The Angel of Lust

by Maurice Magre

  It only required a few seconds for her to summon the Praetorians. They searched the whole house in vain. There was no other exit than the one they were guarding, but they did not find any trace of Simon.

  The Prefect made enquiries in Rome and the provinces. He was not able to learn anything certain. It only seemed that at the very moment of Messalina’s visit to Simon, a woman whose description resembled that of Helen had embarked in the port of Ostia on a vessel belonging to her, and to which she had had great riches transported.

  She was accompanied by an adolescent with a feminine face and wide hips, whose sex it was difficult to specify. She took great care of a man who had been seen the previous day in Ostia and who was carried on to the vessel fast sleep. According to the testimony collected, the man woke up at the moment when the ship set sail, and those who saw him were struck by the enormous width of his forehead. The time of the awakening and the ship’s departure coincided exactly with the moment when Messalina was listening to the malediction of Simon Magus.

  That made the Empress think that there could not be any connection between those travelers and the man on whom she wanted to avenge herself, and because of that she did not give an order to pursue the ship in the ports where it might call in.

  She was not sufficiently knowledgeable in occult matters to suppose that it was only Simon Magus’ double with whom she had talked.

  XIII. The Vow

  Messalina remembered the vow that she had made to the god Priapus on the day of her wedding, the execution of which she had put off. She feared that the god might take his revenge on her, and as it was an evening in spring, and the rites of Miphileseth were imminent, she decided to go to the little temple on the hill in order to offer her body to the priest Chilon.

  With Ahmes, alone, to drive her chariot, hiding her face beneath her veil in order that no one would recognize her, she traversed the transtiberian region and emerged from the city through the Porta Aurelia, as on the evening when she had gone to shed the blood of her virginity joyfully.

  She climbed the path through the cypresses, went past the six priapic genii and opened the low door between the columns.

  In the half-light of the temple, Chilon was sitting beside the Miphileseth of fig-wood, mending a woolen tunic with a needle. He had aged; his nose seemed to have descended over his lips, his hair had become sparse and his beard was going gray He raised a hideous face toward her, on which amazement was painted, and then, recognizing her, he prostrated himself, his forehead on the flagstones.

  Full of disgust, but determined to conclude the matter rapidly, she had him get up by touching his shoulder with her foot. He remained before her, stammering and frightened. She looked him full in the face and, taking the nape of his neck in her hand, familiarly, she pushed him toward the back of the temple and said to him that she desired to see the basement again where she had already celebrate the mysteries of the god.

  He apologized for the disorder that reigned there, affirmed his despair at not having been warned about the imperial visit, and started running around in search of a lamp.

  “It’s Maacha who has protected you and given you your children,” he said. “But you have raised yourself to the rank of the goddesses. I never fail to invoke your name when I celebrate the god’s feast and cause the drops of blood to fall into the vase. It’s for you that I immolate the donkey, only leaving to Miphileseth the goat and the rabbit, and I know that the faithful, when they are possessed by the animal forces and they embrace one another, imagine that they are clutching your divine body and obtain a pleasure a thousand times greater.”

  The lamp was lit and Messalina smelled an odor of rancid and burned oil that evoked for her in a gripping fashion the evening in her thirteenth year when she had followed Chilon into the same place. She thought she could hear the chant of the cithern players, the hysterical cries, and a human voice imitating the braying of a donkey. A kind of magic operated on her, as if those walls were the receptacle of sensual larvae, insatiable ephialtes that took possession of her body.10 She advanced toward the stairway, animated by a horrible desire. In the same way as before, Chilon, curbed in two, raised and lowered his smoky lamp to illuminate the steps.

  Down below there were empty gourds, the skins of sacrificed animals that he had not yet had time to sell, a cask of wine and formless objects.

  Chilon dared not comprehend as yet the meaning of the imperial visit, but she let herself fall to the floor and drew him to her.

  When Messalina reappeared at the door of the temple and she had breathed deeply, she raised her right arm toward the sky in order to summon Ahmes. The latter came up the path through the cypresses at a run. She went straight toward him and, taking his head in her hand, she gave him an order, whispering in his ear.

  In his turn, Chilon had come out of the temple and was walking behind Messalina. Seeing that she had turned toward him, he put one knee on the ground and lowered his head in order to take his leave of her.

  Before he had raised his eyes, Ahmes had delivered a blow of the fist to the nape of the neck, at the exact spot that the Empress’ hand had touched it, with all his might. Then he took a small knife out of his belt, leaned over the priest, and rummaged under his garments with the blade. There was a frightful howl, interrupted by Messalina’s curt voice.

  “Throw that in the temple—it’s my offering to the god, this evening.”

  A few moments later, the imperial chariot disappeared in the direction of the Porta Aurelia, and the old priest was moaning and shedding his blood at the feet of the six priapic genii.

  XIV. Lysisca’s Cell

  Nothing can satisfy her any longer. Always desirous of new bodies, indefatigable, she only pursues the pleasure of amour. No human face retains her, no caress has any need to be repeated, she passes through all arms, only avid for forms that she does not know.

  The blind Claudius is tormented by the cares of State and his literary works. He has aqueducts constructed to bring cold spring water to Rome; he has the port of Ostia enlarged; and he works on his memoirs. Messalina has put into his bed two Greek slaves whose beauty she has savored herself and whom she believes that she can trust. She enjoys an absolute impunity.

  It was Mnester, who had remained her confidant and her companion in orgies, who suggested to her the idea of the night in Suburra that legend transformed, contrary to the most elementary plausibility, into a daily habit.11

  Messalina was often tormented by the idea of imitating Cleopatra. She had gone several times to Caesar’s former villa on the right bank of the Tiber, where the Queen of Egypt had lived during her sojourn in Rome, to dream about her there. She admired her ostentation and the choice of her pleasures. She had heard it said that on certain nights, disguised as a tavern servant, Cleopatra would run around the low dives of Alexandria on Antony’s arm, and that seemed worthy of envy. She imagined surpassing those exploits and being, at least once, exceeded in her flesh.

  In Suburra, in the vicinity of the Caelian hill, not far from the great marketplace, there was a brothel prostitute named Lysisca who bore such a great resemblance to Messalina that she had been able to raise her tariff in consequence to a silver denier. She was a harlot—which is to say that she only sold her body by night, after the evening meal, leading a regular life during the day.

  Mnester took change of indemnifying her for a night of repose. He also warned the brothel-keeper that he would that he would bring a fake Lysisca that evening also resembling Messalina and susceptible of satisfying her clients with the same ardor. He had known the brothel-keeper, named Gnathoenion, who was a habitual furnisher of young boys, for a long time. Gnathoenion, initially the proprietor of a bath-house, had transformed his commerce almost involuntarily. Because harlots were taking advantage of his baths to bring back men that they solicited in the street, he had started charging a fee of three as per man. Afterwards, he had found it more practical to make a declaration to the aedile and to have women in residence. He had a tave
rn on the street and an atrium behind it with a pool connected to the former steam-baths, transformed into cells for prostitution.

  Claudius was traveling. Messalina attended to her toilette as if she were going to meet the most delicate of lovers. She spread a fine violet powder in her hair, in accordance with the custom of the courtesans of Alexandria, and twisted it over her nape, securing it with a silk ribbon. She put a tear of carmine on the nipples of her breasts and enclosed them in a fine gold mesh so light that it was almost invisible. Her flesh was odorous with all the perfumes with which she was anointed. She did not put on jewelry in order not to be recognized, with the exception of a necklace with a phallus in very ancient gold, which came from Phoenicia. She wrapped herself, stark naked, in a large linen sheet, put on top of it a cucul of coarse cloth with a hood, and at the first hour of the night she left her palace on the Palatine by a hidden door, where Mnester was waiting for her.

  It was summer, and outside the shops of Suburra slovenly individuals were seeking to aspire the nauseating air. The cries of drunken gladiators could be heard. Streetwalkers already weary at the commencement of their round looked passers-by in the face. Odors of the evening meal escaped from doorways. It was still the hour of nourishment, which was about to give way to the hour of amour.

  Having arrived at Gnathoenion’s house, for which a red-painted wooden phallus served as a sign, Messalina thought about going back, on breathing the odor of human sweat of a man who brushed past her. But she saw the handsome face of a legionary sitting in the tavern and she went in.

  The chamber where Mnester left her was a little less sordid than the others in the house. It was only separated from the atrium by a loose curtain, alongside which was written in chalk: Lysisca, one silver denier. Inside, the walls were covered with crudely painted erotic images. Mostly, they represented the phallus in the comical forms of birds, insects and fish. There were some with teeth, others on stilts, and others as long as snakes, but they were all veiled by the soot of the lamp and other stains.

  The furniture consisted of a worn rush mat covered with a few cushions and a patched and hideously stained coverlet. On a small table there was a smoky bronze lamp, and there was a sandstone jar in one corner.

  Messalina had barely thrown back the coverlet in disgust when her neighbor in the next cell drew the curtain and came to conclude a story doubtless commenced the previous night. She was a scrupeda, a woman who, after a night spent in a brothel, went to the cemeteries in the morning to satisfy men between the tombs. She laughed as she talked about her walks around the Pomoerium, rapid embraces with prowlers against the steps of a sepulcher in the shadow of a tombstone when dawn breaks. She recounted the simplicity of the market-gardeners who descended from their carts in response to her appeal, their coarse caresses and their generosity. She evoked dangers run, and a flight between the gray walls of the columbarium in the city of manes.

  Voices resounded. A band was spreading out among the chambers. A young man had entered Lysisca’s cell; he seemed handsome to Messalina, but he was timid. He stood by her side, in silence, and she had to make him sit down on the mat with her. She started to laugh when he held out the silver denier, and he left even more confused. Afterwards, one came who wrenched off the veil she had retained violently, seeming to consider it an insult not to find her completely naked. He rolled her on the ground unceremoniously, and kneaded her shoulders and breasts with his hands, almost striking her.

  An adolescent who had drunk to excess swore to her that he had loved her for a long time and that he would even marry her if she wished. She heard him fall and vomit on the mosaic of the atrium when he had quit her. There was a madman who wanted her to prostrate herself at his feet in order to kiss them, while saluting him with the name of Jupiter; there was an old man who asked her to spread her hair over her shoulders and tried to cut off a lock; and a fop who patted her lightly on the cheek with his hand, promising to come back often to bring her the same pleasure.

  Messalina was astonished by so much brevity in the caresses. Nothing of her natural pride subsisted any longer. Like the humblest of the establishment’s whores, she submitted to the erotic caprices, or even the brutality of men. At one moment, the fetid mouth of an old man posed for a long time on hers without her daring to resist, in spite of the breath that was poisoning her, so completely did she identify with her role.

  She sometimes breathed the night air on her threshold. The bacario immediately ran forward with is large jug full of water and poured its contents into the jar in the chamber. When the hour was late he no longer knew which way to go; everyone was demanding him, and Messalina was obliged to shout loudly for him several times. Sometimes, too, the ornamentary ancilla came to offer powders and ointments, and the aquatoli ran hither and yon carrying trays laden with of drinks.

  The night was well advanced when the frequenter of tombs started uttering howls so loud that Messalina thought that she was being murdered. An enormous gladiator had threatened her with a knife. He went away cursing. He was not handsome and his eyes had an evil glean. He went past Messalina and she looked him in the face, as she was accustomed to gaze at those she desired. He would have continued on his way but she seized his arm and drew him to her.

  He was a man from whom an excess of strength emerged, as the same time as a force of evil. He possessed Messalina while insulting her. Then, having stood up, he uttered a little snigger of disgust and took a step toward the door to leave, having place three as instead of the silver denier that he owed her on the small wooden table. Messalina demanded them loudly, for she obtained a puerile vanity from having merited that salary.

  He turned round and responded with a flood of insults. It was a dead woman, already decomposing, that he had just embraced. She was not even worth one as. He was being charitable in giving her three.

  Then she caught hold of his tunic and shook his leather belt. She felt robbed. She wanted the silver denier that she had earned, and which appeared to her more precious than all the riches of the Palatine. She threatened to cry out and summon the brothel-keeper.

  He seized her by the wrists and shook her as if he were about to smash her against the wall. Then, seized again by desire at that contact, he threw her on the floor and fell upon her with all his weight. The metal buckle of his belt scratched Messalina’s breast. She thought for a moment that he was going to kill her. As she rolled over the soiled coverlet she turned her face away with disgust, He saw that movement, an in order to humiliate her, taking handfuls of her hair, he rubbed her face against the unspeakable fabric for a long time.

  Satisfied, and still menacing, he picked up the three as he had given her, and left.

  Messalina knew that the police of the watch were robust and that the local procurators rendered strict justice to women. She started to follow him, but she saw his back in the atrium swaying so powerfully on his solid legs that she stopped. She considered him as he drew away, bruised, finally weary, and infinitely indulgent to male brutality.

  She called the bacario one hast time for water. The night ended. A drunkard was still singing in the tavern. Wrapped in a gray stola, the scrupeda went away, lightly, to provide other caresses in the region of the dead. Mnester was asleep on a bench. He had spent the night with a young fellator whom he had the custom of finding at Gnathoenion’s, but fatigue had aged him, and he suddenly had the appearance of a feeble old man.

  And going through the streets, leaning on him, the Empress dreamed of a unique lover, of an amour that would be pure, of the golden lotus about which Simon Magus had spoken to her, which flourished, she knew not where, in the unknown realm of the soul.

  XV. Caius Silius

  Caius Silius was reputed to be the most handsome man in Rome. He was a consul and enjoyed a great popularity. He loved virtue and defended it. He was the one who had asked the Senate for the execution of the ancient Lex Cincia forbidding advocates to receive money or gifts for pleading a case. That demand had been indirectly aimed at M
essalina, who had bought the accuser Suilius and made use of him to doom her enemies.

  Messalina was not unaware that Caius Silius incessantly raised his voice against the excesses of her life. Several times she sought a means of having him killed. She ended up loving him passionately. It came to the same thing.

  One day, when Caius Silius was returning along the Tiber in the Mucian Meadows from an excursion on horseback, an arrow whistled past his ear and plunged, vibrating, into the trunk of a poplar. Another time, he received as a gift a basket of figs of extraordinary size. They were already on his table. A slave who had tasted one died in convulsions. So, when he was summoned to the Palatine by Messalina, he thought that his final hour might be near.

  Messalina wanted to understand how there could be a man who resisted her beauty, audacious enough to speak ill of her, and so deprived of virile nature as not to desire her. She wanted to penetrate that mystery, which seemed to her to be virtue, and, by means of a frank explanation, to know the cause of Caius’ hostility. She received him lying on the Tyrian purple of her bed, naked beneath light veils. Neither of them foresaw what would happen.

  At first they conversed coldly, the Empress representing to the consul how imprudent it was to attack her and he defending himself without losing any of his natural arrogance.

  But perhaps there was in Messalina a force of seduction that acted upon men even against their will. Perhaps the antipathy of Caius Silius had its cause in a hidden desire. Perhaps they were marked by destiny to give together a great flame of amour and to die.

  At the moment when Caius Silius stood up to take his leave, Messalina, with a sad pout, suddenly hid her head in her folded arm, leaving one of her naked legs dangling outside the bed in an abandoned pose. Caius took her in his arms and they savored their union in a pleasure that they had never known before.