by Ken Parejko
It all seemed so legal, loaded with wherefores and therefores. Plinia and Marcus were young. They would need the help of both families to get on their feet, emotionally as well as financially. And the children who were likely to come would complicate their lives in unforeseen ways. I sighed. No wonder a fourth of all marriages failed, devolved into acrimonious divorces.
But these doubts about the future hadn’t found a home within the wedding couple, whose happiness beamed out to the gathered crowd of family and friends. Now was time to wish them good luck. In one voice, joined together, those who’d stuffed themselves into every room and hallway of the Pliny home cried out: “Feliciter!”As the voices died down the servants hurried into the room with the wedding dinner -- roast pig, mutton, duck, chicken, fish from the lake, a variety of breads and vegetables. It smelled delicious. We all slipped off to our assigned places, according to how closely related we were to the couple, and began eating. I reclined next to my parents, who were next to the wedding couple. The formal part of the ceremony was over. People turned to chatting among themselves about the weather, the crops, local and imperial politics.
Much was afoot down in Rome. The philosopher Seneca, exiled by Claudius, had been brought back to the capitol to serve as tutor to Agrippina’s son Domitius, who had just taken the toga virilis, his entryway into the adult life. As Vespasian had warned me, Claudius’ own son Brittanicus was now relegated to the background. Of the two close advisers to Claudius, Agrippina’s favorite Pallas had become imperial treasurer while Narcissus, who like Vespasian had opposed Agrippina’s rise, was forced out of the picture. It was easy to see Agrippina’s hand in all this, and as we ate and chatted, I heard her name mentioned more than once.
I was already growing overweight, so I chose carefully what I ate. I found myself feeling giddy with the excitement of the wedding and the mixed emotions it brought. I was happy for Plinia, as she started her new life, but afraid for her too, that it turn out well. And after I left our parents would be alone. I felt that life was passing by far too quickly. It seemed that I was only capable of learning from life’s lessons what I should have known going into them, and felt a pang of sadness for watching Plinia drift away. As young children we were close, but in a few years I'd turned to playing with boys, she with girls. When I was sent off to Rome to learn under Pomponius I’d left her behind. My years in the army had only further separated us.
As I chewed a bite of bread, lost far enough in thought that the busy chitchat of those around me went quiet, I felt out of step with what was expected of me by society. Though twelve years younger than me, Plinia was moving ahead with her own life, yet I couldn’t find a way with mine. Last night that had seemed a good thing, my future unknown and still wide open to me. Today it made me feel somehow disabled, inadequate, lost in time. I was a boat caught in an eddy current, watching as all the other boats headed happily off to their destinations.
Father and mother seemed less troubled by the day’s events than I. They were busily passing the time with small talk among neighbors and friends, fully alive in the moment. I experienced a pang of regret that perhaps I might spend my whole life an observer, never entering fully their simple, homely ways.
The party went on into the evening until, as the light outside dimmed, Plinia and mother quietly disappeared. Suddenly Plinia’s scream flew out from the kitchen. The music stopped, and we watched as three strong young me dragged her back into the dining room. She fought against them like a cat torn from its kittens. They dragged her to Marcus’ side, where she nestled herself modestly in his arms.
This little charade symbolized her being torn from the arms of her mother. The message of it to her was that no matter how she might feel about it, her rightful place from now on was with Caecilius. She’d spent countless hours in her mother’s kitchen. Though she would return to visit, her kitchen was now somewhere else. The time arrived for us to move to Caecilius’ house. The guests milled around, finishing their drinks.
“To my house!” the bridegroom shouted. He and the bride hurried out the front door where two young boys took her by hand. A third carried a pine torch, which gave off thick clouds of smoke redolent of the smells of campfire and hearth. The torch had been lit in our hearth-fire and would be used to start a new fire, the fire to which Plinia had wed herself, at Caecilius’. The groom followed, alongside him two girls carrying the spindle and distaff which signified her new household chores.
It was a lovely night, warm and clear, the stars above sparkling jewels set in heaven’s black robe. The moon, far down to the left, playfully skipped its reflection from off the lake. All formality and decorousness broke down. Instead, a competition arose in shouting ribald comments and jokes. Now and then as we walked one or other of the men would break into a verse of obscene songs common to taverns and army-camps. It was embarrassing, but the purpose, to urge the couple to a fruitful marriage, was commendable.
As we neared the groom’s house the crowd pelted the couple with nuts which little children scrambled to collect for their mothers to bake them cakes and cookies. The procession stopped in front of Caecilius’ door. Caecilius’ mother joined the couple there, holding a basin of pine-wood. The torch brought from our house was touched to the wood. As the crowd applauded a flame leapt up, with which Plinia would light a new fire in the hearth of her new home. The boy who’d carried the torch turned to the crowd and lobbed it high into the air. It played a tumbling arc through the starry sky, like a giant comet, and fell toward the thick of the crowd, which parted quickly as it came down. The torch landed in an explosion of sparks and smoke. Boys scrambled to pick it up. Whoever got it was promised a long and happy life. Even weddings, I noted, were heavy with superstitions.
Her new mother-in-law handed Plinia a bowl; she picked from it a handful of suet, from one of the animals sacrificed for the day’s feast., which she rubbed all around the doorway, leaving thick trails of fat. Plinia was handed a towel to wipe her hands. Then she accepted a handful of wool, which she pulled apart and stuck onto the fat clinging to the doorway, wreathing it from top to bottom. Now she and her husband would never lack something to eat, or wear.
The crowd, spread out into a half-circle by the doorway, watched her husband lift her into his arms and carry her over the threshold, and as he did a cheer rose into the night sky. He set her down and they turned toward the crowd. Two of his servants brought them a chalice of water and embers from the new fire. Plinia touched the water, then the container of embers. Fire, water, food and clothing were the essential ingredients to a successful household.
The wedding couple smiled, waved to the crowd and turned into the house. As they entered they passed a tiny bed made up not for them but for their spirits – Marcus’ genius and Plinia’s juno. Their closest relations followed them inside, where they serenaded the couple with an epithalamium, a traditional wedding song rich with ribald double-meanings. Plinia was taken to her new bedroom. Inside, to the sounds of the epithalamium, she was undressed by older, married women. At last, when the final verse of the wedding song finished, she was left to herself. Marcus, somewhat embarrassed, was led to the bedroom, and as he entered, the door closed behind him.
The ceremony was over. A few of the neighbors and friends stayed to shout bawdy comments from outside their window, to urge on the consummation of the the marriage.
But for most it was time to go home. I followed behind mother and father, surprised at the sadness which seemed to rain down out of the starry sky into my heart. This was a turning-point not only in Plinia’s life, but in the life of my family and of me. Except for a few straggling remnants of the wedding ceremony, the path home was now deserted. From up the way a dog barked at us, or maybe the moon. A prowling cat ran across the path. The night creatures had come out. It was time for the day creatures to sleep.
After a few moments of quiet chitchat we went to bed. It had been a long, exhausting day. I lay in bed, listening to the house and its inhabitants drift to sleep.
Little Sparrow had grown up, flown away to sleep in another nest. Fifteen years before -- had it been that long? -- I’d been through a similar passage, not into marriage, but into the toga virilis. I remembered how strange the ritual of leaving my childhood had seemed. I felt, at the time, that I was not yet a man, but was no longer allowed to be a child. Surely Plinia must be feeling something similar. Even before I’d taken up the toga, when I was sent away from home to study in Rome it had been hard. But my studies had caught me up, hour after hour of history, rhetoric, mathematics. They took my mind to dizzying heights from which I could survey the known world, and in a few weeks I hardly thought again of the home nest.
Plinia would not be allowed to soar as I had. As a girl her fledgling flight was short, only a few wing-beats, from one branch of the tree to another. So it was. But it didn’t seem fair. I felt a pang of anger for her sake, who I knew was as smart, strong, full of life as me. But as bearers of the country’s children, women played a role men could not, a role really more important than all the learning, or writing, or even triumphs. We all play our part, I thought, edging toward sleep. Only, what is mine?
At last I slept. I dreamed of a woman, my mother I think, seated where she usually sat in the kitchen, overseeing the household. But a mist came up, and when it cleared, she was someone else -- Little Sparrow, I think, and then Agrippina, too-- seated no longer on a simple wooden chair, but an elaborate golden throne, alternately hidden and exposed by whirling clouds of fog. Then she was Diana Efesina, from whom emanated many essences, powers and beings: prides of lion springing into life, goats, bulls, horses, bees, flowers and forests all as though in a great whirlwind flying out from her presence. There was in all this fecundity a primitive chaos, astonishing as it was frightening. It was as though I stood facing the creative wind by which all things are carried into life.
But behind her, and all this wild fecundation, I caught glimpses of an appalling scene: the forum, covered with grass and tangled vines, sheep grazing among the fallen columns, the elaborate and wonderful marbles of Augustus' forum broken, half-buried under dirt, and the aqueducts, like withered breasts, dry ruins.
Then it was morning and the familiar Comum sun streamed in over me. I slipped quickly out of bed and padded barefoot downstairs. The household was already up and about. Mother set me a breakfast of porridge and cheese. I especially liked the local sheep cheeses, missed them while I was away. While we chatted about simple things, the household, the servants, the grain-harvest, details of my dream slipped away. It was clear my mother shared my sadness at Little Sparrow’s growing-up, and needed someone to talk to. We soothed each other with small talk. In time the conversation turned to my own plans.
“You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you like,” she said, examining a bolt of wool from the household loom. She tsktsked. The weave did not meet her standards. Someone would hear about it.
“Yes, I know. But I’ll be going back to Rome.” I surprised myself with the announcement, which seemed to take shape as I said it.
“Oh?” Though mother knew my future lay beyond the walls of the home estate, she enjoyed having me here. And after all, my future was the family’s future. Perhaps not in the genetic sense, for I showed little interest in marriage or children, but its civic future. No one on earth knew me so well as she did. She’d recognized a genius in me even as a young child, my insatiable curiosity and remarkable memory, my unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Tiresome as I could be, with all my questions about the world, she never gave up on me. The wings of my mind could carry me far. And she knew from her own experience how life at Comum, for a mind such as mine, would be a cage.
“Father wants me to try the law.”
“Yes,” she said, half-heartedly, for she felt mine was not a lawyer’s temperament. But that was something I’d have to discover on my own.
“I’ll go tomorrow, or the day after,” I said.
“So soon?” With Plinia gone, she would be lonely. She would miss us both, for totally different reasons. Because the two of them shared so much of the day, Plinia had become almost a shadow of my mother. Me she would miss because we shared such a similar temperament. Father was a solid citizen, straightforward and honest, and because of that and his hard work by raising the family fortune into the equestrian class had broadened the horizons of my future. But father was no intellect.
“Well, as you like,” mother said, standing. She came to me, kissed me lightly on the forehead. “Only be careful. Rome, they say, is a pit of vipers.”
“Yes. I know.” I was going to tell her about having met Vespasian, about the dangers Agrippina brought to the court, about Claudius’ naivete, and how the very future of the empire lay in question. But it didn’t seem the right time. Besides, though she didn’t know all the details, she knew the substance of it: Rome, a pit of vipers. Yes. It wasn’t the first time she’d surprised me with her deep common-sense.
Mother went off to the weaving-room, leaving me in the kitchen with my thoughts. Little Sparrow’s absence from the house was deafening. I wandered about all that day, but no matter where I went, there she wasn’t.
I was glad I was leaving soon. I told Lucius to start packing. Meanwhile I explored the estate, reached out to touch the unchanged and familiar, only to find changes where I’d least expected them. The old columbarium was gone, where I’d spent hours watching the pigeons come and go and listening to their calm cooing. In its place I found a half dozen beehives, which used to be on the other side of the property. Two of the old outbuildings had been torn down, little sheds in which as a child I’d escape the day’s heat. I remembered squatting in them, watching spiders patiently catching and eating flies. I’d seen a little beetle there, a lovely creature with gold spots down its ebony back, and watched it catch and devour a caterpillar. Where had once been a copse of cedars and yew, from which I’d found wood to try my hand at whittling now stood instead a sheep-corral.
And where wheat and spelt fields once sprawled I found instead rows of young olives. Even the weather had changed; fifty years before olives couldn’t be grown this far north. I recalled father explaining how it had been colder by the lake when he was young. He blamed the cutting down of all the forests for that, which let the land warm more. Red fir and oak now grew scattered up and down the lake where once towered big stands of gigantic beech. Change, I knew, was inevitable; but did it have to come so fast?
The day slipped past. Evening came, and still I felt lost. I set off for nowhere in particular, following a familiar trail up to the back boundaries of the estate. The slopes were steep, and every few steps I stopped and turned to see the lake receding behind me. The view was spectacular; the evening light glinting off the lightly troubled surface of the lake, the dark green hills coming down on all sides like the gentle arms of a mother protecting the waters from the outside world, the villas scattered around the shores, from which smoke rose lazily into the ruffling air, here and there the light of evening fires. From here, the sounds of evening rose to me, the roosters crowing the day to rest, the shouts of men and women in the village, the laughter of children.
My breathing became labored as I moved up to a little ridge that I followed back to the estate’s terminus. While the view of the lake urged me upwards, I found myself pushed back by a growing emotional charge building unseen with each step I took. It was here, just ahead, I’d met my brother Aulus, long ago, Aulus of whom I could not speak, and who I could not forget.
I was nine years old when mother became rich with child. Til then I’d been an only child, and the prospect of a sibling threw me into a state of confusion. I’d seen cows freshen in the barn, and watched rams mounting ewes, the sheep later birthing in the field. I understood the processes of conception and gestation. I’d only been told of my mother’s state when it could no longer be ignored. After the first flush of excitement I’d found it hard to put the fact of becoming a brother out of my mind. Sometimes, especially as the birthing date approached, I would
overhear mother and father discussing what needed to be done. The child would need a name. So I set my mind to finding one. I longed for a brother. My friends who had brothers always had someone handy to play with. Sisters were...well, sisters. Long before the event, as far as I was concerned, I would have a brother. One afternoon I marched right up to mother and announced that we would call him Aulus.
“Aulus? It’s a nice name,” mother said, “but why?”
I didn’t have an answer. It just seemed right. “I don’t know. But will you?”
She put her hand on my head, smoothed down my hair. “We’ll see. Maybe. Anyway, you might get a sister.” She smiled.
Naming day would be a week after the birth. But now that I’d decided on a name, I found myself growing anxious about the event. I’d always been an intense child, fastening onto things like a dog onto a bone. Fascinated by the whole process of pregnancy, I made a nuisance of myself to my mother and Cornelia, the vilica, mother’s right hand in managing the estate. My questions didn’t embarrass them but I asked so many eventually they told me to be quiet.
The arrival of the birthing chair announced my brother's imminent arrival. Mother spent the next days sequestered in her bedroom. Though even in normal times I spent most of my day with my nurse while mother and father busied themselves around the estate, I took this quarantining of my mother surprisingly hard. I hung around outside her room, paying close attention to the comings and goings. One of mother’s sisters and a great-aunt I never really liked came to stay with us. One morning when I came out of my room I found the servants rushing busily about, and a midwife hurried in from the village, one of those Jewish women who made their living this way. It was a long labor, and the sound of mother’s pain troubled me greatly. I wanted to go to her side and hold her hand or put my palm on her forehead, as she often did for me when I wasn’t well. But I wasn't allowed near the room.
