Martialis was silent for several moments, and it was only now, as they passed back through, out of the village, skirting the port on the Baiae road, that Petronius noticed that they were still holding hands. Finally, Martialis sighed sadly.
“Listen, Petronius. I don’t want to fight with you, but what you say is very hurtful to me, and you ought to know it so you can make it right before we part. First, as you say, the only thing that matters to me at all in our friendship is the love we bear for one another. That has ennobled me beyond measure; I feel stronger and wiser and braver because I love you, and I would have hoped you would feel the same. The value of a friendship isn’t measured in its utility, mutual or otherwise. It’s like your ladle there, equally exquisite whole or in pieces, because its beauty is in the warmth it creates, not in what it can be bartered for. I’m surprised, really, that you don’t know that yet, at your age. You seem to think you’ve gone through some conversion today. Maybe you’re just expressing yourself poorly, I don’t know. In matters of the heart you seem to be just as ignorant as you’ve always been. And that’s said with love, because you still have the chance to change.
“And secondly, you tell me to get my priorities straight, to sift my wheat from my chaff, so that when I die I can die proud of myself. Well, that’s not living—that’s planning. That’s insurance. Get on and live? I’d rather trade places with you right now than live a hundred years planning for that one moment when, old and smug with a prune for a heart, I’ll have finally earned the immortal right to say: ‘I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of!’ Well let me tell you right now, Petronius, I don’t feel that anything I’ve ever done is worthless. I’m proud of all of it! Every minute spent blind drunk in some fleatrap, every skanky whore I’ve slipped it to, every obsequious epigram that’s earned me a cup of watery porridge. And nothing all you Romans can throw at me will ever make me feel as worthless as you’re feeling right now—as you’ve felt your entire life. I won’t let it, and that will be my life’s work. Ever since you were a child, you’ve tried to be someone you’re not, someone somebody told you you should be, and it’s brought you nothing but shame, misery, and self-hatred. Frankly, if all this cheap advice is the best deathbed gift you can think of, you can keep it. Can’t you fucking people be honest about anything? I’m sick, sick of it, and I won’t take it from you, Petronius. Not now.”
They were still holding hands, and Petronius could not help but notice—despite himself, because he wanted dearly to hold on to every word that Martialis threw at him—that they had almost reached the point on the road where they would have to part ways. He slowed his pace, and grasped on to Martialis’s hand ever more tightly, and raised his eyes to the sky, which held a few stars less than it had when they had left the village five minutes earlier.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I thought I was the one who was supposed to give the great deathbed speech. That’s how it’s always done in the books.”
Martialis snorted a laugh through his tears, and the snot ran down into his beard.
“It’s just that I don’t see what’s so great about certainty. Why does there have to be some great revelation? Why do you need it to be all wrapped up so neatly at the end? Why can’t you die in confusion, and shame, and doubt, and anger, and fear, as you have lived? Isn’t that the more honest death? Isn’t there honor in that, too?”
“I don’t know. You could be on to something. I’ll have to give it some thought.”
“You do that. And get back to me.”
They came to a halt. Martialis did not seem to be aware that they had reached the end of their road together.
“Marcus, there’s one last thing I need you to do for me. Tomorrow—this morning—a messenger will come for you in your room with a sealed amphora. You must not open it until you are safely back at the Pear Tree in Rome. And even then, I want you to show no one and tell no one about it until Nero is dead and a new emperor has been chosen. Will you promise me that?”
“What the fuck is it?”
“It’s a book. A satire, I suppose you could call it. I’ve been working on it for the past couple of years.”
“A book! You? What’s it about?”
“It’s about you, I think. Well, you and me, in a different world. I’ve called you Ascyltus.”
“‘Untroubled.’ I like it. What’s it called, this book of yours?”
“I haven’t given it a title. You can think of one.”
“And is it really so dangerous as all that? I mean, if it’s about me, how dangerous can it be?”
“It’s not dangerous. It’s private. Do you promise?”
“Promise.”
“Now say good-night to me.”
Martialis started, as if he had been stung by a bee, and the tears sprung immediately, luxuriantly to his eyes, pouring down his face to mingle with the snot in his beard. Petronius clung to him by both forearms, could feel Martialis’s knees weaken, as if he would drop to the ground, but would not allow him to fall. Martialis just shook his head back and forth, silently mouthing “no” over and over again. Petronius tried to fix him with the kind of stern, avuncular gaze he had once used to steel the resolve of vacillating legionaries, but it had no more effect on Martialis than it would have had on a two-year-old.
“Come on, man. You’ll regret it forever if this is how we say good-bye.”
“I told you, I never regret anything,” Martialis blubbered, and clung to Petronius just as hard as Petronius clung to him, forcing him to confront his molten mess of a face.
“Look at the sky, Marcus. The day is coming. I’ve got to go now.”
“Keep them waiting. What have they ever done for you, anyway?”
“Marcus, you’ve got to let me go. Please. I want to go.”
“What if I don’t want you to go?”
“You can come and bear witness to my death, if you like. It won’t take long.”
As Martialis pondered the offer, Petronius wondered if it had been a mistake to invite him. Melissa would be all serenity, silence, and compassion; Martialis would be likely to weep or, heaven forbid, wail. But it was irrelevant—Petronius knew his answer before he made it.
“No, I’ll leave you and Melissa alone. But thanks.”
“Then I must be off. Look at the sky. They’ll be stirring in Nero’s villa as we speak.”
That seemed to shake something loose, and Petronius could feel Martialis’s grip falter, then weaken. Finally, his arms dropped to his side.
“Forgive me,” he said, dragging a swathe of forlorn fabric across his nose. “You’re right. The night is over, and it’s time to go to sleep.”
“No need to get all metaphorical on me.”
“I thought that’s how you epic types like it. Ripe with portent.”
“Give me an epigram, rather.”
“Right. Here’s one I composed in bed with Chrestina yesterday. ‘Charinus is in the pink, and yet he’s pale. Charinus drinks sparingly, and yet he’s pale. Charinus has a good digestion, and yet he’s pale. Charinus goes out in the sun, and yet he’s pale. Charinus paints his skin, and yet he’s pale. Charinus licks a cunt, and yet he’s pale.’ Like it? It’s yours for ten sesterces.”
“I’ll owe you. Good night, Marcus.”
Martialis hesitated, his sandals kicking up little puffs of dust on the road, sending a few jagged stones over the lip and into the vineyard. His face, when he looked up and into Petronius’s eyes, was like a bed of weeds underwater, washed first this way and then that by alternating currents of emotion. But finally it settled into an effigy of grim acceptance, and he reached out to shake Petronius’s hand, as if theirs had been a chance encounter in the forum.
“Good night, Arbiter. See you in the morning.”
Petronius swiveled on his heel and descended the slope, into the vineyard, shoreward, without looking back. He heard no sound behind him, could not tell whether Martialis had gone on his way or stood where he had left him. As he made his way through the rows o
f sawn-off vines, pushing through a light, cold, knee-high mist, he tried to clear his head of thought, if only for a moment. What good were thought, understanding to him now, with the stars winking off one by one and the fishermen already repairing to their boats in the port below? He could hear them, even at this distance, as they retrieved their drying nets and hoisted their rigging into the waiting masts, calling out to each other in their archaic Greek. These men had surely been up all night; they were not the type to pass up an opportunity to carouse, and now their night was blending seamlessly with their day. They would not give up a day’s work, not even in honor of Saturn. Why should they? Would the fish stop biting, the fishmongers stop buying, the customers stop eating? Even on the shortest day of the year, people must find a way of getting on as usual. Tomorrow, for the first time in six months, there would be a few additional minutes of daylight; the day after, a few more. The Saturnalia would end, but the days would continue to stretch themselves. There was much to be done. A shout rose from the fishermen on the shore. In a moment, their sails would rise, fill with wind, and pull them out into the harbor to begin their day. Petronius passed from the vineyard into the dark of the oak wood, where night still clung to the ankles of the trees, and thence through the postern into his own orchard, where all was quiet. Through the bare branches, he saw a single light burning in a window of the villa—Melissa was waiting. He kicked off his sandals and padded through the orchard, across the perfume garden, and along the colonnade to the west terrace. There were just a few stars left now, hovering on the horizon, far out to sea above Sicily. Petronius knew that if he turned around, he would find the black outline of Mount Gaurus silhouetted against the brightening eastern sky. He leaned against the balustrade and watched the fishing boats push out toward Pithecusa, feeling the last of the night’s cold air rushing down the slope at his back.
He felt something warm and soft on his leg, and looked down. It was the puppy, pressing against his ankle in the manner of a cat. It stared out at the sea through a gap between the balusters. He reached down and picked it up, unresisting; he posed it gently on the coping and restrained it with a palm across its chest. The puppy continued to look intently westward, ignoring Petronius, as if it had fixed upon some distant object or were trying to understand some indecipherable puzzle. But there was nothing there, as far as Petronius could tell. What could possibly be of such interest out there to a dog, he wondered, and how long would it take the puppy to realize that he would never come to understand it, no matter how hard he glared at it? Surely the puppy could wait forever before it was graced with such self-awareness, but that would not stop it. On the contrary, it was the puppy’s fate to stare forever into the heart of its own ineffable mystery. That was what made it a dog.
Petronius scooped the creature up and replaced it lightly on the flagstone. Then he filled his lungs with air and turned back toward the house.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although The Uncertain Hour is a work of fiction, several characters are based in historical fact or presumption.
Almost everything we know about Titus (sometimes Gaius) Petronius Niger (born c. 27 A.D.) comes from two paragraphs of Book XVI of Tacitus’s Annals of Imperial Rome. The events described in this novel are largely consonant with that account. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder recounts the story of Petronius’s destruction of the myrrhine ladle to prevent Nero from inheriting it. In addition to a small body of poetry, Petronius is widely believed to have been the author of the Satyricon. Although it may originally have been a work of 20 volumes and some 400,000 words, the Satyricon was not published in his lifetime, and only fragments of it survive. Petronius committed suicide at Cumae in the year 66.
Marcus Valerius Martialis (40–102 A.D.) was born in Bilbilis (now Calatayud), Spain, and moved to Rome in the year 64. Known in English as Martial, he published twelve volumes of bawdy, satirical epigrams between the year 86 and his death. He enjoyed the patronage of the emperors Titus and Domitian, but fell out of favor and retired to Spain in the year 98.
Melissa Silia is an entirely fictional character, though Tacitus briefly mentions a woman named Silia, “on terms of the closest intimacy with Petronius,” who was exiled from Rome following Petronius’s suicide for having divulged court secrets.
Gaius Lucilius Junior (birth and death dates unknown) was born in Campania. Starting out as a penniless plebeian, he rose to knighthood and the imperial procuracy of Sicily. He was the recipient of the Letters to Lucilius by Seneca the Younger, who called him “meum opus” — “my work.”
The crimes and excesses of the emperor Nero are, of course, amply documented by the Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, among many others.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For their invaluable help, support, and encouragement, I am deeply indebted to my editors Karen Rinaldi and Gillian Blake, and to my agent Gail Hochman.
I also want to thank my dear friends Shelly Sonenberg and Charlott Card for their frank and constructive advice.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Christopher Stace, who vetted this book for historical inaccuracies. If any remain, it is I, and not he, who is to blame.
Most of all, none of this would have been possible or even imaginable without the patience, forbearance, and wisdom of my wife and first reader, Judy Clain.
REFERENCES
The author acknowledges with gratitude the generous permission of Derek Mahon and The Gallery Press of Loughcrew, Old-castle, County Meath, Ireland, to reprint the superb translation of Ovid’s Amores I, V from Mr. Mahon’s Collected Poems (1999).
Epicurus quotes from www.epicurus.net.
Hesiod. Works and Days. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Martial. Epigrams. I.I.77. Translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Jesse Browner is a writer and translator who lives in New York. He is the author of the novels Turnaway (1996) and Conglomeros (1992), and he has been a contributor to the NewYork Times Book Review, Gastronomica, Nest magazine, New York magazine, and others.
By the same author
The Duchess Who Wouldn’t Sit Down
Turnaway
Conglomeros
Copyright © 2007 by Jesse Browner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Browner, Jesse.
The uncertain hour : a novel / Jesse Browner—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-59691-339-4 (hardcover)
1. Petronius Arbiter—Fiction. 2. Rome—History—Nero, 54–68—Fiction. 3. Suicide—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.R774U53 2007
813’.54—dc22
2006030269
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2007
This e-book edition published in 2011
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-647-0
http://www.bloomsburyusa.com
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