Threshold of Fire

by Hella S. Haasse

  At that earlier time, Honorius rode in his gilded triumphal chariot, at his side in the seat of honor his father-in-law Stilicho, whom he invited again and again, with stately gestures, to share in the homage. He could hardly do otherwise, since it was Stilicho whom he had to thank for his Imperial glory, and for more than that. At that time there were no ominous cries — or perhaps we simply did not hear them through the cheers, the chanting of the priests in the forefront of the procession and the fanfares of the Germans who were taking up the rear. The secret envy which Honorius must, since his childhood, have felt toward this man who had acted as his guardian and who in fact was the invisible ruler of the Empire, kept festering within him. He controlled himself just as, for his part, Stilicho disguised his contempt and antipathy for his Imperial son-in-law. Those in the know waited — without discussing it openly — for the moment when the silent skirmishing would erupt into a deadly battle. I knew about this too, just as I knew — or thought I knew — everything in those days.

  While the rose petals rained upon Honorius’s procession — and thus upon me — I thought about how I could honor Stilicho in words without offending the Emperor, or how I could flatter the Emperor without neglecting to give Stilicho the full credit that was his due. Looking back, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry over such short-sighted craftiness. Yesterday, as a spectator at Honorius’s second entry, I saw my former self pass before my eyes, a famous man on his way to higher honors. My fall was imminent and I, who understood — or thought I understood — so much, didn’t even suspect it.

  I couldn’t get rid of the cry “Munera! Munera!” which seemed to burst from the depths of the earth. As soon as the procession faded from view and the cordon was abandoned, the crowd began to disperse. There was no question of enthusiasm, but only an apathetic willingness to watch whatever chanced to come into view. It struck me that no one talked about the incident. On the contrary, I had the impression that the people who, like me, had stood on the shoulder of the road, and farther back, under the pine trees near the temple walls, avoided remaining to talk in groups.

  I did not believe that those cries were coming from provocateurs. However, I waited a moment by the side of the road to see whether servants of the Prefect or other guards would appear from behind the temple buildings. But the place seemed filled exclusively with passersby, people who were walking back to the Forum and those — considerably in the minority, I might add — who wanted to try and catch something of the ceremonies in front of the heavily guarded Senate building.

  Someone gave me alms, a woman, undoubtedly a Christian, one of the pious do-gooders who, in the hope of heavenly salvation, spend their days distributing money to the poor, even to those who don’t hold out their hands. I went to sit in the dry grass with my back against the temple wall.

  Over two decades I have seen a world perish, and the birth of something new that is completely alien to me. In the district where I have lived since my official disappearance, in the ramshackle tenements or in one of the markets and squares in the neighborhood, I can still imagine that everything is the same as it was twenty years ago. Under the stinking landing of the tenement, among the stalls and the workshops and in the public baths, the chatter and jokes deal with the kinds of things that don’t change quickly, and events take on the color of average humanity.

  The climate in which the new ruling class lives is determined by questions of politics and religion. Leaning against the wall which cuts off access to the temples — most of them are in ruins — I saw men and women of that class passing in their palanquins, coiffed and clad in the style of the Eastern Empire which Honorius favors and which therefore the bishops don’t dare to criticize. Creatures from another world, officials and merchants who have risen swiftly and become rich through dealings and negotiations with the Goths and call themselves clarrissimi and nobilissimi — and know quite well how to reconcile their Christianity with worldly activities. On this point, the Church gives them its blessings because without servants the Empire can’t keep up its labyrinthine apparatus and today anyone who doesn’t profess the Catholic faith isn’t considered for any important post or office.

  For the true believers — those who in an earlier day set the Christian tone here; idealists, living in strict observance of their doctrine of repentance and abjuration of the world, ready to let themselves be thrown to wild beasts for the sake of their convictions — I have always felt a certain respect. But today’s newly powerful people — or those who would like to become powerful — those who have themselves baptized to serve their ambition or those who come from Christian families and have perfected the art of not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing — these punish and exclude others with the same callous narrow-mindedness as those who persecuted Christians in the past and always with their own elect status on their lips — and they fill me with amazement and abhorrence.

  Seven years ago I should still have laughed at the hypocrisy and pretentiousness of certain people, despite the fact that I was already their victim. But my worldly amusement turned to horror on the day that I heard that our exalted Emperor Honorius had had his first advisor and right hand, the Defender of the Empire, the last sentinel between Rome and the barbarians, his father-in-law Stilicho, killed like a dog on the steps of the Christian altar in the basilica of Ravenna. Did the bishops protest? Did a cry of horror go up from the pious who are always pointing out, with great righteous indignation, the abuses that go on in Constantinople? The blood was mopped up, the Senate took on the difficult task of justifying the accusation that Stilicho was a traitor and then went on with the business of the day: a new murder, for complete security — the murder of Stilicho’s only son.

  With my back against the warm wall, I sat watching the crowded road and the people walking among the monuments and buildings which have not been declared contaminated because of their so-called heathen past.

  Munera! Munera! Chills have often run down my spine when, during a gladiatorial contest, an unnatural dead silence fell over the arena just before the fatal stroke was given. A crowd of ten thousand held their breath and craned their necks while the final bloodstain seeped over the soiled, scuffed sand. Fear and lust, older than our oldest memories, hovered over the amphitheatre. Another sacrifice — again, a toll was paid to the powers of darkness which shall be nameless… That’s all, there is nothing more to be said. The authorities have forbidden bloodshed as a form of popular amusement, but their faith promises salvation through continual inner contemplation of the blood and suffering of a genuine victim.

  I ask myself sometimes what impels most Christians to practice their religion: is it the belief that all souls are equal before God, which was preached by their solitary prophet? Or is it the turbid attraction of martyrdom? No one living can remember it — it is now many generations, more than one hundred years, since the last Christians were put to death for their convictions — but those of us who, before Honorius issued his prohibition, had been accustomed to visit the games, knew from our own experience the tense atmosphere of agony and thirst for blood in which, for a brief moment, there was communion between those who were going to die and those who were going to watch them die. The Christian dignitaries of the court who, on Honorius’s orders, had butchered Stilicho while he clung to the altar of the crucified one (so I have been told) did not execute the sentence coldly and impersonally; they did not satiate, like madmen, a need for vengeance — but voluptuously offered up a forbidden sacrifice.

  I sat on the scorched grass in the heat of the sun and thought about these things: when I closed my eyes, I saw once more a horrible image that I knew not just from hearsay, as I did the death of Stilicho, but which I had seen with my own eyes: the hacked-off head of his wife Serena — my proud friend — stuck up on the City walls to frighten and discourage the Gothic besiegers. Every year in the days of the ancient republic, the head of a sacrificial horse was hung on the wall to ward off disaster. Serena’s executioners did not
know what they were doing, even though they tried to justify their senselessly cruel deed to the people by having their reasons shouted from the housetops. Under the ramparts of the Aurelian wall, the soldiers kept watch near the unrecognizably stained face with its open mouth and glassy eyes; her hair was still partially braided and full of clotted blood.

  I saw it from where I stood among the people who were flocking there. Was this intended as a challenge, a declaration of independence to the barbarians, this woman’s face which some of their commanders might perhaps remember from the time when Stilicho negotiated with them? The head of a Medusa, the blind and stiff figurehead of a Rome which had changed irrevocably? The pitiful stinking remains of a victim sacrificed in a moment of panic to the powers of destruction?

  I heard footsteps behind the wall. There was some movement in the mass of ivy a few feet from where I sat; there appeared to be an opening in the wall there. Two men appeared among the vines — three actually, because the first was carrying a dwarf on his back: a nightmare figure came toward me — two heads surmounting a gaudily dressed body, almost cheek against cheek, one with soft features and a carefully curled black fringe of beard, the other convex, pock-marked. Behind them came a big burly fellow who had to force himself through the opening. The vines crackled, there was a rain of leaves and dust.

  I remained sitting quietly where I was, a motionless spectator, undisturbed even when the other threatened to stumble over my feet.

  “Watch where you’re going,” I said to the double-headed figure, who regained his balance with a quick, elastic sideways leap.

  “I don’t need you to tell me what I should do. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Then you know too that it’s strictly forbidden to circulate among the temple buildings?”

  The man with the beard squinted; the pockmarked one gave a loud, throaty laugh. I pointed to the passersby in the road. “You’d sing another tune if there were vigiles in the neighborhood.”

  “You’re wrong there. We’re like one of the family with the authorities.” (This time the pockmarked one, the dwarf.)

  “Shut up! Let’s go,” said the big fellow who was taking up the rear.

  The suspicion that I was dealing with the provocateurs compelled me to probe further. Why wasn’t I more sensible? I didn’t think about the ugly mugs of the police spies I had seen coming and going in the halls of the prefecture and in the prisons, that trash which would make false statements for money; who had apparently followed me and spied on me for a year, as I discovered too late. I seized the fat man by a fold of his tunic.

  “You cried ‘Munera!’ when the Emperor was going by.”

  The man stood with his shoulders hunched.

  “And what if I did?”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “If you don’t like it, you can take a good punch.”

  He pushed up his sleeve, slowly raised his arm and clenched his fist. I pointed to his bulging, ropey muscles.

  “And you used to fight in the arena.”

  “That’s none of your business.” (But I could tell that he was flattered.)

  “I called out,” said the dwarf, who had slid down from his companion’s back. He put his hands to his mouth and brought forth a hollow, echoing sound, muffled now, but unmistakably the same as that which had just thrown the procession into confusion.

  “Were you paid to do that?”

  “No, it’s our hobby,” said the dwarf. The three of them burst into laughter.

  The man with the beard squatted down next to me and looked at me with yellow cat’s eyes. “You ask too many questions. Who and what are you?”

  He waited, peering at me, smiling with parted lips which were too red, too moist. I found him more repulsive than the freak or the obese muscle man.

  “I am a person of independent means,” I said. “I’m a passerby in Rome, a spectator. At the moment I’m sitting here to avoid the crowd.”

  The dwarf made lightning-quick grabbing motions. “Oh, yes, I can imagine how you’ve handled things — or rather how you’ve taken hold of one thing and another. Are you too a victim of the new laws?”

  “Me too?” I had learned that it was better not to understand every insinuation immediately.

  “We’ve been out of work since the decrees outlawing the games,” said the man with the beard, still smiling. “That one there is good for nothing now that there’s no more combat.”

  Suddenly I recognized him: the blue-black beard that seemed painted on his chin and cheeks; his boneless body, his light eyes which looked like the agate or topaz eyes which in the past artists had given to images of the gods.

  “Pylades the mime! I’ve seen you as Bacchus. But that was more than ten years ago. What are you doing now?”

  “Ah, ah, Dionysus is not dead,” said the dwarf, who moved close to his friends and nuzzled between them like an affectionate lapdog.

  “That probably means that you operate a bordello.”

  “Then should we say that we’re out of work?” giggled the dwarf.

  They were getting on my nerves; I wanted to leave them. I stood up. “I salute you.”

  Before I had taken three steps, the dwarf had grabbed a piece of my clothing.

  “We’ve misjudged you. You’re not one of those who have long fingers. Here’s your capital back that you get your income from.”

  He held out to me on his palm the coin (pinched by him in the interim) that the charitable lady had given to me.

  “I see that I can still learn something from you,” I said.

  “It would really be a pity if we didn’t become better acquainted now,” said Pylades, while he walked down the slope next to me. “We must have a talk.”

  “I didn’t know that we shared common interests.”

  “Oh but yes! The good old times.”

  He snapped his fingers over his shoulder, a signal for the others to follow us. We were standing on the pavement now, among the strolling passersby. I wanted to turn in the direction of the Subura, but Pylades put his hand on my arm.

  “May I offer you a beaker of wine on the other side, in Apicius’s tavern?”

  At that moment I should have refused curtly and gone on my way. He filled me with aversion and resentment and uneasiness at the same time, because he had awakened my curiosity. There had to be a connection between his sudden appearance, the cry of “Munera! Munera!” and the second entry of Honorius. Yesterday something came within my reach; I don’t know what it is, or whether I should welcome it. There are changes in the air; now the signs must be interpreted.

  In the past, when I was in Honorius’s retinue, I was present day in and day out at the spectacles offered by the City to the Emperor in honor of his first formal entry. The performance of this same Pylades, who had the privilege of being the third in a series of illustrious holders of that name, was heralded as a high point of the festivities. And that would certainly have been the case if the passions which it provoked had not unleashed a commotion far more memorable than the spectacle itself.

  After a wild ballet of bacchantes and satyrs in an exceptionally sumptuous setting (it was, under the circumstances, an insane waste of money), Pylades sprang from a litter of interlaced vines: the god of wine, naked except for a loincloth of panther skin and crowned with clusters of grapes.

  From a distance he seemed, even more than he did today, to be a youth, an ageless creature; his body quivered like a young tree in the wind; when he moved in a certain way, the gleam that ran over his skin suggested the play of sunlight on water, or light splashing on wind-tossed leaves. He leaped like a deer, stalked like a beast of prey or whirled and swayed in dances which were more sensual and shameless than those of Syrian harlots.

  Confusion and disapproval could be read on the faces of Honorius’s courtiers, who had not been in the habit, in Milan or Ravenna, of attending spectacles like this. The situation grew worse when the bacchantes rushed forth en masse onto the stage, stamping their feet and, after
having surrendered themselves to lewd games with the god, began to tear at him in a frenzy.

  The manner in which Pylades mimed the martyr’s death was incomparable: shaken by voluptuous spasms, while blood from artfully concealed hogs’ bladders streamed over his face and limbs, he fell all at once into what was finally no more than a shapeless heap of debris. The public on the highest benches roared with enthusiasm; a rustling and murmuring of continual excitement went through the rows of patricians in the lower seats. There were glances at the platform where Honorius sat with his court.

  The Emperor was visibly impressed (the eunuchs in Constantinople who had raised him and his brother had spent much time on the formation of his aesthetic tastes, a circumstance from which I too enjoyed the benefits); many of the courtiers and high officials sat with set faces, but naturally no one had the courage to show his displeasure by leaving.

  The next number on the program was a gladiatorial combat, trident and casting-net against sword and shield — one of the mass exhibitions in which twenty or thirty pairs were in the arena at the same time, and the victors immediately competed against each other until finally only one of them survived. The spectators, still fired up from Pylades’ performance, cheered on the combatants, shrieking for blood. When the first victims had fallen, the crowd could not contain itself; even the Emperor clutched the balustrade tightly. All around him and his retinue, who knew how to preserve decorum, tens of thousands bellowed and howled, sweeping themselves into an emotional maelstrom.

  Suddenly it was noticed that someone was standing in the arena who did not belong there. It took a few minutes before the gladiators became aware of this intrusive presence and began to hesitate. Some of them let their weapons fall, the net-throwers withdrew to a safe distance. The roaring in the stands diminished. The intruder moved about in the middle of the sand, waving his arms, exhorting the combatants in a voice breaking with emotion. He wore a habit, he was sunburned and unkempt like a hermit come from the desert. Fragments of his argument came through to where I sat; he could not be understood in the higher stands, where people were becoming restless again, the ill-natured restlessness caused by interrupted tension, which quickly reached its boiling point and inevitably erupted into threats and violence.