merely feigning their dignity and resolve? Had all their training failed them, too, at the last moment? Perhaps they had pulled it off somehow, reaching into a still inner core that seemed to be eluding him. Perhaps the problem was having too much time to prepare, rather than too little. Petronius ground his teeth in self-disgust. He had no fear of losing his composure, but he had always assumed—far too complacently, as it turned out—that, this moment come, everything would be perfect, including and especially the state of his soul. What else could possibly matter?

Petronius climbed from the bath and passed into the next chamber. Without pause, he leaped into the plunge pool, immersing himself entirely in the icy water. He opened his eyes. A spike of sunlight from the small window near the ceiling quivered before him, and he reached out for it. The light splashed onto his hands, and he cupped them as if he would drink it. This is the way, he thought to himself—you cannot drink it and you cannot hold it, but you can grasp it. If your hands and your tongue are frustrated, seek the sense that is equipped to grasp it, and you will be gratified. You are trying too hard—you know how to do this, you have trained for this your entire life, but your anger and your doubt are making you forget. It is the cold water, not the hot, that cleanses and dissolves the impurities. By the time he emerged to the surface, Petronius was laughing with pleasure at himself. But after only a few minutes of splashing and rubbing at his limbs, the skin gone taut and goose-pimpled, his mood had reasserted itself.

“What a load of crap,” he muttered to himself as he padded into the massage room.

Surisca was waiting by the table, naked but for a cotton shawl wrapped around her legs and tied at the hip. Her hair had been elaborately braided and twisted into a bun at the nape, fastened with the silver brooch Petronius had given her at last year’s Saturnalia. It was a fine bit of native craftsmanship, not made for a slave, but when his brother had sent it from Britain, Petronius had seen that it was not to Melissa’s taste and had not even shown it to her. How Surisca had blushed when he’d presented it to her! Perhaps she had a boyfriend in town to impress, or make jealous.

“All ready for the holiday, I see,” Petronius said, just to see that blush again. Surisca obliged, ducking her head as she warmed a dash of oil between her palms. Petronius took his place on the table, lying on his stomach with his arms at his side. Surisca began scraping his back.

The worst thing he could do, of course, was think this way: this is my last bath; this is my last massage; this is my last sunset; this is my last whatever. Hadn’t he had more than his share of all these things, and been blessed with the ability never to take any pleasure for granted? It was gratitude he should be feeling; satiety, not regret; anticipation, not trepidation. Well, who in their right mind wants to die? That was beside the point—it was not a matter of whether, but of how. He believed as he had been taught, that all unhappiness is the product of unnatural desire; that all fear is ultimately the fear of death; that the banishment of desire should, in principle, vanquish the fear of death. What was it Epicurus had said? “Life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live.” Petronius knew this in his heart to be true; he understood it. He was not afraid to die, yet here he was, clinging to the world as a ship clings to shore at an approaching storm, anchored in place by desire. It was not right. It was not proper. His thoughts should not be clouded at this moment.