A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom

by John Boyne

  “What message?” she asked.

  “That I should come and lie with you tonight. I promise, no one will ever know.”

  In a flash, she jumped from the bed and ran from the room, followed quickly by a naked Caturix. A vociferous argument broke out in the room beyond and the next morning, when I awoke, my mother was alone in her bed and Juliu was nowhere to be found.

  IRAN

  A.D. 152

  WHEN MY FATHER, Marwan, returned from waging war against the Romans in Armenia, the atmosphere in our home changed considerably. Having taken part in countless battles and witnessed the violent deaths of many of his friends, his senses had grown overwrought, his temper was more easily provoked and he was less patient with his children. Too much noise would drive him into a fury; at his worst moments he was Ishtar, covering the Earth with storms and turning all the rivers to blood.

  Part of his ill humor could be put down to the mysterious disappearance of my brother Johan, of whom there had been no news since he vanished two years earlier. Some said that he had been spotted outside a temple in Ctesiphon, carrying a monkey on his shoulder and a tiger cub on a lead while begging money from strangers. Others claimed that he had traveled as far as Mithradatkirt, where he’d married a direct descendant of Arsaces himself and was living a life of extravagant splendor. Still others suggested that he had never left our village at all but had been murdered by his stepmother, his body thrown into an empty well or buried beneath the foundations of one of the new dwellings that were being constructed in the village next to our own. Marwan quizzed Fabiana frequently about the events leading up to the boy’s departure, but she remained vague in her answers.

  “He always hated me, you know that,” she protested. “And yes, we argued while you were gone, but I didn’t throw him out and nor would I ever have caused him harm. We went to sleep one night, all of us, and the following morning, when I awoke, he was gone. That is all I know.”

  Marwan accepted this for now, but a new remoteness developed between my parents and when he returned to the shore to rebuild the boat-repair business that had fallen into decline since Johan’s departure, his attitude suggested that he felt it to be a less worthwhile trade without an heir by his side. Occasionally, I would accompany him, but I was still too young to be of any practical use and he would grow angry with me as the day wore on, eventually returning home in bad humor.

  It upset me to recall how loving my parents had been before the war and, despite my mother’s best attempts to return their relationship to an affectionate place, her efforts were in vain. At night, when they retired for bed, I could hear him groaning in frustration before rising, dressing and disappearing into the night without explanation. At such times, I would slip from my cot into the bed next to Fabiana, whose weeping upset me greatly, and do my best to comfort her. She would hold me tightly and kiss me on the forehead but remained inconsolable and when I asked where my father went so late at night, all she would say was that he searched for the pleasures she herself was no longer able to afford him. Although I was too young to understand the meaning of her words, I swore that I would never turn away from her or abandon her for another, a promise that made me weep, too, and soon the pillow was damp from our mutual distress.

  “But you will, my beloved son,” she said with a sigh. “Boys always do.”

  During this time, our friends and neighbors lived, as we did, in a state of perpetual readiness for more conflict, for the amnesty between our ruler, Vologases, and the Emperor Antoninus Pius was a fragile thing at best. Our beloved Parthian Empire, may the gods look over her with mercy, existed in a state of constant tension with its Roman counterpart. And while I loved my father, I longed for the day when he would be called upon to don his battle armor once again, for the war between the empires had as its counterpoint a certain peace at home. At the back of my mind, however, I began to wonder whether aggression was the natural state for our species and if I, too, would one day be forced to raise a sword against an unknown enemy.

  I must now speak more of my older sister, Abeer, who from the start combined a brilliant mind with a jealous nature. By the age of one she could draw with great skill. By five, she was a talented horse rider and by nine her swordplay was the envy of many. She was witty, too, and tough, and brave, displaying all those characteristics that my father longed for in a son but which he considered wasted on a daughter. Like me, she spent much of her time seeking his approval, but he was less interested in his female progeny; the children who concerned him most were the absent Johan and myself. The male twin, Constans, suffered from a feeble mind and was sent away as a child to be a servant in a rich man’s house before drifting out of our lives forever. The rest were bred as future wives and mothers, nothing more.

  For the most part, Johan had tolerated Abeer, but his affections were muted when, as a child, she bested him in a tournament of warriors. Carrying only a wicker shield and a short spear, she managed to overturn him in front of our entire village, leaving him begging for mercy as the tip of her blade kissed his throat. It was a moment that I savored, for I rarely saw Johan reduced to the role of supplicant, and his face turned scarlet when he suffered the insult in front of his hooting friends.

  By the time Abeer turned eleven she was already a noted beauty and, when it became obvious that she would blossom into an exquisite woman, one of the elders made inquiries with Marwan about securing her as a bride for his son. My father refused the request, determined that no one would take his daughter to a marriage bed before her sixteenth birthday. He did not seek a great alliance or any financial advantage, after all, and I think he hoped that she would marry a man who would prove tender toward her, as he had been toward my mother when they first met.

  Most of the boys in our village were half in love with Abeer. The braver ones collected posies of dried flowers and left them by our door, watching from behind trees as she gathered them in her arms and inhaled their perfumes. They were deeply jealous of her friendship with Hakan, a crippled boy who lived alone with his mother, Nera, nearby. Hakan, who was the same age as my sister, had stumbled into the path of a frightened horse when he was only three years old and had been lucky to survive the accident. His legs had been badly broken, however, and the incompetent doctor who attended to him did nothing to fuse the bones back into their proper places so, as the years passed, the lower half of his body became misshapen and he could walk only with the aid of sticks, which he fashioned himself from the wood of the silver birch trees that grew on the outskirts of our village, carving two crows into the hand-grips. He was relentlessly bullied, but Abeer took him under her protection from a young age and such was her reputation as an indefatigable pugilist that few would have dared to mock him when she was by his side.

  For my part, I found Hakan to be a frightening creature with his contorted legs, which reminded me of clusters of ginger, bent as they were in unpredictable directions and with strange protrusions lurking beneath the skin. When he sat near me, I dreaded his flesh coming into contact with my own and would shuffle along the seat to stay as far from him as possible. I wasn’t proud of myself for this—I knew it wasn’t his fault that he had suffered such a ghastly injury—but nevertheless, I could not bring myself to treat him with the affection or kindness my sister did and wished that he would stay away.

  And so I was naturally dismayed when my father returned home from the riverbank one evening with this same boy in tow, declaring that Hakan would be our guest until further notice.

  “I found him on the street crying,” he explained, tousling the boy’s hair, which was dark and unkempt and in need of cutting. “Nera has gone to visit her dying mother and, heartless creature, has left him to fend for himself. I couldn’t allow it. So I invited him to stay with us until she returns.”

  Fabiana turned around in surprise from her cooking and, although she was fond of Hakan and had a generous nature, it was obvious that she was s
urprised by her husband’s sudden rush of altruism.

  “But where will he sleep, Husband?” she asked.

  “With the boy,” he replied, nodding in my direction.

  “And how long will his mother be away?” she continued, but Marwan simply shrugged his shoulders and sat down, waiting for a plate of food to be put before him. The conversation had come to an end.

  I spent the evening dreading the night that lay ahead. The notion of Hakan’s body and mine pressed together in my tiny bed in a state of undress horrified me, and when the time came and he hobbled into the bedroom where I was already lying naked beneath the thin sheet, I began to weep, running into the kitchen to ask my parents whether I might sleep in their bed instead, a request that was summarily refused. My father looked at me with such disgust that I cried even more, for I hated to shame myself in front of him.

  Marwan, having fought in so many battles and witnessed so much butchery over the years, was barely conscious of Hakan’s deformity and saw my tantrum as nothing more than the selfishness of a child too spoiled to share a bed with another, while Fabiana understood why I was protesting and scolded me for my callousness. Still, I lay awake much of the night and, whenever he turned, some part of those twisted limbs would make contact with my own and I would withdraw from him even further.

  As the weeks passed and Nera had still not reappeared, I asked whether Hakan might not share Abeer’s bed instead—after all, I reasoned, he was her friend and not mine—and my father struck me in anger. I did not realize that asking two eleven-year-olds to sleep together would be to land them in disgrace as well as a marriage contract.

  Abeer forgave my unkindness, for she could never stay angry with me for long, but when I asked her why she liked Hakan so much, particularly when he was an outcast with the other children, she replied by saying that I had answered my own question.

  “His isolation is what makes him interesting,” she told me, sewing a set of yellow ribbons into the hem of her skirt, for among all her other talents, Abeer was an excellent seamstress. “Hakan saves all his best stories for me. All his ambitions. All his secrets.”

  I liked the idea of secrets and asked her to share them with me, too, but she smiled and shook her head.

  “Will you marry him one day?” I asked, fearful that he might become a permanent member of our family, but she remained silent as she returned to her sewing. She must have missed a stitch, though, for she winced and drew a finger to her mouth. When she pulled it away, a drop of blood fell on the material of the freshly decorated dress, leaving a perfect red spot at the center of one of the ribbons.

  “Here,” she said, holding the bleeding finger out toward me. “Kiss it better.”

  I took the finger into my mouth, tasting the saltiness of the blood, and sucked on it. When the bleeding stopped, I watched, transfixed, as she pricked the top of a second finger, producing the same result, and told me to kiss this one better, too.

  “You’ll do anything I ask, little brother, won’t you?” she said thoughtfully as I held this finger in my mouth. “I like that.”

  A month later, Nera returned at last. It was evening time and our family, along with Hakan, was seated around the fire, eating lamb stew flavored with saffron. Winter had come, the nights had turned cold, and my mother was repeating some gossip she’d overheard in the marketplace that morning when we heard footsteps approaching from outside. We turned around as one, for it was unusual to have visitors at that time of night.

  The door opened and Nera entered, looking exhausted and hungry. Hakan jumped up and hobbled toward her, crying out her name in delight. She was holding a bundle that, at first, I took to be food, a symbol of her gratitude to my family for taking care of her son. But no, a confused mewling from the parcel revealed that she was carrying a baby, an infant, and she parted the two sides of the blanket to reveal a tiny head and scarlet lips that suckled at her finger, just as I had suckled at Abeer’s.

  “Well?” asked my father, staring at her.

  “A girl,” she said.

  He nodded and sighed, closing his eyes for a moment before returning to his place at the fire. “Wife,” he said, addressing Fabiana but not daring to look at her. “Nera and my daughter will live here with us from now on. There will be no arguments, no discord. This is how I want things to be and this is how they will be.”

  The silence that followed this speech seemed to last for an eternity. I looked at my mother, whose face fell in a mixture of distress and shame, her entire body slumping in a manner that suggested she had not only been defeated but knew she had no way of fighting back. A kind woman, she turned to Nera, speaking the words of welcome that were as natural to her as breathing.

  “You must be hungry after your walk,” she said. “Let me offer you a plate of food.”

  ITALY

  A.D. 169

  AS OUR NEW and unconventional family life formed over the following months, my discomfort around the boy I began to think of as my cousin diminished and we formed an unexpected friendship. However, it would not be long before I was forced into the company of another playmate, one far less friendly and far more dangerous than any I had yet known.

  The Emperor’s son, Commodus, and I met for the first time at the interminable funeral procession for Hadrian’s heir, Lucius Verus. He was seated on the right hand of his father, Marcus Aurelius, while I, as the son of one of the senior members of the Praetorian Guard, held a position of honor to the rear of the main dais. He happened to glance in my direction during one of the eulogies and, when he caught my eye and offered an extravagant yawn, I burst out laughing and had to cover my mouth with my hand to hide my disgrace. A moment later, he whispered something into the Emperor’s ear and was given leave to vacate his chair. As he walked proudly past my row, his head held high as befitted a child of his elevated status, he indicated that I should follow him, and soon we were making our way back toward the palace together.

  “If I had to sit there for another minute,” he declared, waving a regal hand in the air, “I might have drawn the dagger from my father’s side and cut my own head off. I promise you that when I am Emperor, events like those will be kept as brief as possible. And there will be more sacrifices to the gods. I enjoy a good sacrifice, don’t you? Otherwise, everything becomes so boring. I love the sound of screaming, it’s like music to me.”

  I wouldn’t have dared to disagree, but in truth I had been sorry to leave the pageantry, having looked forward to the moment when my father, Maarav, would lead the cortège carrying the body of the late warrior emperor, which was being venerated that afternoon. Lucius Verus had been the one to finally defeat the reviled Parthian Empire and their wicked King, Vologases, broadening the expanse of the Roman Empire so significantly that the Senate had deified him only days after his death. Maarav had played his own part in these victories and I was filled with pride for his achievements.

  “Yes, Highness,” I replied, already in thrall to Commodus, who looked like a young god in his elaborately stitched toga picta with stripes of Tyrian purple running along the arms to signify his exalted rank. “I would have gouged my eyes out with my thumbs if I’d been forced to stay another moment.”

  He turned to look at me in some surprise before bursting into laughter. “You’re the son of Maarav, yes? Of the Praetorian Guard? I’ve noticed you around the palace grounds. You’re noisy. Too noisy, at times. You must learn to remain quiet. Otherwise, someone might decide to cut out your tongue.”

  I apologized for my indiscipline and swore to mend my puerile ways, although the accusation was harsh, given I was surely among the least boisterous children in Rome. I began to tell him more about my father and the campaigns in which he had fought, but he quickly grew disinterested. Maarav may have been an important member of the Palace Cavalry but, to the prince, he was just another worthless plebeian, a mortal lingering in the company of the divine. />
  He took me to his rooms, which were elaborately decorated, and I examined the tapestries on the walls, the work of the most extraordinary craftsmanship. Each one depicted a great Roman victory, from the Battle of Silva Arsia almost seven hundred years earlier, marking the birth of the Republic under Lucius Junius Brutus, to Julius Caesar’s great triumph over the Gauls at Alesia. I reached out to touch the fabric and was moved by the astonishing blend of strength and fragility represented in each stitch. My admiration for such things was exactly what made my father despise me so; he saw it as unmanly and symptomatic of a weak or even feminine disposition, but I did not care. Even then I valued beauty above all other things.

  But the tapestries were not the only luxurious items on display. The drapes that hung around the boy’s bed were crafted from velvet, the sheets from satin, while the rugs that lay upon the stone floor, brought back from the Dacian Wars, were the very ones King Decebalus himself had once walked upon. The only thing to upset the perfect tranquillity of the room was a pair of dogs with yellow ribbons tied around their necks that had been asleep by the fireplace upon our arrival and whimpered in fear when we entered, rushing to hide beneath the trio of klinai that stood by the window. Commodus ignored them, but I observed how they remained on their guard throughout my visit, the younger, no more than a puppy, trembling violently. I wondered what occurred in these rooms every day to make the poor animals so frightened.

  “Do you play tali?” he asked, lifting a pouch of sheep’s knucklebones from a table and emptying them onto the floor. The game was a popular one among Roman children; we would toss the small bones in the air then try to catch them on the front of our hands, a more difficult proposition than it might sound.

  “Of course,” I said, and he indicated the cushion opposite him. When I sat down he threw the bones up quite high, catching all but two. He was a skilled player.