A horse, had it felt a sunken spot behind it…if it felt it…would either have strained forward or strained backward. An ass would have stopped. And stayed. Time to put something under the wheel. But the mule, even the small, supposedly sophisticated mule, reacted entirely differently. The mule was, after all, the Symbol of Unbridled Lust—though why this should be so when the mule was sterile, was hard to say: the mule (this particular one) had somehow missed the sunken spot. Now it somehow backed up a trifle. Now it felt it. The wheel not right! The wheel sinking! The entire universe of a sudden gone awry! The mule at once went insane: the mule screamed, rolled back its eyes, laid down its ears, made as if to stand on its hind legs—on its forelegs—to lie down and roll over—it was at once evident that there was nothing the mule might not do.
In a second the little slave girl had jumped out of the car to safety, held up her wrists, thin as carrots, at an absolutely useless angle for the Vestal to lean upon. The crowd gave a great groan. It was no slight thing to witness the fall of a Vestal Virgin. Should she be killed, for a space of time at least there would be only five “sisters” to hold safe the hearths of Rome…who knew what might happen during such an interregnum. Many in the crowd believed that seeing such a sight obliged one to fast: many even believed that whoso saw such would—must!—within the year surely die. From the crowd a great groan. Many rushed forward… I amongst them…some seized the mule…some seized the car…some seized hold of their knives, such as each man wore at his belt, or was no man: to cut reins, traces…one man alone seized the Vestal by the arm…by the upper and the lower arm…it lasted a second. The mule was suddenly calm and collected: panic? what panic? The car was suddenly steady and safe. The knives were all suddenly back in their belts, absit omen lest any delator or informer should occasion to ask, How didst thou dare to bare thy knife unto the high-born Virgin Lady? a man might well be well-dead before an explanation were forthcoming. A man might receive a most pressing intimation to slip the short sword between any twain ribs he preferred, thus to prevent his family from attainder and his property from escheatal. Might. Might not. A man might receive a silver pottle or an ember-scuttle enchased with gold, as reward. Might. Might not.
It was all so very suddenly done. So very suddenly her arm was free from my steadying hands. In a second’s time; less than it took a drop of water to fall from the clock—And in that second, while a flame of fire seemed to run up both my hands and arms and through my heart and thence into my manly parts (Touched a Vestal! Touched the Virgin’s naked arm!); in that second our eyes chanced to meet—then her eyes were gone—then she was gone herself—and three thoughts like three bolts of lightning, so swift that before one fades away the other flashes, passed across my mind.
What color are her eyes?
It is death, by the Tarpaean Rock, to have carnal congress with a Vestal.
Her virgin’s vows expire in her forty-fifth year.
The woman’s age then, I did not know. How old was I then, I will not say.
She was gone at once, long enough had she tarried at the sordid scene beneath the walls of saffron-colored stone, sallow where long suns had beat upon them; not swiftly yet very steadily the small carriage departed, the mule’s ears aprick, heading back towards the Temple of Vesta up there beneath the Palatine. It might be that her six-hour watch approached, of guarding and tending the sacred fire. Or it might be that she sought rest and refreshment after the noise and dust and glare. Where had she been? Secluded though they generally were, the Vestals were allowed to take the air at intervals: perhaps to worship at another temple, perhaps to pray before two-faced Janus, he with red mouth straining and with face all grim, as the Oracles of Maro had it. Scraps of thought flitted through my mind. Only a Vestal Virgin might drive a wheeled vehicle through day-time Rome (but ah gods! the hideous rumbling noisy nights!). Should she be accused of inchastity, two defenses were open to her: she might draw off a ship foundered on some shoal in the Tiber…using only a single thread. The Tiber at Rome was full of shoals, but as this knowledge was elementary and universal, ships (as distinct from bumboats) seldom came as high as Rome. Or…she might instead carry water in a sieve. A brave option; small wonder they were seldom accused. Only a Vestal might pardon a man on the way to execution. No one might pardon a Vestal caught in flagrant delight, or convicted after trial—Meherc! that a priestess of fire should be tried by water!—she was buried alive in a tomb at once sealed shut and a grim byword pointed out her last and only choice: starve while the lamp burned, or drink the oil and live a while longer in the dark. Whichever, the glory of the world would soon enough pass, and with it, too: the beauty, the damps, the chills, the plots, the pests, the fevers, and the fleas, of eternal Rome. Of Yellow Rome. Yellow Rome.
As the great fire of the First Year of the Emperor Julius I was destined to occur, dixit David cum Sybilla (whoever “David” is), it was fortunate that it occurred whilst the Roy was completing the conquest of Gaul the Sur, for when word of the extent of the conflagration reached Himself the August Caesar as he was entering the great Port called Marsayle, he ordered that it never be fired but that every building faced with marble be taken apart and the facing be sent by galley-drawn barges to the Ost Port of Rome and thence by oxen-courted shallow-draft vessels up the Tiber. This nonpareil stayne was at once named the Gallo Antico, the Ancient Gaul; some take it from giallo antico, the old gayle, as one says, the blaunche fever and the gayle: or in that poetic line, his face as gayle as Winter grass, sello beneath the snae. Soon enow came marbe of tother hues, rosso antico, and the green one green as the pistuquimnut; the maid-pale-white, the black-as-night, the mottled and the creamy brown; other yet. Well might the Julio exult, A hamlet of wooden huts and hovels so I found, and one of marmol structoes I am to leave behind. As this was in effect the first great quantity of marmorstone seen in Mamma Roma, its popular name was quickly given and ever been left so.
“Good fortune to that man,” I said, shaking my head as though to dispel the flimsies of bad dreams.
Quint made a scoffing sound, such as only the tutelage of the costliest of rhetors could have produced. “Did you see that animal face? He will be caught for another dirty crime and condemned again and this time surely hanged for it within the year—if not, indeed, the week—and should he encounter another Vestal?”
I asked if the Vestals always set the felon free. Quint considered. “First you must meet your felon face to face,” he said, shrugging. Quint was a great shrugger. “Then—of the current Six, you mean?” Instantly it occurred to him that I would scarcely have meant the Six current in the reign of Tarquin the Proud or Judah King of the Jews, and he went on to capitulate them. “Clothilda pardons everyone. Volumnia pardons no one. Honoria, would you believe it, gravely casts dice to decide. Carries them with her in a monopede’s shoe—a monopede’s shoe!” (There would be no gain in asking how he knew it was the shoe of a monopede, for he might have given me some such answer as, “Everybody knows it,” or, “Because there is only one”—in which case my respect for him would be diminished.)
“Aurelia pardons now and then.—the dice? They are the most ordinary dice; sort of spoils the story, doesn’t it? Stories are often spoiled like that: tiresome.” My respect for him increased. “Lenora, they say, never drives that way, so as not to have to choose.” He quirked his mouth, hunched his shoulders, flung out his hand and fluttered his fingers, with what might just be perceived as a very slight emphasis of the digit of infamy. “Soft-hearted Lenora, eh?—but they are all brutes, these fellows. Kindness to them is cruelty to others.”
And he told a recent report, not even to be designated as a rumor, that the man just freed had once been a provincial gladiator of the lowest sort, probably expelled for incompetence. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “You saw that sword-scarred face. No brow. No chin. Some ancestral taint, I’d venture. They sell very good bread with opium seed over there.”
My question almost burst forth. “But which one was sh
e?” She was only one of six sacred women in the service of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, without whom there could really be no home, and hence, no Rome: but which one was she? The bread did smell good; they say there is at least one bakeshop in the capital for every province in the Empery. One does not doubt.
Quint turned to me, immediately (he) a man of the most scornful urban world. “But my dear fellow, you know nothing!—mage though you are—Well…how could you, there in Naples? She is Claudia.”
“And does she often spare?”
Quint started again his rigmarole, stopped. Sincerely he seemed in doubt. Then, somewhat surprised, said that he did not know. That the matter had never—in his presence—come up before. Then he fell silent, merely gestured to his important friend’s litters (only two of many, of course) which were waiting for us: quite in the Roman fashion: not too very far from the appointed place. He certainly did not ask, “Handsome woman, is she not?” or “What did you think of her?” or, “Do you fancy her?” One simply never asked such questions about a Vestal Virgin. It was a long way up to the Tarpaean Rock when you had to climb.
But it was only a short way down when you were pushed.
There were nights when I slept like a farmer, and nights when I could not sleep, or slept but ill. That night I fell soon into slumber, for thank the gods, in that very quiet—and very, very rich—quarter of Rome, where Quint’s Etruscan friend had one of his villas, there was neither wagon traffic nor roistering. Whence, then, came that noise, a mere murmur at first, then tumult and clamor? I must have left my bed the better to observe and to hearken—what, then, a horrid shock, to realize that my arms were bound behind me at the elbows and my feet confined by straps or ropes so that I might take no very long steps and certainly could not run. I turned to ask my terrified question of the man nearest to me, an intent and stinking fellow in a dirty tunicle; but this one held, looped around his hands and arms, a rope: and the rope was noosed round my neck! It did not choke me, not so long as I kept up with my keeper. “But what then?” I begged the fellow. “But what then?” The shun-soap made no answer, but steadily led me along, as a nacker leads the nag before stopping him, stunning him, stabbing him, skinning him, and then cutting him up: hooves, hide, and pizzle to the glue-maker, and the other parts to—Suddenly the sound of the vulgus ceased, then resumed in another note and another register.
Then ceased again.
A woman’s voice, strong and level and chill. “I pardon that man.” Our gazes met. She showed her shock. Her eyes were blue and clear.
It was yet dark when I woke, but Rome generally awoke in the yet dark; a few lamps had already been kindled in the corridor; I noticed this abstractedly as I rushed to Quint: but Quint was already rushing to me. We met in the lesser atrium with the dull red walls where a few servants passed hither and thither like wraiths, thin vapors rising from the vessels in their hands. The heavy master of the household had either not yet aroused, or was occupied elsewhere; had he been present, our own respective business, however much it agitated us, must needs wait: but present he was not. At first our confrontation was in silence, there were sighs and moanings inarticulate, but not words. Then Quint said, and his voice trembled, “I have had such a dream!”
“And I—”
“Dreams are best kept silent, except to a qualified interpreter—or to a closemost friend—”
“Yes…”
“I am older, let me speak first,” said Quint. I staying silent, he went on to speak his words, clutching my arm, my arms, as though he would draw me to him. “Did you notice?” he asked. “Did you notice that old pedlar-dame in yesterday’s mob? selling baskets and sieves? She passed through my dream at an angle and then I saw the woman, I mean the woman…the real woman… I saw the woman holding the sieve… Claudia it was…it was Claudia…she held the sieve—you know what that means—and my heart went chill and swollen and I peered to see if the sieve did indeed hold the water, or if it had merely let it slip through and the mesh still wet. But she held it upside-down, she held it upside-down! What does that mean? And she looked at me and I saw that her eyes were very blue and very clear,” his own eyes, I saw in the increasing light of early day, were very red, and quite without salve or ointment; “and she looked past me and she looked at you and her eyes went wide and I remarked her voice, I shall always remember her voice: it was level and strong and clear, and she pointed her hand at you and she said, ‘Thou art the man!’ And what that means, I dare not think: but I would that you would leave our Yellow Rome at once.”
After I had spoken in turn, Quint leaned closer to me, and almost, somehow, I expected to see a thin cold breath from his mouth, like that from the basins of hot water for a quick early morning wash even now hurried past us by a few diligent slaves: but slavery makes for diligence…and makes it, much. Quint asked, “What is the meaning of this two-part dream? Does one part come from the Gate of Ivory and is false? does one part issue from the Gate of Horn and is it true? Is the whole dream one of evil omen? or of good? If we say, Good, in that she pardons you? of some sentence of death, it is sure, for if it were merely a matter of a fine…prison…the dungeon…or the scourge—” here I shuddered, he went on—“how many men yearly die beneath the lash, merely, the lash? how many in the dungeon, where even a reflection of a reflection of the light of the sun or the moon never shines?…let alone in the mere prison? where sometimes a gleam of sunlight creeps as it were uncertainly amongst the filthy littered rushes or the trampled straw…or now and then a beam of moonlight is reflected by a burnished mazer or a pewter plate polished like a mirror? For that matter,” he babbled, as we stood, crouched, in the atrium, close together; “for that matter,” he went on, “when a mere fine, merely the matter of a fine has broke a man’s bench, his bancus become ruptus, his lands his fields his house his yards his loft his laboratory all his goods his gear his tools his attire and even the very dead embers of his hearth for potash, and even the broken pisspot in the corner of his house of office: all, all, sold to pay the fine—eh?—how many, sinking beneath shame and broken spirit, the fine like blazing fire consumes all means of earning food?”
Quint, beside himself, was now unwittingly imitating the gestures, the very vocal tricks, of any advocate seen and heard in Apollo’s Court. He swept the air with his hands, he bulged his eyes, he stood on his tip-toes, he touched his ear-lobe with a finger. “But all of these minor penalties,” this was a new Quint to me and no longer the sophisticate, the man-about-Rome, the cynical; “and if the enemy of the enemies of mine enemy does not die of the stinking-pox, then let him live…let him live under these minor penalties; And these, allegedly the lesser of evils, the Vestal Virgin may not pardon: not a farthing, not a fig: not the theft of enough crushed walnut paste to cover the toenail of an infant child: none!”
To sum up: I, Vergil, once with brief: an advocate: ’twas very brief: eh? if the Vestal Virgin in this probably vatic dream—and every dream in one way or another must be vatic, must be prophetic, else why is a dream dreamed? if I, Vergil, am he whom the Vestal pardons, she can be pardoning me only from sentence of death. Not from charge of a crime meriting death, no, from sentence of death. And what can I, Vergil, have done or what would I do, to merit?
Dared I, would I dare? to love her—?
And as for the other dream, and her cry of, “Thou art the man!” if this was not accusative, then what was it? Could it be exculpatory? all things were, some barely, possible: but…he would believe that this the Virgin’s exclamation was exculpatory? then he would believe anything…let him, if he would, believe—
But let him first flee. And if not to the end of the Empery, then at least from Yellow Rome. To be, at least, a while more, safe.
Where would he safest be? from the accusations of the vatic voice in a state of dream—? whither flees the frightened child? he flees to home.
And now and for a long time: Naples was home.
… whence he might, if he would, if he need, having taken
stock, flee again …
But why at once …? Why, because there was no set time indicated in these dreams. Who knows but what even now delators and informants were bespeaking those who bespoke the soldiery, He laid his hands upon the Virgin’s naked flesh, and, Act quickly, he may soon escape and flee …
Also, did I wait, tarry?…opportunity…temptation…lust …
Thus: at once.
It is tiresome to say what everyone knows, in this case that some things are more quickly said than done. There was no ship at a wharf behind a signboard reading HOME, AT ONCE. We had to wait until Quint’s friend, our host, was willing to see us. Then it was needful (he, Quint, thought) that I should leave the City by a round-about way and not by any of the broader streets, and essential (I thought) that Quint should not be seen with me; and I was a long time persuading him of this, and even I had a chore preventing him of this, and even I had a chore preventing him that he might not even, as he put it, “put bread in my wallet” for the journey, in my old doe-skin budget, bread: had I yielded at all, we would likely have wandered over half of Rome to find some particular bake-shop. With or without opium seed. Even, yes indeed! he might bethink him, bread is not enough! and insist he obtain me cheese, and salamesausage! —at which, by the sod and staff! might I give myself up for lost—
The Avram Davidson Treasury Page 59
