A Gladiator Dies Only Once (29 page)

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, in your line of work—insofar as Cicero has explained it to me—I should think you rely a great deal on reason or instinct, or some faculty such as that which Antiochus speaks of, in order to determine the truth. A murder is committed; a relative comes to you, asking you to discover the killer. If a man’s stopped breathing, it doesn’t take an Aristotle to determine that he’s dead; but how do you go about the rest of it—finding out who did it, and how, and when, and why? I suppose some evidence is concrete and indisputable, of the sort you can hold in the palm of your hand—a bloody dagger, say, or an earring separated from its match. But there must be a vast gray area where the indicators are not so certain. Witnesses to a crime sometimes tell different versions of events—”

“They inevitably do!” asserted Cicero with a laugh.

“Or a clue may point in the wrong direction,” continued Lucullus, “or an innocent man may deliberately incriminate himself, so as to protect another. Lies must be sorted from truth, important facts must be placed above trivialities. The warp and woof of reality must be minutely examined for meaningful patterns and inconsistencies that might elude the scrutiny of a less conscientious . . . ‘finder,’ as I believe Cicero calls you. Indeed, Gordianus, I should think that you must have frequent occasion to apply the tenets of epistemology more rigorously than anyone else in this room. I suspect it’s become second nature to you; you swim in a sea of practical philosophy and never think about it, as the dolphin never thinks of being wet.”

“Perhaps,” I acknowledged, dubious of his point but thankful that he had rescued me from looking like a cretin.

“So how
do
you go about it?” said Lucullus. “Ascertaining the truth, I mean? Do you apply a particular system? Or do you rely on intuition? Can you tell if a man is lying, simply by looking in his eyes? And if so, would that not be an indication that some innate faculty such as that suggested by Antiochus must indeed exist, perhaps more developed in some men—men like yourself—than in others?”

The guests looked at me intently now, seriously interested to see what I would say. I took a deep breath. “In fact, Lucullus, I
have
given some thought to such questions over the years. If we accept that a thing must be either true or false—either one thing or the other—then even the most complex questions can be approached by breaking them into smaller and smaller questions, and determining in each case which proposition is true and which is false. Smaller units of truth combine into greater units, until eventually a greater truth emerges. Sometimes, investigating the circumstances of a crime, I imagine I’m building a wall of bricks. Each brick must be solid, or else the whole wall will come down. So it’s simply a matter of testing each brick before it’s put into place. Is this brick true or false? True, and it goes into the wall; false, and it’s discarded. Of course, sometimes one makes a mistake, and realizes it only after several courses of bricks have been laid, and it can be a messy business going back and making the repair.”

“Ah, but how does such a mistake occur in the first place?” asked Antiochus, in a tone that showed he had warmed to me somewhat.

“Carelessness, confusion, a lapse of concentration.”

“And how do you recognize the mistake?”

I shrugged. “Sooner or later, you step back and look at the wall, and you can see there’s something wrong. Something’s off-kilter; one of the bricks doesn’t quite match the others.”

“Ah, but there you have yet another indication of the existence of the faculty I speak of!” said Antiochus. “ ‘One knows it when one sees it,’ goes the commonplace. But how? Because of an innate ability to distinguish truth from falsehood.”

“An innate sense that doesn’t always work, apparently,” said Marcus, with a laugh.

“That this faculty isn’t infallible is hardly evidence against it,” asserted Antiochus. “On the contrary, it’s yet another sign of its existence. No other human faculty is infallible, so why should this one be? Perfection exists only in that ideal world which Plato postulated . . .”

Here the talk drifted to other matters philosophical, about which Lucullus did not question me; gratefully, I withdrew from the conversation. But it seemed to me that my brief foray into the debate had been deliberately engineered by Lucullus, so that he might observe and form a judgment of me. For what purpose? I did not know. Had I satisfied his expectations? That, too, I did not know.

I spent the rest of the meal observing the others. The corpulent Antiochus was the most vocal and self-assertive, and in such a company, that was saying a great deal. Cato tended to enter the debate only in reaction to the others, usually to chide or taunt them. His sister Servilia spoke only when the conversation involved gossip or money, and was silent about politics and philosophy. The poet Archias every so often contributed an epigram, some more appropriate to the conversation than others. Marcus Licinius seemed a contented sort who enjoyed every course of the meal and every turn of the conversation. Cicero was talkative and high-spirited, but occasionally I saw him touch his belly and wince. As he had feared, the meal was too rich for his dyspeptic constitution.

The one who spoke least—hardly at all, in fact—was the sculptor Arcesislaus. Like me, he seemed content merely to enjoy the food and wine and to observe the others. But he wore a vaguely scornful expression; even when Archias came out with an epigram that made the rest of us hoot with laughter, he hardly smiled. Was he shy and retiring, as are many artists, or was he haughty, as might be the case with a handsome young man of great talent? Or was he brooding about something? I could not make him out.

The generally buoyant mood dimmed only once, when the conversation turned to the father of Lucullus, and his sad end. Cicero had been talking—boasting, in fact—of his first important appearance as an advocate before the Rostra, defending a citizen accused of parricide. Cicero had retained my services to investigate the matter, and that was how we first met. The outcome of the trial had made Cicero a famous man in Rome and set him on the path to his present pinnacle of success. He never tired of telling the tale, even to those who already knew it, and would have gone on telling it had not Cato interrupted.

“It was the same with you, was it not, Lucullus?” said Cato. “Your first appearance in the courts made your reputation—even though you lost the case.”

“I suppose,” said Lucullus, suddenly reticent.

“Indeed, I remember it well, though it seems a lifetime ago,” said Cato. “Your father was sent to put down the great slave revolt in Sicily. Things went well for him at first, then badly, and he was recalled. No sooner did he arrive back in Rome than one of his enemies accused him of official misconduct and prosecuted him in the courts. He was found guilty and sent into exile, poor fellow. But his sons didn’t forget him! As soon as he was old enough to argue before the Rostra, our Lucullus dug up some dirt on his father’s accuser and brought the man to trial. Everyone in Rome took sides; there was rioting and bloodshed in the Forum. When it was all over, Lucullus lost the case and the fellow got off—but the real winner was our Lucullus, whose name was on everyone’s lips. Friends and foes alike acknowledged him as the very model of a loyal Roman son.”

“And a fellow not to be tangled with,” added Marcus, looking at his brother with admiration.

I was only vaguely aware of this tale regarding Lucullus’s father and Lucullus’s own younger days, and would have liked to have heard more, but our host was clearly not in a mood to discuss it. He lowered his eyes and raised a hand dismissively. An abrupt silence filled the room, and stretched awkwardly until Archias, clearing his throat, delivered one of his epigrams:

Right are the Thracians, when they mourn

The infant on the very morning of its birth.

Right, also, when they rejoice that death has snatched

Some aged mortal from the earth.

Why not? This cup of life is full of sadness;

Death is the healing draught for all its madness.

He raised his cup. The rest of us, including Lucullus, did likewise, and the wine we shared dispelled the chill that had fallen on the room.

The meal lasted at least three hours, but had begun so early that the sun was still well above the horizon when Lucullus announced that it was time for the final course.

“Something sweet, I hope,” said Antiochus.

“Sweet, indeed,” said Lucullus. “In fact, the final course is the principal reason for asking you all here today, so that you can share in my bounty.” He rose from his couch and gestured that we should do likewise. “Up, everyone! Up, on your feet, and follow me! The first of the cherries are ripe, and today we shall devour them!”

From the others, as they stirred, I heard a murmur of pleasant anticipation. I stepped beside Cicero and spoke in his ear. “What are these ‘cherries’ that Lucullus speaks of?”

“A most exquisite fruit, which he brought back from the realm of Pontus on the Euxine Sea. They grow on small trees and come in many varieties, all with shiny skins in various shades of red. All sweet, all splendidly delicious! I was privileged to taste some of Lucullus’s cherries last year at this time. What a delight that he should invite me back again to taste this year’s crop!” Cicero smiled. “His brother Marcus says that if Lucullus’s wars against Mithridates had yielded nothing else, they would still have been worth the effort for bringing cherries back to Rome!”

Lucullus led the way onto the terrace and then down a flagstone path that meandered through a small orchard of low, leafy trees. The branches were heavy with a fruit the likes of which I had never seen before. The cherries, as they were called, hung in great clusters. The type varied from tree to tree; some were blood-red, some were pink, and others were almost black. Lucullus demonstrated the ease with which they could be picked by reaching out and plucking off a whole handful at once.

“Be warned: the juice might stain your garments. And be careful of the pit.” To demonstrate, he popped a cherry into his mouth, then spat the seed into his hand. His features assumed a sublime expression. He swallowed and smiled. “All this talk of philosophy and politics—how irrelevant it all seems when one can know the simple, unadulterated joy of devouring a cherry. And then another, and another!”

With much laughter, the rest of us joined him in plucking cherries from the branches and popping them into our mouths. Some of the most sophisticated individuals in Rome were reduced to a childlike euphoria by the unbridled joy of eating cherries.

“Sensational!” said Archias, with cherry juice running down his chin. “I must compose a poem to celebrate this crop of cherries.”

Cicero sighed. “More wonderful than I remembered.”

Even the dour Arcesislaus smiled as he shared the joy of eating cherries.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to see that it belonged to my host. “Come, Gordianus,” he said in a low voice. “There’s something I want you to see.”

Leaving the others behind, Lucullus led me to a tree at the farthest corner of the cherry orchard. Its branches were more gnarled and its leaves more lustrous than those of the other trees, and its cherries were the largest and plumpest I had yet seen, of a hue that was almost purple.

“Of all the cherry trees I brought back from Pontus, this variety is the most extraordinary. The Greek-speakers of Pontus have preserved the ancient name which the aboriginal barbarians gave to this cherry. I find the word impossible to pronounce, but they tell me it translates as ‘Most-Precious-of-All’—which these cherries are. Their flavor is sweet and very complex—at first subtle, then almost overwhelming. And their skins are very, very delicate. Most other cherries travel well; you could pack them in a basket and carry them across Italy to share with a friend. But these are so tender that they can scarcely survive a fall from the tree. To appreciate them, you literally must eat them from the tree—and even then, they may burst if you pluck them too carelessly.”

Lucullus reached for one of the dark, plump cherries. He seemed not to tug at all; rather, the heavy fruit appeared to tumble into his palm of its own volition.

“Here is something evanescent,” he murmured, “a sensation too uniqtie to be described, capable only of being experienced: the cherry that can be eaten only beneath the tree, so fragile is it. As such, it has another, practical advantage: it can’t have been poisoned.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that a concern?”

Lucullus smiled without mirth. “A man like myself is never without enemies.”

“Yet I saw no tasters at the meal.”

“That is because you were meant to see no tasters.”

He extended his arm and offered the cherry to me. “For you, Gordianus, the season’s very first Most-Precious-of-All.”

“You do me a great honor, Lucullus.” For
which you will doubtless ask something in return,
I thought. Nevertheless, I accepted the cherry and slipped it between my lips.

The skin was sleek and warm, and so thin that it seemed to dissolve at the merest contact with my teeth. The meat of the cherry pressed sensuously against my tongue. The sweet juice flooded my mouth. At first I was disappointed, for the flavor seemed less intense than the cherries I had just tasted. Then, as I located the pit with my tongue and worked it toward my lips, the full flavor of the cherry suffused my senses with an intensity that was intoxicating. Lucullus saw my reaction and smiled.

I swallowed. Gradually, the precedence claimed by my sense of taste receded and my other senses returned to the fore. I became aware of a change in the light as the lowering sun shot rays of dark gold through the leafy orchard. I heard the distant laughter of the others, who had not yet followed us.

“Why did you ask me here today, Lucullus?” I said quietly. “What is it you want from me?”

He sighed. He picked another of the cherries, but did not eat it; instead he held it in the cup of his palm, gazing at it. “How fleeting and elusive are the pleasures of life; how lasting the pain and bitterness, the disappointments and the losses. When I became a general, I was determined to be the best general possible, and never to repeat my father’s failure; but I was determined also never to wreak destruction when destruction was not called for. So many generations of men have labored so hard to build up the few great storehouses of beauty and knowledge in this world, yet by fire and sword their accomplishments can be destroyed in minutes, their memory reduced to ashes. The power of the Roman legions is a great responsibility; I swore that Sulla would be my model, as he had been my mentor in other matters. When he had the chance to sack Athens and level it to the ground, instead Sulla saved it, and so passed on a great gift to future generations. What I least wanted was to ever gain a reputation such as that of Mummius of our grandfathers’ time—the Mummius who ruthlessly destroyed the city of Corinth and never passed a Greek temple without plundering it. And yet. . .”