The Kingdom of the Wicked (61 page)

       Nero was very much in the scarcely used villa four miles out of the city, breaking jars and tearing curtains. His only audience was Phaon, who sat on a stool, chewed nuts, and watched and listened with no visible reaction as his master ran up and down, calling for people long dead, screaming. Then Nero said: 'They won't dream of looking in the slaves' quarters, will they? They'll find this place empty, then they'll leave. Isn't that so, Phaon? Isn't it? Show me where the slaves' quarters are, Phaon. Quickly, quickly.'

       Phaon got up at his leisure. His sharp ear caught a sound outside, some way away, horses. 'Come with me then, take a torch.'

       He went out, not too hurriedly, and his master followed eagerly, stumbling, till they came to a dark and dusty area beyond the kitchens. Those kitchens had cooked no food in a long time. 'Safe here then, you think, Phaon? Quite safe?' His torch showed him a wallsconce. He fitted the torch in. He did not like all these shadows. He did not like Phaon's shaking his head and taking a dagger from his kirtle. He handed it to his master, with a slight bow. 'I do that? Never, never. It's a coward's act, Phaon.' But Phaon insisted. 'Show me, then. Show me how to do it. You do it first, Phaon, then I'll follow.' But Phaon wrapped Nero's fist around the hilt and guided it towards his throat. So great an artist and he had to die. No, not so great: this was not the time for self-deception. If there had been the chance to learn, and to learn humbly. A martyr to the art in a sense: testifying to the future that one had to give up all for art and he had not been permitted to give up all. As he began to choke on his blood he saw a page of perfect sapphics not now to be written. He heard them sung in some phoenix version of his own voice, but the voice did not get beyond the first line and a half. Up to the caesura. The arriving squadron was loud about the house.

There is irony in the fact that Paul's death came after that of Nero. He arrived from Spain in an interregnum, but the law still ran, like a mad horse beyond curbing. He was unaware of this. Christianity was a religio licita. The ship came in at Puteoli, a grainship that had docking precedence. It was unladed of its bales and passengers. A couple of port officials asked the ship's master to show them the manifest of these latter.

       'Leave men from Spain. Private passengers. Who's this Paul?’

       ‘Roman citizen.'

       'That doesn't look like a Roman name.'

       'He's just known as Paul. A Christian preacher. Made a lot of converts in Spain. Including some of these leave men. Why, anything wrong?'

       'How long have you been away from Italy?'

       'I've been doing the run from the Spanish mainland to the Balearics for three years. Why?'

       'Christianity's a proscribed religion. Punishable by death. Where is this Paul?'

       The ship's master pointed to a very brown, very bald, very lean but quite old man in a brown habit, shouldering his pack and preparing to leave the dock area. The port official who had spoken spoke again:

       'And he doesn't know either?'

       'No more than I did. What are you going to do?'

       'We have our orders.' A maniple was summoned; it moved in to arrest Paul; he could not understand why. He tried to resist, but strong arms grasped him. He was taken to the offices of the quaestor in Neapolis. Paul spoke first.

       'I seem to be under arrest. Is it permitted to ask why?'

       'I suppose you're entitled to an explanation. The religion you preach has been proscribed. You oughtn't really to be surprised.'

       'Why?'

       'It's an antiroman activity. You're cannibals, buggers, incendiarists and Jupiter knows what.'

       'Very good. And I personally am to be tried on those charges?’

       ‘No. The state dispenses with the formality of a trial.'

       'Even for a Roman citizen?'

       'There were plenty of Roman citizens who burnt down their own city.'

       'So what happens to me?'

       'I have to order your instant execution. That's the way it's done these days. Look,' the quaestor said, a man as bald and brown as Paul but much younger, 'I don't like this. I don't even believe all those stories. It's not the way we did things before. But we have our orders.'

       It was always a matter of orders. Rome would choke itself on orders. Paul said: 'Crucifixion?'

       'No. The axe. It's quicker.'

       Paul had an unworthy thought. Crucifixion ruptured nothing. Nails ran through the wrists, sometimes without even breaking the bones. A corpse could be taken down from a cross and be seen later to be not a corpse. Pockets of air in the lungs. Resuscitation. If Christ had been beheaded, would the disciples have noticed a thin red band, like a delicate necklace, marking the miraculous rejoining? But Christ had not been beheaded. 'When?' he asked.

       'Now. Best get it over. We've had to set up a block in that yard there. I'll have to call the axeman. Sorry about this.'

       It was proper that Paul should meet his end in a seaport. Rome had never been his city, and it is irrational to search for his bones there. He died in the seawind. For the official record he made a statement:

       'I must make one final protest against a flagrant miscarriage of justice. I am a Roman citizen. I am guilty of no charge. I was exonerated by the state of what previous charges were held against me. I am a Jew and I am a Christian and hence profess beliefs acceptable to the Roman state. I have a right to demand justice.' These words were not taken down. He was taken to the block and, before laying his bald head on it, he prayed: 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Now to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit I commend my soul and the souls of my enemies. Amen.' He prayed in Aramaic. Then the axe fell.

       In Rome, despite the death of its imperial architect, the work of rebuilding went on. Caleb, who had left behind the butchery of the arena, worked as a foreman responsible for the carting of blocks of marble and travertine. A jagged wall was being demolished to make way for something thicker, higher, nobler. Something seemed to have been carved on the wall, near obliterated by dust. He brushed the dust away and saw a crude drawing of a fish. He nodded: he knew the sign. That man Peter had been a fisherman, but Tigellinus had merely sold fish. Now Christ had actually turned into a fish. Caleb had no great love for fish: his muscles had been built on meat. But he looked at the crude drawing with a certain tenderness. These people were not going to give up in a hurry. The faith they practised was, after all, of Jewish provenance. The Jews were not going to give up in a hurry either.

FIVE

This is the last time you will have to hear of my bodily infirmities, which have been somewhat soothed by the continuing good weather of the month named for Gaius Julius, no mean Caesar. But I cannot deny, nor do my physicians attempt to, that I have little time left. A crab crawls in my belly and its claws nip more perniciously every day. Of the condition of my bowels I dare hardly speak. I see now, however, that there has been more relevance in imposing my pains on you than I formerly thought. The decay of one small body is a metaphor of the organic corruption of the Roman Empire.

       I remember very well the death of the father of one of my friends. The old man had been named Kederah for his rotundity, but the name was now a mockery. His was a death which his ailing organs were only too ready to hasten, but his indomitable mind held it back. Or rather it was the seductive power of a particular book which rendered his mind at least temporarily indomitable. He had worked hard all his life at trade, and only in his retirement was he able to return to the love of his boyhood, which was reading. He had never read the Odyssey in his youth and was unable to find a copy until his last illness. Then he became determined to finish his bedrid reading of it before yielding to the arms of the dark. So he reached the final lines, read them, put aside the book, then composed himself for his pagan end. He died at peace. He had done one thing he had wanted to do, and now let the shades enclose him.

       I feel myself to be in something of the same situation. I too have a book to finish — the writing of it (I fear there may be no time to read it through, correct the style, banish inconsistencies, adjust my portrayals of great men evil and good) — and then I shall be content to leave this beautiful and damnable world (last night there were fireflies in my bedroom, and I could see Sirius poised on the tip of one of my Alps), of which I hoped so much and received so little. My friend's father could at least rejoice vicariously in Odysseus's final triumph — the defestation of his island kingdom, the lying in sleep and love with patient Penelope — but I can record little but failure. A faith was born and then died. It was slaughtered by Jews and Romans alike. The hopeful words of Linus to his flock, much diminished by martyrdom and defection, ring pathetically.

       'Children in Christ, we have celebrated the supper of the Lord, taking in love and amity the consecrated bread and wine which, by the daily miracle, become his flesh and blood. The body of the Lord was torn and rent and crucified that we might live. But the hard task of proclaiming the word and suffering that it might be proclaimed remains one which we share with him and are proud to share. The Christians of the city of Rome have suffered. They have been a bloody show to gratify a depraved mob and an even more depraved emperor. But their deaths have not been in vain. They have proved to a pagan world that if a faith is strong enough men and women are willing to die for it. The church of Rome is in constant peril, and yet it is in no danger of extinction. Alas, the great men, the founders of the faith in far places, are disappearing from sight and may soon disappear from memory. Peter was crucified in Rome, Paul was beheaded in Neapolis. I, Linus, your bishop, follow very humbly in their wake. I present to you now our brother Cletus, my successor when the time comes for my death at the hands of the executioner or in the jaws of the beasts. I would say now and say strongly that the Church will prevail. The Church is indeed stronger than the empire which assails it. That empire casts around for a Caesar. It is in confusion and may soon be in a state of civil war. We who profess peace have nothing to fear from it but the death of the body. We who profess love may yet see this agonized empire transformed into a vehicle of the universal expression of divine and human charity. Be strong in your weakness and proud in your humility. In the name of the Father —’

       Pathetic, yes. Damnably so. We have to imagine Linus and his congregation as a huddle of fearful people meeting, by an irony, in those groves some four miles from Rome where the tomb of Nero was already overrun by coarse grass and bindweed. Prayers were often gabbled, and the accidents of the sacrament all too frequently gulped. The end of Nero was not the end of intolerance. It was a weed that flourished rankly and still does.

       Consider Servus Sulpicius Galba in his camp not far from Cordova, the town where Seneca and Gallio were born. The governor of Spain, he hobbled out on aged twisted feet which could hardly bear sandals to the occasional harrying of dissident Iberians. As now. He looked up in satisfaction at three men leaping and gasping like landed fish on three crosses on a little hill. Seventy, hairless, his joints twisted but his spirit vigorous, he had let old age harden a native brutality and bring no glimmer of compassion. His aide Porcellus had some of this last quality and he spoke, albeit nervously, of the Senate's possible displeasure at the crucifixion of Roman citizens.

       'Look carefully, man, and you'll see that our delinquent Roman hangs a little higher than our delinquent Iberians. Roman citizens may claim no special leniency. Justice is justice. As for the Senate, the Senate has been loud in its denunciation of the Christians. I am only pleasing a Senate I am called upon to serve and yet not serve. I wish I could have caught that Jew Paul before he took ship. He too was a Roman citizen.'

       'Our Christians,' Porcellus said stoutly, 'have been no worse soldiers than the rest.'

       'Careful, Porcellus, go very carefully. Keep your sympathy from my ears and eyes. The Christians are by definition followers of a slave cult, scornful of our virtues and of our gods, haters of blood, unless it is the infantile blood they drink disgustingly at their incestuous feasts. There will be no living Christians in my Rome.'

       They had come to Galba's tent, an elaborate contrivance with a wingspreading eagle high above its central pole on a sort of canvas cupola, out-tents attached to the main body, twelve soldiers on perpetual guard around it. Blue Spanish hills, haunted by real eagles, lay beyond, misted in the dull hot day. Galba paused before going in.

       'You read the letter, Porcellus?'

       'I even studied it, sir.'

       'Oh, very conscientious. You agree that this is the only course? Nero orders my death because our Spanish army proclaims me — though the gods alone know how he thinks my execution is to be arranged. I countermand the order. And there's only one way to do that.'

       'I must get used to calling you Caesar, Caesar.'

       'Servus Sulpicius Galba Caesar.' He grinned with few teeth. 'It rings well enough. Pity I'm old, Porcellus. How many years am I given to clear up the mess left by Nero? Oh, send in a woman for me, will you? Not too young. I'm no longer athletic.'

       'These Iberian women are dirty, Caesar. Shall I have some bathed and then Caesar can take his choice?'

       'Have one of them bathed. I leave the choice to you. Will you be like me at seventy, Porcellus? Asking for a woman to be sent in?'

       'I doubt if I'll reach seventy, Caesar.'

       'Very true. You won't even reach forty if you go on telling me that Christians make good soldiers. All right, dismiss.'

       The truth is that Galba cared little for the embraces of women, clean or dirty. But the heterosexual gesture worked well in a province which associated homosexuality with a burnt and dirty Rome which it was the destiny of the provincial governor to go and clean up. Galba loved his little boys like all our pagan magnates except Claudius, and one must wonder at this sickness of inversion which was not just an imported Greek cult but a satisfaction deeply rooted in the male glands and psyche of the Roman governing class. They begot children distractedly but had, perhaps, a deep fear of those magical caverns of the female body which had their counterpart in the female mind. They feared women more than they durst admit, and they were content to allow the infantile loveplay of the boys' gymnasium or the school baths to be prolonged even into old age. When Galba landed with his legion at Ostia, he was, twisted and toothless as he was, eager to engage the perversions of the imperial life that, a grave fault in Nero but, to be truthful, one he had at first resisted, his mother having helped there, had to be associated with other perversities — gratuitous cruelty, arbitrary power. Galba did not cleanse Rome; Rome would never be clean.