Boy Caesar

by Jeremy Reed

  Heliogabalus’ coat drew everyone’s eyes away from the singer. In his own mind he was covered in hundreds of black eyes all staring out at the attention they attracted. While the entire bar was aware of his identity, people let him be and never imposed on him for favours.

  He and Valentino sat down at a corner table to watch the performance. The singer paid no attention to the fact that the emperor was in the audience and continued to dramatize his coloratura.

  As Heliogabalus listened, so he felt his own involvement with the song grow. He planned on rewarding the singer with the fist full of gold concealed in his pockets. There were men openly kissing and exploring each other. He felt excited and open to adventure. The sexual tempo of the bar lit into his nerves. There was news of a new substance being used, different from a psychoactive such as hashish and more powerful in the visions it generated. It was called soma, an extract from the fly agaric mushroom or perhaps, more rightly, as he believed, a compound extracted from harmel, or Syrian rue, a plant native to his own country. The priests at Emesa had called the drug hoama, a plant mentioned in the Zoroastrian teachings, and also mang.

  He had an insider’s knowledge of the drug’s visionary properties but had never considered using it purely for kicks. When he looked around the bar he could see that the greater number of its occupants were somewhere else, out to lunch and smashed on something other than alcohol. The Queen of Sheba was singing a song about unrequited love, in which he had changed the woman’s role in the song into a man’s, so that the relationship was a same-sex one.

  Encouraged by the song’s gay bias, a number of men close to the stage were engaging in group sex. Over it all, the voice built a tragic scaffolding, an ethereal falsetto spiralling into the reaches of pain that only the genderless knew. He signalled to one of the bar staff, and the man returned carrying wine and drugs on a silver tray. He could see people’s inhibitions breaking down as the drug came up, and he, too, wanted to dip into the hallucinatory stream and see where the current took him.

  While he and Valentino waited for the substance to kick in, he singled out another pretty boy who was sitting at the bar. He was about his age and had the look of a cowed teenager who had run away to the big city. He almost knew the story without asking: he had come to Rome from the provinces, been disowned by his family, lacked a permanent address, had no stable job, found it difficult to adjust, worked the baths and docks, hated himself for doing it but had no choice.

  He decided to take a risk and went up to the boy, who was called Zozi and who wouldn’t look him direct in the eyes having heard that he was caesar. He was clearly on the drug, and as it took effect in himself he could see the boy’s skin glow and turn radiant, each pore distinct and alive with molecular energies. He felt for a moment that he had conceived Zozi as a brain thing, a simulacrum cloned by the drug. When he embraced the youth he had the feeling his fingers had bypassed skin and were tuned right into being itself. He was somewhere in Zozi’s nervous mains searching for the DNA signature to his identity. It was a place he hadn’t accessed before, and configurative shapes were coming up opening gateways into the billions of cells contained by the body, each windowed as a complex microcosm and taking on colours such as purple, blue and red. It was the first time he had ever been inside someone’s psychic space, and the experience was awesome. He saw helices the shape of pasta twirls, and both he and the body he was exploring appeared light enough to float. He had the impression that both he and Zozi were free falling through space, and once he let go the initial fear the feeling was pleasurable like flying.

  He wanted nothing more than to touch and explore the taut map of Zozi’s skin. Each pigmented inch was like the cratered surface of a planet, the contours and indentations gridded like a road-map on the epidermis. At the same time he felt connected to everyone; his touch extended to the room and all its occupants. Every sensation was heightened, so that through Zozi he found himself caressing the fifty or sixty men gathered there with an intensity that was dangerous. The plurality of touch was what thrilled him, and when he drew back for an instant he missed the contact and felt suddenly disconnected.

  Whorls of colour exploded in his mind like a neuronal blow-out. They were like sequences or building blocks, and he realized in a blinding flash that inner and outer were seamlessly joined in a continuous pattern and that under the influence of altered states the split between subject and object disappeared.

  He had kept his coat on, and it struck him that he was like his pet Vesuvius, a leopard playing amongst men. He was still too cautious of the drug to fully let go, but he could sense layer after layer of resistance dissolving. He wasn’t aware now of who was touching him or why or of his own part in reciprocating trust. He was being drawn centrifugally into a vortex of bodies, which in turn were objects lacking all boundaries. This time he gave in and connected to the central design. He was everyone and no one as he abandoned himself to contact and sped neatly and unhesitatingly into the eye of the whirlpool.

  10

  When Jim awoke to the loud Roman morning outside Masako was sitting up in bed reading. He flickered in and out of consciousness for a while before coming to. It always seemed unreal to wake up in Rome next to Masako and even more improbable to be on Heliogabalus’ trail. None of it added up, but by now he had come to accept that unconscious dictates were as powerful as those governed by reason in determining the major issues in life.

  He sat up and shook himself fully awake, feeling the strength of his erection rooted in the erotics of sleep. He noticed Masako’s streetmap still open beside the bed, only the grid was different from the one he remembered last night and the page had clearly been turned.

  ‘How was your night?’ Masako asked, without taking her eyes off her book.

  ‘I had strange dreams,’ he replied, finding her gentle manner the ideal accompaniment to dispersing foggy morning blues. ‘I’ll tell you about them later,’ he said, a flashback as he spoke reminding him of one in which he had been sorting through rubbery squid on a fishmonger’s stall to discover Masako’s handbag buried beneath a spaghetti cradle of knobby tentacles. He recalled trying to pull it free of the attached suction pads and in the attempt having the tentacles snake up his arms.

  ‘Mmm. Wait until I tell you my dream,’ Masako said, still not looking up from the Kundera novel she was reading. ‘I dreamed of the exact place where we’ll find Heliogabalus. It’s in an alley off the Via Cavour, near the Forum. He’s up on the third floor.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Jim asked, astonished by her certainty that she had discovered the place.

  ‘Because when I ask a big question, the dream answers. I only do it sometimes. I told you how I discovered it for myself as a child. I’d wake up knowing what I’d learned was for real.’

  Jim still felt marginally stunned by Masako’s access to the specifics of dream, as well as disconcerted to be in the presence of somebody able to commit data to the unconscious and have it processed to resolution. It was uncanny, but he knew enough about the psychic to be convinced of its authenticity, together with the whole contingent science of synchronicity. His recent experiences had taught him that one reality interfaced another and that the two were separated by no more than a window.

  ‘I suppose I find it frightening,’ Jim said, his voice signposting a hint of uncertainty. ‘I never thought when I started this whole Heliogabalus thing that I’d wind up in such a mess.’

  ‘Mmm. But you have me as your guide,’ Masako said reassuringly, surveying a fingernail that smouldered with a sheened burgundy.

  Jim sat up, aware that he was dressed only in his tiny black briefs. He was still confused about his feelings for Masako and reluctant to make sexual advances, no matter his desire. At the same time he was aware from past experience that if avoidance became the norm then it grew increasingly difficult to sexualize a friendship. Masako, with her boy’s torso and girl’s bottom, was how he imagined Heliogabalus to have been, the androgynous ideal playing
into one of his recurrent fantasies.

  He watched her pull on a white T-shirt with a glitzy pink, heart-shaped logo before manipulating herself into skin-tight hipsters. He could feel the hair-fine balance between desire and action dissolve as she fastened the top button of her jeans, aware he had missed an opportunity that may have left her disappointed. The issue was so delicate that he feared the least wrong move. Both of them, he sensed, were so alive to the possibility of rejection that neither was able to act. They were freezing themselves into corners from which it was impossible to manœuvre. It would require something spontaneous to happen for the pattern to be broken, and he was anxious to avoid the sort of preconceptions that would prevent this coming into play.

  He still felt up-ended by the inchoate fragmentation of his dreams, the jump-shots remembered, the transitory flashbacks that even now he was experiencing. It was as if a parallel landscape had been superimposed on consciousness, leaving him, on waking, with sketchily hinted clues as to its reality.

  He dressed quickly, after briefly observing the sky outside. He could never get away from skies, and wherever he was his eyes telescoped straight up there on a vertical axis. Today the skyline was choked with ivory-coloured clouds. The overall effect was a luminously oppressive heat-trap. Jim half expected to see vaporous statues up there amongst the clouds and low-flying aircraft.

  ‘It’ll rain tonight,’ he told Masako with a seriousness that made her laugh. His predictions of weather change had become a private joke between them, causing Masako to pout as she applied the finishing touches to a scarlet lipstick bow. He liked the way her eyes contained her laughter and kept it visual rather than vocally demonstrative. It was her quiet way and one of her characteristics that pulled at a lead to his heart.

  Despite the heat he put on a black cashmere V-neck, something he felt created a mood suitable to the occasion, and as he did so the face appeared again. But this time the image was more disconcerting, as a rusty trickle of blood escaped from the youth’s mouth and the impact of what could have been a blade ripping into his intestines registered in the shocked eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong, Jim?’ he heard Masako say, as he sat down, afraid he was about to faint.

  ‘I saw him again. Just as I was looking out of the window, only this time his mouth was full of blood. I’m frightened I’m going mad.’

  Masako brought him a glass of chilled water and took his hand. ‘Are you sure you want to go? We don’t have to meet him, you know. We can just relax and enjoy ourselves for the day. There’s no pressure, Jim.’

  He hesitated for a moment, but there was no doubt in his mind as to what he should do. He knew he had to go through with it and meet the person whom Masako claimed was Heliogabalus. Only by doing so, he told himself, would he be able to find out if this person was in any way identifiable with the face he kept on seeing.

  After collecting their things they went out to a local cafe and had rolls and black coffee that tasted dark and bitter as the blues. The caffeine hit him alive, as though he was at the wheel of a Jag. Whatever reservations he may have felt at the prospect of going in search of Heliogabalus were starting to disappear. He knew instinctually that he had to go through with it, no matter the consequences. The whole thing was so intricately tied up with his relationship with Masako that the two seemed to exist coextensive of each other.

  They took a brief walk through the neighbourhood and bussed over to Via dei Fori Imperiali and from there walked in the direction of Via Cavour, the air fried with toxins from the persistent grind of traffic.

  Masako took his arm as they negodated the crowds and the culture-hungry tourists busy with their Nikons and camcorders. The sky was still cornea-white with a dark-grey pupil opening ominously in the east. He could smell the rain up there above the politicized ruins and feel its heaviness fitted over the city.

  Masako insisted on stopping at a florist’s to buy six dark-red roses to take to Heliogabalus. She selected each individually and instructed the florist as to the flowers of her choice. She looked at each one fastidiously, like it was her own lipsticked mouth she was admiring.

  ‘You know who these are for?’ she said, throwing Jim a curtained look.

  They moved on, constricted by the crowds and working to find gaps in the wedge. Masako protected the roses by holding them upright against her, like six pouting mouths competing for her attention.

  Jim could feel the sweat breaking out on his palms. He was nervous, and the crowd didn’t help. Masako was all bumped-up eyes for the window displays that swam out at them with tropical intensity. Blues, reds, pinks, violets and blacks brought her up against shop windows as she scrutinized new collections from any number of Italian and French designers.

  He bit his lip and said, ‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing? Wouldn’t you prefer to go to the shops?’

  ‘Trust me,’ Masako replied. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

  He wondered again if he wasn’t on the edge of a breakdown. The sky appeared to be moving in ways he hadn’t seen before, and he had the feeling that somebody was watching him in the crowd. He put it down to panic and increased his hold on Masako’s arm. He found himself resenting being looked at by strangers and interpreted their natural curiosity as some sort of invasion of his rights.

  With the aid of her ubiquitous streetmap Masako guided them off the main avenue into a quiet sidestreet which branched out into innumerable alleys. The tempo was slower there, and Jim felt able to breathe again. There was a young man, hair blown back into a gelled quiff like Elvis Presley, standing uncertainly against a lamp post and holding a beer bottle. His girlfriend was sitting astride a scooter, haranguing him for his wasted state.

  Leaving him behind as an unsteady landmark Jim and Masako made their way along the narrow streets, Masako leading the way with a certainty that astonished him. She seemed totally sure of her direction and to be stopping simply to reacquaint herself with familiar surroundings. They skewed into an alley that smelled pungently urinous, a downpipe overflowing and somebody’s A-grade argument issuing from an open window. They went right down to the end and turned left into an impasse.

  ‘It’s the third one along,’ Masako said. ‘This is the place I visited last night in my dream. It’s exactly as I saw it. He’s on the top floor. Just wait and see.’

  Jim followed reluctantly, wishing he could dematerialize on the spot. He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing and looked up at a balcony full of washing like coloured flags as a means of distraction.

  ‘See the name on the third-floor flat,’ Masako said excitedly, as they stood outside the last house in a row of four that had been converted into modern apartments, each with its spill of geraniums and petunias tumbling from window-boxes on balconies. ‘Antonio Tiberinus. Didn’t you tell me that this was one of the derogatory names given to Heliogabalus during his lifetime?’

  Jim swallowed hard and tried to think of something else. The evidence was there in front of his eyes, but he didn’t want to know. He still clung to the idea of it being a coincidence, the mischievous factoring of someone who had decided to adopt the name as an alias.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Masako reassured him. ‘He’ll know exactly why we’re here. Why else would he be communicating with us?’

  ‘I wish I could be as sure. I still think we’re embarking on something crazy. This person might throw us out.’

  Masako held the roses up for him as a confirmation of trust, their compact turbans just starting to open and fleshy with the palpable illusion of tissue. ‘Let’s try,’ she said. ‘We’ve nothing to lose. I’m sure from my dream that the two of you will recognize each other on sight.’

  Jim watched her depress the buzzer with a sleek burgundy fingernail that almost matched the roses for colour. There was a pause before the voice answered, the tone full of high-pitched curiosity, before quickly switching to English in response to Masako’s enquiry.

  ‘Yes, you have the right name,’ the voice said with
exaggerated politeness. ‘But who are you?’

  ‘We’re from London,’ Masako explained. ‘I’m Jim’s friend Masako. He’s been seeing you for days, and he’s here with me. It’s important that we speak to you.’

  ‘All right, you’d better come up,’ the voice said, clearly fazed by the bizarre introduction.

  Jim followed Masako into a dark hall with a tiled floor. There was no lift, and the staircase went straight up before spiralling out of view. He found a light switch to the left of the front door and threw it on, before leading the way up a narrow flight of wooden stairs. Somebody was playing pop in the first-floor flat, a surfy REM song that he recognized as coming from Reveal. They continued up to the top floor and found the front door to Tiberinus’ flat painted purple, with the number three standing out in gold. Jim felt his heart do a Le Mans, as a voice anticipating their arrival called out, ‘It’s open. Come on in.’

  He followed Masako into a small entrance hall done out in the same purple and gold, with a rococo mirror creating the illusion of space. They walked through to a large sitting-room with scarlet-painted walls and found a slim youth of indeterminate age leaning with his back to a window that gave on to the city. There was something about the place that stopped Jim in his tracks. He knew he had been here before and was experiencing an acute crisis of déjà vu. When he caught the young man’s eyes he felt zapped by the exchange. The face was exactly the same as the one that he had seen in his visions ever since his arrival in Rome. Thick blond curls framed eyes that appeared more green than blue, the prominent high cheekbones formed a triangle, taking the chin for its base, the nose was pointed at the tip and the mouth surprisingly small and feminine. Jim couldn’t help but feel that this particular face would have excited curiosity in any age. It wasn’t so much that the youth was attractive as compellingly sexless. His shoulders were narrow and his hands small with elongated fingers. His appearance apart, what impressed Jim immediately was the sense of conviction that the young man carried. For all his apparent vulnerability he appeared absolutely sure of himself. It was clear he could hold his own on the street, and did, for he had the air of somebody who was streetwise rather than a fugitive.