Counting the Stars

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘I don’t listen to all that stuff,’ Clodia says, with the small patrician shrug. ‘Whatever I do, people will talk. They always have. It means nothing.’

  Sometimes he wishes she’d had smallpox in childhood, not badly but just enough to mark her so that she wasn’t perfect any more. So that people would glance her way and then pass on, uninterested. Or maybe a minor accident… A broken nose or a scar above her right eye…

  Not that perfection is Clodia’s charm. He’s deluding himself if he thinks a scar would make any difference. Some girls need to be perfect, or their beauty vanishes: those pure, classic ‘white’ beauties mustn’t have a mark on them. But even with a broken nose and smallpox pits on her cheeks, Clodia would find another way of being the woman everybody can’t help wanting.

  Her critics tear her apart. Her eyes are too large – cow eyes. She walks too fast. Her figure isn’t symmetrical enough for beauty. She laughs too loudly. But they can’t take their eyes off her. She’s public property – not anyone’s Clodia, but ‘our’ Clodia. Clodia nostra… Lesbia nostra. In his poems he hides her name without hiding it. The stress and quantity don’t change. Our Lesbia – Lesbia nostra – that Lesbia, that one.

  She’s in everyone’s mouth and everyone’s eyes, but they don’t see what he sees. They see themselves instead: their own doggish greed and the smart little jokes that fall flat when she meets them with a cold stare. People whom she wouldn’t let into her house tell stories about ‘what Clodia’s really like’.

  She has the power of changing to suit anyone’s eyes. If they want to see a great lady, she’ll be blue-blooded and arrogant. If they want a whore she’ll rustle, giggle and snatch at purses. She’ll play in the gutter better than anyone.

  He shifts on his seat. Leaf shadows are falling on him now, through the vines that spread over the pergola. The shadow is cool and sweet, scented with verbena and with those small, tight, dark red roses that open for a day and then die. As he watches, a rose dissolves in a shower of petals.

  He looks down at his stylus and blank writing tablet, and grimaces.

  ‘You’ve got to come to Baiae, my darling. I’m down there for weeks and weeks and I’ll go crazy if you don’t come. He never comes to Baiae. It’ll all be so much easier than it is in Rome. People do turn a bit of a blind eye in Baiae. When we can’t be together, you’ll get on with your writing. You’ll have complete peace.’

  And boating parties, she said, and picnics, and midnight bathing, and expeditions to a little farm where you can milk goats, drink new milk and take away cheeses wrapped in vine leaves.

  ‘I can’t picture you milking a goat, Clodia.’

  ‘You’re so wrong! I was an expert when I was little. We used to be sent off to the country every summer, to my father’s old tutor. He’d been freed and given some land near Formiae. My brother and I milked the goats, teased the bull and climbed every tree for miles around. He was two years younger than me, but he could always keep up with me, he was so tall and strong. We even trod the grapes at harvest. You should have seen my feet – I wore away a whole pumice stone on them before the stains came off.’

  He thinks of her bare feet, treading down the mass of grapes. Her child’s face, sunburned and laughing, before she learned to whiten her skin.

  ‘My brother and I did everything together. If one of us cried, the other cried in sympathy, even if there was nothing wrong.’

  Her words eat at him now. He’s jealous of the years that have gone before he knew her. He’s jealous of everything about her that belongs in other people’s memories, where he can never reach it. Even Pretty Boy Clodius – vain, violent, power-mad Pretty Boy, who won’t be satisfied until he’s running Rome as his personal fiefdom – he can’t be dismissed along with all the other politicians, because he possesses something of Clodia that Catullus will never have.

  ‘Come to Baiae – you’ll have complete peace!’ What a joke. He hasn’t known peace since he met her.

  He’d like everything to dissolve, except for the present tense. Clodia here, now. Clodia belonging to the moment, and to him. Yes, if she were here now, sitting on the cool marble bench, then he could be happy.

  When the next rose fell apart, he would brush its petals out of her hair. He’d like to lose all those years, all those men. Lose them all in a drumbeat of kisses, hypnotic, repetitive, cancelling out everything but their own rhythm.

  da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

  dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

  deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.

  Da mi basia – give me kisses – give me a mille, give me a thousand – then give me a hundred – and then another thousand, a second hundred, and then another thousand with them, and then a hundred –

  da mi da mi da mi

  Like a child following its mother, whining and dragging at her heels. Like a greedy shopkeeper reckoning on his abacus. Give me give me give me. It’s the only thing in the world. It’s what we all desire. Basia. Listen to the sound of it. It makes your lips join and then softly blow apart. Exactly like a kiss.

  Kisses flying like beads flying across the abacus. Centuries of kisses wouldn’t be enough for him.

  da mi basia da mi basia da mi basia Lesbia Lesbia Lesbia Lesbia mea puella

  My girl, he calls her when he’s closest to her, when Clodia Metelli and Gaius Valerius Catullus cease to exist. Their freight of name and reputation sinks to the bottom of the ocean. They are melted into each other, dissolved into basia. Thunder beats in their ears and their eyes are full of darkness. He’s still counting, counting, until all the figures fly apart.

  You ask how many kisses

  Lesbia, how many kisses will be enough?

  Lesbia, count each grain

  of Libyan sand that sifts

  through silphium-rich Cyrene,

  count from Battus’ tomb

  to Jove’s hot-blooded oracle;

  or reckon up the stars

  watching over the hidden

  loves of humans while night is silent:

  that’s how many of your kisses

  would be enough for your possessed Catullus,

  so many that the spies fall silent

  so many that no evil tongue

  can worm its way into them.

  The frame of the pergola thuds. Rose petals rain down on him.

  ‘I could of broke my neck on that blessed step,’ announces Aemilia. ‘You think they’d get a stonemason to fix it, the rent you’ll be paying. A person could break an ankle too, and then where’d you be when you wanted a message? Waiting and waiting, like the girl whose best boy said he’d marry her once he’d given her a good try-out. Oops, mind, you’ve got rose petals all over that – here, let me give it a wipe clean for you.’

  He snatches the writing tablet away before she can rub out his poem. Aemilia has lost her fear of him all too thoroughly, at least when she’s alone with him. In Clodia’s presence she remains subdued. Now she lunges at him again.

  ‘My mistress said I was to tell you on the quiet, when no one else was by.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘This party they’re giving, it’s going to take up most of the day, and half the night, too. They’re having recitations and musicians and dancers –’

  ‘Dancers!’

  ‘Not what I’d call proper dancers. It’s those ones that strike poses according to the lyre, and look as if they’ve got no blood in their bodies.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And I don’t know what else they’re having, once the boats bring the party back. So my lady won’t be able to get away today. She says, why didn’t you accept her invitation?’

  ‘I’m working, Aemilia. I came to Baiae to work.’

  Aemilia flicks a quick glance over his writing tablet.

  ‘I dare say. But she says tomorrow’s all right. There’s a doctor down from Rome who’s good on digestions, and my master’s booked with him the whole morning. He suffers terribly with his digesti
on. So she’ll meet you up by the old Marcian villa. Which I don’t agree with,’ adds Aemilia, as if to herself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘As soon as she’s had breakfast. You know the place, it’s that old ruin up above the Lepidan rocks. It’s always supposed to be being renovated, but no one’s ever going to want to live in it. It’s miles from the Baths. Miles from anywhere if it comes to it. Nasty old place, full of rats and snakes and cockroaches, and they say it’s haunted, that’s why nobody goes there. There’s a little bit of a beach just below it. You go down through the olive grove. That’s where my lady’ll be.’

  ‘What don’t you agree with?’ he asks abruptly.

  She looks straight at him. ‘It’s not safe. Anyone could come. Everyone knows my lady, and she says they know you as well.’

  ‘You think that the olive trees are going to tell tales?’

  ‘It’s not trees I’m worrying about. And it’s me that’s got to come scrambling after her. Never mind that it’s bad luck to disturb such places.’

  She makes a quick sign against the evil eye. He’s not sure if it’s really ghosts she’s afraid of, or Metellus Celer.

  Clodia will protect you, he wants to say. You’re a genius with her hair, she won’t let you be flogged and sold off.

  He has a sudden vision of Metellus Celer’s face. Not genial now, but judging, condemning. And Clodia at his side, her face as hard as his.

  ‘No one’s going to see anything,’ he says.

  Aemilia gives him the strangest look, and her lips open, as if she’s about to speak. But she says nothing. Suddenly she is formidable. She outfaces him, squat and sure. He could believe she’s been standing there since earth began, guarding the gateway to love and beauty, trampling down trespassers. But it’s only a moment, and then Aemilia’s gaze falls. She’s herself again, the daughter of a home-bred slave who was mated to a Syrian bought at Antioch.

  ‘Tell your mistress I’ll be there,’ he says.

  Aemilia still doesn’t respond. She stands and waits as if the message hasn’t reached her ears. Of course, he thinks in relief, she wants money. That’s what it is.

  ‘Wait,’ he says, and picking up the writing tablet he goes into the villa. Money, money, why has he never got any when he needs it? He feels in the dry, scratchy innards of a pot where he sometimes drops coins. Yes. He shakes a few into his palm, then goes out to the terrace and the waiting Aemilia.

  She disappears the coins into a fold of her cloak. ‘I’ll tell her,’ she says, and she’s gone, barging into the pergola as she goes, shaking the vine leaves and knots of roses.

  Four

  The little beach is made of grey-white sand. It’s littered with driftwood which is also grey-white and as dry as the bones of a sheep which have been picked clean by winter. A couple of basking lizards whisk out of sight as they feel his footsteps.

  He’s early. The water laps very softly, as if it’s already tired out. He explored the empty villa before coming down here, but Aemilia was right: no one was ever going to want to live in there, not even for a brief summer season. It’s badly built and there are already cracks in the ambitious portico. Its mixture of meanness and ostentation sets his teeth on edge. The situation looks good at first sight, because the villa is set high on the rocks and commands a view of blue water, olives tumbling down rocky promontories, and in the far distance the outlying villas of Baiae. But you would always take the brunt of the wind there; cold in winter, parching in summer. The olive branches would knock and moan all night through. Even today there’s a dry, itchy, irritating breeze.

  The villa wasn’t locked when he tried the door, and there wasn’t a single slave to look after the place. It was abandoned, after all the waste of building it. He thought of the houses that children build in a morning, before the sun gets too hot. The children are called inside, and they forget about the carefully piled earth and pebbles, and their wilting miniature gardens made of daisies, marigolds and olive twigs. The sun blazes, the petals blanch and shrivel. By the time the children come out to play again, in the cool of evening, they’ve lost interest and they kick the walls apart without a qualm.

  He thought that there were so many different kinds of emptiness. Manlius’ villa gave the impression that it had been startled in the middle of a long but living sleep. But this place was dead. Bricks, concrete and marble hadn’t fulfilled their boast. There’d never been any life here. No one had been born, or made love, or died. If you ate food here, it would turn to powder, clogging your mouth.

  He wouldn’t bring Clodia inside the villa. When Aemilia had mentioned the place, he’d hoped that maybe it could be a retreat for them. All they needed was a corner that belonged to no one, where they could pitch their camp of love.

  Camp of love! Flattering yourself again, he thought. Building your own little villa of metaphor, and standing back to admire it. You are fucking another man’s wife, let’s not get too fancy about it.

  As soon as he smelled the air in the villa’s dreary vestibule, he knew it was no good. He looked up, and saw that the ceiling was cracked right across, as if the whole place knew that the best thing for it was to fall down as quickly as possible. Scrabblings came from the inner rooms. Those rats of Aemilia’s, perhaps. Not snakes. Snakes are silent, unless you’re very, very close. Crows would roost here, and lizards would cover the walls. Owls would nest, bringing bad luck.

  He shivered. The atmosphere was getting to him, making him tired, depressed. Maybe Aemilia was right, and the place was haunted. Sometimes land doesn’t want to have a house built on it, because too much has already happened there. Suffering; death.

  But he was being absurd. The olive trees around the villa were well tended. He noticed the black-tarred nets, carefully stored in little stone shelters against the day when they must be spread for the olive harvest to be shaken down into them. Nothing ghostly about them. Most likely the neighbourhood boys and girls found their way up here at dusk, and giggled as they proved themselves in these empty rooms. Big, strong peasant girls like Aemilia would be happy enough to flaunt their fertility before marriage.

  Wedding songs kept running through his head like an obsession. Girls and boys raising high their wedding torches. Flames the colour of crocus flowers, licking the dusky sky. The whole day rushing towards this moment when the bride meets the groom, like a river rushing towards the rocks where it will become a waterfall.

  The torch-bearers, musicians and attendants have to back away and close the doors on the couple, because there’s no place for them in the bedroom. No one has the right to intervene in this sacred mystery that seeds the human race until the couple’s children’s children’s children’s children are as many as the stars –

  But he and Clodia would never have a child.

  He looked around quickly and felt heat rise to his face, as if someone had overheard his thoughts. Just imagine what his friends would make of them. Calvus, especially, with his sharp tongue: ‘Sacred mystery of marriage! This is even worse than the sacred mystery of the golden fuzz around Juventius’ balls. You should have stayed in Rome with us. You’re going to seed down there in Baiae. Hay-seed, in fact. Big-bellied country wenches and clodhopping bridegrooms. Our lovely Lesbia as a blushing virgin – sharpen your wits, my friend.’

  The rats rustled again, like the leaves of long-dead trees. There are places that make a horse swerve, and you don’t know why. Blood-soaked fields where wheat grows tall and strong, but there’s a taint in it that makes the grain worthless.

  He came down the steep path where brilliant patches of light quivered as the olives stirred in the breeze. There were dozens of yellow butterflies. He still had a sense of darkness at his back, but he was walking towards water and into the light.

  She’ll be here soon, and then everything will be all right. But she’s late. Maybe her husband decided that the doctor was a quack, and cut his treatment short. Maybe something distracted her –

  Clodia is easily distracted. How quickly
she lights up at something new. When you are that new thing, it’s overwhelming. You can hardly breathe.

  He hears them. A giggle, and then a sharp, imperious voice. His Clodia. But she’s not coming by land, she’s coming by water. Their boat is rounding the little point that shields the beach, skimming so close to the rocks that the side almost scrapes. The inexpert handler of the oars is Aemilia, the passenger with a white scarf thrown gracefully around her head is Clodia, who shades herself further from the sun with a green parasol.

  There’s a broad patch of sweat on the back of Aemilia’s tunic. She must have rowed all the way from Baiae.

  It’s crazy. They could hardly have found a more conspicuous way of getting here than in that dumpy little boat that looks as if Aemilia’s stolen it from a not-very-well-off fisherman.

  But Clodia, graceful and glowing, half stands and waves to him.

  ‘Sit down, my lady!’ shrieks Aemilia. ‘You’ll have us all in the water!’

  With much ladling of her left oar, she turns the boat and heads inshore. Catullus has already unstrapped his sandals: now he kicks them off and wades into the water.

  ‘Stop rowing! I’ll pull you in.’ He braces himself. The boat is heavy and the water holds on to it. ‘Get out on the other side, Aemilia, and help me bring it in.’

  Aemilia sploshes into the water, soaking him but fortunately not Clodia. Together, they haul up the boat, and Clodia steps out on to the grey sand. Her radiant smile passes him so close that it seems to scorch his cheek, but it’s a routine smile, one of those that Clodia flashes just to show that she can.

  She’s not in the best of moods. The plan of bringing her sparrow has not been a success.

  ‘He was terrified, poor darling. I’ve never heard such pitiful cheeping. Look at him cowering in the bottom of his cage. It’s the first time he’s ever been out on the water.’

  ‘We should of put a cloth over him, my lady, then he wouldn’t know any different than he was still in your room,’ suggests Aemilia, who is already unpacking rugs, bags and baskets from the bottom of the boat, and lugging them to the part of the beach where overhanging olives give some shade. ‘This blessed rug is damp,’ she grumbles.