Vergil in Averno vm-2

by Avram Davidson

  “And his business was —?”

  “Everything at first, you know, though in a small way. As for, we did used to go along the wharf and buy seamen’s private trade adventures, such as they was allowed to carry free aboard — not much: a sack or a box or a bale of this-and-that at a time. Then one year he chartered the fruit harvest at one of the orchards. That was good, I liked that; hard we worked in the open sun and air all day, but the fruit was sweet to smell and eat; hard we worked, the day, but at night, sir, ah, how we young people used to dance on the threshing-floor, the grain harvest not being on at the same time. Folk playing music, like as you’ve done, sir. . the bright moon. . A look of quiet came across the freedman’s broad and sallow face. “And the next year the people made him an offer to charter the wheat harvest, and we did so well that after that it was mostly wheat we dealt in. . oh, yes, sometimes oil, yes, sometimes oil. But mostly wheat.”

  It was almost as though Aurelio were acting the role of chanter for some mimetic play; even as he said these words the workmen were breaking into pieces the bread they had for the day’s first meal, and dipped the pieces of it into the dish of oil carefully propped on a heap of sand. Vergil was prompted to quote the old proverb of the Aegypts, “Water and the wheat plant are equal to the throne of God,” and Aurelio said, indeed. Indeed, indeed, sir, indeed. His old master, Aurelio Favio, then, he was not. . and his freedman Aurelio was not, then. . a dyer?

  “No, sir, never. A dyer, Master Vergil? Why — ”

  “But isn’t that madder, Aurelio, in the lines of your right hand?”

  The freedman’s mouth opened. He turned his hand over, stared hard. Those lines of which the chiromancers make much were indeed a deeper red than anything but madder could supply. Aurelio looked. Puzzlement. Then a jerk of his head, a click of his teeth. Recollection. He nodded. “It was the other day sir, as I went indeed to the dye-house to see about the curtains for my bed. And the master workman poked his stick into the vat to show me how it was going and he hauled the cloth up and it began to slip and I, like a fool — as though he didn’t know his own craft! — I grabbed ahold of it. Well! And so the dye still stays there yet, in the lines of my palm. Sharp eyes you have, as well, Master Vergil, sir.” Respect, and perhaps just a touch of something more.

  Not wanting it to be given the chance, just then, to become too much more, Vergil said, “We are making you a good house here, Aurelio. Will you live alone, just you and your servants?” No more encouragement was needed, the freedman opened his heart and spoke of his plans. He was, he felt, too old to marry. “If I need a woman for a night, I know where to find one. But what’s meet for a night is not meet for a lustrum,” he said. The vine might well be wedded to the elm, as anyone could see for himself who walked out into the countryside and saw the one, trained, draped round the other, so to speak: but old age and maidenhood, not so well. And to marry an older woman meant to marry all her family, “… some of which I might like and might like me, and some of which, well …” And had she no family, none, then to marry all her sorrow and bitterness as well.

  But.

  There was something else on the man’s mind and Vergil felt some sense of what it was, and a stronger sense of not wishing to show anything of what he sensed. He nodded. Waited. “There’s a young girl, oh, maybe eleven, twelve, or so, in the new wharf part of town, whom I been looking on for a while, you see, sir. And I see she’s a good girl and as clean as they leave her be, where she was before with some family, not a slave, no, just a servant-drudge. So I spoke a word here and there and I put a few pieces of silver into a few hands and I got her in with a better family where she can do more than scrub and carry — where she can learn the ways of a good family house and a good family housewoman: buying, spinning and weaving, cooking good food as she has bought, managing servants, and to read and write and keep accounts, and all such things as I needn’t enumerate. And in a while, Master Vergil, I shall adopt her and dower her. And then, without no haste, sir, then I’ll go cautiously inquiring around in the workshops of the good crafts, of the best of the crafts, sir, of promising young men who’ve about finished their journeyman time: and then I am going to pick the best of them as don’t have family to set them up well in trade and then I’ll marry the two of them off, if so be they’ll have each other, for I don’t believe in forcing such a match if they won’t. With the dowry, then, the young man, my son-in-law as he’ll be, he’ll be able to open a good shop and we’ll all be a-living here together in this good house which you’re a-building for me, and I shall have children then, you see, and grandchildren, and I shan’t be alone no more, then, nor in my ancient age …”

  Quiet joyful anticipation for a moment, then, hastily: “If such be my fate, absit omen.” He spat three times and thrice he rapped upon a balk of timber.

  “Absit omen,” Vergil repeated. It was a bad thing to boast or vaunt, it would attract the envy of others. . other people. . others who and which were not people; it was a risk, but, being a risk which it was inevitable sooner or later at one time and another anyone would take, there was a remedy provided: one invoked the protection of the spirits of the trees, which resided, residually, at least, in any piece of wood; one spat, for spittle was deemed potent surrogate for potent semen. “Avert the omen. . Yes. Such be your fate. It is written in your palm, the lines outlined in madder. Yes, it will be a good house that we are building for you. So you do not go to Averno, then, for your dye-work?”

  Pleasure in this prophecy, confirmant of his own chief hopes, made the freedman almost speechless for a moment, and he was slow to take the last question into his mind. It was with a sudden movement, almost a convulsive one, that he reacted to it in a moment; and his face twisted. “That black pit? That stinking hole? No, master! Oh, I’ve been, more often than I’ve wanted to, for every time I’ve been there I haven’t wanted to, but business sometimes obliged me — why else? — for as for them hot baths supposedly good for the health, why, rather sicken at home than go there for a cure! However, beg the master’s pardon, whilst it is true that they do dye-work and iron-work and in fact all such work as involves heats and fires, which is what keeps ‘em all alive and makes ‘em rich (besides from thievery and murder or worse) — why, no sir! ‘Averno-Inferno’ is what we calls it. If so it be as I can possibly help it, I prefer to pay higher price and breathe cleaner air….” Some sudden thought interrupted this not-quite-tirade. “They say there is a king there now, King Kakka I suppose it must be, a king of shit.” Contempt and disgust, and something more, struggled a moment more upon the fat face with its clear, if faded, blue eyes. Then: “Begging the master’s pardon for my rough words.”

  Next, with no more than a twitch, this all was gone. “So my palmlines say I’m to live here in peace as I’ve desired, master, you say …?”

  Vergil reached for his lute, to take it up again; made of wood, it was, and inlaid with that mother-of-pearl fetched up from the rich ocean-mines of the Erythraean Sea. “As far as the lines say me, yes. And as for further information, why. . one would not wish to go to Averno for it, would one?” He ran his fingers over the lute-strings, and then, seeing that the older man was troubled at this last remark, which (he thought) it would have been better not to have made, Vergil asked, “And how did you meet this young girl whom you plan to adopt?”

  Aurelio’s face cleared once more. “How? Why, let me think. Ah. It was a hot day and I was toting a sack of good wheat to miller’s, to save the cart, it being but the one sack. And I pause to wipe my sweaty face, and she come over and offered me a cup of water, you see, sir …”

  “Yes, I see. Well. . ‘Water and the wheat plant,’ eh?”

  He began to stroke the lute; and the men arose again and the work went on again. And went on well.

  • • •

  The last to leave, of those who left the building site, Vergil bade good evening to the watchman (by special permission of the municipium, armed: not all knew about spells and such safeguards, nor
did Vergil wish to make his own knowledge of them a subject for public clamor), and — some small devil entering into him — with a gesture indicated the signs deeply scored in the sand and dirt with his staff. “Don’t disturb my circles.”

  But the man did not catch a reference one would have thought well known even to schoolboys; exclaimed, “The gods forbid, sir!”

  Times had changed. For the better. For the worse.

  Night. He had of course the standing invitation to dine with Claudio Murcio, but the thought of having to hear once more the standard bill of fare deprecated by the inveterate modesty of the host seemed just that much too much. Another time, then, Claudio Murcio. And there was the invariable reading from Homer at the salon the Matron Gundesilla, followed, invariably, by refreshments of high quality; again, no. Plutarco had, not two days since, suggested that Vergil might find his collection of charts interesting, and Vergil very well might. On the other hand, he would probably not find very interesting the long walk thither in the fast-fading light; and, even less, the long walk back, accompanied by a servant with a torch yawning for his bed. So, so much for that.

  Home.

  Someday he would be able to afford to keep his own horse or mule. Someday he would have his own litter and litter-bearers. Someday he would give his own entertainments and have other people come to him. Someday home would be so well furnished, so well supplied with books and devices, that the thought of home would never seem even faintly disappointing. Someday. . home would be. . somewhere else.

  Until then, and meanwhile, then, at any rate: home.

  Supper, supplied by the cookshop-tavern two doors down, was no surprise. Barley and cheese. Almost he regretted after all the table of Claudio Murcio, where, in between the eggs at the beginning and the apples at the end, there would be lettuce and snails and roast kid and — And also: The lettuce is not very crisp, I fear, Master Vergil. The oil is not, alas, the best oil; it is merely local oil, I fear, Master Vergil. The eggs are not. . I fear the kid. . I wish the apples could have been. . Ah no. Better the barley and cheese, which the cookhouse crone had not waited to deprecate, but had simply put down on the table and taken her leave. There was wine, his own wine; there was no old moss on the amphora, there was not even new moss on the amphora, it was a small amphora of what wine-snobs would call a small wine; the wine would never travel, and who the hell cared. It was not bad wine. He ate, drank, washed his hands, dried them. Considered: What next?

  A woman? No wife, no concubine, no mistress kept elsewhere any more than here, and — currently — no loves, no intrigues. But there was Luvia, a few doors past the tavern, her person clean, her fee affordable, her purple gown (Averno-dyed) would look bright enough by lamplight. And then, the gown removed, a half hour in dalliance, the gown put on again; then Luvia would rattle and chatter and laugh. . and sulk if he did not laugh and chatter and rattle as well. Well, no matter if he did or did not, and tonight he did not wish to, then she would be off. And then what? Many men would then, simply, sleep. Vergil would not. At least, not after Luvia. Although old Tiresias had suffered much for frankly answering Juno’s question with Women, nine times as much as men, it was doubtful if, really, Luvia enjoyed their strokings and his delvings in any such proportion; as for the arithmetical reverse. . Enough that, though it left him in much measure satisfied in one respect, in another it left him restless. So. Then he would look to his books. . and so, all things reflected on and considered, he might as well look to them now.

  Instead.

  Someday he would have all the books he wanted. Theophrastus’ On Herbs, illustrated in good colors. The Pharmacon of Pseudo-Theophrastus. The Cookbook of Apicius, full of ghastly recipes for nightingales’ tongues in garum, elephant’s trunk farced with truffles, scuttlefish, and mustard sauce made with hippocras: he would need the entire Pharmacon to physic himself after such a supper. Someday he would have the complete Astronomica of Manilius, mistakes and all; Firmicus’s Liber Mathesus; the Parthian Mansions of Isidore of Charyx Spasini; Marsi’s Arts Magical (he had only the digest now); Vitruvius De Vitriae /?/. He would have the Catalogue of Ptolemy, with golden clasps and a silken cover, and a new Almagest in bright black letters (his own was faded, and half-illegible with interlineations and erasures); the Similitudes of Aristotle and the On the Formulae of Zoroaster — no! His mind had wandered: it was of course the other way around!

  Meanwhile, what did he have which would bear reading tonight? He had Ctesias, that delightful liar, both the Persica and Indica. He had part of Proclus (though, someday —), and the Thrasyllicon and Sicander’s Of Mesopotamia Septentriona. Yet the one book that he took down was none of these, but the Patterns of Parthenopius, and for one full passage of the larger sandglass he went through every single one of the labyrinthine mazes there delineated. . went through them in his mind, of course; merely he checked them with those in the book when he had done.

  He had done them all correctly.

  He always did.

  But it was well to be in practice, and besides: such splendid practice! such splendid exercises! And such splendid, splendid patterns!

  After that he simply selected a scroll at random, raised the upper part of his jointed bed and fixed it fast with the rod behind and beneath, saw that the lamp was well, and retired. He folded the scroll as he unrolled it, so that each column was folded full-face clear, back-to-back with another column, so as to save the trouble of rolling (and unrolling) the scroll whilst he was reading it; began to read.

  . . unexpectedly they were invited, in fact constrained, to join in a procession to the temple of Jove in Alexandria Olympia, where the Thunderer was worshiped under the Syrian name of Haddad. The procession had been organized at the first sign of bad weather by the local dyers’ guild, for, they say, the thunder affects the dyes in the great pots if the mordant has not already been — He was seized with a great start, in fact really something like a brief convulsion; the scroll shot from his hands and he sat bolt upright, the coverlet kicked off -

  Asleep? Certainly he had not fallen asleep, out of habit he had turned the sandglass over as he began reading and the first few grains were just trickling through. What book was this?

  He examined the label attached to the scroll’s tubular case. Seneca On the Four Cardinal Virtues? Hardly; clearly a mistake…. He got up and collected the fallen scroll, of course he had lost his place, well, well, he would find it again, and…. It was certainly not Seneca on anything, it was a fragment of, well, the gods knew what it was a fragment of, of something he had never seen before, so how came it here? Its text was not on the first wooden roller ever supplied it. Its text had been clipped and trimmed and glued and not recently, for the few marks left of the last letters on the part clipped off were quite impossible to decipher, by reason of who knew how many years of fingers — often greasy, often heavy, laboriously tracing the lines; how did it begin? It began, so the Esthish people who dwell by the Wendland Sea in a corner of the North, when they begin to winnow grain, address these words to the wind, O Wind, O Wind, O Heavenly Child. O Wind, O Wind, O Heart of Great Joy …

  Vergil fairly hastily yet fairly carefully went through the rest of the scroll; it was the memoir of travel of a Roman knight who had gone north after some precious commodity, amber, perhaps, and who had recorded not only every ounce purchased, and the price, but also, seemingly, every proverb he had ever heard and every way station at which he had heard it. But as to those other lines which Vergil had read but a moment before, lo! not once did they appear …

  Nor anything like them.

  Nor did he find them in any other book in his cabinet nor on his shelf. And neither could he recollect ever having read them before in his life. Anywhere.

  He set aside the scroll and its case with the errant label, let the bed-rod down and got into bed again, drew the cover up, blew out the light, snuffed the smoldering wick with moistened fingers, murmured a prayer, and slept without waking once, and without a single dream.

&nbs
p; • • •

  Averno was not very far as the crow flies, but it was a byword that not even a crow, scarcely the most delicate of birds, would wish to fly to or even near there; for “They be smudged black already” and “Them folk there begrudge them corby-crow a carcass, even”; and suchlike sayings, and more. But men went to Averno, and went often, even if not all men; and some came thence, too. It was but a short time after finishing the house of Aurelio (the mortar, made specially after Vergil’s own new-formed formula, might indeed prove better than the one commonly made; it would certainly prove as good, he would check it from time to time. . decade to decade. . for he had, he hoped, built the house to last forever: and so it might: barring quakes of the instable earth or some immense great overblast of Old Vesuvio. . or the Death of Rome come flying down upon it) — it was but a short time after finishing the house that Vergil had encountered a certain street scene of a morning. It was in between the old and the new wharf sections of the town port that he saw the man with a string of pack animals, laden down with, no doubt, madder and carmine and saffron and woad, indigom and hyacinth. Some fool of a lean-shanked fellow with stubbly cheeks had given a hoot, and, “Averno! Pho!” had cried. And held his nose. The crowd guffawed.

  The Avernian merchant or dye-master (they were often the same) might have passed for a caricature of himself and his class in an open-air burlesque at a festival: fleshy, in travel-stained clothes he had not bothered to get washed, and mounted on a dark and dingy mule. He showed no anger, but, pressing his knees against the beast’s flanks, he had raised his massive rump a trifle from the saddle, and, having said the while, “Since you hold your nose at me, here is something to hold it for,” broke wind with a great noise.

  The crowd’s mood changed in an instant; they were all (for once) on the Avernian’s side, roared their approval loud, and hooted the holder of the nose, who growled and sneered, but all the same took care to slink away at once. As it all pleased the populace and had certainly hurt him not, Vergil would no more than have shrugged, had this not brought the matter into his mind yet one time more. The prospect of Averno did not attract him, had never attracted him, and even now (he thought) very much did not attract him. But many things were not attractive that nevertheless needed to be done; it seemed to him, fairly of a sudden, that he might as well go to Averno, for, as witness this last incident, Averno seemed prepared to come to him.