The unlucky victim tries to run but he stumbles over. The faster boy is on top of him, stabbing his throat with a clumsy blow.
Well done.
The assistant gives a lewd smile as he runs over to offer his congratulations. He asks for the gladius back and the boy hands it over without a second thought: “Return the weapon and await your reward in silence.” The announcer chooses another from the group and hands him the sword.
“Kill the criminal! Emperor Titus commands it!” he tells him, pointing at the bright-eyed survivor.
So that is how it works.
They will murder each other.
And it will go on like that until only one is left, who will be given a choice between getting ripped apart by the beasts or, if he prefers, taking his own life. The massacre is over sooner than expected, the long succession of corpses forming an orderly pile until a single man remains.
The last survivor does not hesitate to make his choice, throwing himself onto the sharpened gladius.
APPLAUSE.
Killing Roman citizens, however, is another story.
That is what the muscles from the ludi are needed for.
The residual group of prisoners is fairly large, but they will not all face the gladiators. A few Christians, for instance, will be nailed up. These bastards go crazy for martyrdom, practically crying out for it. And Rome’s assassins give them what they ask. After having hung them up like their God, they even go to the trouble of lighting a fire under their asses. The odor of cooking flesh is nauseating. Verus’s stomach churns.
But there is worse, much worse.
The torment of Orpheus is the fate that befalls three unlucky, hard-faced victims. According to the myth, the curious lover retired into solitude in order to mourn his Eurydice, saved from the underworld and then lost again when the urge to lay his eyes on her before they were out of danger became too strong. After that he was no longer interested in women, despite the great number of honey pots still on offer to him. The maenads, harlots invested with the spirit of the wine god, dressed only in skins and horny from dawn to dusk, could not bear the idea that someone could refuse them and so ripped him to pieces. They tore him, pulling in all different directions.
And here, in the Amphitheater, the equipment is on hand for every kind of wickedness.
The limbs and other parts of the three victims are bound to groups of raging animals, all of them hooded and thrashed into a frenzy. Then a bear is thrown into the mix and he does the rest. When the beasts have finished strewing the arena with bones and guts a team of men arrives to cut them down, followed by another to clean up.
It is all over in half an hour.
In the meantime the group of condemned citizens grows ever weaker and the gladiators stand to one side awaiting their turn, skin reddening and metal armor becoming hotter by the moment.
Before the grand finale, the spectacle reaches a hair-raising level of cruelty.
The lucky prize winner is called Silvia and the announcer even takes the trouble to recount her sad story. Silvia is not some poor wretch, but the wife of a merchant named Sulpicius. A wealthy man, this Sulpicius, dealing in foreign spices, without ever having to leave home. His business was going so well that the master’s physical presence was unnecessary—a dozen or so agentes in his employ traveled through the Empire selling his wares. All that was left for him to do was oversee the loading and unloading of goods at the commercial port down by the river and then come back to his villa to hassle his young wife. Silvia.
The old bastard Sulpicius was fixated with tidiness. If the tunics were not perfectly stacked and arranged by shade—from darkest to lightest—he was apt to fly off the handle and throw his weight around. One day he lost his temper and gave Silvia such a kicking, down where the sun does not shine, that she began to bleed. At the time Silvia was pregnant. She was so badly hurt that she thought she would soon be meeting her Creator—Silvia is a Christian, which certainly does not help matters—and decided to take the filthy son of a bitch with her. So she slipped into the shack where her husband kept his tools and grabbed a knife: not a carving knife, nor one of those magnificent hunting daggers that Sulpicius was obsessed with having delivered to him from the Orient. Nothing like that.
Silvia wielded a coulter in two hands, part of a plow that had been left on a workbench one foggy, sleepy afternoon. A nice, big chunk of iron used for digging up the earth, like a cleaver straight from the hands of Polyphemus or one of his idiotic fucking brothers.
Back in the atrium she found Sulpicius munching his way through something savory, and promptly split his skull in two like a ripe melon. After that she allowed herself the luxury of fainting, imagining that she was already well on her way to paradise.
When she awakened, Silvia was in for a surprise: no singing chorus of celestial hosts, just a throbbing headache and the ferrous smell of iron chains wrapped round her wrists and ankles. Sulpicius was dead, but she was not.
How fucking ironic fate can be.
The one who ended up getting caught in the middle was the baby daughter she was carrying in her belly; come into the world too soon, born alone and dead shortly afterwards, killed by kicks and cold. After the argument, the servants had rushed to patch the woman up and help her to give birth, but one of them alerted the imperial authorities—the master had been killed, after all. And that was why things happened as they did. Silvia was locked up, but a crime such as this deserved a punishment that would serve as an example. This is the reason why they kept her behind bars all winter, so that they could kill her in front of everybody, on the day that nobody would forget for a thousand years.
That day has come, Silvia, and all you can do now is place your trust in your battered, penitent God. Because from the Eagle and the She-wolf you will receive no mercy.
The torment of Pasiphae awaits you.
Silvia is a mere shadow of the woman she was; months in jail have hollowed her out. She looks nothing like the fiery wife of Minos, king of Crete. According to the myth, Poseidon had given the king a fine bull so that he could sacrifice it to him, but the greedy monarch kept the handsome animal for himself, preferring to have it in his herd rather than chopped up on the sea god’s altar, offering up a different beast instead. But offending the gods is never a good idea: they are vengeful, and immortal to boot, which means they have all the time in the world to make men pay.
Poseidon took a while to decide how to get his own back, but in the end he came up with the idea of filling the beautiful Pasiphae’s head with an uncontrollable urge to fuck the bull that her husband had spared so blasphemously. Except it is no easy thing to convince a three-thousand pound beast to lie with a queen. And a little bit dangerous, too. So the cunning Pasiphae disguised herself as a cow, hiding inside a faithful reproduction of a young heifer that had been artfully constructed by a skilled carpenter, and enjoyed the ride. The woman fell pregnant and the unlikely union bore fruit: the unfortunate Minotaur, whose story is known by all.
Just as every spectator in the arena will soon know the sad epilogue of Silvia’s story. Silvia is no longer herself. Verus never met her before that fateful day, but when his gaze meets her sunken eyes, he realizes he does not have a human being before him, but a walking corpse. Skin and bones; after months of fasting her stomach has closed like a vise, preventing her from keeping down even that little that Mother Rome allowed her during the time in prison. Her once proud breasts droop from her body liked rotten fruit, frayed hair sticks to her forehead and her joints protrude horribly.
Silvia is toothless. Someone must have smashed them in at the prison so he could get his blowjobs without running any risks. But her eyes still burn: who knows whether it is the thought of the God she will meet soon enough, or her hatred—simple, crystal-clear hatred for every man on Earth—that has kept her alive.
The structure has been placed at the center of the arena. The two groups, prisoners and gladiators, stand at either side, as impotent as poor old Sulpicius.
There is nothing that can save Silvia from what awaits her. Slaves in crimson tunics place the woman on the wooden scaffold and bind her in place: legs spread apart, back bent at ninety degrees and arms out in front. An old man arrives to open her with a blade, as Silvia screams like a madwoman. Verus is on the point of throwing up. There must be a moral to this story, but he really cannot see it. He vomits on the ground. Priscus caresses his neck with a glance.
The spectators murmur quietly as they watch the scene, shaken by a dirty thrill, lightning through the muddy water.
When he has finished, the old man gives a whistle and four men arrive to cover the poor, skinny body of the woman with a cow hide. Then the old man whistles again. A bucket full of red liquid is brought out: blood from a cow in heat.
The bastard smears the sticky liquid over the mess he has created of Silvia’s flesh and, before he leaves, pours half the bucket on the ground, right between her thighs.
Only then does the bull appear.
And it really is a big one, at the height of arousal. Four assistants are hard-pushed to hold it back. It is black as night, snorting and sniffing heavily: it has already caught the smell of sex. When the assistants let go, it charges on ahead, its excitement mounting.
Martial is watching the show from up on the terraces. As the assistants busied themselves preparing the torture devices, he was noting down every small detail. But he no longer feels like composing a fucking epigram about the affair: how the hell can you write a story like that?
The poet gulps and forces himself to watch. Like everyone else, all around, until Silvia’s cries cease, until the bull has consummated, until the wooden frame bearing the body of a guiltless murderer gives way, until the fall breaks her neck, already left hanging by a thread by the beast’s pounding.
At that point Silvia’s soul ascends to the heavens, flies down to the underworld or goes its own way.
Nothing more than a memory remains of her body.
A doll, broken by the furious play of Emperor Titus.
This, too, is Rome.
Welcome.
The final act of public execution calls for the gladiators’ presence. This is why Titus has had them take the field: they will take care of the convicts, just the same way as the Roman legions do when they go out “exploring”conquered territories. The Emperor wanted the gods of the arena to see the killing up close. Ramrod straight, like Leonidas’ hoplites at Thermopylae, moments before the red-stained chaos is unleashed.
A murderer’s trade is a strange profession, made to measure for those who have lost their minds. And the gladiators are hardened murderers, the worst kind of killers, with no rights and no free will. Some of them, among the ranks of both Ircius and Daimon, get excited at the sight of blood. Others have managed to hang on to some glimmer of light at the bottom of the black well called the human soul, and pray it is over quickly.
But whatever way you slice it, this is how it is, and the time for thinking has just ended.
The Emperor himself stands to give the order. His hand makes the slightest of movements, but the cruel smile painted across his features speaks plainly enough: “Kill these bastards.”
Next to him, his daughter Julia does not take her eyes off Verus and Priscus. She sees them shaking in their iron cases. The young girl has a strange mixture of emotions in her chest. Because that is what Julia is: just a young girl, broken hearted over two men who are sworn to die.
Next to her is another spoilt lover, her uncle Domitian. The blond Roman officer tries to take her hand for the umpteenth time, but she pulls away, tears in her eyes.
She knows what is about to happen.
And there is not a damned thing she can do about it.
Domitian is irritated by his niece’s reaction, sick and tired of her mood swings. He decides to enjoy the spectacle with his arms folded across his chest, and he has an idea for afterwards. The sort of idea that could change the outcome of the match.
Of an entire life.
Down there in the arena, the silence is dried resin. Hard as ancient rock.
The numbers have been whittled down to thirty against thirty, a fair fight, were it not for the fact that the gladiators serving the Eagle are decked out for battle and armed to kill, while their naked opponents can barely stand after forty hours of abuse.
One of Daimon’s brutes charges, skewering a poor man with ashen blond hair.
It is the signal.
The crowd awakens from the stupor of the long drawn-out massacres, rubbing their eyes and rousing themselves for the coming bloodbath. The women chant the names of their favorite champions, men gulp down hot wine, drunken with death but never sated.
The real fighting begins and the condemned react as best they can. At first some try to flee, but there is decidedly more honor in fighting, and then, you never know…Perhaps, if they fight well, the pure heart of the Emperor might be moved to pardon them: that is the last thought of a man in his forties, a well-built fisherman, used to the bite of salt against his skin.
He barely has time to formulate it before Priscus’s blade slices cleanly through his skull, entering through one ear and exiting through the other.
Verus stares at him, appalled.
Priscus’s eyes do not allow for a riposte.
Do what you have to do and stop thinking. This is your life, now.
Verus shakes himself out of his stupor and sets about hammering into the face of a tall, thick-set African.
Around him there is nothing but blood and easy victory. The blades that serve the Empire do their duty silently and with infinite skill. The crowd relishes the spectacle and begins to loosen up, worshipping the gladiators and allowing themselves to be swept up by the hysteria, until their applause begins to filter down to the sand, inundating the standard-bearers of oblivion with their lusty gratitude.
Before they know it, only five are left standing; they huddle bravely together to face the final assault.
Verus and Priscus square up to them, trying to use their shields to push them against the spears of the hoplomachi, who jab their weapons unhesitatingly into the prisoners’ kidneys. But the last convict left, driven to desperation, manages to land a kick against a retiarius, grab his trident away from him and thrust it into his belly. The gladiator cannot believe his eyes and looks down at his mangled guts before floating away down the Styx in the company of Charon.
The survivor slips away from the press of the fight, dodges to one side and runs free. He gives another slap in the face, this time to one of the Thracians from Daimon’s school, slicing one of the gladiator’s fingers clean off with his own sica. At this point, wielding weapons in both hands, he throws himself onto Verus, knocking him to the ground. Ircius’s murmillo is taken by surprise—the survivor is a hundred-handed fury. He scratches the gladiator’s chest with the trident, while the sica strikes his helmet with a spray of sparks. Verus is struggling. He wants to break away, but his heart is pounding faster and faster and his concentration is slipping.
The condemned man is fast, giving it all he has got. He tries to stab Verus with both weapons at once.
The Briton has reached the end of the line, but destiny decides to step in.
The convict is coughing up blood before he has a chance to push the iron into his opponent’s belly. The point of a flattened blade darts out of the man’s open mouth.
Verus backs up a couple of paces before getting to his feet and pulling his helmet off.
Saved.
A moment from the end.
Behind the body of his unlikely enemy glint the eyes of a friend from the past, as cold as Pluto.
Priscus has just saved his ass.
The ice man is back.
Verus runs up to him and embraces him.
“I owe you my life, brother.”
The misunderstandings, the unease, the distance—all that is gone. In moments like this it is the heart that really counts. And Verus’s does not calm itself.
But P
riscus does not melt. He takes back his blade and cleans it on the motionless corpse of the wretch he has just killed.
All around, there is only death: that is the face of tomorrow.
He speaks with the voice of a ghost. It is the first time he has said anything to his beloved in a long time.
“I told you that morning, Verus, what feels like a century ago: life has nothing to do with it. Our pact is with death, that’s what it means to be a gladiator.”
He does not wait for an answer. And in any case Verus would not know how to reply.
In his mouth the bitter taste of time slipping away, the immovable scrape of sand on his soul.
In the Emperor’s box, Titus, who has stayed standing throughout the massacre, enjoys the cheering of the crowd for the heroes of the day.
Verus and Priscus lift their arms to accept the resounding excitement of the bovine mob.
Young Julia’s eyes are filled with tears. She has lost a piece of her life and then won it back again, all in an instant.
She has eyes only for the two of them, down there: ice and fire, they consume her thoughts. She pays no attention to her uncle, a rattlesnake poised for its venomous strike. Domitian has already decided that his vengeance is ready to be served.
Ice cold, just as it should be.
He approaches his brother the Emperor and leans an arm on his shoulder. At the same time he indicates the arena, pointing at Verus and Priscus.
Titus smiles and nods: “Excellent idea.”
Then he gestures to his cupbearer, who sends for the master of ceremonies. A fat, sweat-soaked man with hair combed neatly as a schoolboy arrives, wheezing noisily. The Emperor says in a loud voice: “I wish to speak with Daimon and Ircius immediately!”
Domitian sneers contentedly.
Even Julia shakes herself out of her daydream and turns to look back at her father, eager for an explanation. But the master of the world’s next words seal everyone’s lips: “A private audience.” After which he leaves the box to go below, into the belly of the stone behemoth.
Colosseum Page 28
