The Water Thief

by Ben Pastor

  “Am I to show up tomorrow morning, Commander?”

  “No, come the day after.” At about noon the following day, as they had agreed before parting, Aviola Paratus would arrive and take up lodgings in the old Foreign Unit Barracks, where a few rooms were kept for visiting or retired officers. Nearness would simplify their exchanges in view of the investigation, and afford the veteran the protection of sturdy walls.

  Before nightfall, Aelius’s courier returned from the estate of the noble lady Carminia Repentina, very much her own woman by the way she urged him to visit (“Here I’m bored silly”), and chose the day for him (“Early next week, Tuesday at the latest, and make sure you send word beforehand”). It was welcome news: entitled to the address of clarissima foemina, she was related through her late husband to Marcius Turbo, a friend of the deified Hadrian, and famous epistolary writer. In the country for the summer, she was the sort of well-introduced aristocrat whose library and acquaintances could come handy to a researcher: and, who knows, to an investigator as well. Visiting her was high on Aelius’s list.

  11 August, vigil of the Ides, Friday (18 Mesore)

  Biding his time until midday, Aelius went to inquire on the city prefect’s expected return from Sardinia. A westerly wind carried masses of swift clouds over the City, without relieving the heat; if anything, churning it up in the valley where once Nero’s round lake had lain, and now the Flavian amphitheater took its place. As Aelius rode across it, the height and size of the arena, skirted by a narrow ring of shade under the summer sun, dwarfed all; and yet everything around it was colossal—terraces, ramps, the 130 feet of bronze nakedness of what had been Nero’s statue and was now the Sun’s. Surely even in the days of the deified Hadrian, flower and garland sellers in the arena’s archways had resembled bright ants under a handsomely turned-out mound. People seemed small in Rome. Aelius’s horse pranced when a fine water spray whipped by the wind flew sideways from the marble cone of the Sweaty fountain and tried to drink from its basin.

  At the city prefect’s office on Mother Earth Street, they said that, weather permitting, the magistrate was due back between the last day of August and September 2. In the vice prefect’s chambers, meanwhile, the trial of two relevant Christian deacons was taking place. Following the hum of voices from the room, Aelius decided on the spur of the moment to attend. Soon however, be it the heat or the oppressive repetitiveness of the process—where stolidity of questions was matched by stolidity of answers, neither part having the least intention to change opinion—he developed a headache, which peaked with the foregone sentence by the magistrate: immediate beheading in the usual place. In this case, the legal formula for executions meant a crossroads at the IV mile of the Via Labicana—the turn-off Aelius himself had taken a few days earlier to reach the kennel, and twice gone past to visit Paratus the day before, the place with a colorless horizon, silent rows of stumpy mulberry trees, and unequal cypresses. Asked by the court if he wished to go along in his role as an official observer, he said yes, telling himself he was only doing it to dear his head with a ride in the country.

  Relatives and friends of the condemned, not allowed in the trial room, waited outside the prefect’s office. It surprised Aelius how, contrary to the excitement of Egypt, here these matters seemed routine, and no anger whatever was exhibited by the judge or the accused. Wholly composed, the deacons nodded in reply to the greetings of the small crowd, bade them come along, and that was all for reactions. The picket left shortly by the Via Labicana. Aelius rode well ahead of the group, minding his sore head. When he neared the arch of Isis a flight of pigeons caused him to look up at its cornice, where the mild goddess against a racing sky, held her inclined ewer in A charming, eternal gesture of religious attention.

  After the execution, Aelius was still idling by the turn-off when he recognized Aviola Paratus in the traveler approaching on a stout mare, led by a servant on foot, and followed by a boy with a pack mule.

  “I smell blood,” Paratus was observing. “An execution, was it? Are we at the IV mile?”

  “We are.”

  “Commander Spartianus! Is that you? I didn’t expect to meet you here.”

  Aelius explained briefly. Side by side, having sent the servants ahead for privacy, they continued toward Rome, now and then passing the mourners who returned on foot from the deacons’ beheading. The wind was falling, swelter and clouds thickened as a result, but Aelius’s headache was beginning to wane. He took a deep breath of warm air when Paratus asked, “How did it go?”

  “Like every other execution. Quickly. It intrigues me that before the blow, their followers unfolded napkins in front of the two, to soak up the blood.”

  “Ah, yes. Then they’ll cut them into strips and little squares, and keep them as relics. There was a flourishing commerce of them already when I served in the V Cohort.”

  “It seems rather idolatrous for people who swear to have a faceless god.”

  Paratus smirked. “We all need images, in love and in hate. If we don’t have them before us, we tend to substitute others for them, or make them up, as they say the deified Hadrian did toward the end, seeing plots everywhere. A faceless enemy is the worst.”

  “I can’t agree more.”

  “Take me: After so many years of darkness, I still need to make up the faces of those around me. My aging wife’s, those of my sons, who have become men and I have to imagine how their childhood faces turned adult. I came up with a mental picture of your face, too, but as I have never, seen you and never will, it is by necessity based only on the faces of people I knew before losing my sight.” They had come less than half a mile since their meeting, and already one of the gates of the villa at Two Laurels was visible, like a rusted spider’s web in the distance. All along the way, spots and streaks of blood on the lava stones of the road indicated that the deacons’ bodies had been carried this way for disposal. “Time passes, and changes everything. Which brings me to wonder why should anything dating back to Hadrian be of consequence now. It’s been more than a century and a half! I have been thinking about my first hypothesis: the northern enemies, the Persians, the desert tribes . . . All of them we dealt with through the centuries, and defeated or contained. Military prejudice spoke through me, and—I believe—might be speaking in you, too. We see enemies everywhere, connect events that have nothing to do with one another, in order to keep on the alert and justify our careers. The Empire is different these days, the very way we conceive of ourselves as Roman citizens is worlds away from those years. Do you really think a danger can last that long?”

  It was the question Aelius had asked himself from the start. Had he been mistaking accidents along the way as related threats, to give importance to himself and his search? Why did he feel the imminence of great danger when none objectively revealed itself? As they neared the villa’s grounds, he stared at the gravestones of the Imperial Guards crowding their square of land across the road. Soon he would be close enough to pick out the familiar Pannonian surnames from the many Germanic ones. “The emperor’s letter doesn’t specify, but three deaths over a long-forgotten political threat are three too many.”

  “Four deaths, unless you take Philo’s demise to be accidental to the fire.”

  “Right. While still in Egypt, I began to examine the threats to the deified. Hadrian’s rule during his lifetime. There were conspiracies against him, after all.”

  “All of which were discovered in time and dealt with, from his brother-in-law’s bad-talking him to Trajan when not even Trajan had been nominated emperor yet, on to the various plots that never saw the light of day. But you’re the historian, you would know best.”

  Aelius stared at the soldiers’ monuments. Neatly kept like all army cemeteries, this one was aging better than the glorious imperial gardens facing it. In a fallow stretch of land beside the graveyard, far from the road, the executioners were burying their victims under the blasting sun. “Palma and Celsus come to mind,” he said, “and Neratius Priscus
, but they were just ambitious men whose aims were personal, and surely not meant to overturn the state. Let’s leave aside the tales of how Trajan’s widow had an actor impersonate him from behind the deathbed curtain, and nominate Hadrian his successor. From all I have read, the presumed enmities by consuls, jurists, generals, and imperial hangers-on didn’t amount to much. None of them had real power to do damage.”

  “There was a revolt late in Hadrian’s reign.”

  “You mean the Jewish War? Yes. We know how that ended.”

  “Still, it was a threat to the empire, judging by the way it spread, and less than eight years ago we were both involved in settling the trouble in Egypt.”

  “The Rebellion in Egypt had nothing to do with the Jews.”

  Invisible blackbirds were whistling in the dense park of the imperial villa. Paratus turned his head toward the sound, and instinctively Aelius did the same. “I wouldn’t be so hasty in counting them out, Commander. What about ben Matthias?”

  It was a vexing point for Aelius. “If he’s involved, he’s too clever to get caught at his own game. I regret seeking him out, because I have somehow felt toyed with ever since. In Egypt I suspected him outright, and even considered the possibility of having him clapped into preventive custody. Now I’m not so sure. Paradoxically I even think that—with all his traffics and acquaintances—he might be of service, but can we trust him? If not, and he feels we’re on to him, he would merely shift the focus of his activities to one of his lieutenants. He has friends and business partners all over.”

  “And fellow believers, do not forget.” Paratus stroked the neck of his patient mare. “I consider myself a tolerant man, but I tell you, today we proclaim the Christians a peril to the state, as if Christians were anything other than secondhand Jews. And while from the start Christians stupidly got themselves known by their mindless antisocial habits, paying with their lives for it, Jews toed the line and remained free to weave their intrigue. But just because they pay taxes, and officially stay out of trouble, it doesn’t mean they are not plotting one of their revenges. They never forget, you know.”

  “Yes. Ben Matthias has an old score to settle with our army as well.”

  “And you. Do not trust him, Aelius Spartianus. He’ll try to contact you, you watch. Write you, or come to Rome ‘on business,’ and just happen to run into you. We both know how he fought dirty during the Rebellion. People remember the names of Achilleus and Domitius Domitianus, but tend to forget those of their advisers. I know, because I was on Domitius’s staff when he revolted. One was ben Matthias’s brother, and another, a hothead come directly from Judea to run arms and stir up trouble.”

  Aelius’s headache had passed. He could nearly enjoy the increased traffic on the road as they approached the City gate. An appetizing odor of fried fish came from taverns and food stands, crawling with people at this hour. Paratus was right. Hadrian’s contempt for the Jews was proven by his restrictive measures and harsh military campaigns. Ben Matthias had not concealed that he knew Aelius was in Egypt on imperial orders, but what else, how much else did he know? His thugs kept him informed, and were everywhere. Egyptians and Jews were difficult to tell apart, whatever ancestral enmity had marked their common past. “Yes,” he said, “Jews and Parthians are the only peoples I can think of, dating back far enough, to have constituted a threat to Rome. Since the deified Hadrian, some thirteen emperors fought against the Parthians and their Persian rulers.”

  Paratus nodded. “I know all too well. Parthians are a very good guess.”

  “But Hadrian never fought against them.”

  “No. He fought against the Jews.”

  “Well, God keep us from another Judaic War, and from Parthian Armenia. What do you say if we stopped to have a bite?”

  While they had lunch at The Roasted Donkey, sultriness turned to rain. Across the wide doorway, stable boys ran to shelter the horses and mule, passersby sought a doorway or picked up their step. Paratus ate slowly, nearing food to his mouth with care. Aelius lent an ear to the patter of water on the tile roof, its thickening and then braiding into a gurgle in the drains. He waited to speak until the customer at the next table—an army man—had paid and left. “What annoys me,” he said, “is the feeling—I have nothing else to go by—that there are many involved in this matter. You know how a soldier’s awareness of unseen threat is what he drinks and eats on campaign, what he sleeps on and is saved by. I waver between telling myself, ‘There’s nothing to this, you’re making it up,’ and knowing there is a clear and imminent threat, with old roots, whoever and wherever is its mastermind. They—yes, I know, ‘they’ is a vague term, but someone knew I was coming to Rome, after all—manage to stay ahead of me just enough to keep information from me.”

  “Some information, not all.”

  “Yes, but what I did gather, I stumbled upon by chance. Theo’s tidbit about the storage room, even the broken obelisk here in Rome—if it ends up being genuine. They were unpredictable bonuses, and in any case, not enough for me to come to any conclusions yet.”

  Paratus put a piece of bread in his mouth, and chewed it through before passing his right hand near the plate in search of his wine cup. “Which means we are back to finding the Boy’s grave, where it all began.”

  By the time they left the tavern, the spate had abated. Rain fell in a welcome, even way, and accompanied them up the Caelian Hill. By the angle of the climb, to Aelius’s surprise, Paratus could tell how far they had proceeded toward the barracks. At one point, “We’re not far now,” he remarked. “I can smell the quince in the Valerii’s gardens, and the army brothels, too. There’s a scent of girls.”

  “I don’t smell anything.”

  “You don’t need to. You have eyes.” Paratus lifted his face to the rain, smiling. “When you’re blind, you even get in the habit of imagining yourself in a place so strongly that you feel you’re there. Darkness cancels out whatever surrounds you in reality, so the mind is free to see as your eyes once did. That’s how I can still see the nights in Commagene, down to the smallest star, or the game of light and shadow cast by the aqueduct along this road on sunny days. I believe we ought to imagine the night during which Antinous died, and reconstruct the movements of those on board. Ask yourself: What time of night was it? Where along the river did it happen, and is there a reason why it happened where it did? Never mind what it looks like now, as what remains of the Boy’s cult has likely made the spot memorable. They sell souvenirs there now, there’s no doubt, and all that. What did it look like nearly two centuries ago?”

  Having presently reached Aelius’s quarters, they went in to dry up and change, as there was no hurry for Paratus to claim his room at the Special Agent Barracks. “Well,” Aelius spoke rubbing his head with a towel, “it’s the old borderland between the Heptanomia and the Thebaid, which the army now scours for Christian hermits. Hadrian’s Road had not been built yet—”

  “Hadrian’s Road. My God, I recall how it goes straight to the coast, and from there you can travel back by way of Porphyry Mountain where the quarries are, ending up south of Abydos. Have you been there?”

  “I’ve been all the way down, or upriver—depending on how you consider it. To the First Cataract, to Ivory Island and its army post. Population: human, sixteen; crocodiles, three hundred at least.” Aided by his servant, Paratus was changing into dry clothes. Scars on his forearms and legs showed what else the wars had left on his body. Aelius remembered how Anubina had studied the scars on his body with a seamstress’s, eye, critical of the surgeon’s work, and told him not to come back with more. So now she had her farmer husband’s callouses to look after, which had cost him nothing but a day in the dirt. “As for the location where Antinous fell in,” he continued, “I read all I could about it and went there myself, but there’s nothing geographically remarkable about it. On the right bank, in those days there must have at least existed fishermen’s huts and moorings for their boats. The river stretch runs between the inland rui
ns of a place called Her-wer and mud walls of a shrine to Bes. Now it’s all Antinoopolis. Across the river, as far as I could reconstruct, sand bars, ruins, and cliffs.”

  “Any historical or religious significance?”

  “None in Antinous’s day that I know of, but, of course, not far on the left bank is Hermopolis with its shrine and courtyard of Thoth. The locals say the old name of the place was Khnumu, which means “eight,” and stands for the eight great gods of Egypt. The place was fabled to be where the cosmos arose from chaos.”

  Now fully dressed, on his own Paratus was lacing his boots—an operation Aelius could also do in the dark, by long habit of predawn reveille. “Ah, yes. That is the place where Ma’at is brought about. Justice, cosmic order, the Right. A highly meaningful location for the Emperor’s favorite to die, I should say. Doesn’t that suggest something about the significance of the place?”

  “Only if one believes in it. If so, it might mean a place of generation—”

  “Or regeneration.” Paratus clapped his hands, causing a sharp echo in the changing room. “Stay with it, stay with it.” He urged answers like a demanding teacher. “A place where order is made out of confusion, where the world begins—or begins again. Did Hadrian believe it? Did those traveling with him? Did the Boy? It might have meant plenty for the Boy if he did away with himself, and for the deified Hadrian if he had any say in what happened. If you wish to solve the riddle, Aelius Spartianus, you must familiarize yourself with the stage, the players, the plot, and the deus ex machina.”

  Nothing but a drizzle remained of the rain when the two men left the house. Swallows came and went from the dripping eaves, and already the sun struck distant roofs with a glint of arson. Top-heavy clouds, livid at the lower hem, cruised the horizon past the temple of the deified Claudius; colors stood out like stains. Aelius respected Paratus’s wish not to be led by hand toward the barracks and limited himself to keep talking, so as to give a reference point to the blind man.