Colosseum

by Simone Sarasso

  After his third cup of wine, Marcius gets to talking about the sea, and after that there is no stopping him. Verus would like to open up to him, tell him he is worried about the direction his life is taking inside the belly of that monster, but Marcius does not listen. Like shrimps on a skewer, one tale follows another, fishing trips and sea battles. The old sailor allows his tales to stew in the warmth of the wine and the cool of the night air.

  Priscus is wary: he has sensed for some time that Draco has his eye on him and his friend. More and more often they find themselves running into him in the underground passageways, or talking of muscles, violence, and brute force.

  “You know there’s no need to be embarrassed…for being a slave or for the trade you have chosen. Gladiators are gods on Earth and you, if this plague had not started, would surely have found your place among the gods.”

  Priscus knows very well what the slimy bastard is hinting at, and cuts him short, trying not to show too much disrespect: “I did not choose this life. It is not my fault if I have been trained to kill…”

  Draco normally nods understandingly. But all the while he has that same look in his eye, both distracted and heedful at the same time, the same look Ezius the physician had the first time he squeezed Priscus’s balls when they first joined the barracks.

  Draco does not need to place his fingers where he should not in order to try the wares. A quick glance suffices; he grew up on the street. And on the street there is nowhere to hide.

  The surprise comes at the end of the first month. As usual, Verus is totally unprepared.

  He is no fool; the carpenters’ looks and sculptors’ smiles have been telling him for days now that something is amiss. The clink of coins in pockets becomes deafening every time he and Priscus cross the site. But it is only when they arrive in front of the Cage that Draco makes his move.

  He is surrounded by malevolent thugs. The terraces are already crowded for the big event.

  The Cage is a gigantic iron structure, originally used to hold blocks of wood pressed together until the glue between them has dried. As the work went on however, the Cage was left empty more and more often, its imposing bulk dissuading anyone from trying to move it from where it had been abandoned. For a time the few hens scratching around the site had used it as a refuge, but the harmless fowls were soon replaced by game cocks fitted with milled-iron spurs. In the Cage, though, there is enough room for twenty people to stand with arms outstretched, one behind another, and the underground fight fans were quick to realize that the space was too big for chickens. Or even dogs. So the Christians starting getting inside the enclosure there to beat each other to a pulp.

  The Christians are good fighters; there is a small group of them among the workers at the Amphitheater. Very quiet, keep themselves to themselves. A shame their God does not much care what happens to them. The plague has taken half the community, spreading the pestilence to women and children beyond the stadium walls.

  And so in the space of a few weeks the betting king Draco has found himself short of fresh meat. Without a single fighter worthy of the name.

  That is why he is there, standing in front of the Cage with an escort that would turn Leonidas of Thermopylae pale. That is why he gets straight to the point with Verus and Priscus, without any foreplay: “Are you ready to fight?”

  Verus tries to slip away, but one of the thugs grabs hold of his arms. The Briton pulls free and smashes his nose with a head-butt, but another of the guard dogs is faster and holds seven inches of sharpened metal against his jugular.

  Priscus spits on the floor.

  This is what you call a damned stalemate.

  Around the Cage, the crowd throbs with excitement.

  The head thug walks up to the two slaves: “Perhaps you’d prefer to leave the site this very day? Up to you, my friends!”

  Verus and Priscus are itching to snap Draco’s neck. To close their hands around his windpipe and Adam’s apple, squeeze until they hear the pop of cartilage. But that would be the end of the line for them, and they know it. In that murky air of dust and depravity.

  Verus looks Priscus in the eye and grips his shoulder: “Strength and honor, brother.”

  “Strength and honor,” answers Priscus.

  A moment later they are in the Cage.

  One against the other, like wild beasts.

  Verus takes the head-butt with a grunt. Priscus has never done things by half measures and he is not the sort to hold anything back in a fight. The Briton’s eyes fill with blood. In the Cage you take each other apart with whatever you can: rocks, sticks, a butcher’s hook that opens up slashes in the flesh as wide as thick sausages. The two of them go at it with every trick they know.

  First with sticks, and the son of the Island comes out of it pretty well. More than once Priscus ends up in a corner, on the defensive. Then with rocks, their daily bread for months on end.

  But when the aim of the game is smashing heads in with sharpened stones, there is no way to alter the final outcome. The flesh can only go on lunging and dodging for so long before muscles interlock in a suffocating dance, a symphony of elbows, knees and blows below the belt. Until the rocks fall to the ground and the rasping breaths of the fighters tell them it is time to start again.

  Soon enough the slaves are wielding the meat hooks, exhibiting everything they learned at Ircius’s house. With every lunge the crowd roars, the red that spatters the ground from the torn bodies is rain in the desert. The blood brings them back to life, more than a cock’s crow at daybreak. The rabble grunts and foams at the mouth, a lamed beast.

  Verus throws all he has into it. Fire pumps through his veins, slashed by the iron. But Priscus is ice and will, and gives nothing away to his adversary.

  Both know it would be a bad idea to kill the other.

  But staying alive is no joke for men who have studied as gladiators, trained to see things through.

  Priscus pushes things to the limit when he finds the chance to land another head-butt on Verus from below. He decides not to, but they both know who has really won.

  Priscus pretends to lose his weapon in the counterattack and Verus throws his own to the ground, accepting the adulation of the raucous crowd as a tribute to the honor that is not his.

  The Briton feels terrible. There is nothing worse than to win by cheating.

  Priscus tells him not to worry. He does so with a wink; no more is needed between the two of them.

  The farce goes on, brother.

  The farce is our home.

  But Verus is boiling with rage, unable to convince himself. He charges headlong into his friend’s belly, lifting him from the ground and slamming him up against the iron mesh of the Cage. Metal scratching the blond man’s flesh, the scrape of teeth and gums. A piece of incisor goes flying, smashed away by the pressure and counterblow.

  He has the upper hand but his fury keeps him from thinking straight and Priscus punishes him with a double hammer to the back: he joins his hands and brings them down on his companion, who falls to the ground gasping.

  Verus tries to get back up but the other silences him with a kick to the lungs, forcing him to puke his guts up and, finally, to calm down a little. Then he throws him a final glance and commands in a cold, flat voice: “Stay down. The night is still young.”

  Priscus raises his arms and a roar acclaims him the winner.

  Money changes hands and a sack of silver coins ends up decorating his belt, carefully secured in place by Draco himself.

  The Gaul bows his head and returns to Verus, helps him to get up and half carries him to the makeshift infirmary a short distance away. While the field doctor—a docker by trade who, given the circumstances, does what he can with a scalpel and cautery—sews up the offending wounds, Verus turns to his battered companion: “So that was how it was supposed to go, then? Our first
match in the arena and we’re both still alive…”

  You’re alive because I decided to keep you that way. But the other gladiators won’t be so generous, my friend.

  But Priscus keeps this thought to himself and merely smiles.

  They clasp their hands together firmly, and in the end their sutures are not so painful.

  “I would say we’ve earned our damned names on a tablet,” growls Verus as the field doctor’s needle repairs his flesh, one stitch at a time.

  Priscus chuckles as he thinks back to a prize now light years away, a life lost along with all the others in the belly of the trash heap the world knows as Rome.

  Where has the future they dreamt of gone, the life they thought they deserved? What has happened to the Ludus Argentum? How is it that all their hopes have slid down into this miserable abyss?

  But what is more, what the fuck happened to Decius Ircius?

  Good question. The lanista is panicking.

  He has only been back in the Eternal City a few hours and he is already risking his skin.

  Damn it, these guys do not mess around.

  “Drop the pouch or I’ll gut you, little lord…”

  Despite the fact he has not had to make daily use of it for years, he still handles his razor with a certain skill. But the razor is no use. The ruffians outnumber him; to be sure, he underestimated them.

  There are twelve of them but from the way they growl and drool they look more like the hordes of Pluto himself. Determined to drag their enemy down to the underworld, whatever the cost.

  Rome has changed; Ircius has underestimated her too.

  The disease is loosening its grip, but has left its mark on the withered flesh of its denizens. Those still standing have lost so much, too much to leave any room for negotiation.

  Public order is being gradually restored, as Imperial centurions bring each neighborhood to heel, day after day, reminding the wretched scavengers who is in charge. But anger cannot be brushed away with sword thrusts and public works. The wounded heart of the citizenry struggles to get back on the straight and narrow, and human jackals roam largely unchecked.

  The lanistahas returned to put things in order. Basically he is a man of honor, the type that does not leave things unfinished. Few know he is also a good father, that this is his true nature. He swore an oath to himself that his family would survive, and so it did. Thanks to his money and astuteness he is still alive today, and his wife and children have been taken to a safe place, where they can take shelter and pass the winter far away from the poisonous fumes of the plague-ridden city. When spring arrived, however, Decius began to feel deep down that he must do the right thing. His conscience ate away at him all winter: he asked himself what kind of fate would have befallen the school and its pupils. He imagined the worst, fearing that the flames of chaos had perhaps consumed every last brick of the Ludus Argentum, the place he once called home.

  He breathed a sigh of relief when he found it again right where it should be, albeit infested with tattered-looking thugs, rats, and corpses. At least the walls were still standing. The arena was filled with trash and excrement, and of course there was no trace of the gladiators’ weapons, but at least he could begin again.

  One has to start somewhere.

  So he contacted Ezius, miraculously still alive after having contracted a mild form of the disease. It was he who told Decius that his most faithful sons had stayed to the end, while the cowards had fled immediately. When the lanista confessed his dream of putting the school back on its feet, Ezius looked at him as though he were crazy. But after a few hours and a few cups of the good stuff, slowly sipped to give Bacchus the chance to do his work and clarify the doctor’s thoughts, he too was convinced: Ircius always gets what he wants in the end.

  “What will you do for money?” asked Ezius, seduced by the inebriating flavor of the honey wine.

  “Thank Mercury I was not such a fool as to keep it all in one place. We must rise again, my friend. From the ashes, like the damned phoenix.”

  “And the ludus? Who will clear it out? It’s full of wastrels, the place looks like a leper colony.”

  “Money can work miracles, my old friend. Arms for the dirty work and beatings for the stubborn ones. And if hirelings are not enough, Titus will send his dogs to finish the job. I offer a public service, after all. The Eagle cares more about her citizens’ entertainment than she does their safety.”

  Ezius was forced to nod. The city may have suffered a damaging blow, but in the final analysis not so much had changed since the last time Ircius was here. Certain things are permanent. Dishonor slakes its thirst at the fount of eternal youth.

  “You’ll need an instructor,” the physician pointed out, unable to keep up with the lanista.

  He smiled. “And why do you think I came to see you first? Come on, old friend, give me some names…”

  And so Ezius let out a deep sigh. Despite the noble profession he practices, dealing with the lives—and more of then deaths—of the sick, Ezius Tortonus has remained attracted to the worst side of human nature. He has always had a soft spot for thugs, ever since he was a boy.

  In the early days it was a question of emulation, pure and simple. It entailed slipping away from the watchful eyes of his wet nurses and sneaking into the rough neighborhoods near his home, back when he was a little daredevil with grubby unshod feet and nimble fingers. Growing up, he realized his infatuation with bad boys had changed into something else. He did not want to be like them, he wanted to have them—from sunrise to sunset. So Ezius started visiting certain locales where boys like himself from good families could, in exchange for a reasonable sum, spend a few hours of passion in the arms of some ruffian. He soon understood the risks involved: he ended up falling in love with a different man every month and his pockets were emptier by the day.

  One sunny afternoon his father caught him in the oldest brothel in the Eternal City, the Three Fountains. He let him taste first the lash and then starvation. He cut off his funds after giving him the beating of a lifetime. He told him to find a job. Ezius became a bone-chopper out of desperation, but soon found he had a talent where it came to flesh and blood. And he could once again afford the favors of the worst delinquents in the city. He made himself a single promise, which has kept him going despite the wildness of a lifestyle that has gone on for too many decades: no more love.

  Love, when it smacks of the knife, is always a bad idea.

  Ezius shook off the torpor, his only lover since the disease took without keeping him, and gave his friend a name.

  Ircius made a mental note and got going.

  Two hours later he finds himself face to face with the man in question, an Egyptian with an unpronounceable name who everyone calls Aton, like the sun god in those parts. Who knows why, because there is nothing sunny about him, except for the bright red glaze covering his broken teeth.

  When the lanistaarrived he was keen to make a deal and offer the position to Aton. But the Egyptian has not believed a word of it and has turned up with a team of young, blood-thirsty henchmen.

  “Drop the pouch or I’ll gut you, little lord,” Aton says again without emotion.

  Things are going badly for the king of the Ludus Argentum.

  Very badly indeed.

  Verus and Priscus walk as free men through the belly of a city that has left them alone. Rome smells of ash and stinging nettles. The remains of pyres are everywhere, whitened by quicklime to smother the corpses’ last spasms. Women walk the streets, heads covered, cautious, and stripped of everything but their determination. They pick through the trash, gathering scraps of food left on the ground and placating the cries of their surviving children by offering their breasts, long since dry.

  The city is stirring, with difficulty but with patience too. Never giving up. The faces of the survivors show that the disease has run its course.

  The Gaul and the Briton walk beside one another, close as brothers. Verus is more melanchol
y than usual; Priscus is enjoying the sunset. The son of the Island is the first to talk.

  “How can you say we’re lucky?”

  “We’re alive. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No it isn’t! Damn it, we had it all! We were about to skyrocket—and now look at us. We fight like dogs for a few sestertii to please that bunch of idiots at the site.”

  Priscus shakes his head, places a hand on his friend’s shoulder and forces him to stop. To think about it calmly.

  “What exactly do you mean when you say: ‘We had it all’. Are you talking about the primi pali or having the same rations day in, day out? The humiliation? The grueling training? The chance we might die in every damn match? At least in the Cage we can watch each other’s backs…”

  Verus indulges him and stops, but then begins shaking that big head of his and gesturing. This is what he does when he has to explain something but words are not enough: he uses his hands.

  “We had the chance to be somebody. To become gods.”

  Priscus does not agree. “We weren’t free!”

  “Technically, nor are we now. Our master has gone, but he’s not dead…at least I don’t think he is. And he didn’t sell us either, as far as I know.”

  The Gaul is tempted to give in and tell him he is right, but it is important the damned Briton understands, at least this once. So he insists: “My friend… even the finest racehorse has to wear a bit and saddle.”

  “But when he is first past the post, he’s the winner—and the crowd worships him, Priscus. Do you really not get it, ice man? They gave us the chance to be important. And the plague, the damned bitch, has taken it away forever.”

  The Gaul looks his companion in the eyes. Dark wells down to the bottom of his soul.

  “You are important. To me.”

  Verus blushes. He curses himself when he feels his cheeks flush, but it happens and there is nothing he can do about it. He does not like it when Priscus starts talking this way. Friendship is a great thing and it is normal that two men feel bound by adversity, but the more time passes, the more Verus gets the impression that Priscus feels the bond between them is something else. Something special. The kind of union that takes root between soldiers in battle for whom every sunrise might be their last, or the bond that develops between student and teacher, so strong that they intoxicate one another, that they become one. Literature is full of male love, beginning with Achilles’ passion for Patroclus, or Jupiter’s for the handsome Ganymede. It is a well known fact that men can cultivate a greater understanding with their own sex than they can with women. After all, women are only good for churning out little brats and breaking your balls. At least, that is what they say.