Boy Caesar (12 page)

He caught himself out describing a particular type for the hundredth time and laughed. He knew he was incorrigible and Antony shared his laughter.

‘Sounds like the right one for you and the wrong one for Caesar,’ Antony commented, the smile upgrading itself from his lips to his eyes.

‘I want him for always,’ Heliogabalus said, aware as he spoke that he was allowing his extreme youth to colour his feelings. He wanted Hierocles in the way his obsession wouldn’t rest until he had acted on his desire. It was always the same, his urgency made subordinate to every other consideration. And sometimes his mania got out of control when the object of his desire was the sun, the harbour, a particular street, the billions of gallons of air over a mountain or an idea that could find no external correlative.

‘I’ll have him here waiting for you when you return from business,’ Antony promised him in his usual reassuring way.

‘I’ve so much on my mind, and need your help with the preparations for tomorrow. The streets have to be cordoned off, the Praetorian Guards are needed for back-up to the procession, there have to be police out to suppress potential riots … The list is endless. Plus it’s also the time when an assassin could strike. Being emperor makes me the most wanted person alive.’

It was still early, and a burnt-orange sun was beginning to show through the mist. He didn’t want to wake Julia up at this hour with the news that their marriage was over, but he had decided that he
could no longer continue with the pretence and that she should be sent back to her father with some sort of annuity. He would leave that up to his lawyers. He had it in mind that to make his own religion popular with the people he should marry Aquilia Severa, one of the Vestals who officiated over the Palladium in the temple. The marriage of Elagabal with the earth goddess Vesta would, on a symbolic level, bring about the ideal union of East and West.

He toyed with the idea, while Antony massaged his shoulders with juniper oil. Of course, a marriage as controversial as the one he intended with Aquilia might also explode in his face. Marriage with a Vestal Virgin would be considered, by anyone’s standards, a violation of taboo, but the mystic in him argued for a union in which the bond would be spiritual rather than physical. The knowledge that vestals found guilty of having sex were traditionally buried alive worked in his interest. If, as he hoped, Hierocles was about to become his lover, then Aquilia would prove the ideal mental partner.

His head was busy with the audit as Antony worked along his spine. What he secretly had planned was to remove the image of the goddess Vesta to his own temple. He was fascinated by the idea of the inextinguishable fire kept burning in honour of the goddess. Aquilia was part of the order devoted to never letting that fire go out and by appropriating the practice for his own cult he intended to take on that power and have his name become a metaphor for the city itself. Its commerce would be reflected in the activity of his neurons, its sex-drive in his hormones and its spirituality in the dance he performed inside his temple.

He amused himself with these thoughts as Antony, having finished on his back, wrapped him in a heated towel and left the room, coming back in again minutes later carrying a tray, on which there was bread and halva topped with yoghurt and honey. There were fresh figs and a selection of little cheeses that had been sun-dried on rush mats.

Now that he’d had a drink Heliogabalus felt better able to face the light meal prepared for him. The preparation of food interested him more than its taste, and he had himself the previous night prepared a dish of pumpkin with a seseli, asafoetida, dried mint,
vinegar and liquamen dressing. He would never grow fat like the Circus Maximus gladiators of the vomitarium, the liverish
commissationes
who collapsed under repeat gourmand courses and who could tell at the first taste whether an oyster had been bred at Circeii or on the Lucrine rocks.

Equally he couldn’t help himself sexually. Despite his busy agenda, he was obsessed with only one thing, and that was going back to the same bath-house in the hope that Hierocles would show up again. The place where the action happened was the bath-house built by Titus beside the ancient Domus Aurea, with its external portico facing the Colosseum. The place was notorious for its gay clientele, and almost anything could be had in the recreation rooms. He liked the steamy hothouse effect of the place and the abundance of naked bodies from which he could take his pick. And when the sun beat through the rotunda at noon he had the feeling his body was being solarized by its rays.

Although he imagined it would be meaningless to him, Heliogabalus was anxious for Hierocles to witness the procession he would lead tomorrow. He was determined to leave the city stunned by his performance as part of the rites. The musicians had been instructed to lay down a beat that would translate itself into crowd frenzy.

Acting against his own best interests, he decided to go to the baths by the Colosseum. Preparations were going on all over town for the festivities the next day. Streets were already being cordoned off and people were starting to set up stalls. Rome was still dusted in haze, and he looked out at a cemetery used by prostitutes, its marble statuary defaced by graffiti and eroded by time. Seneca was right, he told himself; we must live in the knowledge of certain death.

Leaving his minders to mix freely with the other bathers he went into one of the dressing-rooms. The place was all black-and-white marble with mosaic inserts and statues of the gods commissioned by Titus. Even though he made light of his identity and adopted a series of disguises, word had got out that he was emperor. It was known that he had a liking for
onobeli
or big cocks. That he had used up the talent available at the baths of Plautianus was also common
knowledge and explained why he had chosen to patronize this place.

A number of youths were in the process of getting undressed. Everyone swam naked, and the boys here were mostly rent or belonged to theatre. What he liked was the way in which his sexuality dissolved barriers. Even though he was emperor his predilections made him as much an outsider as the fraternity who came here to have open sex in the recreation rooms. Nobody seemed suspicious of his motives or grew inhibited by his presence. Rather, he was amused to hear, via Antony, that he had been given the nickname ‘Patron Saint of Rent Boys’.

He was in no hurry to pair off and disappear into one of the private cubicles. He had only one thought on his mind and that was finding Hierocles. He was nervous with apprehension. Elation and fear collided in his nerves. He kept seeing Hierocles’ face everywhere, as though hallucinating him into existence. He saw him in every face that looked in at the dressing-room. His own need was so great that it was being answered by multiple variants of his obsession. Several times he was about to call out ‘Hierocles’ when, at the last moment, he realized his mistake. He ended up engaged in a long kiss as a result of misidentifying a dark youth with the hots. The kiss seemed to go on for ever and tasted of the sulphur traces in the water. Normally he would have followed this through to sex, but realizing his error he backed off. He didn’t want Hierocles to find him going down on a possible rival.

Jealous without any reason, he imagined Hierocles involved in an orgy in one of the vaulted back rooms. He saw him engaged in a noodle dish of naked bodies glued to each other by positioning. He blanked the thought and went out to the pool with its turquoise floor shimmering through the rippling steam.

He dived in, searching for himself at the bottom. The water closed over him like a protective skin. For the moment his world seemed without boundaries. He gave himself up to weightlessness in an arc that took him effortlessly to the blue-tiled floor and up again in a fluent trajectory to the surface.

He surfaced, gasping, and looked around at the other swimmers
lolling on the surface. The boy next to him had his curls collapsed like a bunch of black grapes over his face. People hung motionless in the water like bottles or made lazy circles with indolent breast-stroke. All around the pool naked youths sat displaying their bodies or paired off and disappeared into the recreation rooms. Those looking out and those looking in the pool had come here for the same purpose, and Heliogabalus felt safe in their company.

He made a slow round of the pool, scanning each cluster of faces. He was about to dive under again when he saw Hierocles coming out of one of the dressing-rooms. He accidentally swallowed water and felt his heart turn over. He was so nervous that his first impulse was to dive under and come up on the opposite side of the pool. He wanted to dematerialize on the spot and pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened.

Instead he stayed dead centre of the pool, marginally obscured from view by a tangle of playful swimmers who were busy diving each other. He could see Hierocles looking around to acknowledge friends with a smile or a wave. He must have known he was being watched, for he went and stood by himself against a marble pillar and presented a moody profile to the pool.

Heliogabalus pretended not to notice and flipped over on his back so that he could stare up at the changing sky through the rotunda. The clouds had returned the grouping of a dense aerial forest. He lay there, lost in his reflection, hoping that by now Hierocles had joined a group or friends or had jumped into the pool. Without daring to look he began to create the lazy backstroke designed to get him back to the edge of the pool. He wished he’d never come here, and his only thought was to get out of the place fast.

He propelled himself back to the rim of the pool and was helped out by his minders. He looked across and saw that Hierocles had disappeared from view and was both relieved and terrified that he had gone off with someone else. He sat there, oblivious to the youths competing to catch his eye, his mind preoccupied with nothing but the thought of winning Hierocles. As the minutes passed, he grew more despondent at having missed his chance. He
decided to punish Hierocles by slipping out through the back and leaving him to rot. Nobody in his world was going to play that hard to get.

With the intention of following his plan through, he stormed off towards the dressing-rooms. He brushed aside attendants and masseurs offering to dry him and, still wet, changed into his clothes. His mood had radically changed, and he could feel the blues driving out the optimism with which he had started the day. Suddenly nothing seemed important, not even the prospect of the festivities tomorrow.

He sulked as he dressed, his mouth down-turned like his mood. He wanted to stay and he didn’t, and neither option pleased him. He took his time in preparing to leave, assembling his clothes without interest and avoiding eye contact with everyone.

When he got back outside he saw Hierocles waiting on the other side of the street. He was standing with his arms crossed, looking directly at him. Their eyes met in a freeze-framed moment that seemed to eliminate his entire past.

He didn’t care that his minders were watching but instead hurried straight across the road. Hierocles looked nervous in a streetwise, bashful sort of way. Although the boy clearly lacked refinement, Heliogabalus was fascinated by the dodgy world Hierocles represented. There was something of an underworld shadow in his face, a sort of smokiness that suggested he had lived fast and wild.

Heliogabalus didn’t wish to draw attention to himself, so he simply said, ‘I’ll have someone pick you up outside here at eight o’clock. They’ll drive you to the palace.’

Hierocles nodded, and without wasting time Heliogabalus hurried back, his heart turning somersaults as he ran.

The day had suddenly picked up speed, and he was glad of the pearl-coloured sky that continued to shut out the sun. It added to the city’s mystery and the sensation he had of the whole place being a fractal illusion that changed according to his vision. Perhaps because he was new there he felt he never encountered the same city twice. Rome seemed to be endlessly in the process of constructing and deconstructing itself.

He had cancelled his day’s appointments and instead insisted on being taken to his temple to be with the god he was preparing to celebrate. Elagabal lived in him like a river sunk into a deep groove. He was his source and the reason for his good fortune in being emperor. It was imperative he honoured him at all times and made his phallic symbol into Rome’s chief signature. Sacrifice was needed and, by way of showing his dislike of the military, he had transferred the duties of some of the leading generals to those of attending his temple. Their job was to officiate over the slaughter of animals and to prepare parts for sacrifice. The high-ranking military involved deeply resented their downgrading of office and the withdrawal of privileges that went with it.

What Heliogabalus did within the temple was guarded with such secrecy that the rites were known only to himself, his mother and the priests. He was aware of the rumours that he engaged in human sacrifice, selecting boys from the best families for this purpose and divining from their entrails a prognosis for the future. The idea amused him as much as it annoyed. It owed its origins to the malicious gossip of the military leaders he had demoted. Infanticide played no part in his scheme, nor did the abduction of youths from Italy’s finest families.

He was driven across the city to his temple on the Palatine Hill. The huge colonnaded structure within a rectangular porticoed enclosure was surrounded today by a filigree mist. The place was to be his starting point tomorrow, and from there the procession would cross the city to his other temple in the suburbs. He liked the fact that a slow fog was rolling in and obscuring the city’s high-rise buildings.

Insisting on being left at the entrance, he went inside to a temple lit only by a fire at the altar. Only last week it had been reported that he regularly fed human genitals to lions as part of his rites and that he castrated his lovers for this purpose.

A priest wearing a long Phoenician tunic with a single purple stripe running down the middle came to meet him as he approached the altar. Together they knelt before the black phallic oracle surrounded by offerings. He led the way as they chanted an incantation
to his god that repeated a magical formula, and one that he was sworn never to divulge. The vibradon set up by the chant deepened to a drone. Time ceased to exist as the mantra created its own autonomous rhythm. He was conscious only of the conversion of breath into a sound so charged it established a vibration round the walls. It was the old dynamic in which he lost himself to a higher plane of consciousness.