‘Boy,’ I call down to the lout, ‘here’s alms for you.’
I throw the ruined meat at his feet. Still shitting, he grabs at it and in one sure movement stuffs it into his mouth.
The old woman cackles then shades her eyes, frowning up towards me. She can’t see me for the sun. ‘Don’t encourage him,’ she calls up to the sky.
The boy cleans himself with a handful of earth and weeds, stands and wiggles his arse at the old woman. She throws a fist of vegetable peelings at him and though they fall short he runs for them, smacking away the competing fowl, and scoops them up. He chomps on them, swallows, then turns and wiggles his shit-stained arse at me.
‘Want some of this, Clod Foot?’
I work my mouth, spit a gob through the window. But he has already run off, cursing me, cursing the old woman, cursing his fate.
Behind me, the old man is groaning, his eyes shut tightly, as he forces himself to his knees. He bends forward, kisses the floor, and begins his rocking back and forth. Setting my feet down flat I wince from the pain. I sit in a corner of the cell, watching him, listening. He prays in a tongue that I don’t know. I close my eyes.
A loud rapping brings me back to the world. The prisoner is still praying, still crouched in supplication to his vain and jealous god. I carefully rise and walk down the dark tunnel to the door. A rat darts by and I kick at it but my aim is not true and it burrows into the dirt. I unbolt the door.
Three figures are standing there, in thick cloths though it is high summer. The man bows; there are two women behind him, both pulling their veils over their faces. One of the women has a goatskin container perched on her head and is steadying it with one hand. The man, still bowing, blesses the First Amongst Men, the imperial family, blesses the city. I salute all he mentions but I also offer thanks to Rome’s gods.
‘You may speak.’
He thanks me and stands upright. His stare is confident and I sense he is an equal to senators and noblemen. He is barefoot, and clothed in rags not a toga, but his unblemished skin, his bearing and his confident manner mark his caste. I make sure to bow and lower my eyes.
‘Sir,’ he begins, and though he’s speaking familiarly, as though an equal to me, his haughtiness and formality cannot help but creep in, ‘we ask you to accompany us and the prisoner you are guarding, our brother Paul, to visit one of our fellowship. She is condemned to the arena and she has asked to receive a blessing from him before her death and the coming resurrection.’
He fumbles on this last word, as though it is unfamiliar to him, though most probably it is in anticipation of my reaction. He fears that I might jeer, or break into laughter.
The sun is high, the streets are filled with livestock and slaves. I want only to return to sleep. But he is a citizen, and whatever his shameful pretence at being an ordinary man, it is clear that he is highborn. The old Jew has been under house arrest and in my charge for over a year now. This gentleman is not his first noble visitor. It is a weakness of our highborn castes that they are bewitched by eastern cults. Being unfamiliar with war, work and struggle, their minds and bodies grow useless: how else to explain the outrageous fact that these aristocratic pricks venerate the insane deities of our slaves? The old Jew is fortunate to have been able to seduce such weak men. If I had my way I’d throw the old goat into a common prison, have him share a cot with murderers and rapists and the arse-fucked—that’s what a blasphemer deserves. But he has plied his sorceror’s tricks and is now protected. I can’t refuse them.
‘Very well. I will accompany you, sir.’
The gentleman turns to the women, and the one balancing the goat bladder, hands it over to him, her face still covered from my gaze. But as she does so her headscarf slips, revealing the shaved head of a slave. It’s disgraceful that these bitches have their heads covered, but they are his slaves and what they do is his business. I let the gentleman through, slam the door on his women.
In the cell, the younger man places the water pouch on the floor, then rushes to embrace the prisoner. They kiss each other on brow and lips, stroke each other’s cheeks, greet each other in their ugly eastern tongue. Once done, they break apart.
The stranger assists the old man to his stool and kneels before him. ‘There is a maiden, brother,’ he begins, ‘a sister in the Lord. She is to be sacrificed to the circus this day. She asks to see you, she wants your blessing.’
The old man looks up to me. I nod my assent. For the first time all morning, he smiles.
They continue to chatter in Greek as the prisoner sits atop his chamber-pot, urinates, farts, opens his bowels. He rises and the younger man then takes a rag from underneath his smock, and with no indication that this abominable servility is an indignity to him, he uncorks the goatskin, pours water onto his rag, and begins to wash the old man’s face and neck, his scrawny arms, his knotty feet. A gurgle rises from deep inside my gut to my throat, and I force myself to swallow it. And then I am truly shocked: the younger man is about to wipe the old man’s shitter. His dishonouring of himself forces the gurgle to my lips: I spit, not hiding my disgust.
But the old man—he at least is not insane—has taken the rag off him. ‘No, no, brother Philip,’ he chides, ‘you don’t have to do that.’ He cleans himself and drops the soiled cloth into the chamber-pot.
In the yard, the gentleman named Philip hands the pot and the emptied skin to one of his slaves. She takes both and throws all, rag and shit and skin, into the pen. The swine squeal and battle to be the first to rub their snouts into the filth. The action of the slave is practised: she manages it all with her right hand still holding her shawl over her face. She doesn’t loosen her grip on the empty chamber-pot but there is a moment when she dares a glance at me, and I see a streak of arrogance in the set of her mouth, as if she is going to hand the pot to me, for me to return it to the cell. What kind of creature is this: slave but proud? It is her master’s fault—what happens when duty is ignored. This is what you get from being lenient to the gods of our foes. He should knock her to her feet. I could clobber the bitch for her insolence.
Seeing my fury, my prisoner grabs the pot from her. ‘I’ll return this,’ he says quietly, ‘and then we can go.’
We are walking through the blacksmith’s district. The air is thick with the reek of sulphur and smoke from the furnaces. The stench clings to our skins, burns our throats and nostrils. Beneath it, a damp rotten stench rises from the river. We cross the square of Mars in Victory, where merchants squat next to their drays and stalls, and shrouded women tout for buyers of their fruit and seed, most of it fly-blown, dregs from the harvest’s bitter end. A boy sits cradling a kid goat, stroking its hide, kissing its neck and face, as the voices of the priests rise as one in praise to the god of war, and metalworkers bang flat sheets of copper and tin, naked in the summer heat, their bodies tanned brown and black. Slaves haggle for the provisions they are purchasing for their masters’ households; incense mingles with the stink of sewage; the rot of overripe fruit is overpowering. A butcher lops off the heads of chickens, his sons strip the feathers off the carcasses and his wife chops up the meat and throws it into a bubbling cauldron of oil.
As we walk through this chaos of smell and sound, we hear the blast of horns, then the strike of horses’ hooves on ground, followed by marching feet, the steady jog of soldiers, so familiar that my own feet fall into rhythm and I stumble and fall against one of the slave girls, grabbing at her cloth to steady myself. As I do she screeches in fury but the retort on my lips is drowned out by the horns blaring above us as the first line of the guard advances into the square. There is the steady march of the soldiers, those who lead and those who follow and those who carry the imperial carriage on their shoulders, and all there shout out praise to the First Amongst Men and his family, we bless Rome and we bless her gods. We are exuberant in our cheering. It is only my charges who are silent. At the last salutation, as the sounds of the horns and marching fade and the thrum of the stallions’ hooves make th
eir last echo, the square fills again with the sounds of selling and buying. The slave girl turns to me once more and hisses in my face, ‘How dare you touch me,’ and I hiss back, ‘I know you did not salute the gods,’ and she shrinks back, afraid, and covers her head.
Just beyond the blacksmith’s district, between the workshops and the river in which they purge their filth, there is a fallow field that is usually home to beggars, but today it is bustling with the activity of workmen and slaves. A fence has been placed around it, and through the gaps in the posts I can see them setting up tiers of makeshift benches. At the far end of the field, a squat wooden tower has been hastily assembled over the coops and pens of a livestock bazaar. A bronze-skinned boy is nimbly climbing the tower, cords of gathered hemp between his teeth, lashing together the posts. My prisoner stops to examine a roll of animal skins that will be pitched as a tent. He prods it with his cane, then squats and rubs at the vellum. I help him to his feet.
‘It is a shoddy job,’ he whispers to me. ‘The stitching is already coming undone. Thank our Lord it won’t rain.’
The game for the entertainments is corralled together in the cages: wild-eyed boys, beggars and thieves, mad witches and old imbecile sorcerors, delirious young girls, most of them with the mark of their crime of being runaway slaves carved in gashes across their foreheads. They are naked, squashed together in their filth. A youth keeps guard over them, his harelip a deep gouge that splits his scowl. Men are squatting or sitting at the back of the pens, forming a line that disappears into a gloomy alley.
I bow to the gentleman Philip. ‘Is she with the prisoners?’
He nods.
I gesture to the squirming mass inside the cages. ‘Which one is she, sir?’
He makes to walk into the bazaar but the sentry stops him and looks at me. I reach beneath my smock, take out my pouch and show the youth the imperial seal. He waves us through. The gentleman Philip goes up to a cage, searches the cluster of bodies inside, calls out a name. As he does so a young boy leaps onto the netting, wailing like a tortured cat. I grab the old man’s cane, jabbing the end of it into the boy’s face. He falls screaming into the muck and the other bodies fall over him. But at least my act has silenced the infernal scrum.
The gentleman Philip is beckoning to a figure in the huddle. A girl, barely maiden, pushes through the swarm. Blood has dried in runnels down her legs. One hand covers her breasts; they are full, and would excite me if it were not for the splashes of vomit across them. Her other hand protects her damaged sex.
The old man has moved to the gentleman’s side. He pushes his hands through the netting and brings the girl into an embrace.
She looks at him with awe, as if he were a demigod. ‘Are you the witness? Are you our brother Paul?’
He is stroking her dirt-encrusted hair. Her ravaged scalp is alive with lice.
‘Sister, what can I do for you? What can I tell you?’ says the old man.
‘You have seen him?’
He nods.
‘You really saw him?’
A crone pushes her face into the netting. ‘Saw who?’
I slap her away. She makes to bite me and this time I bash her hard with the thick of my palm and she tumbles amongst the condemned. The cage stirs, a wave of bodies rocks back and forth.
Only the girl is unmoving, held in stillness by the old prisoner. ‘Describe him to me,’ she demands.
‘He is light, he is tranquillity.’
She pulls back, resists his hold on her, clutching at the netting.
‘I want to know what he looked like. What colour were his eyes, his hair? Was he tall, was he handsome?’
The old man sighs. The women behind the gentleman Philip have edged closer. They too are eager for his answer.
‘His skin is coarse and dark.’ The old man releases his hold on the girl, closes his eyes and touches his own face, as if calling memory to himself. ‘On this cheek, there are the scars of the pox. He has thick lips, his hair is already receding. It is black, as are his eyes, the darkest eyes I have ever looked into. But for all their blackness, a light shone out of them. It was undeniable.’
As he continues his description, the girl has dropped her hands to her side, sliding to her knees in the filthy earth. She is muttering to herself, ‘Yes, yes, I see him.’
‘His hands are larger than mine,’ the old man continues, as if in a trance. ‘They are strong hands. The smallest finger of his left hand was cut off and scarred at its end, severed in a work accident.’
‘He was a woodworker, weren’t he?’
The old man is kneeling in the filth and is again stroking her hair as he describes their god of death.
‘Yes. He seemed very tall.’ The old man pushes his face hard against the nets, kisses the top of the girl’s head. ‘But, then, I am short. Maybe he only seemed tall compared to me.’
The girl starts crying pathetically. ‘I won’t see him, I won’t be here to see him return.’
The old man is transformed by a sudden rage. ‘Whoever preaches that is wrong,’ he declares. He seizes her shoulders. ‘Do you believe that the Lord sent his son to us?’
The girl is lost in her tears and has stopped listening, but not those huddled against her—even the imbeciles and demented are quiet and listening.
The old man shakes the girl. ‘Do you believe?’
‘Yes.’ It is a dull, listless reply.
‘Do you believe he was crucified?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you believe he was resurrected on the third day? In mind and body? Resurrected in body—not only in spirit?’
She turns her face to him again. ‘You saw him?’
‘I did.’
‘You touched him?’
‘Do you believe?’ he demands. ‘Do you believe he was resurrected?’
‘I believe you’re a stupid old cunt.’
I stifle my laughter. It’s the boy I whipped with the cane. He’s risen, is poking his tongue out at us, not daring to come close.
At the brat’s words the girl has pulled away from the old man, has turned and faced the crush of naked bodies around her. She slumps. I have to look away. Her misery, her defeat, is clear. She is preparing for the world of ghosts.
But the old goat reaches through the netting, grabs her by the shoulder. With the other hand he is pointing to the vermin in the cage.
‘Is this it?’ There is severity in his voice now. ‘Is this your end? Don’t you want more than this life?’
You are cruel, you bastard. This is her fate. Don’t rub it in the poor child’s face.
I haven’t spoken out loud. The gentleman Philip, his shameful servants, they are nodding at his words.
He releases her and she falls back amongst the others. ‘Believe,’ he says quietly, ‘or this is your end.’
Her hands are clutching at him, her crying is pitiful, desperate. ‘Don’t go!’ she screams. ‘I believe! I believe!’
His arms reach through the gaps in the netting and he brings her close to him, her sobbing now muffled as her face rests against his hollow chest. ‘Has she been baptised?’
One of the slave bitches behind the gentleman Philip dares to speak. ‘I baptised her, brother.’
The old man pulls the girl in tighter and his lips hover over her scabbed shorn scalp. As if he wishes he were caged in with her, as if he has chosen condemnation over life. ‘If you believe in the Lord, and you have been reborn to the light, then when the kingdom comes, you too will rise. In body, in spirit. You will be free.’
She can’t be consoled. ‘But I won’t see him return,’ she whimpers.
My charge, however, is made bold by her doubt. ‘None of us should sleep soundly,’ he says.
He has turned to look at me, trying to ensnare me with his sorceror’s eye. I call on the shade of my father; he is behind me, his breath on my neck, giving me strength to resist any magic. I spit, then look away.
‘You are condemned to die,’ he continues, turning back to
the girl. ‘But we are all condemned to suffer. You must accept your fate, my child, but do it knowing that, very soon, all who you see around you—these guards, these prisoners, all these people—will be gone and forgotten. They will be ash and dust. But you will live forever.’
His hand has slipped through the net; it covers her eyes. ‘Can you see him coming?’ he asks softly.
And the terrorised child is now nodding. ‘I see him, he is as you said.’ His tricks are working. ‘I am ready, sir,’ she continues shakily. ‘I am ready for death.’ She bows her head.
I can’t stomach it. I leave the bazaar, the reek of dung and beast, the filth and waste of humans, the terrible profanity that is life in love with death. He should be telling her to scream and curse and defy them—to be alive, as alive as that young boy I struck; he at least was not waiting meekly for his end, but living to his last moment. That is what the gods demand, ardour and fire and spirit, not this blasphemous desire for death. I take deep breaths, no longer caring that the sulphur scalds my lungs—at least I can feel my blood pounding, at least I can taste life.
There is a line of men near the cages, squatting and gambling as they wait. The line winds into the darkness of the alley, from where we hear the sounds of a child shouting. It is a girl, and she is insulting all of us men, begging the gods to make our wives barren, to make our sons devourers of cock, our daughters sluts. Her screams are full of life and fury.
A sentry notices me watching and winks. ‘Do you want a go?’ he asks. ‘It’s only a few pennies.’
I realise what is happening; this is prostitution for paupers. Since virgins cannot be sacrificed to the gods—that is abhorrent—the condemned girls are being broken before their slaughter. I shake my head. But I silently salute the violated child; she is facing death with defiance, with courage.
Did that simpering child listening to the old man’s fairy tales curse and fight and condemn, or did she just lie there while they defiled her? Was she thinking of her raven-haired god who couldn’t save himself, let alone a prisoner condemned to the arenas? The raped child’s screams do not stop, her fight continues, as man after man drops his coin into the sentry’s hand and takes his turn to fuck her. Is she a runaway, a thief? A murderer, a child-killer? Her crime does not matter. As a soldier I understand that the mark of who we truly are is only revealed in death’s call. I salute her. And I condemn the cowards to the ignoble death they so desire.
Damascus Page 15
