The Kingdom of the Wicked (37 page)

       'A display of avuncular afffffection, no more.' He did not look well: the hair pure snow, the face lined, the stammer bad. 'So this is the young man I hear well of? So now I bbbbbrace myself and you tell me tell me aaaaall.' He spoke the last word on a rising intonation. Julius gulped and began.

       'You will understand, sir, that there has been a certain division in my mind, what may be termed a conflict of loyalties. I was given a post in which discretion was enjoined on me. I was to be loyal to the Empress, but this loyalty entailed being disloyal to the Emperor. You understand my difficulties.'

       He and Narcissus had been standing; the Emperor, in a dressing gown which parted to show glimpses of a slugwhite fat body, was sitting on a wide chair loaded with yellow cushions. The Emperor said: 'I think you had better sit down. I think we had bbbbbetter have some wine. You're a soldier and I've done my share of winebbbbbibbing with soldiers. You may relax as in your own mess. Will you, Narcissus -7" Narcissus brought a plain winejug and cups from a table in a far corner of the room, not overlarge, its quality intimate and domestic. Julius was glad of the wine: his mouth was dry. 'Ppppproceed,' the Emperor said. Julius proceeded:

       'The Empress made many visits about the city and its environs, withmyself in charge of her armed escort. Most of these visits were to the same individual — often in one or other of his houses, sometimes in a farm or villa not owned by him. Occasionally in an inn on the road to Ostia. The individual in question was Gaius Silius, though I heard the Empress address him by name only once. That was when I was on patrol round the house of a kinsman of his former wife, the Lady Lollia Paulina.'

       'Ffffformer —?'

       'Yesterday, before I was dismissed her imperial majesty's service, I heard her address the consul Gaius Silius as husband, and the — gentleman in question responded with wife. I thought at first this was a kind of facetiousness. But one of my last assignments had been to provide a military guard for a — I do not know whether to call it a party or a religious celebration or an orgy —’

       'You mean,' Claudius said, very pallid, 'one of these Oriental — the slave Ccccchrestus or whoever it is —’

       'No, sir, not religious in that sense. On the estate of a certain Silanus there was what was termed a homage to the god of wine, appropriate for the time of the wine harvest. Grapes and vineleaves and much wine and a fat naked man impersonating Bacchus. There was a good deal of drunkenness —’ Julius heard the primness of his tone and felt, paradoxically, soiled by it. 'The consul Silanus, perhaps inevitably, turned himself into Silenus. There was — lechery, nakedness. It was a warm afternoon,' he added, as if to excuse the nakedness.

       'Cccccc —’

       He did as he was bid and continued. 'Then a man in priest's robes appeared to conduct a marriage ceremony. Perhaps I saw more than I should. I was supposed to stay in a sort of grove. But I saw this ceremony between the Empress and Gaius Silius and I assumed it was all a game. There was a great deal of laughter and little solemnity. Then the marriage or mock marriage was — It is hard to continue —’

       'You must,' Narcissus said.

       'It was — consummated at once and in public. And, in sympathy as it were, the other guests — A great mass of naked bodies. Men and women. Fornication for them. There were boys there too, Ganymedes. For the Empress and Gaius Silius it was termed a consummation.'

       Claudius said, with calm and without stammering much: 'You were right after all, Narcissus. I owe you many apologies. A bigamous marriage to show her ccccontempt not only for her husband but for the law of Rome — a signal to the world of ggggglory in depravity. And when does Gaius Silius think he can strike the blow that will seccccure him the imperial cccc —’

       'I do not think,' Narcissus said, 'that Gaius Silius has such an ambition. He is a weak man besotted by the erotic, no more.' To Julius he said: 'Where are they now?'

       'I was told there would be no further need of my services and that I must report back for reassignment. Also that I must be discreet in my reporting back. The word was uttered in a tone which I interpreted as one of menace. I heard brief talk of a journey to Neapolis.'

       'And perhaps,' Narcissus asked, 'of taking ship there for the island of Capri? The Villa Jovis? That,' he said to the now shaking Claudius, 'was by a deed of gift assigned to the Empress.'

       'Do not refer to her as the Empress. You may, if you wish, allude to the late Empress. Immediate arrest and almost immediate execution.' His tones were clear and pedantic, as though he were referring to peccant personages in his own historical writings. 'As for a trial — all Rome must know already of a depravity too foul for its very sewers to discharge. All except its Emperor. I've been weak, Narcissus.'

       'Tolerant, Caesar. Distracted by multifarious duties.'

       'Young man,' the Emperor said to Julius, 'the world is more evil than any man can know. Every day there is some new foul surprise, some new ppppputrid revelation. The times need to be washed, scoured, to become the ttttttablet for the writing of a new age. A great pppppurging and a fresh beginning. But none gives the word. None none none.' And with an astonishing and totally unexpected howl of animal terror he dashed his wine to the floor and tottered out.

       There was a pause. During it Julius stood. He had done his duty and was ready to be dismissed. Narcissus looked up at him from his chair.

       'How much more can you tell me?'

       'Only of the road to Neapolis. Wait — some talk of Gemini, the heavenly twins. I did not attend much to that. It seemed to be some private joke.'

       'There's a ship of that name. It plies between Neapolis and Capri. Or used to. Tell me — do you fancy following your purgative mission to the end? Apprehending the — criminal couple?'

       'Do I have a choice in the matter, sir?'

       'Oh, I think so. I can understand your wishing to be done with the business. I'll have some bully from the Praetorian Guard assigned. You've done well. You've also, to be candid with you, restored my own credibility with the Emperor. I warned him of this, but he was not prepared to listen. He even, at one point, made sounds indicative of great rising anger, as though I were speaking a kind of referred treason. And now — I think a wholesome week or so in the bosom of your family would be in order. And a little bonus from the treasury perhaps. So be it, or — What was that Hebrew word?'

       'Amen.'

       'Yes. You have some connection with the Jews, you said.'

       'Through marriage, sir.'

       'Do you fancy service in Palestine?'

       'I think of myself as a good servant of the Empire. But I've lost my taste for blood.'

       'One of our tasks is to stop people shedding it. Perhaps you'd better work on your Hebrew.'

       'Aramaic, sir.'

       It would, I think, be wearisome to recount the details of the many voyages that the tireless Paul undertook in the service of the new word, for wherever he went he said much the same thing and met much the same mixed response. He went back, after the delivery of money for the famine relief in Judaea, to the city of Antioch, where he baptized Luke the physician, saw that the Christian community was in good hands, and then prepared to go to Cyprus. Of the church leaders in Antioch it is perhaps interesting to note that one of them must have been black (else why should he be called Symeon Niger?) and one of them, named Manaen, meaning the comforter, was the foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch. Apparently his grandfather, who had the same name, pleased the infanticidal Herod the Great by prophesying great things for him, and Herod had the whole family accommodated in the royal household, so that the young Manaen became a sort of adoptive prince. This gives us an image of two boys playing together with golden balls and so on, one of them destined to be a church leader and the other to have the head of John the Baptist shorn off as a gift for a dancing girl named Salome. This should mean something, but I do not know what.

       Paul took ship with Barnabas at Seleucia, five miles north of the mouth of the Orontes, and later the learned John Mark joined them at Salamis, on the east coast of Cyprus, where some saw the light and others hurled bricks. In the provincial governmental town of Paphos, where the proconsul Sergius Paullus ruled on behalf of the Roman Senate, Paul prayed that the blasphemous sorcerer Elymas be blinded, and his prayer was heard and implemented promptly. Sergius Paullus was impressed and agreed to consider the possibility of his joining the new faith, but I think he was merely being polite to his near namesake. Paphos had its many-breasted goddess, closer to Aphrodite than to Artemis, and Paul thundered against fornication. Many listened with pleasure, but most continued to fornicate.

       The party then sailed for Perga, or rather for Attalia, taking a riverboat down the Cestus to the inland city, and Paul in the synagogue gave a long seamless account of the search of the Jewish people for a Messiah and the fulfilment of that search. Little, bald, thundering, though shaking with malaria, he impressed the Gentiles more than the Jews. He also seemed to take it for granted that he was the leader of the mission, although Barnabas had the priority of longer service and hence greater authority in the mother church of Antioch. John Mark resented this relegation of his cousin to second place. He told Paul so and Paul said:

       'I do not see that this is any business of yours. Barnabas does not complain. He is too busy preaching the word to consider such a thing as being of any importance. Get on with some preaching yourself and cease this pettiness.'

       'I think you are growing puffed up. I think your eloquence is inflating more than your lungs. You speak to the congregations as though you were the inventor of the faith. A lot of what you are preaching does not seem to me to be all that orthodox.'

       'Who is to say, except presumably yourself, who have read too many books and meditated on the faith too little?'

       'Jesus made friends with prostitutes, and you howl at them as though they were the devil.'

       'And so they are.'

       'I think I shall go back to Jerusalem,'

       'How will you get there? Work your passage?'

       'A week's lessons in Greek to the daughters of that man Nabal will earn me enough. And I was asked to give a lecture on Zoroastrianism. No trouble about money, 0 father of the faithful.'

       'What did you call me then?'

       'Never mind. Good luck with your preaching.'

       'I call you a traitor and a deserter.'

       'Call me what you like. I could call you some things.'

       So John Mark went back to Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas caused trouble by filling up the synagogues with Gentiles, who were forewarned to get there before the regular time for the arrival of the Jews. Stones were hurled as they took the eastern road to Iconium. In that city they had trouble too, but an Iconian resident named Onesiphorus gave them notice of coming mob violence initiated by some of the civic leaders, so they were able to get away unscathed. Onesiphorus was much impressed by Paul, and he has left us a little poem in Greek which fixes his appearance for all time:

              Strongly built, though small in size,

              Large-nosed, with penetrating eyes,

              Omega made by leg and leg,

              His eyebrows meet, bald as an egg,

              A man, yes, but angelic grace

              Shines sometimes from that ugly face.

       So on to Lystra and then to Derbe, then back to Antioch. Here Paul and Barnabas quarrelled. Paul said:

       'Things go well enough here. Now I suggest we take the same trip as we did before and see how things go there.'

       'Now?'

       'Soon.'

       Barnabas gave an apologetic cough. He said: 'There's somebody here in Antioch who's sorry for his sins. He keeps out of your way. I tell him to come and beg forgiveness, but he's frightened.'

       'You mean your damned cousin?'

       'Yes, and I trust you use damned as a mere conventional expression of displeasure. John Mark is good and useful. True, he sulked in Jerusalem for a time, but he realized at last where his place is. So I think we ought to give him another chance.'

       'He's a traitor and a defector and I'm not having him.'

       Barnabas sighed. 'But if I want him?' he said.

       'Look, Barnabas, there's family sentiment at work here. You want him because he's your first cousin. I don't want him because he's disloyal and, to speak candidly, his conception of our faith is not orthodox. He's more trouble than he's worth.'

       'It seems to me, if I may say so, that you're taking too much on yourself. Nobody denies your eloquence and intellectuality and your success as an evangelist. But you assume precedence over me, and that without cause. You were sitting on your arse making tents in Tarsus when I summoned you. It was I who set up a church here in Antioch and I called on you as a helper not as one free to usurp my primacy when he felt like doing it. That's plain speaking but you asked for it. John Mark goes with us.'

       'Oh no he does not.'

       'Oh yes he does.'

       'You're pigheaded, Barnabas, and you don't have the cause at heart. We can't afford to have mere passengers, especially carping ones like John Mark who, moreover, trembles on the edge of the heterodox in too many of his views. He doesn't come, and that's an end of it.'

       'Very well then, I don't come either.'

       'Oh yes you do.'

       'Oh no I do not.'

       'So,' Paul said, 'this is very regrettable, but it looks like the parting of the ways. You go where you will, since you proclaim the authority of primacy as you call it, taking that damned cousin with you. I'll have to look for another helper.'