The Kingdom of the Wicked

by Anthony Burgess

‘I’m standing before Caesar’s judgement seat, where I have a right to be judged. I have done no wrong to the Jews – this you know well. If I’m a wrongdoer and have committed some crime worthy of death – well, I resist neither the charge nor the execution. But if none of these things of which I’m accused are true – then no man can hand me over to these accusers. My appeal is to Caesar.’

  ‘You say you’re a Roman citizen. Centurion, is that confirmed in the records?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Very well. You’ve appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you shall go. Wait,’ as the Jews started crying to heaven. ‘Less noise there. This is a court of justice. I hadn’t finished, had I? You shall go to Caesar when it’s sufficiently clear to me what precisely this whole case is about.’ The Jews relaxed: there was still a chance of putting the knife in. ‘Take him away. Clear the court.’

  What image of Caesar possessed Paul’s still provincial mind is not at all clear: probably some gaunt figure cruel but constant as the north star, lifting a judicial finger towards Olympus, in billowing toga and goldsmith’s laurel crown, unaware that conspirators were ready to strike. The real Caesar, pretty but pimpled, was, in that Neronian time which does not quite correspond with Pauline time, marauding in mask and green wig with some of his old schoolfellows in the Suburra district of Rome, among the shops and brothels that lay between the Vicus Longus and the Vicus Patricius. He was, in a sense, trying to escape into a happy adolescence from a matricidal guilt which would not leave him. Rome congratulated itself on the removal of a figure made more rather than less sinister by her undoubted beauty, and Rome guessed where responsibility for that removal lay. Eventually Rome would, when it was convenient, speak of the second most abhorrent crime in the calendar; at present it rejoiced in the liquidation of a monster whose monstrous enactments had been unmitigated by masculine compassion, masculine lethargy, masculine rationality. Rome’s citizens slept sound, but Rome’s ruler woke sweating. He heard her voice calling him at night; by day he saw her momentarily resurrected in audiences at the theatre, making him forget his lines when acting or, when singing, croak. He was beginning to learn also that one murder always leads to others: her assassins had, in their turn, to be assassinated and the new knifers knifed. He saw that murder could not properly be delegated unless he wanted the whole world to be killed. He was led, which was tiresome, to the study of poisons and the acquaintance of that Locusta (here in this very district of Suburra) whom his mother had vicariously employed to his own ungrateful aggrandisement.

  Gaius Petronius, of course, had praised the device of the leaden galley as most artistic, deplored its failure, accepted the subterfuge of an imagined treason as inferior drama but legitimate, if banal, improvisation. He dismissed the bad dreams and waking apparitions as what he termed, in his refined Greek, mere epiphenomena, comparing them with the tiresome ghosts that encumbered the tragedies of Seneca. He chattered too much and Nero had sent him away on a long paid holiday to Athens, there to prepare the way for his master’s participation in the singing contests. In the meantime, nightly raids on shops and brothels in the company of the yelping friends of his youth. Panting after the beating-up of a grocer who had just been shutting up his emporium for the night, they turned a corner and found a closed fish market still open. They had an enjoyable time running after the shop assistants with their own knives for gutting and scaling, flailing each other with sea bass and octopus, slipping and recovering on the slimy floor, whooping and roaring. When the apparent owner of the market appeared, calm, indulgent, even smiling, a huge flounder in his arms like a sleeping child, they paused in their play: they were meeting a reaction past experience had not led them to expect. The man, dark, broad, in early middle age, went up to the disguised Nero and tried to hand the flounder to him, saying:

  ‘Hail, Caesar. A gift from Neptune to the ruling divinity of Rome.’

  ‘How do you know who I am?’

  ‘The imperial light shines, despite that elegant mask, from your worship’s countenance. You smell of divinity as this flounder smells of – whatever it smells of. On second thoughts, it’s past its first youth. I have fresher fish within. Already in the pan, with garlic, sweet butter, cloves and capers.’

  ‘You dare to invite the Emperor to supper?’

  ‘Humble duty, sir. The pride of a subject. I can bring in dancing girls. Or boys, if you prefer. Naked.’

  Wigged Nero smirked at the man. ‘So there’s money in fishmongering, is there?’

  ‘Money in a lot of things, your celestial goodness. I’ve come back to what I started as out of a certain nostalgia. I plan to make a monopoly of the Roman fish trade – fresh fish, rushed from the coast in cool tanks, sold cheap and hence sold quickly. I already have a monopoly of the Sicilian horse trade. Money, yes. But to be spent, sir. I hate hoarding. I like life. Strong flavours, if your Olympian sagacity knows what I mean. Fish blood is thin, but some blood is as thick as cassia honey. The juices of life, sir – blood and semen. Let them flow.’

  ‘The Emperor,’ Nero said with mock dignity, ‘is pleased to consider you a man after his own heart. Your name?’

  ‘Ofonius Tigellinus, at the Emperor’s service. A euphonious name, would your holiness not agree? Euphonious Ofonius. Tigellinus the little tiger. Ever ready to give your supreme imperial divinity most earthly pleasures. An Epicurean is what I am, if I may put this business on a philosophical level.’

  ‘With no love for the Stoics?’

  ‘Stoics? Seneca and his crew? I spit on this fishy sawdust. Hypocrites, I’d say. Pretending to virtue and practising secret vices. I hate the hole in the corner. Let’s laugh in the sun.’

  ‘Ofonius Tigellinus, I can smell that frying fish from here.’

  ‘Good, isn’t it, sir? It’s the garlic. Nothing like garlic.’

  It was on the Vicus Longus that Aquila had his shop and, behind the shop, the living quarters where, with his wife Priscilla as hostess, he sometimes gave hospitality to fellow Jews. They had made money in Corinth but were glad to be back in Rome. Except that these days, nights rather, it was unwise to go out much. They could hear the loud bravoing of the youthful wreckers and wondered when their turn would come. But there was nothing to wreck except a bare workshop, and the shutters Aquila put up were of hard pine with metal bars. Aquila said now, hearing whoops and smashing:

  ‘The times we’re living in, eh? You need somebody to shout out against it. Like your old friend, Caleb.’ For Caleb was there with his wife Hannah and their son Yacob, also Sara, who had that day received a letter from her Roman husband telling her about Caleb’s old friend, and Ruth, who was now ripe enough for a husband. They were a handsome party. Hannah, who in Gentile company sometimes gave her name as Fannia, was the orphan daughter of a moneylender whom one of his senatorial clients had indicted and convicted on a charge of defiling a statue of Vesta. She had been quick to learn cynicism from Sara, who trusted neither God nor man and had a slight ancestral contempt for the pretensions of Rome: for all that, both ladies could pass as Roman patricians whom a sun more southerly than Rome’s had touched. Caleb, whom Rome’s sun had made swarthier with the years, caught Aquila’s reference and said:

  ‘Preaching wouldn’t get him far here. When there’s a bad smell you run away from it, you don’t try to hide it with civet.’

  ‘You can get used to a bad smell and call it roses.’ They had both somehow got off the point. ‘Like you with blood.’

  ‘Blood honestly spilt. Nobody orders a gladiator to open his veins. Blood’s his trade.’

  ‘How about the Britons?’

  ‘Yes. That’s giving me a few bad dreams. Untrained men and boys being hacked to pieces. But the crowd loves it.’

  ‘Because,’ Priscilla said, bringing out some of their store of Corinth raisins which seemed to last for ever, ‘the Emperor does. Corruption always starts at the top. Why don’t you get out of it?’

  ‘And do what? I’ve a living to earn.’

  ‘You see ho
w it works out, Caleb,’ Aquila said. ‘You start off by thirsting for Roman blood – oh, in a good cause, may God bless the Zealots. You end up by accepting the shedding of any blood at all – Roman, British, Syrian, anything.’

  ‘We’re fed full of blood,’ Priscilla said.

  ‘Saul’s people,’ Caleb said. ‘Paul’s, I mean – they drink it. And they eat flesh.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Hannah said. ‘Let’s change the subject.’

  ‘Now you talk like a scandalmongering Roman,’ Aquila said. ‘Look, neither Priscilla nor I is a Christian yet. But I made a bargain with Paul. If ever he got to the Tiber, I said, he can plunge us into it. Both of us. What I’m trying to say is that it’s the body and blood of Christ they eat, but it’s in a different form. Bread and wine. It’s a very subtle and intelligent idea. You eat the soter and he becomes part of yourself.’

  ‘And then,’ Caleb said coarsely, ‘you void him.’

  ‘You’re not with your circus friends now,’ Hannah said. ‘Can’t we talk about Octavia’s new hairstyle or something?’

  ‘Religion,’ Sara said, ‘is not merely useless. Religion is dangerous.’ Aquila comically groaned, having heard this from her before. ‘To get through the day without a headache is the important thing and to breathe a sigh of relief that you’ve made the long journey to your pillow.’ The noise of juvenile disruption had been still for some short time. Now it began again.

  ‘It sounds as though they’re—’ Priscilla began. ‘Oh, no.’ For there was loud fisting on the shutters of the shop, yells to open up, a grinding that suggested that crowbars were at work on the iron binding of the stout pinewood. Caleb’s neck seemed to have thickened by a good two inches. He said:

  ‘You and I, Aquila, are going up on the roof. I get very tired of the Romans sometimes.’

  ‘And what do you propose we do on the roof?’

  ‘That tub of yours should be full of rainwater by now.’

  ‘Oh, no. It won’t stop them, you know, what you seem to have in mind. They’ll only come back again.’

  ‘I think I can manage that tub by myself.’ And Caleb made for the stairway, more of a fixed ladder, that led to the loft. ‘You stay there, Yacob.’ He raised the hatch and found himself under Roman stars. Below, to the right, the yells and hammering continued. The wooden tub was only half full, but his muscles strained to the lifting of it. He carried it to the parapet, panted, paused, looked below. Stupid boys of the patrician class, one of them in a green wig. He tilted the tub on to them with care. There were screams and threats, round holes of mouths howling up at him. He picked up the emptied tub and raised it. He threw it down at the green wig and struck. The wig came off and its owner circled like a drunk howling before he fell. His companions, much concerned, bent over him. One of them looked up at the roof and cried:

  ‘Do you know what you’ve done? You fool, do you realise what you’ve done?’ Caleb made a coarse noise with the back of his throat much used by gladiators to express contempt and loathing, wiped his wet hands on his buttocks, and then went down back to the company. He did not hear his victim, who had merely been stunned, emerge from blackness crying ‘Hic et ubique, mater?’

  Nor, some weeks later, did he recognise that recovered victim in the Emperor who paid a courtesy visit to the performers in the games. Caleb, calling himself Metellus, stood to attention with the men he had helped to train when the pretty pimpled young man, no longer a boy, came down from the imperial box in his purple to the performers’ well which debouched into the arena. From the arena came the noise of Rome seated, chewing sausages, waiting for blood. A number of exotic captives, not yet fully aware that they were to shed blood to please Rome, lay and sat around, pale-skinned and fairer of hair than the Emperor, unresponsive to the games editor’s barks that they should jump to their filthy feet in Caesar’s presence. Caesar was much taken with a freckled boy of about fourteen years who stood bewildered by noise, fuss and his own ignorance; he embraced him lovingly. ‘What do you think, Tigellinus?’ he said. ‘Much too pretty to be turned into mincemeat, wouldn’t you say?’

  Where, Caleb wondered, was the prefect Burrus? Another one sent into exile for yawning during an imperial recitation? The man addressed as Tigellinus wore no uniform but he seemed to have come into a kind of praetorian authority.

  ‘Caesar is too soft-hearted. Caesar’s subjects like to see young flesh torn to tatters. You,’ he said to Caleb, ‘what’s your name?’

  ‘Metellus.’

  ‘If you’re Metellus I’m Cleopatra. Does this one know enough daggerwork to make it look like a fight?’

  ‘He’s a child. He doesn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘He’ll have armour on, won’t he?’

  ‘They don’t understand what armour is. And what chance is he going to have with Tibulus there?’ Nero beamed at Tibulus, a chunk of handsome stone from Liguria, more massive than supple, ponderous to kill and too stupid to feel pain. The games editor said:

  ‘He’ll hold back, Caesar. At least five feints before he comes in for the kill.’

  ‘Just like that,’ Caleb said hotly. ‘The kill. And this boy doesn’t understand what’s happening. He can’t speak Latin and we can’t speak British.’ He made a coarse noise at the back of his throat much used by gladiators to express contempt and loathing. The Emperor was charmed by the sound, which he did not seem to have heard before.

  ‘They’re only animals,’ the games editor said. ‘Great Caesar, we wait on your pleasure.’ So the Emperor and his entourage climbed back to the imperial box and air unpolluted by rage, sweat, fear and kindred emanations. The Empress, stupid bitch, was there. She rose on Nero’s entrance and, as he did, remained standing to bow to the loyal roar of the crowd. The crowd was huge: sure sign of a prosperous Empire, this massive afternoon leisure. The hydraulis or water organ was footed and growled chthonian thunder. It was the voice of a coarse and pampered citizenry wearing the collective blue cap of a flawless placid heaven. The weak voice of Vergil’s ghost called them to collective virtue, but they wondered what team Curgil or Purvil had played for. Nero smirked and bobbed and said aloud but unheard of them: ‘Filthy inartistic lot, what do they know of the agony of forging flawless hendecasyllables?’ Then he sat. Britannicus came in late, mildly drunk from his complexion. Nero frowned, Britannicus beamed. When the bewildered Britons came on, hefting unfamiliar weapons against (at first) prancing playful professional opponents, he beamed less. He had a kind of proprietorial concern with these pallid naked northerners. ‘A mockery,’ he was heard to cry. ‘They fought well in their own way. They’re still fighting well and rightly after we’ve raped and beaten and burnt them.’ Nero heard all this treasonous talk with pleasure. He saw bare Britons hack unhandily, hacked back efficiently when the general howl for blood grew loud. Bare bloody Britons lay in blood and sand. Then the freckled boy of fourteen was pushed on, looking at his dagger with the puzzlement of one who handles his first lizard. Tibulus gave stolid acknowledgement of the crowd’s welcome, which was to say he looked at the crowd much as the boy looked at his dagger. The boy, assuming he had to use his dagger against this one here, stuck it into his arm. A trickle of Roman blood primed a roar of patriotic affront, dirty little foreign bastard, even babes in arms in that northern mound of dogturds are trained to be treacherous to our brave boys. Tibulus watched the red drops trickle with the sincere interest the elder Pliny might bring to a march of fire ants, then he swished his sword terribly to the mob’s delight. The boy now performed what this mob took to be a barbaric filthy wardance round and round the brave Roman and, which was totally against the rules of fair play, nicked him in the buttocks not once but twice. Nero was surprised not to hear Britannicus crying against the current; he looked round and saw that Britannicus was no longer there. Tibulus stood blinking at the dancing boy, then he downed with his sword at the lad’s dagger. The lad seemed happy to be rid of it but seemed also to wonder whether, in the rules of a sport he was beginning dimly to
understand with the crowd’s help, he ought not perhaps to pick it up from where it lay at Tibulus’s feet. He decided instead to run away from Tibulus’s sword, which flashed unpleasantly in the sun at him, but this, according to the crowd’s rage, was not in the rules either. Running, anyway, he stumbled over a British corpse, disclosed a tearful and impotent anger, and appeared ready to be hacked, that was the crowd’s evident but mysterious need, best get it over. It was then that Britannicus appeared in the arena and stopped the fight. At first the crowd did not know who he was and they howled down what he was trying to say. Then, to the horrid amazement of the Emperor, Britannicus sang.

  Sang. Sang. Opened his throat and sang, in a clear and altogether audible and apparently trained tenor, two or three wordless measures which had the effect on the crowd of a minatory trumpet. The crowd hushed and heard what followed. ‘I am Britannicus, son of the divine Claudius. Where, I ask, is the ancient Roman spirit of mercy to a brave enemy? I fought the Britons. I helped conquer them. It is enough. Let them not be humiliated as well.’ And, as Nero had done previously but in the impulse of a very different velleity, he took the boy in his arms. The fickle mob howled its joy. You could never trust the mob. Caligula, Nero thought, was right in wishing the Roman people to have but one throat and himself the satisfaction of cutting it. After, that was, the duty of slashing more particular throats.

  Any mob likes to howl, though it does not always know why it is howling, any more than a dog knows why it bays at the moon. The Jewish mob, away in Jerusalem or, having transferred itself segmentally to the mainly Gentile port, as near as it could get to his cell in Caesarea, still howled at Paul, having forgotten or never having known precisely why. It was time for the new procurator to be himself sure why this bald-headed one in chains had incurred both high and low displeasure, and what relevance this had to Roman governance.

  He was lucky to receive about this time a courtesy visit from King Herod Agrippa II and his sister Bernice. For this son of the dead and unlamented monarch of Judaea knew all about the Jewish law, so it was said. He had been ruler of Chalcis, which lay between Lebanon and Antilebanon, and afterwards took over the tetrarchies which Gaius Caligula had granted to his father before his elevation to the greater throne. Nero, in his early conscientious days, had added a few scraps of territory around the Galilean lake and, in gratitude, the little king had changed the name of his capital from Caesarea Philippi to Neronias. Bernice, or Berenice (that being the original or Macedonian form of the name), was a pretty young widow who had been married to her uncle Herod of Chalcis. There was a fair number of avuncular espousals in the Herod family, and it is curious that nobody thundered against them, the Jews being hot against violations of allowable marital limits, while the Roman Senate, not a notably moral body, had howled against Claudius’s proposal to marry his niece, until, that is, his niece had stopped their howling with an assassination or two.