"The poem is yours, Octavian."
"Only insofar as I am the advocate of the Roman people; others possess private property, not I, as you know."
Holding a small laurel branch plucked from the wreaths in his ever restless fingers, there stood Augustus beside the candelabrum, as though among the shadows of a murmuring laurel; he stood there dapper and majestic, and what he said was pure falsehood, although he believed in it himself; for he took great pains and was quite successful in increasing the holdings of the Julian family to gigantic proportions, as everyone knew. And the slave said properly, though luckily without being heard: "You are lying, Caesar." And yet, had the one so addressed not heard him? For now, casting his eyes on the manuscript-chest, he smiled as though in answer.
"In whatever character you accept it, Octavian, I have given the poem to you, but I must ask a favor in return."
"Conditions, Virgil? ... I thought it was a birthday present."
"It is an unconditioned present; it rests with you whether you will grant the favor I ask, or not..."
"Then let me hear these conditions; I submit to them beforehand, but call to mind your own words, Virgil,"—a sly, friendly twinkle appeared in Caesar's eyes—, "be lenient to the conquered and temper your arrogance to that end."
"The future!" exclaimed the slave in the midst of the crowd.
Yes, the future; that is how the words were meant; the infinite, unplumbed future of man and man's virtue, the future of humility—, yet how slyly Octavian had made use of them for his temporary and superficial ends, but nevertheless the Aeneid should and must belong to him: "You have limited the emancipation of slaves, Augustus; permit mine to go free."
"What? At once?"
What a curious question! at once or not at once—, was it not all the same? "Not at once, Augustus, but immediately after my death; that is how I shall designate it in my will and on your side I beg you to sanction this bequest."
"Of course, I shall do so ... but consider, Virgil, will your step-brother, who, as far as I remember, takes care of your property in Andes, be in agreement with this bequest? you will create difficulties for him if you take away all of his slaves at one stroke . . ."
"My step-brother, Proculus, will know how to help himself. Besides which he is a kind man and the servants will be likely to stay with him even as free men."
"Good, that is not my affair; I have simply to give my signature ... in truth, Virgil, if this was the only condition you had to make we could have been spared our long arguments!"
"Perhaps it was good to have had them, Octavian."
"It was good,"—the Augustus smiled—"in spite of the time you made me lose by them."
"But there is still the will, Octavian."
"Unless I am mistaken you deposited one a long time ago with my archivist."
"Certainly, but I must add to it. . ."
"Because of the slaves? Make haste slowly; you can take care of this later in Rome."
"There are a few other changes; I do not like to put them off."
"You are in a hurry for yourself, but not for me . . . still, you are the only one to decide on the urgency of your document, and I neither dare nor shall I hinder you from drawing it up now; but as I cannot wait for it, I must ask you to give it to me later or send it on so that I can affix my seal to it in testimony and confirmation ..."
"Plotius or Lucius, or both together, will bring you the will, Augustus; be thanked."
"My time is limited, Virgil; I sense the impatience with which they await me over there . . . Vipsanius Agrippa should have come in the meantime ... I have to leave . . ."
"You have to .. ."
Enigmatically the room had suddenly become empty; they were quite alone.
"Alas, I must go."
"My thoughts go with you, Octavian."
"Your thoughts as well as your poem." A sign from Caesar and there, conjured out of the void, stood two slaves beside the chest, their hands gripping the handles. "Are these going to carry it off?"
Lightly, swiftly, Augustus came to the bed, and bending over it almost imperceptibly he became Octavian once more: "It will be kept in safety, not carried off; take this as a pledge." And he laid the bit of laurel that he had held between his fingers on the bed-cover. "Octavian ..."
"Yes, Virgil .. ."
"Accept my thanks for so many things."
"My thanks go to you, Virgil."
The slaves had raised the chest, and now as they started to carry it off someone sobbed, not very loudly, but still violently, and with that fervor one meets when eternity breaks suddenly into human life, as when pall-bearers are shouldering the coffin to bear it from the room and the relatives feel themselves stricken for the first tube by the inexorable power which has already begun to take its course. It was the same eternity-sob which is wont to be sent after a coffin, it was this eternity-cry and it came from the broad and powerful chest of Plotius Tucca, from his kind and powerful human soul, from his moved and mighty heart, sent toward the manuscript-chest which was being borne away and which actually was a casket, a shell, bearing the remains of a child, of a life.
And now again the sun had really darkened. Reaching the door Augustus turned around once more; once more friend's glance sought friend's glance; once more their eyes met: "May your eyes rest on me always, my Virgil," said Octavian, standing between the wide-opened wings of the door, here still Octavian, only to hasten off as Caesar, svelte, proud and masterful; at his heels a tawny lion, which followed the casket with steps heavy and slow, and many of those present joined in the procession.
THE goodly moist sobbing of Plotius persisted a little while before passing over into a breathy gulping, interspersed with many an "Ah, yes!" and it only completely subsided when the sun came out again and the doves on the window-sill went on once more with their cooing.
"Let your eyes rest on me always." Those were Octavian's words, that is the way they sounded or something like that, and that is how they continued to sound, remaining in the room, floating there, imperishable by their bond with him who had vanished, imperishable by their fulness of meaning. Imperishable the bond, but Octavian was gone—, why, why had he gone away? why had Plotia gone? Alas, they had gone like so many others, vanishing into their own fates, vanishing into their activities, into their aging, into their increasing tiredness, into their graying and their senility, vanishing into a dunness from which a voice no longer issued, and despite that, those invisible bridges had remained, and likewise those invisible chains that had linked them together once and seemingly forever, the invisible laurel-bridges, the invisible silver-enchainments, and the bond had remained, indestructible, built and forged for eternity, binding with, and reaching—where? Toward an invisible nothingness? No, the invisible thing on the opposite shore, that was no nothingness, no, for all its invisibility it was true existence, it was Octavian as he had always been, Plotia as she had always been, except that they had been most curiously and completely stripped of their names and their bodily forms; oh, deep, very deep within us, not to be reached by our bodily disintegration, unharmed by the fading of our senses, immune to all change, immune in the most unthinkably far regions of our selves, of our hearts, of our souls, perception lived on, imperceptible, unevocable, unexplorable, unrecognizable to itself, and it sought the counter-perception in the other soul, in the other heart, in the invisible depths of the other, sought to call it out just there in order that it might become forever perceptible to itself, eternal the bridge, eternal the spanned chain, eternal the encounter, lasting beyond all transfigurations, because the full significance of the word, the full significance of the world, relied on the encounter alone, perception perceived in its echo; nothwithstanding that his lids were closed, immensity lay outside, visible and full of meaning, breath-golden, wine-golden, transported in the stilled, shimmering glare of the sun's noontide, washed over the brownish-red, black-striped, dirty, spongy roofs of the city, visible and invisible at once, a mirror waiting for its re
flection, waiting for the floating word, the floating perception, which although not quite revealed, was already at hand within the room, a care-free state, participation in which would not be a perjury, beauty risen from true knowledge, its existence permitted again, within the law of the pledge-protecting, the unknown god; and then, yes, and then, some of the doves left the window-sill with a puffing, almost pompous, fluttering and flew up, whirring their wings in the sunlit blue, sinking upward in the fever-heat of day's prime; thus they sank upward in the circle of the glance and dropping below it they disappeared— Oh, let your eyes rest on me always.
Plotius wiped the tears from his plump cheeks: "Too stupid," he remarked, "it is too stupid to be so moved just because Virgil has finally recovered from his lunacy."
"Perhaps it was Octavian's behavior that caused your emotion."
"Not so far as I know . . ."
"I want to make my will now."
"That is no reason for being emotional. . . everybody makes wills."
"It has nothing to do with your emotion; I must draft it now and that is all there is to it."
Lucius it was who now objected: "Augustus is perfectly right, one can only agree with him that you could leave such things to the time when you will have recovered, and you have all the more time as we understood there was already a valid will."
Plotius and Lucius were present in actual visibility, and Lysanias must also have been present even though he might be hiding in some corner of the room, perhaps annoyed that because he had not been summoned earlier the slave had been left in possession of the field—, but where was the slave? even so, where was he? there was nothing to indicate he had joined the train of Augustus, on the contrary, if he were anywhere it was presumably in this room, since this in a certain sense was his natural place, and yet in spite of it, he could not be found; however, this was not entirely true; if one began to look a little more intently, if one strained one's sight just a little more, in addition to the complete visibility of the two friends, some invisible things could be seen, things unready for living or for viewing, perhaps even unready for both—the ability to differentiate being insufficient—there especially where strips of sun-dust came in, there various motes of human-like invisibility were swarming so thickly it seemed the crowd that had left the room in Caesar's wake had streamed back into it, at least in part; nothing was likelier than that the one sought for was among these images, certainly not to be summoned, having been unwilling to disclose his name.
"Lysanias . . ."—even though the slave could not be called, one could call the boy; he ought to come and give some explanation.
"Again and again you mention this Lysanias," remarked Plotius, "you speak of him, yet he never appears ... or has he some connection with the will you are so urgent about drafting?"
It was not to be denied that neither the boy nor the slave had any direct connection with the will; however, he was still unable to explain the association to Plotius and could only take refuge in a seeming motive: "I want to bequeath to him some object or other."
"The more then is it his duty to show himself at last; otherwise I shall feel obliged to doubt him and his existence."
The boy appearing at that very moment proved the implication unjust; anyone who was willing to see him could, and the reproach redounded upon Plotius. Nevertheless it would have been better if Lysanias had not been summoned, for now, having actually arrived, he had come in the twofold guise of slave and boy, just as if both bore the same name, to which each, whether slave or boy, had to respond. On the one hand this was not very remarkable; on the other it was remarkable that this twofold advent lacked concord, that the boy, although at pains to approach the bed, was not able to get ahead of his larger and stronger companion; again and again the way was barred to him and one would have thought that the boy Lysanias had lost all his wily skill.
Plotius walked back, sighing, to the armchair where he had sat before: "Instead of taking it easy as everyone advises you, you busy yourself with codicils and with what you have in mind to bequeath to this one or that one . . . Caesar was with you for more than an hour, and one can tell by your voice that this wore you out . . . well, for my part, I shall take care not to interfere with a pighead such as you . . ."
"Yes," added Lucius with a speculative curiosity, "well over an hour . . . and did you talk of nothing but the Aeneid? . . . stop, do not answer if it tires you . . ."
Standing sturdily beside the bed, the slave appeared to have grown in a most unforeseen manner; a stilly coldness emanated from him as from one who has come into a room from the iciest winter weather, and he stood there so broad and mighty that he made it impossible for the boy to send over a single glance, although the latter had climbed up on the table in order to peer over his shoulders.
"The slave should leave . . ."
"Ah, because of the will?"—Plotius from his armchair looked around the room—, "all of them have left anyway, you may begin."
Lucius, fussing as usual with the folds of his toga, sat down cautiously on the chair near the bed and, folding his long, slender legs one over the other in a worldly posture, he held his long-fingered hand palm up in a gesture of explanation: "Yes, when the Exalted One once starts talking he is inclined to let one have a fair amount of it. And yet, if we are frank, he is anything but a gifted orator, at least not captivating in comparison with the Roman eloquence of classical times, which we, as surviving witnesses, are entitled to claim ... do you remember the senatorial speeches of the past? what a pleasure they were, all of them! However, Augustus' eloquence does for the present, since, as it is, no one discourses today, and it will have to do . . . but, Virgil, by no means must I fall into the same blunder as he, praised be his name; I do not want to tire you ..."
Why did the slave not move? He was set up here motionless and firmly rooted, like an ice-block, like an iceberg, always threatening to grow higher; by now he covered little Lysanias completely and the cold made itself felt ever more dangerously, issuing from him as though inexorably, bringing great waves of weariness in its wake.
"You need a complete rest,"—Lucius' hand put a finishing stroke to this pronouncement—, "you need rest, and had you consulted the doctor again he would have told you so; it might be best if we left you alone now."
His need for rest could not be gainsaid, a sweet and seductive need that had come over him, coming to him on the weariness-waves of chill, dangerous in its inescapability: Oh, it had to be fought, fought immediately! and so it proved most welcome that Lucius had mentioned the doctor and that he, answering the summons, started to emerge solidly from the swarm of transparent figures and continued to emerge no less solidly, a bland smile on his lips: "You have recovered, Virgil, and I am proud to be able to tell you so, for as I may be allowed to state in all modesty, my skill has contributed not a little to this favorable outcome."
It was a gratifying though not quite unlooked-for announcement: "I have recovered ..."
"That is a slight exaggeration though on the whole, the gods be thanked, it may be correct," Plotius was heard to say from the alcove.
"I am well. . ."
"You will be soon" . . . corrected the slave.
"Send him away," the boy's voice sounded weak and plaintive—"send him away if you wish to recover; he will kill you too."
The weariness-chill became downright physical; proceeding from the ice-block it turned into an ice-block itself, turned into a curdled wave, enclosing, enwrapping, fiery at the core, enforcing a warm repose by its freezing embrace: "I have recovered; the doctor did not lie."
"Perhaps so, at least insofar as a doctor is able to be entirely truthful, but this truth implies that you have to behave live a convalescent who does not want to have a relapse"— Lucius was standing up—"and as for us, now we are going to leave."
"Stay!"
His voice had failed; the word had not been heard.
"Oh, let them go, let all of them go," begged Plotia coaxingly, though unable to conceal her
own fright, "and him as well, send off him who holds you embraced; my arms are softer than his, and he is loathsome."
Then it became clear that the glowing-icy clasp was caused by the giant's arms, lifting him up from the bed and from the earth, and that on the giant's breast, in the immensity of which there was no longer heart-beat nor breathing, the sweetly-alluring repose of immutability would have to be found.
Clay was the earth from which he had been lifted, but not less earthlike and full of earth's forces was the giant's breast on which he lay.
"He is crushing me," sighed the boy hopelessly overcome by weakness.
"His time is up," said the giant, and it was almost like a smile, "it is not I who molest him, time does that."
Mighty as earth was the giant, bearing earth, bearing rest, bearing death—, did he not bear time as well?
"I am timeless," rejoined Plotia, "I do not alter, do not let him kill me too."
Did Plotia need to be saved, did the boy? was he himself in need of salvation? was there a need for the will, or for the Aeneid? the embrace became still vaster, heavier, mightier, more and more icy, more and more glowing, the glow and the iciness already melted into a common lifestream, carrying existence toward non-existence so that it could unite with it; the quiet had already become so dense that it threatened to let no sound escape, no sound that might shatter it, and it seemed already past shattering, and not for Plotia, not for the boy, no, but for his own life's sake, a final effort must be made: "I want to live ... oh, Mother!"
Was it a cry? It could not be ascertained whether it had pierced the borders of stillness. The breast of the giant was without heart-beat or breathing, without heart-beat or breathing the world. And it was quite a while before the giant said: "I am not freeing you because of the woman's entreaties nor those of the boy, neither because of your own fright; I am freeing you because you have a mind to accomplish your earthly service." It was almost an admonition; and withal he felt the clasp loosen as if the giant were restoring him to the clay floor of earth.
The Death of Virgil Page 41
