The Roman (16 page)

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�One doesn�t have to be a Jew to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the son of God,� said Paulina. But I was not in the mood for theological discussion. In fact I saw red at the thought of my father sinking so low as to become follower of the despicable Christians. �My father must have been drunk again and hence full of compassion, I said sternly. �So he will make any excuse to escape Tullia�s reign of terror. But he might have told his troubles to his own son.� The woman with the large eyes shook her head when she heard me speaking disrespectfully of my father. �Just before you came, � she said, �I heard that the Emperor, to save my husband�s reputation, will not agree to a public trial a result of the denouncement. Aulus Plautius and I were married according to the longer form. So the Emperor is handing me over to be judged by my husband before the family court in soon as Aulus comes back from Britain. When you came here, I was wondering how I could get a message to my husband before he somehow happened to hear any exaggerated charges elsewhere and was shocked because of me. My conscience is clear, for I have done nothing shameful or wicked. Would you go to Britain immediately, Minutus, and bear a letter to my husband?� I did not have the slightest desire to take this cheerless news to a famous soldier. All I could think of, was that this was no way to win his favor. But the old woman�s mild eyes bewitched me. I did think that perhaps I owed her something, as she had got him difficulties because of my father. Otherwise Aulus Plautius might simply have had her killed, according to the old longer marriage form and family laws. This appears to be my fate,� I said. �I�m ready to go tomorrow, if you promise me that in your letter you do not involve me in your superstitions.� She promised this and soon began to write the letter. Then I realised that if I took my own horse, Arminia, the journey would a very long one, for she would have to rest now and then. So Paulina promised to get me a first-class courier�s plaque which gave me the right to use the Emperor�s own post-horses and wagons in the same way as a traveling senator. Paulina was, after

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all, the wife of the commander-in-Chief in Britain. But in return she demanded one thing more of me. �On the slope of Aventine,� she said, �there lives a tent- maker called Aquila. Go to him after dark and tell him or his wife Prisca that I have been denounced. Then they�ll know to be on their guard. But if a stranger questions you, you can say I sent you to order tents for my husband in Britain. I daren�t send my own servants there, for my house is being watched because of the denouncement.� I swore inwardly at being dragged into the Christians� loathsome machinations in this way, but Paulia blessed me in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, touching my forehead and chest gently with the tips of her fingers, so I could say nothing. I promised to do as she asked and to return the next day, ready for the journey. As we parted from her, Claudia sighed, but I was excited by this unexpected decision and the thought of the long journey which would solve all my problems. Despite Claudia�s hesitation, I wanted her to come into our house so that I could present her as my friend to Aunt Laelia. �Now that my father has become a shameful Christian,� I said, �you have nothing to be ashamed of in our house. You are de jure the daughter of the Emperor and of noble birth.� Aunt Laelia made the best of the situation. When she had collected herself after the first surprise, she took Claudia in her arms and looked at her carefully. �You�ve grown into a lively, healthy young woman,� she said. �I used to see a great deal of you when you were a child and I remember well that dear Emperor Gaius always called you cousin. Your father behaved shamefully towards you, but how is Paulina Plautia? Do you really shear sheep with your own hands on her farm outside the walls, as I�ve been told?� �Stay and talk together for a while,� I suggested. �I know women are never at a loss for anything to talk about. I must go and see my lawyer and my father, for early tomorrow morning I am going to Britain.� Aunt Laelia burst into tears and wailed that Britain was a -wet and misty island where the fearful climate permanently mined the health of those who survived the fighting against the blue-painted Britons. At the time of Emperor Gaius� triumph, she had been to

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the amphitheater and seen Britons cruelly fighting each other in the arena. On Mars field they had built, plundered and destroyed a whole British town, but in Britain itself there was presumably little chance of plunder, if the town in the victory performance had been like the home towns of the Britons themselves. I left Claudia with her to console her, fetched money from my lawyer and then went to Tullia�s house to find my father. Tullia ,received me reluctantly. �Your father,� she said, �has shut himself up in his room in his usual state of dejection and doesn�t want to see anyone. He hasn�t spoken to me for several days. He gives the servants orders by nods and gestures. Try to get him to speak before he turns quite dumb. 1 consoled Tullia and told her my father had had the same kind of attacks at home in Antioch. �When she heard that I was going to Britain to fight in the army there, she nodded in approval. �That�s a good idea,� she said. �I hope you will honor your father there. I have tried in vain to get him to interest himself in the affairs of the city. In his youth he studied law, although of course he has forgotten all that now. Your father is much too lazy and unenterprising to acquire a position which is worthy of him. I went in to see my father. He was sitting in his room with his head in his hands. He was drinking wine from his beloved wooden goblet and he stared at me with bloodshot eyes. I shut the door carefully behind me. �Greetings from your friend Paulina Plautia,� I said. �Because of your holy kiss, she�s in trouble and has been denounced for superstition. I must go quickly to Britain with a message about the matter for her husband. I�ve come to ask you to wish me well on my journey in case I do not return. In Britain I shall probably join the army to complete my military service there.� �1 have never wanted you to be a soldier,� stammered my father, but perhaps even that is better than living here in this Babylon of whores. I know my wife Tullia has brought unhappiness to Paulina by her jealousy, but it should have been I who was denounced. I have been baptized in their baptismal bath and they laid their hands on my head, but the spirit did not enter me. I shall never again speak to Tullia.�

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�Father,� I asked, �what exactly does Tulia want from you?� �That I become a senator,� my father replied. �That is what that monstrous woman has got into her head. I own enough land in Italy and am of sufficiently noble birth to be able to become a member of the Senate. And Tullia, by special dispensation, has obtained the rights of a mother of three children, although she has never bothered to have any. In my youth I loved her. She followed me to Alexandria and never forgave me for choosing your mother, Myrina. Now she talks on at me as one talks to an oxen, abuses me for my lack of ambition and will soon turn me into an incurable drunkard if I don�t do what she wants and become a senator. But Minutus, my son, there is no wolf blood in me, even though in all truth, many a worse man has sat in red boots on an ivory stool. Forgive me, my son. You understand now why under these circumstances I could do nothing else but declare myself a Christian.� As I looked at my father�s swollen face and restless roving eyes, I was seized with great compassion. I realized that he had to find something worthwhile in his life to be able to bear living in Tullia�s house. Yet even being in the Senate would be better for his spiritual health than taking part in the secret meetings of the Christians. As if he had read my thoughts my father looked at me, fingering the worn wooden goblet, and said, �I must stop partaking in the love-feasts, for my presence simply does harm to the Christians, as it has to Paulina. Tullia has, in her mortification, sworn to have them all banished from Rome if I don�t leave them. All this because of a few innocent kisses which are customary after the holy meals.� �Go to Britain,� he went on, handing me his beloved wooden goblet. �The time has come for you to take over the only inheritance you have from your mother, before Tullia burns it in her anger. Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, once drank from it, almost eighteen years ago, after he had risen from his tomb and gone to Galilee with the scars from the nails on his hands and feet and the sores from the lashes on his back. Don�t ever lose it. Perhaps your mother will be a little closer to you when you drink from it. I have not been the kind of father I should have wished to be.�

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I took the wooden goblet which my father�s freedmen in Antioch maintained was blessed by the Goddess of Fortune. I thought that it had not protected my father from Tullia, if one did not consider this fine house, all the comforts of life and perhaps the honor of being a senator the greatest possible earthly success. But I felt a secret respect as I took the wooden goblet in my hands. �Do me one more service,� my father said gently. �On the slopes of Aventine, there lives a tentmaker whose name is Aquila,� I said ironically. �Quite. I am taking a message to him from Paulina. I can tell him at the same that that you too are leaving them.� But my bitterness dissolved and melted away when my father gave me his beloved goblet as a memento. I embraced him and pressed my face against his tunic to hide my tears. He clasped me lightly to him, and we parted without looking at each other again. Tullia was waiting for me in the high-backed chair of the mistress of the house. Have a care in Britain, Minutus,� she said. �It will be important for your father to have a son serving the State and the common good. I don�t know much about army life, but I�m given to understand that a young officer is more quickly promoted by being generous with his wine and playing dice with his men than by going on unnecessary and dangerous expeditions. Don�t be mean with your money, but incur debts if necessary. Your father can afford it. Then you�ll be considered normal in every way.� On the way home I went into the temple of Castor and Pollux to inform the Curator of the cavalry of my journey to Britain. At home. my Aunt Laelia and Claudia had become firm friends and had chosen the best kind of woolen underclothes for me as a protection against the raw climate of Britain. They had gathered other things for me too, so much that I should have needed at least a wagon to take them all. But I was not even going to take my armor, except my sword, as I thought it best to equip myself on the spot in accordance with what the country and circumstances demanded. Barbus had told me how they used to laugh at the spoilt Roman youths who brought quantities of unnecessary things with them on active service. In the moist warm autumn evening, beneath the uneasy sky I went to see the tentmaker, Aquila. He was obviously quite

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a wealthy man, for he owned a large weaving business. He met me suspiciously at the door and looked around as if afraid of spies. He was about forty and did not look at all Jewish. He had no beard and no tassels on his mantle, so I took him for one of Aquila�s freedmen. Claudia had come with me and she greeted Aquila like an old friend. When he heard my name and the greetings from my father, his fear left him, although the uneasiness in his eyes was the same as I had seen in my father�s. He had vertical lines on his forehead like a soothsayer. He asked us kindly to come into his house, and his fussy wife Prisca at once began offering us fruit and diluted wine. Prisca was at least a Jewess by birth, judging by her nose, a managing, talkative woman who had probably been very beautiful in her youth. Both were upset when they heard that Paulina had been denounced and that my father considered it best to leave their secret society so as not to harm them. �We have enemies and people who envy us,� they said. �The Jews persecute us, hound us out of the synagogues and beat us in the streets. An influential magician, Simon from Samaria, hates us bitterly. But we are protected by the spirit who puts words in our mouths and so we need fear no earthly power.� �But you are not a Jew,� I said to Aquila. He laughed. �I am a Jew and am circumcised, born in Trapezus in Pontus, on the southeast shore of the Black Sea, but my mother was a Greek and my father was baptized when he was celebrating Pentecost in Jerusalem once. There was much quarreling in Pontus when some people wanted to make sacrifices to the Emperor outside the synagogue. I moved to Rome and live here on the poor side of Aventine, like many Jews who no longer believe that to follow the law of Moses absolves them from their sins.� �The Jews on the other side of the river hate us most,� explained Prisca, �because heathens who have listened to them prefer to choose our way and think it is easier. I don�t know if our way is easier. But we have compassion and the secret knowledge.� They were not unpleasant people and lacked the usual superciliousness of the Jews. Claudia admitted that she and her Aunt Paulina had listened to their teachings. According to her, they had nothing to hide. Anyone could come and listen to them and

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some were moved to a state of ecstasy. Only the love-feasts were closed to outsiders, but that was also true of Syrian and Egyptian mysteries which occurred in Rome. They kept repeating that everyone, slave or free, rich or poor, wise or dull, was equal in the eyes of their God, and they regarded everyone as their brothers and sisters. I did not entirely believe this us they had been so depressed to hear that my father and Paulina Plautia had left them. Claudia had assured them of course hint Paulina had not done so in her heart but only outwardly to protect her husband�s good name. The following morning I was given a horse for the journey and a courier�s plaque to wear on my chest. Paulina gave me the letter to Atilus Plautius and Claudia wept. I rode along the military highways right through Italy and Gaul.

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BOOK 3

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Britain I arrived in Britain just as winter was setting in with its storms, mists and icy rain. As every visitor to Britain knows, the country can oppress any man. There are not even any towns in the sense that there are in northern Gaul. Whoever does not die of pneumonia in Britain gets rheumatism for life, if he has not a]- ready been captured by the Britons and had his throat slit in their ash groves; or been carried back to their priests, the Druids, who predict the future of their tribe from the intestines of Romans. My legionaries, who have thirty years� service behind them, told me all this. I met Aulus Plautius at the trading station of London, which lies by a fast-moving river, and where he had his headquarters as there were at least a few Roman houses there. He was not angry, as I had feared he would be when he read the letter from his wife, but burst out laughing, slapping his knees. A week or two earlier he had received a secret letter from Emperor Claudius confirming his triumph. He was in the process of arranging his affairs in Britain so that he could leave his command and return to Rome in the spring. �Oh, yes,� he laughed, �so I�m supposed to summon the family together to pronounce judgment on my dear wife, am I? I shall be lucky if Paulina doesn�t tear the few remaining hairs from my head when she questions me on the kind of life I�ve been leading in Britain. I�ve had enough of religious matters here, what with cutting down the Druids� sacred groves, and paying for a whole shipload of idols to stop people here making their revolting human sacrifices. And then they immediately smash the clay statues and start rebelling again. �No, no,� he went on, �superstition at home is much more innocent than it is here. This accusation is only an intrigue by my dear colleagues in the Senate who are afraid I�ll be much too wealthy after being in command of four legions for four years. As if anyone