by Gerald Kersh
There was nothing offensive in the way he said this. His tone was serious, admonitory, and he made ‘perfect scoundrel’ sound like a rare kind of compliment.
‘Oho!’ exclaimed Soxias. ‘Sound the shawms, blow the bombards, wind the ram’s horn trumpets, smash the cymbals! Here comes the champion of the I AM! Way for the little Pharisee in the name of the God of the Jews! I dare you to gamble your Pharisaic pride, Paulus, at the risk of bumping your consecrated backside and exposing your sacred circumcision!’
Barbarus said: ‘I will not play this game, Soxias. I cannot win, and my dignity is mine alone to lose. I have looked; I am grateful. Now, if you will excuse me, I will go home.’
‘Wait, Barbatus,’ said Paulus, ‘I think I will play for this cup.’
And he measured the four foot-lengths from the shining ball and clasped his hands, interlocked, at the back of his head. ‘Here, Soxias,’ he said, ‘I am adding an extra half-foot for good measure.’
He stretched out his right leg, with the foot arched and extended; then, without noticeable effort, he sat on his left haunch, balancing himself upon the ball of his left foot, and touched Eurynome’s toe with the tip of his right sandal, so lightly that the balanced cup revolved at ever so slight an angle. He drew back his foot, and did not put it to the floor until he was standing upright.
‘Well done!’ we cried, looking at Soxias.
He, nodding placidly and blinking his veiled eyes, said: ‘The cup is yours, Paulus. But admit, now, that I made you bow your knee to a graven image!’
‘Why, no,’ said Paulus, taking up his prize. ‘That is a highly debatable point. If, for example, I took you by the throat and knelt on your belly to beat your brains out on the floor, could it be said that in so doing I was bowing the knee to Soxias?’
Soxias laughed, and said: ‘Ay, ay! And if I get to my feet to empty my bladder, does Soxias stand in honour of the pisspot? And so on…. There’s no knowing where to catch this one! You must be very strong in the legs.’
‘I am,’ said Paulus, ‘but that trick – why, I learned it as a child. We used to play it with empty eggshells, for sweets.’
‘And it has won you a graven image,’ said Soxias.
‘Oh,’ said Paulus, ‘but I have not taken the image unto myself, you know – I am offering it to Barbatus as a gift.’
And he handed the Eurynome cup to the old gentleman who took it, speechless with inexpressible emotion. A dramatist might have chosen this moment to end a scene, with young Paulus triumphant and old Soxias out of countenance.
But it was not like that.
Soxias held the stage by suddenly yawning voluptuously, and without pretence – an enjoyable yawn; he smacked his lips after it. There was an awfulness about his overwhelming indifference. It would have made any expression of feeling by us, now, seem small as the squeak of a bat in an Egyptian tomb. Before I could stop myself I yawned too.
‘So ends another amusing and instructive night,’ said Soxias, ‘and here comes another cool and refreshing dawn.’ He spoke, of course, with irony.
As we prepared to leave, he said to Paulus: ‘Pray tell your venerable father – after you have purified yourself of the pollution of my house – that Soxias is most pleased with his young son Saul, or Paul, or Paulus. That Soxias says, although he fears the father of so astute a son, nevertheless Soxias invites him to his house tomorrow or the next day to conclude certain business that he wants news of.’
Paulus bowed.
‘We’ll draw up a contract in the Roman style,’ said Soxias, ‘and not lay our hands on each other’s genitals in the style of the Jewish patriarchs, of course.’
‘I am sure that a written contract will be quite acceptable to both parties,’ said Paulus.
But for the first time that night he blushed. Paulus’s triumph was dust and ashes.
Soxias’s evening was complete.
2
PAULUS, who was close at my heels when I went into the courtyard, lingered, waiting for me to say something. Much of what he did, at that time, was done with half an eye on me.
I said: ‘I shall walk to my house to stretch my legs. Then a shave, a massage, and to business.’
‘No sleep, Diomed?’
‘Later, perhaps. An old soldier learns to sleep or wake at will. Go home and rest.’
‘I made Barbatus happy,’ said Paulus.
‘So?’ I answered. ‘What is Barbatus to you?’
‘Nothing, but I didn’t want to see him try, and fail,’ he said. ‘I hated to see Soxias playing with him.’
I laughed and said: ‘Soxias was playing with you, Paulus, and not with Barbatus.’
‘I won the cup.’
‘What does Soxias care for a cup?’
‘It is worth a fortune!’
‘And you gave it to Barbatus, for a gesture. Vanity, my dear Paulus, as your Solomon would have called it! And Soxias knows that in your heart you are biting your nails, and is amused – he made you give that cup to Barbatus! But never mind,’ I added, to console him, knowing that my words had hurt him, although his face did not change expression, ‘you are still one of the very few who have pleased Soxias and still kept their dignity; and done good business for your father at the same time. You have made a tremendous impression all round. Everybody is happy, except you; and you are learning very fast, my boy.’
‘Thank you, Diomed. May I come to your house this evening?’
‘Do,’ I said. ‘Meanwhile, work out what you would have said if your foot had slipped.’
So he left; and Afranius came out, arm in arm with little Tibullus, and followed by old Melanion.
Tibullus was saying: ‘The difficulties encountered by the conscientious historian, Afranius, are innumerable. At times, I fear they are almost insuperable. Often I am tempted –’
‘Ah, Diomed!’ cried Afranius. ‘You are walking? I’ll walk with you, if I may.’
‘So will I,’ said Melanion. ‘It is unhealthy to stay too long in one position. I am reminded –’
‘The difficulties encountered –’ Tibullus began again.
‘The air mixes well with Soxias’s wine,’ said Afranius. ‘Oh – and Soxias has played another little joke. You know, Hylas fell asleep in the arms of a little golden-haired girl?’
‘The one he kept describing as a rosebud dipped in honey and almond cream?’ I asked.
‘That one. Well, Soxias had her taken away, and put in her place an old hunchbacked dwarf with no teeth.’
‘I ordered Soxias to rest,’ said Melanion growling.
‘Soxias merely told his steward to give the dwarf her orders,’ said Afranius. ‘She is to pursue Hylas in the open street and scream that he is the father of her child.’ He roared with laughter.
‘The difficulties encountered by –’
Afranius interrupted Tibullus again, saying: ‘You would have thought that young Paulus really did lay a curse upon Lucius, would you not, Melanion?’
‘So he did,’ said Melanion.
‘A real curse?’ asked Afranius.
‘Yes,’ the physician said.
‘He has very penetrating eyes,’ Afranius said, thoughtfully.
‘Penetrating eyes your grandmother!’ Melanion frowned a smile, as one might say – squeezing it out of his mouth with the weight of his forehead. ‘He has a woman’s feeling for a weak spot, and a juggler’s sense of timing. I, too, could lay a curse on Lucius with a winedrop and a word; only coming from me it would strike from a different angle. It would be the same curse, however.’
I said: ‘Shame, shame, Melanion! Silly talk, that, from a physician, and a surgeon too. I am only a soldier, but I can tell you – a common boxer, wrestler, or gladiator could tell you – that the angle makes all the difference. The difference between up under the ribs or down over the ribs is often the difference between death and life. You mean, in effect, that you could strike Lucius with a curse, but it would be a different curse.’
‘I am at fault,’ sai
d Melanion. ‘I deluded myself into a false belief that I was not speaking with fools. Forgive me. … You will concede, Diomed, that there are numerous ways of stabbing a man’s heart with the same dagger?’
‘Granted,’ I replied, ‘and I see what you are driving at, Melanion. A stab to the heart, from the front or from the back, with the same dagger is the same killing, you are going to say – only the angle is different, you argue.’
‘Well, then?’
‘You are wrong. It is the same dagger, thrust with the same result. But the killing is a different kind of killing.’
‘To hell with your metaphysics!’ said Afranius. ‘Return to Lucius and Paulus.’
Melanion nodded. ‘To hell with metaphysics indeed. Take Lucius first – he is a deeply religious man.’
‘Oh, come now!’ cried Afranius.
‘Why not?’ said Melanion. ‘Only a man who believes in the gods can find the thrill of wickedness in constantly and obscenely blaspheming them. And Little Lucius really believes that he is being wicked. The more frantically he blasphemes, the more he believes. His private fear of the gods is in inverse proportion to his public mockery of them. … Is this metaphysical enough for you, Diomed?’
‘Nothing metaphysical about it,’ I said. ‘By the same token, the more openly devout some men are, the smuttier their private lives turn out to be. Remember the scandal of Martius, the one called the Ascetic, and his nephew? The child died of internal injuries –’
‘May I proceed? I have your permission? Thank you. Concerning Lucius: deep in his soul he is very much afraid of the gods. And I’ll wager that when he’s alone he sends up quite elaborate excuses to them on the smoke of lavish sacrifices, saying something like this: “Dear gods, let me make my position clear once again. You will not fail to perceive that in blaspheming you I am serving you, in that I often shock lukewarm believers into warm protest and generous sacrifice to you …” and so on, and so forth.’
‘As I might call Diomed, say, a pederast and the son of a bitch, safe in the assumption that he would know I was only joking,’ said Afranius.
‘Something like that,’ said Melanion. ‘Now this evening while Little Lucius was approaching the most lurid part of his foolish poem, where Neptune comes in, Soxias cut him short. This put him out of countenance. Lucius fell into one of those empty depths of misery that only the professional clown can reach.’
‘Well put,’ said I.
‘Be silent,’ said Melanion. ‘At this point Paulus raised a laugh. Lucius went into one of those ecstasies of impotent spite that only the professional clown can achieve when an outsider steals his audience. There is philosophy among wild beast men, resignation among thieves condemned to fight to the death, and sportsmanship among maimed swordsmen – but among clowns there are none of these things. They know a desperation and a hopelessness nobody else knows. Thus, in his despair, poor Little Lucius turned to blaspheme a god without a statue, one he couldn’t sacrifice to. And in that second, when one laugh would have given him strength again – in that one second – Paulus played his tomfoolery with the drop of wine and Lucius’s hand; and by the gods I honour him for it!’
‘But the curse, the curse!’ cried Afranius.
‘Here is where I honour Paulus,’ Melanion said. ‘Because what I might have done out of calculation and long experience, he did with the wisdom of an instant. There was the calculation, yes; there was the diagnostic perception, yes; but it all came to his mind in a flash, and what is more, in that flash the boy acted! Lucius, in spite of all the wine he has drunk, will be unable to sleep. He will toss and turn, and think of his hand; he will pray to all the gods; he will drink a lot more wine; he will vomit. Then he will swallow some strong Indian opiate such as he probably takes normally to give himself strange and pleasant dreams. But he will have bad dreams this time. When he wakes up, his hands will be trembling, as they always must. This time they will be trembling more than ever, and his right hand will tremble more than the left. He won’t be able to hold a cup, let alone a stylus. And this evening he will go weeping to Paulus, saying: “Take off the curse, take off the curse!”’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘And you would have cursed him as a physician, no doubt, in the name of Aesculapius, and might perhaps placate him with sacrifices of chickens, or whatever your god prefers, and so persuaded him out of the curse. The point is, that Paulus cursed Lucius without a god at all! He caught him with the right word and the right gesture at the exactly critical moment –’
‘I, too, can tell a man to be sick or well, and sick or well he will be,’ said Melanion.
‘But you are a great physician, and a kind of god in yourself, since so many have faith in you,’ I said. ‘Paulus is the son of a merchant manufacturer of tents and, to Lucius, nobody. Your curse, therefore, would be different from Paulus’s, Melanion.’
‘Oh, idle speculation, idle speculation,’ growled Melanion. ‘I am forbidden by oath, and by ethic, to curse, or to hurt except to heal. Diomed, invite us in and give us all cold fruit-juices and water.’
The sun had risen, and it was pleasant on my shady terrace. Not forgetting that in Tarsus, in times like these, even the most absurd occasion for a mob to gather might have grave consequences, I excused myself and went to speak to Sergius, my sergeant.
‘Nothing, Pugnax?’ I called him, affectionately, by his nickname.
‘No, sir.’
‘You know Hylas.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He’s at Soxias’s house. In the course of the morning he will be pursued by a negro dwarf who will scream that he is the father of her child. It will be very funny.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have her put in a sack and delivered to Soxias’s secretary with my compliments.’
‘Yes, sir. Any special kind of sack, sir?’
‘A large sack, old friend.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Then I joined my guests, who were sipping the cool drinks. Only the writer of history, Tibullus, seemed slightly ill at ease: he was sleepy, but would not go home for fear of missing something. Missing what? Tibullus did not know.
His plump face always wore an expression of mild irritation, as of one who, in the middle of a long journey, suddenly feels that he has left something behind; he cannot recall what it is he may have forgotten; it is on the tip of his memory, and when at last he does remember, it will be too late. In any case, it is of no consequence.
To cheer him I said: ‘Ah, Tibullus, the difficulties encountered by the historian are numerous, are they not?’
Brightening at once, he replied: ‘Sometimes I fear, Diomed, that they may be almost insuperable.’
‘More than “almost”, I imagine,’ said Afranius. ‘I have read the historians, right up to Livy, and it still seems to me that history is only a matter of opinion. The fables and the poems and the old wives’ tales have taught me more.’
‘If a hundred Livys wrote for a hundred years they could never write the true history of one man, let alone a people,’ said Melanion.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that is because it is easier to know what ten thousand people have done as a body than what one man has done as an individual.’
‘And it is the individual who makes the history of the ten thousand,’ said Melanion.
‘But it is also argued that the circumstances bring forth that individual,’ said Tibullus.
‘The individual having brought forth the circumstances,’ said Afranius.
‘Not in the beginning,’ said Tibullus, somewhat weakly.
‘How do you know? Were you there?’ asked Afranius.
‘Unfair, Afranius!’ I cried. ‘I have taken part in two or three battles, and my account of them would be quite valueless. Interesting to someone whom such matters interest, perhaps; but poor pickings for a searcher after truth as a whole –’
‘Which can never possibly be uncovered,’ muttered Melanion. ‘In such a discussion you end with your head down your throat.’
/> ‘And I have heard men who had fought at my right hand and at my left discussing these self-same actions,’ I continued, ‘and if I had not known beforehand what they were talking about, I should have had to ask them in what battles they had been engaged. He’s a poor historian who starts by saying: “I was there at the time.”’
‘What!’ cried Afranius, ‘Diomed of all people doesn’t trust eye-witnesses?’
‘Not unless their independent testimonies happen to fit the established fact. Independent, mind; uninfluenced and dispassionate. And I trust a hundred witnesses a hundred times less than I’d trust one. But my business is, to keep the peace, and leave judgment to the judges.’
‘The testimony of an educated man –’ Tibullus began. Poor fellow he was destined seldom to finish an observation.
Melanion completed it for him: ‘– is the testimony of a man with preconceived opinions. What you call education is nothing but a ring in your nose to lead you by.’
‘If Melanion wants an argument,’ I said firmly, ‘he can’t have one this morning. We were speaking generally about history and eye-witnesses, and so on. I was about to give you a case in point. You have heard of one Jesus Christ, who, if he has not made history, has certainly made a great deal of trouble –’
‘Same thing,’ said Melanion.
‘Well. Naturally, one is professionally interested to know what kind of fellow this was, who roused such a persistent rabble, shook the Temple, and has managed to flog up a whole mad-doggery of fanatics simply by repeating a few stale and perfectly harmless aphorisms, fables and injunctions. Now this man preached to thousands who, hanging on his words, must have looked at his face. He was a demagogue, a prominent figure. He was cheered in the streets. His public trial was overcrowded. His execution was exceptionally well attended – in fact, I have it on report that there might have been a riot, if he hadn’t sworn his supporters to non-violence. There must be, let us say, a way of making a composite picture of the various descriptions of the man, for the sake of identification?
‘I questioned fourteen people who had seen and heard Jesus Christ, concerning his personal characteristics. Six said he was tall, five said he was neither tall nor short, and two said he was short. That, roughly, should make his height average. Now, as to colouring: one, a Macedonian, swore Jesus Christ had grey eyes and fair hair; seven, who were Jews, said they had never seen his hair, because his head was always covered, but that he had a magnificent jet-black curly beard, very large black eyes, and a rosy complexion; two Romans said he was pallid and swarthy, with a high forehead and a very thin beard and small, prominent eyes; a Dacian said he had a healthily bronzed face, narrow dark eyes, and a broad, low forehead; and three others said, simply, that he did not look very well. Eight swore that he had a tremendous, resonant voice – the voice is very important, remember – a voice like a gong; but five were quite sure that he had such a little, quiet voice, that he had to use one of his followers for a mouthpiece whenever he addressed a moderately large meeting; and one was equally certain that Jesus Christ screamed somewhat like a passionate woman.
