The Far Arena (49 page)

'By offering me what I want, and what I want is an end to questions. You have one last question to be answered. Agreed?'

'Agreed. For the hour.'

'For the week.'

"The day,' said Olava, and it was done. The question asked was this:

'Did you have any friends in Rome?'

'No. I never had a friend, I think. There was Mfriamne, whom I loved, but I would not rely on her for many important things. There were my loyal slaves, who had a fool for a master. I had amusing affection for Publius, but he was no friend. No, Olava. I never had a friend.'

‘I
f you never had a friend, then what would one be like?'

'That is a second question.'

'No. It is part of the first, and, besides, it is not about Rome, but about everyone.'

'A friend must be an equal. It is more than liking. You can like a tree, but it is not a friend. A friend must be someone you can rely on, but not use. He must be honest, but also reticent with that honesty because of fear of losing you. Honesty is too strong a drink to be unwatered all the time; rather it should be given in doses. No, I am not sure what a friend is, Olava. But I think perhaps it is someone you laugh with a lot, not by making jokes, but by seeing the world together. A friend is someone you laugh with regularly. That is a friend. And of course cry with. It is a simple thing. I think it may be a great thing. 1 have not thought about it before.'

I
did not like this garden or this spring or this air or this time. Semyonus in a white jacket ran to us. Olava translated that he was saying we were late for Lewus.

As we walked with him, I
realized he was subdued towards
Olava, and the ready smile was not there.
I
felt a sadness in him in his little quick nods, as though if he moved his head too quickly the tears would fall out

'Did he offer his love, and did you turn him down, Olava? He is not loving towards you.'

That is my personal life.'

'And so will be my answer to you, woman, when you ask of me. I claim similar rights.'

'He did, and I did,' she said brusquely, hoping to escape.

'You should have given him what he wanted, so little if any discomfort for you and such satisfaction for him. Look at his sad face. I have seen happier swamps.'

'It is my body, not yours,' said Olava burning. 'Or his.
I
have given it to my God. And I do not pass it out like little party cakes for the momentary satisfaction of those who happen to be around me. It is neither a sedative, palliative, reward, or bribe. It is my body.'

'If I might have succumbed to fancying you, know that you have cured me in advance, woman. A disease uncaught is the best cured.'

'And it has nothing to do with you,' she said with even more anger. 'Me. It has to do with me.'

Semyonus asked something, and Olava spat back a single answer - the interchange being Semyonus asking what she was telling me, and she telling him 'nothing'.

I would have told him everything, but we did not speak each other's language, Of course, I was equally confused on other matters.

Semyonus said something to me and patted me on the head like his favourite dog. 'Don't worry, he says,' said Olava. 'Don't worry about what?' I asked. And the response was: 'Whatever happens.' 'What does he think he is going to do to me?' 'Nothing,' said Olava.

I thought that was very funny and no one else did. Semyonus expressed faith in me and his science. He looked to Olava as he said this. Olava said something. I had to ask for it.

'I told him I had faith in him also and in you, Eugeni.'

‘
You reassure with confidence wonderfully,'
I
said.

‘
Thank you,' said Olava. 'And Semyonus thanks you.' They were so grave in this matter, I did not want to hurt their feelings by telling them their reassurance was like waking someone to teach them to sleep. It was not reassuring. But what could anyone do to me now?

They took me to a room like a small indoor arena, cut in half with a flat side, like actors might use. The lights went on and all three of us sat on chairs on the floor of this arena. Lewus was late. He arrived, smiling that smile I used for the arena. He wore dark clothes, as did Semyonus, dark and coloured being a sign of wealth, and white being worker clothes, but only in places like hospitals, and physicians were not workers but were on higher levels. Although colours themselves did not tell rank always, not even the expense of clothes, which was a hard thing to judge sometimes, even for those who lived in these times.

Lewus carried machines in his arms, and Semyonus explained to Olava who explained to me that these machines were the machines recording the pictures that moved that I saw. Upon further questioning, I found out the ones used for dramas were bigger.

Lewus made adjustments. The machines purred like a cat with a rusty metal belly. Lewus asked Olava to stand. He asked Semyonus to stand.

'And he wants you to stand also, Eugeni,' said Olava. 'Between us.' It felt like a family, although we all would have had an argument over who was the parent.

Olava related that Lewus said he did not know all that much about ancient Rome. He was from a small provincial community where the schooling was not as good as in the large cities of his country, a country which did not even exist in the time we were talking about. He would look to Olava and Semyonus to assist him. They had great educations, he said. Olava, with sombre countenance, assured her help. Semyonus did the same with haughtiness.

Only I was alarmed. Olava told me not to worry. I told her I would worry less if she worried more. She asked what alarmed me.

'What sort of a person tells you he is weak, and why does he want you to believe so? That is the danger.'

Lewus asked what I talked about, and Olava translated into the almost indistinguishable grunts of his language, a language which Olava had explained lacked order. Through Olava, he asked what I should have to fear of him? He asked this several times, and only he and I knew he was already drawing blood in his battle. The interrogation was not long and it went like this:

Through Olava, he established the great costs of the arena games in man-hours worked in gold, in silver, in animals, in blood.

Essentially I said, Lewus was correct, very correct for someone who had lacked great schooling, someone who, despite his lack of schooling, carried the academician's highest title of doctorate, something which Olava, with all her great schooling, lacked. This warning to Olava to be aware went like rain upon stone. It landed and went away, as though it had never been at all.

'If this man,' translated Olava for Lewus, 'were premier gladiator of Rome in Domitian's time, I think that's about 80 CE, he would literally be worth a city. In farmland, let me try to explain, he would be valued at most of the Ukraine or roughly one and a half times that of Iowa, plus you could throw in the worth of the Suez and Panama canals. Or if one likes cities, he would be worth, literally to the penny, the combination of Dallas and Marseilles. Astronomical.'

Of these places I did not know.

Then he said that, according to Olava's reports, I had been given my freedom by the Aurelii. Was this correct? 'It was,' I said.

'Could they afford such a great gift, tantamount to letting General Motors run itself for itself?' said Olava for Lewus. She explained General Motors was a gigantic latifundia organisation which produced machines instead of grain.

'The Aurelii were wealthy in heart as well as gold,' I said.

Olava thought this a wonderful answer, translating for Lewus with a warm smile. Only 1 noticed that he began his next question before Olava had finished her translation.

Was it correct that I had been convicted of maiestas with my name stricken from all records?

'It was.'

So that if I did really exist as such a gladiator, premier gladiator of the entire empire. I would not be known of today in any of the multitude of records. True.'

'You seem to have an excellent understanding of the politics of the imperial period of ancient Rome. That and finances.'

'I knew enough to keep bread and wine in my house,'
I
said.

'And after killing, oh, a hundred and twenty men I guess, even knowing the disaster you would create, you decided not to slay one Vergilius Flavius Publius. Correct?'

'Correct.'

'And this Publius was a loudmouth, correct?' 'Correct.'

'And you, who were supposed to have known slavery, and now knowing we are not Domitian's agents, admit you loved your wife and child, yet risked their lives to possible slavery, correct?'

'That is correct.'

'And a whole cohort takes you out into what was then barbarian lands far north, then poisons you, and then leaves you to die of cold. Correct?'

'Correct.'

'One more question. Why didn't you slay Publius?' 'In all honesty, I am not sure.'

Olava entered into a discussion with Lewus in his own language, and he became heated on one question. And asking what that was, I was told he asked where the European lions were. And I said I presumed in the forest, and Olava said I had missed the point.

'Lewus says, and correctly so, that games were so important to Rome that with nets and spears only they made an entire species extinct, something the world could not do until recently with the help of great motor-powered machinery. The European lion is the example.'

And Lewus said two words and Olava said one.

‘
Stand.'

I stood.

'And we are to believe that the energies of the known world could not find something more deadly than that, even though men were smaller then? No, too much. Too many things do not conform to logic' And to Semyonus, according to Olava's translation, he mentioned something about a frog. Semyonus, raging, yelled at the large man who, like an innocent child, suddenly looked upon the entire world with innocent wonder. Lewus knew only what Lewus knew, he said. This from Olava, who translated.

So Lewus had created great doubt about my story, not the least being because of my size.

'He didn't prove you were a liar, Eugeni. He didn't prove that at all. He only created some doubts. That's all he did.'

'Perhaps that is enough,' I said.

'For what?' she asked.

'For whatever he wants,' I said.

She explained he had come from a provincial place and, despite his schooling in science was still a simple peasant sort of person, as were most from his area of his country. She suffered from the common Roman notion that provincials always told the truth because they never learned to lie like civilized people.

But in the arena, which drew from all places, we knew that lying was most natural to the uncivilized, even though civilized man had perfected it as an art called 'oratory'. One only has to look at a child to know that lying is quite a natural thing, like breathing. The telling of the truth is something that has to be learned like any other painful training. And this is so.

Twenty Four

Lew McCardle felt the sweat on him when he left the operating room with Dr Petrovitch yelling after him, Sister Olav stunned, and that little olive-skinned fellow smiling. He could have sworn the short, muscular guy was the only one of the three who understood what was happening. But of course, he couldn't know. Probably.

McCardle returned to his office and dropped the movie camera and the tripod upside down, camera first, leaning against the wall. He wouldn't need the film. The camera was there for Sister Olav and Petrovitch to have seen him use. So they would think about their size and the size of the subject. It was their minds Lew was working on.

A small refrigerator, slightly larger than a bread box, balanced atop a Jaeger's
Paedeia
-
a book on life in the world of classical antiquity. Lew opened the door and put a hand around a chilled bottle of imported Schlitz, which he needed. His throat was dry and his body perspired, and the cold beer felt good going into his belly and easing off the tingles from the night before. He knew he was drinking too much, but after this he would moderate it. Things were just going too quickly to work on not drinking.

He cleaned manila folders off the two leather chairs facing his desk. The desk was covered with notes, beer-bottle caps, and a Latin-English dictionary, opened, covering the phone which Lew made sure was not on the hook. The room smelled faintly of beer and last week's whisky. It had been spotless just a few weeks ago It was small. It was cluttered. And it was a great place to work.