"Apsimaros?" I had been drinking wine myself; at that name, I swallowed wrong, coughed, and sprayed little drops of red over the tabletop in front of me. "They couldn't have dug up a bigger nobody if they tried for a year."
Strictly speaking, I suppose that is not true. Phokas, whom my great-great-grandfather overthrew to the salvation of the Roman Empire, had been but a commander of a hundred before a mutiny raised him to imperial rank- in his case, I shall not say imperial dignity. Apsimaros was of higher standing than that.
After dabbing at himself, my informant said, "That's the name, all right. Once you hear it, how can you forget it?" Except, of course, as a means of gaining more wine. "He's in Sykai now, they say, across the Golden Horn from Constantinople, and trying to figure out how to break in."
I bought him still more wine in the hope that he could tell me something else, but he, wine or no, had run dry, leaving me disappointed. To become Emperor, a rebel must seize the Queen of Cities. My great-great-grandfather had managed it against Phokas, for no one defended the vicious tyrant. Leontios had managed against me, seizing the city from the inside out, so to speak. Apsimaros, though, was attempting what I would also have to do when my day came: breaking into Constantinople against opposition. The followers of the false prophet had not managed that. Could anyone?
The next ship up from Constantinople brought the announcement of the accession of Tiberius, Emperor of the Romans, who, it was reluctantly admitted, had once borne the barbarous appellation of Apsimaros. That was all the official word given forth. Myakes got more out of the sailors, who, remembering what they reckoned my former rank, were reluctant- were afraid- to speak to me.
"He bribed Leontios's soldiers up at Blakhernai, that's what he did," Myakes reported. "They opened the gates for his men, and in he came. Did some pretty good plundering, the soldiers he had with him." His sigh said he wished he'd been there himself. But then he brightened. "Ah, that's the other thing: Apsimaros caught Leontios." He beamed from ear to ear.
I shrugged. "Since he's calling himself- miscalling himself- Emperor now, I suppose he would have. Leontios must be shorter by a head." It was my turn to sigh. "Too bad. I wanted to kill him myself."
"He's not dead, Emperor." Myakes beamed wider than ever. "Apsimaros the asp bit him, sure enough, but not to death. He packed him off to the monastery of Delmatos, but first- do you know what he did first?"
"Sooner or later, you'll tell me. Why not now?"
Myakes took no notice of my irritability, and, in fact, cured it with half a dozen words: "Emperor, he cut off his nose."
My hand went of itself to the scarred wound I bore. "He did what?" I said, and then held up my hand. "No, don't say it again. I heard you. Truly God is a just judge. That comes closer than anything I could have imagined to tempting me to forgive Apsimaros for stealing the throne that belongs to me. I don't forgive- I'll never forgive- but I am tempted."
"He's ruling under the name Tiberius," Myakes reminded me.
That made me shrug again. "He's sitting on my throne. No reason he shouldn't steal a name that belongs to my family, too."
As a matter of fact, though, now that I think on it, my clan had also borrowed the name Tiberius, taking it from the Emperor who ruled just before Maurice and who was, in the days of my great-great-grandfather, a man of good reputation. How and why that Tiberius came to bear his name, I cannot say, he being the first Roman Emperor to carry it since the one in whose reign our Lord was crucified.
"His brother, I hear, is named Herakleios," Myakes said. "Whether that's his real name or one he's put on, I couldn't tell you."
I vaguely remembered that Apsimaros had had a brother who was an officer of some sort. For the life of me, I could not remember what that brother's name had been; in no way had he distinguished himself. Apsimaros wo uld undoubtedly promote him to high rank anyhow: if a man could not rely on his own brother, he could rely on no one. Remembering how little my father had been able to rely on his brothers, I felt relying on no one the better choice.
Then I looked over at Myakes. Had I not relied on him, had I not had him upon whom to rely, I would surely have died not long after my exile began. But comparing Myakes to my ambitious uncles was comparing figs and fingers. Myakes was in no position to supplant me, no matter what he did. Apsimaros would always have to keep one eye on his Herakleios, just as my father had had to watch his brothers Herakleios and Tiberius, just as I would have had to watch my brother Herakleios had he lived.
I said, "I pray to God, Myakes, that Leontios has no one to look after him as you looked after me when I needed you most."
He grunted; I'd succeeded in embarrassing him. "Emperor, I've been taking care of you about as long as I've been a man," he answered after a pause for thought. "I've been doing it so long, I'd hardly know how to do anything else."
He seemed to feel about it the same way I felt about the throne: the one was his destiny as the other was mine. But he was luckier than I, for his calling, unlike mine, had suffered no interruption.
***
Time went on. I never abandoned the hope and intention of regaining my throne, but I had no luck building any sort of force to help me do it. My only new recruit besides the aforementioned brothers, Barisbakourios and Stephen (or, as I have said, Salibas, he answering impartially to both), was a gigantic fisherman named Paul, who was as strong as any other two men I have ever seen. Unfortunately, what God had given him in bulk, he took away in wit, with the result that the fisherman was often called- though seldom to his face- Moropaulos, Foolish Paul.
Carthage remained in Arab hands. Apsimaros, having been part of the fleet that failed to reclaim it, must have regarded it as a lost cause. In the east, though, he beat back an attack by the followers of the false prophet, and that frontier, being the gateway to Anatolia and to the imperial city itself, is more vital for the Roman Empire.
By the news that slowly dribbled into Kherson, Apsimaros displayed more energy on the throne than had Leontios. That this is less than the highest of praise, I freely admit; a dead man would have found it difficult to display less energy than had Leontios.
In the year following his successful defense of Roman territory, Apsimaros sent into exile Bardanes, sometimes called Philippikos, consigning him to the island of Kephallenia. Reckoning this upon my fingers, I find that it must have been in the fourth year of Apsimaros's usurpation, which was the seventh year of my exile. The more I think on it, the more incredible it seems, and yet I am convinced it is accurate.
"What did Bardanes do?" I asked the traveling jeweler who gave me the news.
"Story is that he dreamt he had an eagle shading his head, and was stupid enough to say so in front of somebody who took word to the Emperor," the fellow answered.
"That was stupid," I agreed. From time out of mind, the eagle has been the symbol of Roman power and, by extension, of the imperial dignity. No wonder Apsimaros exiled him; he had as much as claimed he would be Emperor one day.
In the next year, the Arabs under Azar attacked Kilikia. Apsimaros's brother drove them back to their own lands with heavy losses. The Armenians also rebelled against the Arabs whom Sabbatios had installed as their overlords. Apsimaros sent men to help them, but the deniers of Christ proved stronger there, driving out the Romans, regaining the territory that had rebelled, and burning alive a good many of the Armenian grandees who had risen up against them.
I know I heard this story in detail far more circumstantial than I recount here, but count myself lucky to remember any of it at all. Sitting not far from the sailor who was spinning it was a small, thin, brown man with wavy black hair and features of almost feminine delicacy. During my time in exile, I had learned that such men came from distant India.
They did not often come from distant India, however; in those seven years, I had seen no more than half a dozen. Thus I looked at this fellow with some considerable interest. Perhaps men from India also come to the imperial city from time to time. If they do, however;
they do not come to the grand palace; before my forced journey to Kherson, I had seen never a one.
The man from India also stared at me. I had grown resigned to that from children and strangers, the general run of Khersonites having by then accustomed themselves to my appearance. But the Indian's stare was different from those of many seeing me for the first time: curious, not horrified.
After a bit of staring, that curiosity got the better of him. Picking up his cup of wine, he came over to me as I stood in front of the bar, whereupon, pointing a brown finger at the center of my face, he asked, "Why do you look like that?" His Greek was not very good, and flavored by a singsong accent unlike any I had heard before. He certainly did not know enough of the language to be polite.
"Why do I look like this?" I repeated, to be sure I understood him. He nodded. He being a barbarian, I thought him also a fool, and gave back the sort of answer I should have offered to a Roman twit who put such a question to me: "I lost my nose somewhere, and don't know where to find it."
That got a laugh from the drinkers who heard me. The little man from India, though, nodded again, as if what I had said made perfect sense. "If you want," he said, "I build you new one."
"Oh, splendid," I said. "Will you make it of clay, so that I can paste it onto my face?" I won another laugh with that sally. I laughed myself, bitterly. One winter, the second or perhaps the third I was in Kherson, I had taken a knife and carved a nose out of wood, taking pains to let no one, not even Myakes, know what I was about. Rather than pasting it to my face, I had attached it by means of a cord tied round my head. When it was done, I carried it off to a rain puddle (again making sure no one saw me), donned it, and examined my reflection. My opinion of the result may be inferred from the fact that I never wore it again.
Once more, however; the man from India, rather than giving up or growing angry- as I was certainly beginning to do- replied as if to a serious question: "Oh, no, very much no. I make from flesh of you."
He wore a tunic not much different from mine. Instead of a belt, though, he had a rope around his middle, with a flat wooden box dangling from it in place of the usual leather pouch. From the box he drew a knife that reminded me of the one the executioner in Constantinople had used to try to slit my tongue.
Had I been back at the grand palace, anyone daring to produce a weapon in my presence would have met a quick end at the hands of the excubitores, or perhaps a slow end at the hands of the executioners. His intention in so doing would have mattered not at all; the act would have sufficed and more than sufficed.
But I was in a smoky tavern in Kherson. My hand went to the knife I wore on my own belt, but I did not so much as pull it from its sheath, waiting instead to learn what he would do or say. "Make from flesh of you," he repeated, and, with the knife as pointer, sketched a flap of skin on his forehead, saying, "Do cutting here, you see- you understand cutting?" He knew how limited his Greek vocabulary was.
"I understand," I told him. "You are speaking of surgery."
"Surgery," he agreed happily. "Is word I am wanting, oh very yes. Do cutting here, I say, and it go down overa160…" He pointed to the hole where my nose had been. "Make more cutting." He ran his thumb along the bottom of his own nose. "Sew together, wait for heal, you have again nose. They no do this here?"
"They do not do this here, no." Even in my own ears, my voice sounded far away. To have a nose againa160… I had dreamt of having a nose again, but knew too well how dreams vanish on waking. My hand moved to the scars- smooth now, and painless, from the passage of years- around my mutilation. "Would it be as good a nose as the one I once had?"
Without a moment's hesitation, he shook his head. "No. You still be ugly. You not be very, very ugly no more, oh very yes you not." No, he did not have enough Greek for politeness. As when he took out the knife, though, I remained unoffended. His attitude bespoke a certain basic truthfulness.
I found more questions: "How is it you know how to perform this surgery? Have you done it before?"
"Do it three times, me." He held up three fingers, in case I had not followed him. "How I know how? My brother- is right word, brother?- he do this times many. Hea160… baidyas." This, it turned out, was, as best I can set it down in Greek characters, the Indian word for physician, the small brown man being unable to remember its Greek equivalent, if indeed he ever knew it before I said iatros. "I do you?" he asked.
As he had not before, I did not hesitate now. "Yes, you do me," I said. At that time, in that place, what had I to lose? He could not very well have made me uglier than I already was. And if I had not died of fever when my nose and tongue were cut, I doubted I should perish of it from what, as I could see, would be a lesser infliction of the knife.
Then he revealed he was indeed a trader. I had shown myself too eager. The glow that came into his eyes had nothing to do with the lamps and torches illuminating the tavern. "What you give me to do this?" he asked.
"What do you want?" I asked, suddenly cautious. As Emperor, I had dickered with the Arabs over tribute, but, till I came to Kherson, that was my only experience with the fine art of haggling. Exile had broadened my knowledge of an art for which an Emp eror had but limited use; even so, I knew I was less acquainted with it than a man who had made his living by it from childhood would have been. I tried to distract him by asking an unrelated question: "What's your name?"
"Auriabedas," he answered; that, again, is as close as I can come to rendering it into Greek letters. He was not distracted. "Is gold good in this part of world," he said, a tribute to the quality of our Roman nomismata I could have done without at that moment. He held up a hand, showing thumb and all fingers. "You give five- this many- of gold."
"Five?" I clapped a hand to my forehead. "I am not a rich man." A humiliating thing for the Emperor of the Romans to have to say, but true. "I can give you two." I did not know how much money Myakes had, nor what he could spare.
Auriabedas's fine features assumed a look of tragedy that might have suited him for one of Euripides' dramas. "Is not enough, oh my no," he said. "You not pay five, you stay very very ugly, oh my yes."
"Three, then," I said. "I tell you, I am not made out of gold."
"Five," Auriabedas repeated. He had not much Greek, but, being a canny merchant, had made certain he knew the numbers in our language. "You no want pay, I no want cut." He looked at me. "You no want pay, maybe I say ten soon."
We were two nomismata apart. With a nose, even one that left me uglier than I should have been had my own encountered a club, I could deny I was physically imperfect and hence debarred from the Roman throne. Without a nose, I had no prayer of raising enough support to return to Constantinople; years of bitter exile had proved as much to me. Was I to throw away my chance to regain the throne in a quarrel over a couple of nomismata?
"Five," I said, hoping Myakes had five nomismata to his name.
Auriabedas beamed at me. "I fix you," he said. "You be ugly, but you not have to fuck in dark like I bet now." He cocked his head to one side, seeing if that shot went home- as indeed it did. Not since arriving at Kherson had I taken a woman in broad daylight.
"Come to the monastery tomorrow," I told him. "I will pay you." If Myakes had not the money, I knew whom to rob.
***
Myakes proved to have the money. He put it in my hands. The only question he asked was, "This fellow's not a mountebank?"
"I don't think so," I said. "If he were, he would boast more about how wonderful he was and how he'd never had any trouble with this surgery and how everyone to whom he's ever set a knife has come out of it handsome as a pagan god. A man who tells me straight out I'll still be ugly after he cuts strikes me as an honest man."
Having weighed that, Myakes nodded. "Maybe you're right, Emperor. Sounds like you've got a decent chance, anyways."
One thing more he did not- would not- say. To let him know I understood it without his words, I said it for him, as it had occurred to me the night before: "Besides, being a
s I am, what do I have to lose?" His jaw worked. He glanced down at the floor of the xenodokheion. But when his eyes returned to mine, he nodded once more. If I was to be Emperor again, I had to have a nose.
I had not told Auriabedas at what hour to come to the monastery. From sunrise on, I paced back and forth, nervous as a cat trying to watch three mouseholes at the same time. I was beginning to wonder if he would come when, a little past noon, he did. "You go outside," he said, pointing. "Need very much see what I do."
Out we went, Myakes walking a pace or two behind us, sizing up the man from India. When he did not say anything or try to dissuade me from my course, I concluded he had decided, as I had, that the fellow at least thought he knew what he was doing.
Auriabedas sat me down on a large stone. The wind was blowing off the sea, so the stink of fish was missing from the air. By then, I noticed its absence more than its presence. Auriabedas gave me a small jar. "Drink," he said, undoing the stopper. "Wine and poppy. I cut, you hurt not so much."
I drank. The stuff had a muzzy taste to it. After a while, the world began to look dimmer than it had, an effect the poppy has on the eyes. I yawned. I felt sleepy, detached, almost floating away from myself.
From his little wooden case, Auriabedas drew the knife he had shown me in the tavern; needle and thread; some linen rags for bandages; a couple of hollow wooden tubes, each one thicker than my little finger; and, absurdly, a pen-and-ink set. He leaned forward, touching me with surprising delicacy to measure the exact size of the wound he aimed to repair. Then, inking his pen, he drew on my forehead the shape of skin he intended to cut out and fold over the hole in the center of my face.
"It looks like you're drawing a leaf," Myakes told him, he being able to see the shape I was trying to discern from sense of touch alone.
"Leaf, oh yes," Auriabedas said. "For center of nose bottom and for sides. You understand?" He touched the wings of flesh around his nostrils to show what he meant. Then he looked at Myakes, seeming troubled as he did so. "I cut. I hurt. I make pain. You are understanding this, oh yes? I need mans to hold. Not one man. Two mans, three mans, maybeso more mans. Not have here."
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