by Gore Vidal
I have been in many scary situations in my time, but this
was the scariest. In a proprietary way, Nero was holding my manhood in one hand, idly rolling the balls about. I started to whine: "Why would you want to make me a girl? I mean, I'd lose my biceps, and the pecs would get all soft, and I couldn't even box. ..."
"It is my dream to marry a powerful young man and then turn him into a gorgeous girl. That way I would have everything in one basket, you might say." He squeezed mine, and I gagged. It was like the recurring nightmare of my circumcision, only worse.
"But why do you want to spoil a perfecdy good guy to turn him into what wouldn't be much of a girl, anyway.>"
Nero was practical. Plainly, he had given the matter much thought. "I don't want children, for one thing. Certainly not by the man-woman I love. Above aU, I am into male-bonding—bondage, too, of course—and with someone like you I would have a perfect buddy, all boy, as Pe-tronius so wisely calls you, and then, once altered, all-boy becomes part-girl and the two-in-one are all mine. Oh, what a good time we could have! Quality time, too."
Nero kissed me on the lips, a disgusting business for someone who hates face-work, but you don't argue with the emperor of Rome. Anyway, I would have done anything to get out of there in one piece, complete.
Nero spoke wistfully of his sad life. "In my place I can never know if people truly hate me for myself or because I am emperor. Worse, I can never fulfill my dream to be a musician, to have a group, to travel—to meet groupies!" He sighed. "Of course, if I was just another regular Joe, I'd be—don't laugh, I know I'm an idealist in a crude practical world, but my never-to-be-realized dream is to be a serial killer."
"But, Divine Caesar, you can kill anybody you want, anyway."
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"What fun is that? Everything I do is legal. Where's the danger? The suspense? The chase? It's the difference between being a butcher in an abattoir and a hunter." He crushed me to his muscular chest. "I've made up my mind. I'm going to marry you. . . ."
As it was, I was saved by the plot to assassinate Nero. A dozen officers belonging to the pro-Latin, anti-Greek party of Piso charged Nero who, like a trained stuntman, leapt gracefully out of a window. As we were only on the second floor, he landed safely in a carp pond.
I grabbed my clothes and ran, stark naked, into the conversation pit where Petronius was being witty. "Quo vadis?" he said when he saw me, and the pit was loud with tittering laughter. Jesus's crack to the Rock was already the source of many funny jokes in Rome before the Fire.
"They are attacking His Divinity! He just now jumped out the window." That was the end of the laughter in that conversation pit in that palace in that particular life of Petronius, who was implicated in the plot to murder the emperor and so was obliged to commit suicide by opening his veins in a hot tub, the preferred method of suicide in the higher circles.
But before Petronius took his blood bath, he wrote a fascinating short bio of Nero, recalling how he murdered his wife and mother and so on as well as what he did in the sack and how bad his table manners were. Despite every effort, the book has never been entirely suppressed—I picked up a copy just last week—and so Petronius seems to have had the last word. Also, just before Petronius took his final tub, he smashed the emerald ladle to bits.
Nero put the Court into a month of mourning for that ladle. Then Nero did to a young soldier what he had planned to do to me, and married the result. I cannot emphasize too strongly the effects, over time, of lead poisoning.
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New York. I'm working on some special, very special effects, for 2001 A.D. But say nothing of this to my younger self if he should channel in."
I was to the point. "Is it you or is it he who will arrange for my excursion to Golgotha.^"
Cutler Two was uncharacteristically evasive. "Naturally, we know that you are—^were—^there, thanks to the Polaroid, but who shall have the honor of sending you.^ Gulf + Eastern or General Electric .>"
"You don't know.>"
"I do and I don't. We are currendy faced with two scenarios. I am at work on the second which will supplant the first, I hope—and pray. You see, the first is that of the enemy, myself, as I was ten years ago at General Electric. Sometime next week that misguided self plans to transport you to anchor the Live from Gol^fotha show for NBC."
"Then Chet wasn't just stringing me along when he said that business affairs had approved my terms, including the percent of adjusted gross as opposed to net—"
"Stop babbling!" Rudely, Cuder Two cut me short. And I a bishop and anchorperson, not to mention saint-to-be! "I don't think you realize how serious all this is, not only for you but for Christianity and, indeed, for the survival of the human race."
"What then. Dr. Cuder"—I was cold—"is diis 'all diis' you are referring to?"
"Before I saw the light and left General Electric, I was a passionate Zionist. Although I was brought up a Christian, I became more and more convinced in my studies of Comparative Religion at Fairleigh Dickinson, the ne plus ultra in Judaic studies, that Jesus was not only not a Christian but that he would be horrified at what Saint Paul had done to his message, which was for the Jews only—^you
know, the usual standard stuff about shellfish and rayon. Finally, the clincher: He was crucified. So he could not have been our messiah. Yes, I am a Jewish convert, though I have now lost my faith a second time—or that particular faith for something higher. ..."
"Not Selma Suydam?"
"Don't be absurd. Anyway, she is dating Robert De Niro." He rubbed the end of his flat nose, so unlike that of his younger self Is he an impostor or, worse, has he had cosmetic surgery.> "I am not at liberty to discuss my religious beliefs, only my «»beliefs, you might say. My dreadful younger self became convinced that Judaism must be saved from Christianity, and that could only be done by going back to the beginning—to Golgotha—and altering the story. . . ."
"Is Cutler One the Hacker.>"
"He hasn't the patience to infect so many tapes, one by one. But it was he who put you up to writing this gospel that won't be dug up until 2000 a.d. . . ."
"Have you seen what I have—or will have—^written.^"
"Not yet. The archaeologists are carbon-dating the papyrus and so on. No one has actually read it. But then it may not prove to be of much consequence unless we act together—you and I—against my younger self and his colleagues. ..."
"Chet?"
"I'm afraid poor Chet is something of a lightweight. Essentially, he's just advertising and sales. Anyway, he is a minor figure. But Marvin Wasserstein is a genius, and a major player in this game of gods that we are playing."
Cuder Two opened his briefcase. "I've brought you a videocassette that will fill you in on the background of what is happening."
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"But I don't have a VOL"
"You do. It is the flat box on top of your Sony." He gave me a small package. "I've included a book of instructions, couldn't be simpler. In English as well as Japanese . . . But then you don't actually read our languages, you intuit their meaning, an odd corollary to channeling fast-forward as well as on the old rewind."
"Is fast forward now possible for me.>"
Cuder Two nodded. "I—^the other me, as I think of myself at General Electric—^perfected the Cuder Same-State Molecular Effect shordy before the Hacker began his work."
"There is a connection.^"
"There is a connection, as the tape will show. Saint Timothy, we want you on our team at Gulf -(- Eastern."
I ordered a botde of Egyptian beer. The bartender looked with only mild curiosity at the hologram beside me. I took a long swallow and, I fear, belched. "Dr. Cuder, I . . ."
I stared into his eyes, so different without glasses from the huge round eyes of his earlier self. The eyes are narrow behind their contact lenses. Do I trust him? Dare I trust him? He seems a nice old man but he could well be the Hacker. He says he has had a change of heart, but do people chan
ge hearts, ever? He could well be working with his younger self, doing the good cop, bad cop routine that we see so often on the television.
"I appreciate what I take to be an offer from Gulf + Eastern but you must remember that I am already morally committed to General Electric to anchor NBC's upcoming program Live from Gol^fotha. I have given Chet my episcopal word."
Cuder Two nodded appreciatively. "I admire your moral strictness. Saint Timothy. But what we have in mind for you is something else, behind the cameras, as it were. You
will continue to write your gospel, of course. Anchor the NBC show, of course, not that you'll ever see a penny of gross. But you may feel obliged to . . . revise what you see there as opposed to what was—or will be—^there."
"How can I change what was?"
"The same way we all do, or could do, if we had at our fingertips the Cuder Effect of my relative youth. Oh, dear!" He sighed. "Cynthia's tired. She's old, poor thing. And the Hockneys were uninsured. I must fade." He was now transparent.
"My next visit v^ be on the X Channel, from my home in Paramus, New Jersey. I've left an emergency number in case ..."
A pale outline of a hand pointed to the package on the table; then he was gone. As usual, no one in the tavern noticed. I don't think these yokels would notice the end of the vyorld. Yet, oddly, as I was leaving I thought I heard one of them say—^mind you, I could have misheard—"That was a real nice hologram, wasn't it!*"
I'm having trouble with the VCR. It looks easy to operate but something isn't working. Meanwhile, I feel a degree of urgency. I haven't finished this account and yet it is even now—in the future—being criticized, and presumably read. No matter what may go wrong with this text, I still have the carefully hidden Gospel According to Saint Mark, which is quite enough to restore the Sacred Story should too many kibitzers infiltrate and distort my text. It seems that every time one of them pays me a call, I begin to write odd things that I am certain I do not remember or if I do remember would never have written down, like Priscilla's giving me head, or my being topped by Nero.
Sitting in Flavia's loggia overlooking the muddy Tiber,
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and all those barges being pulled upstream by slaves on the bank, I was very much at ease.
Flavia—like Priscilla—^was into young studs and my wish was her command. Saint had come over for an afternoon chat, and he brought the Rock with him. Of the two founders of the church, Paul had to put up with the most shit from his rival. Basically, Rocky was a moderately hard-line Zionist.
It was summer—^always summer when I think of that marvelous, noisy, stinking city, Rome. We drank wine chilled with alpine snow served by slave girls. Rock's converts. We men reclined while Flavia, a lady to her gilded fingertips, sat in an ivory chair. Rocky had a sty in one eye which made him look most comical, and Saint's jokes about casting the mote from one's brother's eye failed to tickle old Rock's fimny bone.
"So how's the trial coming.>" It was well known that Peter hoped the Romans would throw, if not the book, the Torah at Saint.
"We're on appeal. I've already sent the file up to the Palatine. The emperor's on our side." Saint had become a compulsive name-dropper, but then that was the name of the game in the fast lane of the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever known. Unfortunately, you had to be careful about which names you dropped, since Nero was killing off celebrities right and left as a result of the palace plot. Yet society went on pretty much the same, while Nero continued to give concerts and recitals and his usual tea dances; he even displayed his very charming watercolors in the vestibule of the Senate House, where those who could afford the prices bought them up as fast as he turned them out.
Peter pushed at his eyelid with a piece of silk. "He hates Christians."
"Jews anyway." Saint was curiously tranquil. "But he
loves theology, and Heaven knows we are loaded in that department. I've been explaining to him—^well, through a close friend of the emperor actually—^my theory of the Trinity. You know, God the Father ..."
"Blasphemy!" The Rock was no Trinitarian. Neither was I for a long time, but now I am a believer, and though we won't see the Trinity accepted as church doctrine in my lifetime, it will be one day, as I know from the television. Without a truly perfect mystery like the three-in-one One God, none of this really makes any sense—until Jesus returns in 2001 A.D., which has not yet happened for any of my visitors, though old Dr. Cuder is on the cusp of that fateftil year, and busy, very busy.
"Blasphemy is—like a mote—in the eye of the beholder." Saint was serene. "Anyway, the friend of the emperor says that the emperor will intervene ^/anything should go wrong with my appeal. That means a pardon, of course."
"You have been found guilty of an insurrection against Rome. That's a capital offense in these parts." Rock looked almost happy.
"More wine.^" asked Flavia, shrewdly. She never listened to anything that we three saints ever said. But then she had no way of knowing that she was in on the ground floor of a great world religion with not only legs but a bullet. Flavia liked modern dance, and not much else except boys. Like Priscilla, she was a chicken hawk. Luckily, at twenty-seven I looked a lot younger than I was. If I hadn't, I'd have been out on the streets, hustling the Suburra.
"Actually the original offense—alleged offense—^was against the Temple authorities, a minor infraction under Roman law. Unfortunately, Zenas misfiled my first appeal." Saint was very precise in legal matters. He understood so well the word of the law that he often missed its sinister substance.
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"The whole thing couldn't have been sillier. Zenas had run out of ordinary appeal forms, so he used an old form that they used to use under Caligula for crimes against the emperor. Since this form had long since been superseded, he saw no harm in using it, just for the paper, you know? Well, the magistrate filed my appeal under treason and now ..."
"Now you are guilty of a capital offense." Rocky chuckled. "But then what do you care.> All flesh is as grass ..."
"Oh, God ..." Saint groaned. If there is one thing a saint can't put up with it is having to listen to another saint sermonize.
But the Rock was not to be stopped. "... and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. ..."
Flavia touched the tiny bald spot at the back of my head, the beginning of beauty's end.
"The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away."
"Everyone knows weeds die." Saint was cutting. "Isn't that a bit banal, Rocky, even for you.>"
"I speak simply to the simple. I bring them a vision of a new Jerusalem. ..."
"The old one is more like it." Toward the end. Saint was less and less forbearing with the Rock and the Zionist crowd. Lately, they had not only been petitioning the emperor to set up a mandated territory in Palestine, but they had been putting up anti-Nero signs all around the town. This was not calculated to win the heart and the mind of someone suffering from extreme lead poisoning.
"Charity," said Rocky, with a maddeningly smug smile, "shall cover the multitude of sins."
Before Saint could deliver a whammy, Priscilla and Glau-con had joined us.
"Flavia, cherieV Priscilla and Flavia embraced.
"Hi, guys," said Glaucon. Success had not changed him, I'll say that. He was still looking for that perfect lay while explaining the cosmos in his satyr plays. Also, right to the end, Nero thought the world of Glaucon, who was our protection at Court after Petronius broke the ladle and took to his tub. For the record, contrary to rumor, Nero wasn't anti-Christian. Like your average Roman emperor, he was anti-Zionist. But when knife came to axe, as we say in Lystra, he gave it to both Jews and Christians.
Priscilla was on a high. You can read all about it in her diaries, Alexandrian edition. "We're booked into the Theater of Marcellus. Glaucon's Medea. Starring me! I have never had a coeur so plein ofjoie avant^.^^ She began to sail about the loggia, striking artistic poses.
I'm afraid at this point
in her career—^the apex really— she was not a pretty sight. The small piquant pussycat chin had slipped into the multifolds of her sinewy neck, while the black gum shone like onyx whenever she spoke. Flavia quite liked her but then Flavia was, as they say in Roman society, old money.
"The play's pretty good," Glaucon allowed when pressed by Saint, who was a theater buff despite his constant inveighing against all the performing arts except juggling and tap dancing. "Should be pretty popular . . ."
"The first night is already sold out. You can't get standing room even, no matter what ice you pay." Priscilla, the pure artist living for Art alone, was now Miss Showbiz in spades. "Rome will never see a Medea like mine—like ours!" She embraced Glaucon rapturously.
As it was, Rome never did see Glaucon's Medea with Priscilla in the title role.
Saint said, "I smell smoke. Something's burning."
"More wine," said Flavia, shrewdly.
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What was burning was the city of Rome. There have been many explanations of what happened but I think the whole place was doomed to go up in smoke. Thanks to the inadequate building codes and the unscrupulous builders and contractors, not to mention the conscienceless slum landlords—Petronius had owned most of the Suburra—^the city was just a jumble of rotten wood and decaying stucco with the odd marble building left over ft-om the great days of Augustus a century earlier.
Neither the Zionists nor the Christians set the fire, and, as far as I could tell ft-om Court circles, Nero not only did not set the fire but he took a financial bath, since he had just bought the three largest insurance agencies in the city. Ultimately, he did take advantage of the fire—"cleansing fire," he used to say—and immediately started to build a palace for himself between the Palatine and the Esquiline hills, a golden house, he called it, set in a couple of hundred acres where a whole business and residential district had been. He was still doing the landscape gardening next to a man-made lake he had dug beside the famous colossal statue to himself when there was a successful palace coup and he had to flee the city, committing suicide when the game was up, on the road. All in all, as your average Roman emperor goes, Nero was not only good ftm but a sincere and knowledgeable fan of everything Greek.
