Dear and Glorious Physician (24 page)

Lucanus’ fair brows knitted with sudden anxiousness. His heart beat with a vague fear. He honored Diodorus for those brave and honest words, those words flung into the faces of liars, politicians, and other rascals swollen with ambition. Nevertheless, he was frightened. He tried to console himself with the thought that Tiberius Caesar was also a soldier, and that he respected Diodorus and was, in his own way, an honorable man.

I expected to be shouted down,
Diodorus’ letter continued
. But those nearest me merely sat in silence and looked at me with knitted brows. One or two, younger than the others, blushed and stared at their hands. Carvilius Ulpian avoided my eyes and twitched on his seat. It is possible that he has an irritable rectum, so I forgave him. I waited, but no one answered me.

Rome is not my Rome, the Rome of my ancestors. The Founding Fathers are forgotten, or mentioned only when some politician wishes to commit more infamy. The days of fortitude, faith, and character are gone forever, and the days of courage and discipline. Why then do I struggle? Because it is in the nature of a free man to struggle against slavery and lies. If he falls, then he has fallen in a good fight, if hopeless.

But enough of this gloom. You will return to your family in the near future. We shall receive our dear son with rejoicing and affection.

May God bless you, my son.

Lucanus’ eyes smarted dryly as he rolled up the letter. It was always dangerous to speak the truth. In a corrupt world such as this it was fatal. If God cared for the world of men at all, thought Lucanus, bitterly, He would create many Diodoruses, or He would protect them when they spoke in their loud clear voices.

Let me forget my family, Lucanus abjured himself with sternness. I must not love — though I love! — because if I am involved too deeply the consequences will, as usual, be tragic, and I have had enough of tragedy. If I could pray, however, I should pray that the senators would hastily close and bolt their chamber against Diodorus, for his own dear and vociferous sake, and the sake of my mother and my brothers and sister.

He reminded himself that he had lately come, at a considerable price, into possession of a translated scroll from Cathay, containing wise words written centuries ago by one K’ung Fu’tze, or Confucius, as Joseph ben Gamliel had called him. The Jewish teacher had been reluctant to part with it, but Diodorus, reflected Lucanus, might be soothed by those lofty words, so calm, so resigned, so mannered, so contemplative. He would also nod vigorously at reading, ‘Remember this, my children, that oppressive government is fiercer and more feared than a tiger.’

The harpy-faced little Claudius Vesalius had come to a pause with his wretched student very near to Lucanus, and he raised his voice. “Mathematics is indeed the Apollonian art!” he shrilled. “He who dislikes it, or avoids it, or regards it as a lesser science is a brass-assed monkey!”

He means me, thought Lucanus with some amusement, and pretended to be engrossed with a letter. The little mincing Greek was incensed. He continued to address his student but in reality Lucanus.

“I consider Pythagoras superior to any Aristotle or Hippocrates or Julius Caesar!” he declaimed. “Or any Phidias or any artist, or what not. All science and art are based on definite mathematical principles. Induction! It is all mathematics! Let us say that we wish to prove that the sum of the first N odd numbers is N-2, that is, one plus three plus five plus — plus 2N — one equals N-2. Is it not true that N equals 2? Yes! For one plus three equals four equals 2
²
. It is also true that N equals K. In that case we should have — ”

Lucanus elaborately yawned, and seeing this, Claudius Vesalius seethed. The young Greek rose easily and wandered to the far-off gate at the other end of the garden. The teeth of Claudius Vesalius gritted. Here was one gifted with the Apollonian art, and he preferred to dabble his hands in corpses and bloody his clothing and smell vile stenches in carnal houses or infirmaries! Argh! He hated Lucanus for all that waste. To Hades with him. Let him deliver brats who should never be born and cut for the stone in those who could not resist their lusts at the tables! Worthy calling for a worthy sniveler! Nor did this precious pretender haunt the brothels of Alexandria as normal young men did, nor was he overly respectful to his teachers. His attitudes were preposterous. Did he grace wineshops or taverns or circuses or theaters with his presence? No indeed. He was too valuable for all that. He was always careful to protect those delicate hands of his during the rougher sports for fear of stiffening a finger that could hold a scalpel.

“He is a young Hermes,” said the harassed student admiringly, following Lucanus with his eyes. Claudius Vesalius squealed like a pig and slapped his face in rage.

Lucanus left the gardens and the university. Beyond lay vast green lawns over which palms and cypresses and myrtles and willows cast an emerald shade in that bright golden air. A sweet stillness lay over the earth. The sea in its unfathomable mystery stretched away to infinitude. Lucanus was alone. All was silence except for the unresting voice of the waters flowing to the west.

Suddenly the twilight descended, and the earth and sea changed. Overhead the sky became a dim and hollow arch of a greenish blue. The sea darkened to a swift and quiet purple, its far distance restless with crimson as the sun poised on the waves. The illimitable west burned with an orange and scarlet light against which drifted black clouds in the form of Roman galleons, moving on their unknown journey, their sails bellied in an unfelt and unearthly wind. The immensity of heaven and sea dwarfed the earth, towered over it, rolled about it, speaking of awe, yet doomful and foreboding to Lucanus.

Involuntarily he remembered Joseph ben Gamliel speaking on one such a twilight, and in that soft yet sonorous voice of his: “The Heavens declare His glory!”

Lucanus sat down on the grass. He felt again that terrible estrangement between himself and God. Ah, but one must never permit God to enter his heart! For with Him He brought anguish and duty and commands and exhortations and fear and tragedy. Once possessed of a man’s soul, He became King, and there was none else beside Him.

“But with His commands and His laws He also brings love and spiritual delight and bread for the soul, and a light in the darkness,” Joseph ben Gamliel had said to Lucanus one twilight. “Without Him one has only the world and delusion and hunger and dust and pain, and an emptiness that cannot be filled by man. One has death, without the Most Holy One, blessed be His Name. One has only tears, which cannot be comforted. All the gold in the world cannot buy His peace, which is beyond understanding. I have taught you of the Psalms of David, the king. ‘The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great mercy. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works. . . . He will not always chide: neither will He keep His anger forever. . . . For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him.’

“My Lucanus, I feel Him near you. I feel Him as close as breathing. His Hand is upon you. Fear not, my child. Turn to Him in your sorrow and dread, for I know these devour you.”

“He afflicts us,” Lucanus had replied bitterly. “I want none of Him. What explanation do you have, Rabbi, for what I daily see in the public infirmaries and in the carnal houses? Why should a child suffer, and a man be afflicted with leprosy? How have they offended God that He should punish them? The world is one great groan of agony.”

Joseph had turned large and luminous eyes on his pupil, and they beamed with compassion. “Job was an afflicted man, and wept for himself and his fellow men, and reproached God for what appeared to him the senseless misery of the earth. And God answered him, reprovingly, ‘Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place . . . Hast thou entered the springs of the sea? . . . hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? . . . Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? . . . Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God . . . ?. . . Shall he who contendeth with the Almighty instruct Him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it’.”

Joseph ben Gamliel had stood with him on this very spot, tall and majestic and thin to transparency, clad in dark robes of brown and crimson, his high head bound with a cloth of red cotton. His bearded face, with its pearly skin, delicately aquiline nose, and tender mouth, had shone in the twilight like alabaster. Lucanus loved and honored him more than any other of his teachers, yet he constantly exacerbated the young man’s very heart. Still, he sought out Joseph and did not know why, except that he threw coldly furious questions at him and commented cynically on the loving answers.

On that twilight Lucanus had flung words like stones into that reverend and gentle face. “If you had ever suffered, my teacher, if you had ever endured the loss of one dearer to you than life, if you had watched that dear one die in affliction and without hope, and her vitality leaving her body like an unseen trickle of water, and she the sweetest of women! then you would not speak so. You would, like Job, pour ashes upon your head and cry out in reproof against your God! Would you, then, speak of His mercy?”

Joseph’s face had changed, or perhaps it was only because the twilight had deepened. Surely it was only the twilight which had cast an aspect of tragedy and weariness on the teacher’s face. Joseph never spoke except with tranquility, like one who had dined well or who lived comfortably, without question or trouble.

Yes, it was only the twilight which had suddenly darkened and contorted his face for a single instant. Then he had smiled at Lucanus and had gone his quiet way, his garments flowing about him. It was easy for those who had no wounds to find the wounds of others insignificant, and to wonder at the complaints made about them!

Now as Lucanus stood in this present twilight and looked at the darkening sea and the far glimmer of the orange-scarlet sunset, he felt his awful loneliness again, his abandonment, and his endless, unremitting grief, not only for Rubria, who was lost to him forever, but for all that suffered and cried aloud without solace. His soul stiffened in him with resistance. Never again would God speak to him, for he had shut his ears! The unanswerable had received no answer, or consolation.

A chill wind, salty and immense, swept over his flesh. He turned away, desolate as always, to return to his small house where he lived with Cusa and the latter’s wife, Calliope. He returned to a lighted lamp, a frugal dinner, and his studies. He was a soldier on bivouac, preparing for the near day when he would be armed adequately to meet the God of pain and vanquish Him.

“Bah!” said Cusa to his wife, Calliope, who stood before him with her plump infant girl resting on her hip. “You are only a woman, and it is notorious that women possess no intelligence.”

“I knew enough to get you as a husband, though veritably you are not the handsomest man alive,” replied Calliope, her pert and pretty face smiling impudently. “It was I who asked Aurelia for you, and it was I who suggested to that poor and noble lady that we wished to be free. She communicated my desires to Diodorus, and so, here we are, free if not freeborn.”

“You are wrong,” said Cusa, ill-naturedly, but smiling at his little girl, who cooed at him. “Did Aurelia free us, or the tribune, that ferocious descendant of the Quinites? No. When we were offered by him to Lucanus it was our blue-eyed Greek who said he would not accept us unless we were first freed, and as the Roman loves him as a son, and has adopted him as a son, the request was granted in order that Lucanus would not be alone in Alexandria. Did the tribune think that without our chaperonage Lucanus would become a sybarite? Or a haunter of brothels? Or a gamester? Hah! I only wish he had some appreciation of such things! He is a male Vestal Virgin. Has he no blood, no parts, no fires, no passions except for learning his accursed medicine?”

“You will observe,” said Calliope, sitting down and beginning to nurse her child, “that you are full of doubts yourself, in spite of your remarks about my intelligence. Why does Lucanus refrain from all the delights of young men? Why is he so abstemious? Less charitable people would consider him either a devotee of Narcissus or one engaged in unspeakable practices with other young men. But he is neither. Something eats at the vitals of his spirit, like the Spartan fox. He is short of patience with everyone; his words are cold or somber. He sits for hours in silence on the terrace, either with his books or with his hands fallen upon them. He is curt and hard of speech at times, if he is disturbed. Have you seen him smile often? Only our little Mara can amuse him. At times I find him tiresome. I think there is a spell upon him. Yesterday I visited the temple of Serapis to pray for him. It is not that I love him; it is impossible to love such a remote young man who resembles a statue more than flesh. But I was thinking of ourselves.”