by Jack Lindsay
“This girl,” he said, awkwardly, “is your son’s betrothed. Her name is Karni. She’s a Jewess of course.”
“My son is not betrothed,” replied Ezra with the mild air of a man correcting a trifling error. “And where is the father of the girl who makes this unfounded claim?”
“I’m her kind of guardian,” said Gallus, who had thought out this phrase during the walk, but it sounded far lamer than he had anticipated. “Amos asked me to look after her. She’s a freedwoman of Queen Cleopatra’s household. I saw to her full discharge from the steward of the court.”
“My father was named Benjamin Ben Joseph,” said Karni, rapidly. “He was a reputable dealer in glassware and died when I was born. He was a very wise man, and was cut off before his time through a dispute over the Scriptures which ended in a fit; and he died in the Synagogue itself, which happens to few.”
“How did you enter Queen Cleopatra’s service?” asked Ezra, without interest.
“My mother sold me during a famine. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Of course not,” said Ezra, as if completing the subject of Karni. “And now, master Gallus, will you please take away this virtuous and beautiful young maiden, and allow me to continue with my accounts?”
Gallus stood helpless; he had expected a slight argument, but not this calm dismissal. Leonidas was pleased at Karni’s discomfiture, but feared she would become a permanent resident in the attic and ruin the stove. Stirring, he shook the leather bag, and a chink of money was heard. Ezra turned and looked at him, then at the bag, then back at Karni.
“I don’t come without a dowry,” she said, and, taking the bag, poured out a moderate heap of silver coins. Ezra watched with respect, but the money was far too little under the circumstances; she was a freedwoman, with only her own word for her father’s status. Karni saw his emotions, and drew out the heavy gold bracelet which she had gained last night. This she dropped on to the pile. Ezra bent down and looked carefully without touching. It was a very valuable bracelet indeed, the stones were genuine. Gallus, remembering that he still had the pearl-stud, took it out and dropped it into the ring of the bracelet. Leonidas could not forbear a snort; even to get rid of Karni the price was too high.
Ezra straightened his back and looked kindly at Karni. She was blessing Yahwe, Isis, Atargatis, and Hermes (for she was hardly orthodox in her cults) that Ammonios had been too distracted by the move to inquire into her slave-earnings and commissions. Although he kept a thorough spy-system in the household, it had become deranged overnight and he hadn’t heard of Cleopatra’s gift. A slave’s earnings were by law the master’s property and could be claimed before manumission or sale, though usually a master allowed the slave at least enough to start him off as a freedman. Ammonios, however, had no such scruples, and Karni was lucky.
Ezra looked at Karni and noted that she was a well-built girl, not likely to run into a decline and cause doctor’s bills; also she seemed disposed to treat him with due esteem. He cleared his throat. The only other girl he had had in mind was the thin Judith, whose dowry would be less and who would be forever complaining; her father Jubal was a conceited person and had felt too assured about getting Amos as a son-in-law. Moreover, it would do Amos good to be married.
“You are strict in the observance of your religion?” he asked Karni.
She nodded emphatically. “O yes indeed I am. Not one of the prohibitions have I transgressed.” She felt a little uneasy at the statement, but decided that Yahwe would take it in good part as meant to refer forwards, not backwards. Henceforth she’d be a perfect daughter of Judah.
Ezra put his hand on her head and blessed her. “May God make you as Rachel and Leah.”
*
Amos had entered the fullery and been informed by a friendly workman that his father was closeted with Gallus and a strange woman, a Jewess by appearance. The workman smacked his lips and cast his eyes up to the beams of the roof in appreciation of the strange woman’s exterior. Amos at once knew the worst, though his first emotion was wild jealousy against Gallus — how had he found and got away with Karni? Then even this emotion failed, and only panic was left. Amos ran to the outer door, ran back, trod on a pile of washed clothes, stood angrily meditating plans for flight, moved towards the inner house with a vague intention of raiding the pantry and starting a new life at the other end of the city, and then halted in stupefied dismay as he saw his father peering out of the office-door and beckoning.
He entered the room and, without looking at Karni, was aware of her presence. In fact he was aware of nothing else. She was like a pattern of flowers painted all over a wall; she enveloped him, a cloud of scented draperies. He sweated.
“I have blessed Karni,” said his father, “and she is to be your wife. See that you make her a good husband.”
Amos was more astounded than ever. He had expected objurgations and was almost hurt that he hadn’t got them. The marriage was impossible. Firstly, he didn’t want to marry anyone; secondly, Karni was a wicked woman; thirdly, he didn’t want his wife to have been a slave, even if she’d run away or bought herself off; fourthly, he wouldn’t like to marry someone who wasn’t a virgin, and he wasn’t even the first with Karni, he was sure; fifthly, she’d lost her religion; sixthly, he wanted to marry someone with a lot of money; seventhly, he had a private scheme of marrying the fat hair-specialist in the next street, who made a fortune out of abortions, and who would probably turn Jewess if suitably approached (though so far Amos had done no more than give her a push in a crowd); eighthly, he was jealous of Gallus; ninthly, in an indefinite repetition of the first reason, he didn’t want to marry anyone, except someone twice as beautiful as Karni and very rich — the kind of woman who’d object to her husband working.
“I’m too young,” he said, shrinking himself up to prove his words. “I don’t know the trade properly.”
“If you’re married,” replied Ezra, “you will stay more at home and have more time to give to learning the trade. Your mother will be pleased to have a daughter-in-law.”
Karni wanted to take Amos by the scruff of the neck and speak strongly, but caution urged her to wait till she was better established. She felt somewhat strange yet in the world of freedom; hadn’t the behaviour of Gallus shown how different things were?
“I won’t marry her,” said Amos, desperately. He yearned to tell all he knew about her, but didn’t dare expose himself. He sought for safer reasons. “She’s lived in a house of unrighteousness and been contaminated by food not according to the law, besides working on the sabbath.”
“Once the whole seed of Israel was in Egyptian captivity,” remarked Ezra. “He that touches pitch is defiled, but he that first spits on his finger can touch molten wax unburned. She is a civil girl, and you will marry her as soon as it can be conveniently arranged.” Now that Amos objected, he was entirely decided on the match; his only fear had been that he might seem to encourage Amos in going his own way.
Karni, unable to express her emotions more effectively in Ezra’s presence, began to cry; and Amos grew confused. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he said, lamely. “But I’m too young to marry.”
Ezra, ignoring his son, took Karni by the arm. “Come, my dear,” he said, and led her out, still weeping, through the nudging workmen, to meet her future mother-in-law, who was anxiously peeping round the farther doorposts and then withdrawing, like a piece of rather tattered door-curtain wavering in a breeze.
Amos turned on Gallus. “Why did you upset things?” he asked hoarsely.
“But I thought you didn’t want to lose her.”
“Of course I didn’t want to lose her,” said Amos, contemptuously, “but did that mean I wanted to marry her? Now I’ll never be able to leave home for fear she’s squeezing the hands of the workmen.”
He sank despondently on to a stool, and Gallus, followed by a jubilant Leonidas, walked out of the office. It was all no use. Lovers couldn’t be helped. Nobody could be helped; they all preferred t
heir own way of being miserable to someone else’s way of being happy. They were all damned because they didn’t know what they wanted; and he was the most miserable of them all. He had been able to put aside the thought of Cytheris while succouring this pair of distressed lovers; but now the sense of loss overwhelmed him again. He longed for the touch of his lost Cytheris, for the softness of her hair against his face. O to be near her; to see the movements of her ankles or her hips or her wrists; to watch her spine and her thighs as she moved, and to know what curve of resistant growth it was that all trees and flowers sought and lacked. To be near her: that was all he wanted.
*
In wine was the only satisfactory escape from Fulvia. With fuddled pleasure Antonius noticed that she gave up discussing politics with him and preferred to talk apart with Lucius; and what they told him to do, he did. It was the easiest way out. The Senate were keen to reach their final spring-session. Brutus and Cassius has stopped at Lanuvium and sent round word to the loyal townships to recruit a militia; but a suitable rebuke from Antonius had stopped them, and now Brutus was saying how ready he was to go into exile if it would quiet the State. Cassius had his hands full with Tertulla, who, objecting strongly to travel, had had a bad miscarriage. The Senate had placed under the control of Antonius the army that Caesar had gathered in Macedonia, for there were rumours of barbarian invasions there; and Lepidus was being commissioned to settle with the remnant of Civil War rebels in the West.
Antonius drank. The world was dead. Action was needed. He harangued the populace and praised Caesar. Lucius called on the aid of Caesar’s chief secretary, Faberius, a coolheaded business-like fellow; and the news crept round that posthumous decrees signed by Caesar could be obtained, if a high enough price was quoted. The Sicilians were bargaining for the full citizenship; the agents of the Galatian king for the return of confiscated territory. Money was coming into the house on the Carinae, a lot of money. The Senate grew afraid and tried to limit the power of Antonius to deal with Caesar’s papers; but it was too late.
Antonius drank and enjoyed himself, with one eye on Fulvia. Cleopatra had gone. Let her go. Wine was better. A man took it into his belly; which was more than he could do with a woman; and if he spewed afterwards, then women and wine had similar disadvantages. Lucius and Fulvia were the wise ones. Life was something to exploit. Wink at Faberius and post up another proclamation. Why shouldn’t the Galatian king have some more land, even if he was a twisty anti-Caesarian? Caesar was dead now, and the earth was for the living.
Finally, after the last session of the Senate, Antonius took a band of veterans and broke into the Temple of Ops, where the State-chest was kept. He enjoyed himself watching the scared faces of the priests and officials, and having the money weighed out. Not a coin was left.
He slapped himself on the chest, and drank deep that night. A good bribe must go to Dolabella, who was coming round to sense. Money was needed; for money bought men, food, swords.
Men. That was the solution. More veterans must be brought to Rome. None of the talkers at the house on the Carinae knew exactly what was to be done; but they were preparing for war. Lucius suggested that Antonius should make a tour of Campania, on pretext of seeing to the proper carrying out of the settlement at Casilinum, and come back to Rome with some thousands more of veterans.
A fine idea. Antonius clapped his hands and called for more drink. Action. He’d like a few weeks in the open. He’d be faithful of course to Fulvia; he swore to himself, afraid she would read his thoughts and claw his eyes out; but across his mind there drifted the picture of dancing girls, fat, cheap ones, the kind that got beamingly drunk and had no memories. He too would forget and come back with a good conscience.
He put his arm round the back of young Quintus Cicero, who now frequented the house.
“Won’t you come?”
“I don’t want to go south. I might strike my blathering old uncle. I tell you there’ll be no peace in the State till you put him away.”
Quintus Cicero drank with an oath, feeling a full-fledged conspirator. Certainly he didn’t want to go south, though he’d have liked to ride about with Antonius; but he also hoped to see more of young Clodia, the girl he’d rescued from a bawdy robbers’ den: he’d now come almost to believe that part of the story himself. Clodia, however, had been very good since her escapade; her terrified nurse Bhebeo had seen to that.
*
The people had not forgotten the martyr Marius, though they bore no grudge against Antonius for his death. The martyrdom was one of those things that merely happened; what mattered was that there was a martyr. The faith of Marius was spreading, though the mob seemed quiet. But the unending stream of worshippers who came to pay their respects to the pillared altar in the Forum showed how the faith was taking root.
Caesar would return to save the world. He had not been a mere patron who aided and then passed away. The seed of a new order was to be found in the meaning of his life and his death. That meaning would repeat itself, creating a new world. Caesar would return.
But of the man who had called himself Marius in the effort to redeem a fabulous inheritance no one thought except a staring-eyed girl who hugged a lazy black cat, spending on its milk the money that she painfully earned or begged. She did not tell anyone lest they should steal away her cat, for she knew that Marius and Caesar were now one and that their united spirits inhabited the cat who had such an unquenchable thirst for milk.
LONG LIVE CAESAR
X — A CLAIMANT TO THE INHERITANCE
But now a new actor appeared, someone quite forgotten: Gaius Octavius, Caesar’s heir. A lad of eighteen years, of sickly health, he had been sent to the University of Apollonia; and nobody thought of him again after hearing his name read out in the will until news came that he had landed in South Italy. He visited Neapolis and Puteoli, met Cicero and Philippus his step-father, and, duly warned against the ridiculousness of taking up the legacy, came on to Rome. There his mother and sister added their tears to the warnings and begged him not to attempt a hopeless task. The slight lad kissed them both, for he loved them dearly, and sent a message to the Tribunes that he would like to address the people.
Lucius Antonius replied that he was ready to convene a meeting and introduce him. The meeting was called; and the slight lad with the bright blue eyes and somewhat dandified appearance announced that he would take up the legacy and honour all Caesar’s wishes, and that henceforth he would assume the name of Octavianus Caesar. The people were pleased, and praised him among themselves.
At home the senatorial friends of the family were waiting with remarks of the utmost depressing gravity. Octavianus listened with polite and apologetic disregard of all they said.
*
Sometime in the third week of May Antonius returned to Rome, feeling himself on good terms with all the world. He now had a large bodyguard and had sent litterfuls of weapons ahead. He feared nobody. He wanted a province for five years; the rest was in cloud-cuckoo-land; and he felt vaguely annoyed at the violent speeches Lucius had been making.
But Lucius and Fulvia had also come to decisions. “Where’s Dolabella?” asked Antonius.
“He’s a fool,” said Lucius, speaking loudly and not looking at his brother. “No sooner had you gone than he rushed out and overthrew Caesar’s pillar.”
“Of course I heard. I cheered him for it. We’ve had enough of this superstitious stuff.”
“Well, he’s in hiding again.” Lucius scowled. “The people didn’t like it.”
“What the hell do the people matter? I’ll fix up my province now and be glad to leave Rome.”
“Listen to Lucius,” said Fulvia, sharply.
“You won’t hold your province long,” said Lucius in a dry voice, giving Fulvia a quick glance under his lashes, “unless we hold Rome. I’m going to bring forward a Land Bill and set up a Commission. We’ll all be on it. I’ll have the law repealed that forbids proposers to sit in the commission they propose.”
“I’ve no objection to that,” said Antonius, pondering. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“And young Octavianus will join us.”
Antonius leaped to his feet, swearing foully. “Whom do you mean? That little womanish whippersnapper who’s taking Caesar’s name in vain? I won’t have anything to do with him.”
“You must,” said Fulvia with her usual cold decisiveness.
“Listen to me now,” said Antonius, planting himself squarely before her. “I know all the arguments you’re going to let loose. I know you’re going to talk about the value of his name with the soldiers, and so on. And I tell you not to waste your breath. My name will go with the soldiers as far as we need to be taken. I tell you flatly I’ll have nothing to do with the knock-kneed little girl that’s calling herself Caesar.” His voice rose to a shout. “I won’t. Do you hear me?”
He strode out of the room. Fulvia and Lucius exchanged glances. Gaius, who had been lounging against a sideboard, chuckled.
“I knew he’d stand up for himself some day. You’d better take care, Fulvia.”
He followed his brother out, juggling with three figs.
“What did he mean by that last remark?” asked Lucius, fingering his scar.
“Probably he suspects,” said Fulvia, negligently. “But he won’t say anything. I’ll see what I can do with Marcus, but I’ve never seen him so obstinately set.”
She felt disturbed, and put her arms about Lucius, running her lips up and down his cheek, his scarred cheek. He felt as if the blade was ripping it warmly open —exhilarated, for this was the first time she had touched him of her own accord.
*
Octavianus went ahead asserting his position as Caesar’s adopted son; but Antonius took no notice of his request for the passing of a curiate law to complete the adoption. At home Antonius jeered at the youth’s concern about having Caesar’s gilded chair set up at the Games.
