ME & for the soul?
SENECA Yes.
ME & for the digestion?
SENECA (sternly) Absolutely.
ME Little fool of a girl! Why are you standing there staring at me? Is there something wrong with my face? A bit of food in my teeth or an entire celery stalk or stick of carrot lodged in my hair?
LAURA No, Domina.
ME Are you laughing at me, impudent slut?!
LAURA No, Domina…it’s just…
ME It’s just what?
LAURA It’s just that you’re…
ME I’m what?!
LAURA Funny, Domina.
ME Funny ha-ha or funny…
LAURA Funny ha-ha, Your Highness.
ME Of course I am! Now—hurry along! & don’t call me “Your Highness”! Who do you think I think I am—a queen?
LAURA Yes, Domina?
ME Yes?
LAURA No, Domina.
ME You don’t think I could be mistaken for a queen—is that what you think?
LAURA I don’t know, Spider… I mean Domina… I’m so, like, confused right now.
ME Leave us & fetch the tray of food for gods’s sake! Spider? What can the girl mean?!
LAURA Right away, Domina. Forgive me, Domina. I was merely struck by your, like, hilariousness & loveliness, Domina.
ME You’ll be struck by the palm of my hand if you don’t get going. But thank you: that’s very kind of you to say.
LAURA Yes, Domina.
ME But thank you, Laura. It’s nice to have one’s pulchritude appreciated—even by a low-born whore of a pretty little dirty servant girl.
LAURA Yes, Domina.
ME (brightly, to Seneca & Aurelian) Continue, continue…
SENECA Now, where were we?
AURELIAN Mummy, do you think Laura pretty, really?
ME (quizzically) Why do you ask, child?
AURELIAN I think she’s pretty.
ME Oh, do you now?
AURELIAN I think she’s very pretty.
ME (taken somewhat aback) Oh?
AURELIAN Yes indeed, mummy.
ME Do you fancy she’s prettier than any of the other girls we have or have had?
AURELIAN Oh, very much so.
ME & do you fancy she’s prettier than, say, someone like mysel…
SENECA Forgive me, Dame Lora, but…
ME Oh, of course….you still have sums & sword fighting to get through today, plus a slight snack…
SENECA Thank you. I didn’t mean to interrupt.
ME Never mind. ’Tis nothing. Proceed.
SENECA Now, Aurelian, where were we?
AURELIAN (sighing) Peoples…
ME Why do you sigh, Aurelian?
AURELIAN I’m tired of answering, mummy. I don’t want to have to be so logical all the time! I’m just a boy, after all. Can’t I go play, please? My mind hurts right now.
ME Hahaha! ‘My mind hurts!’ How very precious & precocious, don’t you think, Master Seneca?
SENECA Doubtless it is so.
AURELIAN (squirmy, fidgety) Mummy, please may I…
SENECA Just a few more, Aurelian. All right?
AURELIAN I guess so…
SENECA There’s a good lad. Let’s see…would you ever trust an African? Ruminate judiciously.
AURELIAN Huh?
ME Just answer the question, Aurelian.
AURELIAN No.
SENECA No, you won’t answer the question, or no you would not trust an African?
AURELIAN (sighing encore) Would not trust an African.
SENECA Excellent. Or borrow money from a Jew?
AURELIAN N…
SENECA (looking stern, looking cross) Um?
AURELIAN Yes?
SENECA Excellent. What kind of Jew would you borrow from?
AURELIAN I’m afraid I don’t… Mummy, I…
ME Go ahead & answer, Aurelian.
AURELIAN A rich Jew?
SENECA Yes. &?
AURELIAN One I could trick somehow! Trip up in some devious way! Or slay for no reason! Maybe I could have him blinded so that he wouldn’t, um, be able to see that I had tricked him into lending me money that I never would repay. & I would smite him if he even dared asked for terms!
ME Or?
AURELIAN Or…
SENECA (mouthing) Mmm-mai…
AURELIAN Maimed! I could have him maimed!
SENECA Precisely. Excellent!
AURELIAN So that he would not mind therefore the money not being repaideded [sic] but all his waking thoughts would be of his broken legs or severed arm!
SENECA Most excellent.
ME (clapping for joy this time) He really is quite a wonder, isn’t he, Seneca? He’s really coming along, is he not?
SENECA Oh, yes indeed. Great progress, we’re making. Great strides.
AURELIAN Now can I please have something to munch? I’m hungry, mamma. I haven’t had anything at all to eat for over an hour now!
ME Be patient, Aurelian. & besides, here she comes with the plates now, the slut.
AURELIAN Goody!
LAURA (setting down a large blue & white marbled tray of boiled cow & roasted fowl) Your boiled cow & roasted fowl, Domina.
SENECA Just one more enquiry before we break. This cult you may have heard about of late—the Christians—say in their ecumenical way that their curious & strange god teaches them that they must, and I quote, “turn the other cheek” when slapped by an assailant. That is their teaching. What do you make of that, Aurelian?!
AURELIAN Hahahaha!
SENECA I know! Incredible, huh?!
ME Hahahaha! Priceless. Do they really? How very strange & curious! Where do they get this stuff from, I wonder?
SENECA Seriously. So what would you do, should someone strike your cheek, Aurelian? Would you turn the other toward him & permit him to…?
AURELIAN Certainly not! Are you kidding, Master S? I mean…
SENECA (breathlessly, really swept up in his outstanding pedagogy, nodding his encouragement of our brilliant son) What should you do?
AURELIAN Strike his cheek!
SENECA Or…?
AURELIAN Or…?
SENECA Or…? Think hard, Aurelian.
AURELIAN Poison him—if I could.
SENECA Or…?
AURELIAN (pantomiming stabbing) Run him through with my sword!
SENECA Or…?
AURELIAN (whinging) I don’t know. I’m tired of all this poisoning & stabbing & striking inferior peoples. It’s fatiguing, surely. Mummy! Please can we eat now, please?
ME Aurelian, you know you must ask Master Seneca…
AURELIAN Master Seneca, can we…oh but he’s already got a handful of cow or owl in his mouth, mummy.
ME Master Seneca! Wait—owl? Are we eating owl here, Laura?! I said fowl, not owl!!! Laura!
LAURA Yes, Domina?
ME This is not owl—is it?
LAURA I don’t know, Domina!
ME Well, whatever it is, Master Seneca, you should not have begun eating first!
SENECA Sorry, Dame Lora Caecilia. Forgive me. I work up such an appetite, teaching. You’re not the only one, Aurelian.
ME (indulgently) All right, my dears. Let’s all partake. Fetch the bloody wine now, Laura.
LAURA Yes, Domina.
Exit LAURA, we THREE eat with great relish and bonhomie. End Scene.
So you see how quotidian Roman life continues apace in your absence, Caius. I brought my leathern writing pad & scroll out to the courtyard to be a sort of stenographer for you so that you could feel somehow like you were there, like you were here with us, watching Aurelian shine. & I hope you have enjoyed this little vignette about how we’re faring. I do wish
you would come home soon, but I am content with the children & watching them grow. You’re the one I feel sorry for, despite my occasional ennui & despair & the intermittent desire to put an end to myself with a dull knife (kidding!): you’re missing out on so much, la. Before you know it, Julia will be happily married (if she doesn’t turn out a courtesan like those jades your sisters), & Aurelian a great, saturnine statesman or popular local tyrant. Please get all the killing, smiting, warring, etc. you can over & done with & come home to me (with open arms & legs),
Your Lora Caecillia
P.S. Too peevish right now to write a P.S. Frustrated, Caius. Randy. Damn this damnable state of affairs.
P.P.S. Oh, Caius, Caius! This is horrible, just horrible. Something terrible’s happening. Seneca’s dying. I’m not kidding around, either. He’s sitting here across from me choking on some colorful candied almonds (I don’t know why they call them Jordan when they’re made in Italy at any number of confectioners right here in our borough or near it at least) Laura brought out after we feasted on a bit more cow & some suckling pig, post-sword fighting & sums lessons. Such a potpourri of pretty pastels, those pretty-colored candies—yellow, blue, pale brown, purple, pink, and white. Delicious! & you know how I love them. The dish being offered him, Seneca smirked & said “I really shouldn’t,” but urged him to indulge, a.k.a. why not, go ahead, help yourself, live a little, you’ve questioned Aurelian so relentlessly today, worked so hard, spoil yourself, you deserve a tasty treat, you only live once, etc.; & he says “All right, okay” & his well-veined & hoary-hairy hand sort of hovers whitely over the rich mélange of happy candies & he laughs a bit of a plosive laugh & breathes in that noisome whistling way most oldsters have, & finally he takes an handful (no modest or decorous amount, at all), a real jumble of them & starts flicking a mess of them into his big old gob & before you know it he’s holding his wizened throat & writhing round & gyrating & making a sound like a hundred chickens make when a fox or mingy old raccoon’s got into the hen house; &Julia (who’s just woken up from another nap, & who is sitting on my lap) just starts shrieking & Aurelian tries slapping the dear old soul on the back with his (Aurelian’s) little painted wooden sword (the silver & gold one with the gold & scarlet tassels—so adorable, that one) & he’s not not breathing quite yet (Seneca, that is, not Aurelian, thank Aeolus), but as I write this (oh no, Caius!) the dear old dotty worthy’s turning all shades of purplish red & bright blue & I’m furiously trying to finish this seemingly interminable (& seemingly impossible to terminate) sentence & instead of doing something, bustling about on their better’s behalf or at the very least sending haste post haste for a surgeon or an apothecary, the stupid servants are just standing there, positively flipping out & covering their spastic mouths with their red-raw & fluttering, pusillanimous hands & at last he (Seneca, the silly old dodgy old fool) keens then keels over horribly, onto the courtyard tiles (I got a sweet deal on them—the men who put the fountain in did them in half a day, I think), & his appalling pink tongue jets out with a mishmash of masticated candied almonds frosting it, coating it, for gods’s sake, & his scary-great green eyes bug like the dickens. “Mastwer Senecwa, Mastwer Senecwa!” Julia’s shouting & pogoing now like anything. “Don’t shout so, Julia,” I’m going. “Try & be a little ladylike here, all right?” “But, mummy,” Aurelian goes, “he’s not breathing, mummy.” “Oh, for gods’s sake,” I say. They can be such drama kings & queens sometimes, your kids. “Of course someone’s not going to breathe when they’re choking to death on something, you silly goose—especially when the something they’re choking to death on’s got a hard candy shell! Oh blast & bother—what a pother! Hang on a sec,” I say & I put my pen down & go over & I grab Julia & set her on the old boy’s chest & I go “Jump, Julia, jump!” & she gives me a too-frank look like, “But you’re always telling me not to jump, mummy,” & I give her a look in turn like, “It’s okay; forget about all those other times: do you reckon you can do me a favor just this once & jump on an old man’s choking chest for me?” & wouldn’t you know it but after five or six good hard thumping leapings up & landings down on sweet little precious Julia’s part (it took her a couple of tentative practice ones, jumps, that is, to really get going & throw her adorable little arms into it & catch some serious air & put some air therefore into old Seneca), a mess of candy shrapnel comes foaming out the old trout’s mouth & he’s alive & kicking & I, your quick-thinking & really quite clever & industrious humble servant (well, not a servant, but you know what I mean), have saved an important man’s life, a philosopher’s life no less, that of a demigod or potentially deified person—if he ever gets it together as a writer, that is, & comes out with a smash hit of a bestseller, something for the lay person who’s interested in philosophy, logic, sums, Roman supremacy, & sword fighting. Well, anyway—how d’ye like that?! Ha! Haha! Hahahaha! You know how I hate to blow my own trumpet, but, by golly & by gosh & without any unseemly fanfare & ceremony—pretty nifty wife you’ve got there, Mr. Bigshot Legionary Caius Aquilla, wouldn’t you say? A sort of a modern superheroine, an almost-goddess, & a near-legendary example to all Roman women kind, surely. If I do say so myself, in all immodesty.
P.P.P.S. Long dramatic & to say the least draining day today so I think I’ll have just one more nice fat goblet of red, then some white, then set sail for dreamland. Hope you are well. & alive of course. Mwah!
XXI Aprillus
Dear Friend:
Hail. Well, well, well: the inevitable. Laura & her “brother” are no brother & sister at all, but brazen, horrid, twofaced, clandestine lovers. Ha! I knew it. The silly sneaks! So vexed. Color me a woman betrayed. This is an outrage & a most maddening one! Here’s how they are discovered, & thus undone. No sympathy of any kind have I, for one, for them. Not being able to sleep, I rose in the middle of the night & put on my blue & sparkly silver satin slippers & my favorite sheer robe of flowing royal purple & went to look at the moon, that glorious orb, symbol of mutability, or at least check to see if there was one on account of I couldn’t remember if there was one or not & oh by Diana if I didn’t through the slats of the servants’ quarters spy Laura & her golden-curly-haired sham & of an hirsute “brother” a-nuzzling & a-spooning & a-holding each other as tight & fast & close as the night is long! They looked so peaceful & content & innocent it made me want the vomitorium on an empty stomach! I can’t believe I was so very duped! & yet not: I suspected them all along—I will say that. Ready to scratch their eyes out was I! When confronted (I took off one slipper & threw it at them from a very short distance as a way of telling them physically that I was no fool & now fully on to their sordid-salacious scammy scheme), their olive skin went in tandem the color of milk pudding or tapioca & like adolescent ghosts & in great confusion they hopped to their dirty-disgusting flat & grotesque peasant feet & stammered worse than Marius (poor dead Marius) ever did. “What is it, Domina?” the fool of a boy, rattled, prattled. “Keep your voice down, imbecile!” said I in my of course inimitably minatory way. “You’ll wake the entire household, you ridiculously imbecilic flibbertigibbet, oaf, & rube!’”‘What is it, Domina?” he said at just the same volume, but an octave lower, the cretinous wretch. “What have you done? What have you done? Why, gods damn you both to Hades, you’re lovers, not sister & brother!” said I, rhymingly. “We were, uh, only, um, like, keeping one another warm, Domina!” Laura pleaded & got down on her knees & held up pathetically praying hands, then lifted her inestimably pretty, duplicitous, & tear-streamed face to me. “Like, for sure,” the blithering-shivering boy says. “Oh fa-la-la!” said I, “‘brother’ indeed! Fiddlesticks, fie, & fiddle-dee-dee!” “Huh?” the boy says, but never mind him. In a wax, I says to her, the girl: “If that is so—& it is decidedly not!—then you have committed incest with him, your ‘brother.’” “Indeed we have not, Domina,” the meretricious little bitch says. “Please listen,” pleads the stupid lad. “Liar!” says I, & slapped her a right quick good one, the sound of the b
low I’d struck I’d liken to the report of a well-tuned tin drum like the one Aurelian rat-a-tat-tats on once in a while (isn’t he just adorable?). It wasn’t, the slap I slapped her, that hard, in other words (she’s such a baby sometimes, you know?). She wimpered. I laughed. My laughter reminded me I should focus & wax indignant, wax cruel, put my foot down as they wax lachrymose, wax penitent, pathetic as a to-the-lions-thrown Christian or Jew: “D’you expect me to believe such codswallop, hussy? It makes for sixty-seven Celsius out here if it’s one degree at all! It’s warmer than my admittedly quite fiery temper, it is! You’re lovers! Admit it! I saw you! I’ll brook no denial here.” “I don’t, like, understand you, Dom…” says the girl. I go: “Lookee here: you’ve been having each other the entire time you’ve been in my employ, you nasty-randy horrid filthy dirty attractive foreign creatures! Rutting like mad, like anything. You know you have! The truth! Out with it! If there’s one thing I cannot take it’s lies. Lies, lies, lies!” My attempts to gorgonize the appalling two of them go for nought: “No, no, no, exalted Domina,” they squealed in barbarous chorus, & the boy drops dramatically to his golden brown servile knees & folds his dumb, illiterate hands like he’s praying to Venus & Juno together. Just then I noticed they’ve matching & contrapuntal open sores on their upper lips—kisses from Eros, presumably. Bah! Revolting! What utter shamelessness. And just then I began to wonder if they often rehearsed together this sort of stuff, this posturing & madly phony supplicating, when they’re alone. What utter twaddle. What cheek. What acting! & you know how I despise pretense & thespianism more than anything, more than weakness, more than vegetables! Never thought them capable of such chthonic, bathetic depths. “It is not so,” the boy says lamely, as though he’s speaking Latin for the very first time, querulously, creepily, obnoxiously, nauseatingly. I reckon he thinks he sounds convincing & sincere, pious & penitent, believable. Ha! Ha, ha! No dice. Not a chance. Suchlike rebarbative groveling only makes me detest & wish to thrash & thrash him more & more. Hypocrites, both of them! Oddly, in the midst of this I realized that all this drama & strife is making me feel peckish; I nearly go ordering them into the kitchen to make me a snack so that I can refresh myself before we resume. But I don’t, figuring they might abscond or giggle together & talk about me, or poison me somehow or put a hot pepper in with some cow & bread or something, for cod, the little imps & gorgeous scalawags. “Why do you talk like a demented baby?” I asks him. “Your beauty blinds me, Domina,” says he, appealing & quite successfully, I might add, to my vanity. Why is it, I wonder, that we forgive that rote fault in a woman & readily, but in a man it is most unwelcome, effeminate, & revolting? It is a vice & a fault like any other; yet female conceit’s tolerated if not encouraged. What did we give little Julia for her fourth birthday last—do you remember? I’ll tell you: perfumes, a looking glass, hairbrushes encrusted with opals & rubies. “Well…” I say & must have blushed a bit. “I am said to be…accounted to be…renown, actually, to be…” “As beautiful as the biggest star in the sky,” the brazen boy bellows boldly. “The biggest star?” I, incredulous, blurt out & cock my eye in a most forbidding way, dead at him. “You’re saying I’m heavy, I’m big as a star?” “No, no, Domina,” he blunders. “Gods damn you both,” I say. “That was not my meaning,” says he. “Liar!” I says. “D’you reckon I’m in any mood to bandy words with you, sirrah” “I didn’t mean that!” he said. “He didn’t,” cries she. I give them both a look that announces that I don’t believe them for an instant. “Truly, Domina,” Laura supplicates & looks at me with those almond doe-eyes of beautiful blue so blue they sparkle in the dark, they do. I know I am often “deep in my cups,” as they say; ineffably bibulous; everyone who knows me knows that. But do they (these “siblings”) deign to think, I wonder, that I was born yesterday & not yet weaned? “Lie a-down again,” I says, barks quietly, that is. They do. “Turn over!” “Yes, Domina,” they says. “Remove your cheap-o togas first!” I says. “What?” the idiot boy says. Again!? Has he learned no manners of me, serving me? Is he deaf? Kids these days—their modi operandi boggle the mind, Caius, I’m telling you. “You incorrigible bastard,” I says. “Lie down face down, completely naked!” I says. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Domina,” the cheeky boy says. “I have trouble breathing unless I’m lying on my…” “You impossible imp,” I say, as they both have wild, animal looks in their eyes and icicle smiles going—exceedingly provocative, “here you are offering your utterly valueless opinion when I have found you out—spooning like honeymooners, in moonlight no less.” “We were just, like…” Laura proffers. “Cease!” I say. “Don’t you know that Hades hath no fury like a woman scorned? You dunces! Now: off with your kits!” Off go their kits. I squeeze in & kneel between them, triumphing internally. It isn’t difficult, me making room for meself upon the sordid bed—they’re way on opposite sides of the kip space that’s supposed to be just for the girl. Quivering like oysters now. I go: “Now: this is for your own goods, you reprobates & mendacious barbarian n’er-do-wells,” & I begin to run my long sharp hard mahogany nails full deep, lifting my bum up & getting some deal of nice torque from my legs so that I can really dig in, score their bare & exposed & creamy backs. “You’ll like this,” I say, breathless, expectant, indeed aroused. “You’ll take this & like this! Now… There! How do you like that?! Doesn’t that feel good, children?” I say rhetorically of course & I continue to make them both squirm like mad & say “ow!” & “Please, Domina!” & all that rubbish & as I scratch & scratch like a cat trapped in a box or two lust-crazed women fighting over a handsome, priapic gladiator who can’t run away on account of he’s lost one leg to a tiger or lion, as I nail them as it were, like anything, they sort of start to turn round in pleasant pain, their fucked, voluptuous faces begging for mercy in the blue light of the chamber & for me not to stop, not to desist from hurting them horribly, wonderfully; & I kiss better, metaphorically speaking, the skin where the red’s raised up & left a hard mark. The salt red blood curdles forth in rennels & I trace a star on the back of the wench, then run my hands in tandem along their young taut pert fine round bums & working thighs & fine waists & I kiss Laura’s proffered neck (then bite it, softly, softly!) & so-fine hair & pull the boy’s exceedingly tumbleweedy mop (& bite him, his head—I don’t even know his dumb stupid name; I just call him “Boy!”) & I clutch the little whore, the little liar & minx, by her wettening crotch & I begin to finger her gently-sweetly & gingerly & teasingly from behind as I yank the lad’s jules out & down at the same time like cook stirring a batter with a stirring stick & they turn to me both as if to beg & plead for their lives or at least their privates & I kiss one of them, one then the other (not on their pox-marked lips, natch) &, in fine, they look up now with ass-kissy eyes & we proceed to have a threesome or three-way or orgy or ménage-a-trois or whatever the Hades you call it. Hang them both for a pair of slattern sluts. Afterward, after he fucks me & I come, & I fuck him & he comes, & I fuck her & she & I both come, & I fuck her while he watches & frets like a great baby, then she licks me while I suck his fat little stub of a barbarian cock…as we daisy chain away & it all goes round & round. Afterward, I slap good & hard both of their faces blue, hard as I can in light of my “spent” state; & I go back, pad back, to bed & tell them I will deal with them in first thing in the morning or at least by noon. Seriously resisted the urge to wake Cook up and have her make me an individual pizza with everything (hope you are proud of me for practicing self-restraint!). With love from your very cheesed-off & chagrined to find I have been hoodwinked so, so gulled; bamboozled, as well,
Your Caius Aquilla Page 10
