The Confessions of X (6 page)

“Thank you for your kindness,” I replied.

Paulinus was leaving, my aunt escorting him to the front door. I heard her speaking to him in soothing tones and could imagine what she said: She doesn't know her mind; she's young yet; she will obey.

Left alone with my uncle, I could feel myself shaking but it was not from fear. Was I now to be bartered to a stranger and sold off like a bucket or a cooking pot?

I thought of Nebridius and Augustine, who walked the city at will and never incurred disapproving or lascivious looks, of the way they talked of their future as if they had only to reach out and take it. Whereas I was handed mine full-formed, an entire map of my life stretching into old age—wife, mother, drudge.

My aunt returned and I saw her jerk her head at my uncle indicating he should leave. I tensed, expecting him to refuse, but he got up. He stood for a moment looking down at me. I stared back, my chin raised.

“You will marry him,” he said, “or I will throw you into the street.”

When he had gone, my aunt and I sat in silence. I expected her to berate me for coming home so late, for spoiling the dinner, for refusing Paulinus so rudely; instead, she seemed lost in thought. The oil lamp guttered, throwing wavering shadows on the table, on the little box with the red ribbon. My aunt took it up and, untying the bow, took off the lid. She withdrew a slender gold chain and
held it up on the end of her finger where it dangled there, a shining filament.

“A generous gift,” she said.

I said nothing. I was thinking of the feel of the water jar as Augustine lifted it to my lips, the coolness of the water in my throat, the hot nearness of him.

My aunt sighed and dropped the necklace back into the box, replaced the lid, and set it aside. Without the ribbon the box looked like a sarcophagus, a design of vine leaves etched faintly around its sides, a tiny coffin for one girl's life.

“He is a good man,” she said, quietly. “A
good
man.”

I knew she was comparing him to her husband. For the first time in my life I wondered how old my aunt was, how long she had been married, and if it had been a love-match or arranged. I could not imagine her young, could not imagine a time when her hands were not red and ugly, her face not scored with lines, her hair not lusterless and brittle.

Instead I said: “My father would not have done this.”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Your father was a dreamer,” she said, “with no more idea about the world, about a woman's life, than a child. No,” she said, her eyes glittering but whether from anger or sorrow I could not tell. “Your upbringing was left to me to sort out.”

She struck the table with the flat of her hand so that the box jumped and the lid fell with a tiny clatter.

“When your father brought you home that first summer, you were a sight, I can tell you. Hair so tangled it took weeks to comb out the knots and crawling with lice.” She shuddered. “You were like a mangy dog and with manners to match. You ate your food
like a wild beast and flung yourself about when I tried to dress you, scratching and biting, refusing to wear shoes.”

I remembered only snatches of what she described, the way the walls of the house pressed out all the air, the painful clang of copper pans instead of the delicate tic-tic of the chisel on terra-cotta or the trill of birdsong in the trees, the suffocating constriction of the shoes and dresses I was forced to wear. Yes, I thought. Sunlight in a box.

“You are a young woman now,” my aunt said. “It is time to think of your future.” She dipped the edge of her stole, the one she only wore to church, the one she had put on in honor of Paulinus, in a cup of water and before I could draw back, rubbed at my face. “See,” she said, showing me the smudge of dirt and sand on the cloth. “You act like a child.”

When I did not reply, she got up stiffly, as if all her bones ached. “The wedding will be in a month,” she said and left the room.

Early the next morning I waited until I heard my uncle leave for the potting factory in the western district of the city hard by the clay pits, a long, low building filled with the hum of potters' wheels endlessly turning, and rack upon rack of drying vessels. My father had taken me once when I was small.

I heard my aunt moving about. Once she tapped on the door and softly called my name, but I pretended I was sleeping. Then I heard her leave and remembered it was the day she went to the women's baths. She would be gone most of the day.

I had lain awake all night turning over and over in my mind all that had happened the evening before. I wondered when Paulinus would come again and what I would do if he did. I knew I could not be here but had nowhere else to go. I heard a knock on the front door.

Thinking it a neighbor wanting to borrow oil for frying or a broom, I opened the door. Augustine stood there as if conjured from my mind. It was the first time he had come to the house.

“You cannot be here,” I said to him, though my heart pounded in my chest. “I am alone, and my aunt and uncle would not stand for it.”

“I came here only to give you this,” he said, putting something in my hand.

I looked down and saw a shell the size of a robin's egg, a creamy helix lined inside with mother-of-pearl as delicate and pink as a child's ear. I lifted it to my lips and it tasted salty, put it to my ear and heard the memory of the sea trapped within.

“It's beautiful,” I said. “Thank you.”

Behind his shoulder, a woman banging at a rug with a stick was frowning at us. By tonight my aunt would have been informed of this strange young man who visited her niece when she was alone with her hair loose about her shoulders like a slut, her head shamelessly uncovered. By tomorrow, the whole street would know.

“Will you meet me at the church at noon?” he asked. “There is something I would ask you.”

Just before midday, I slipped quietly from my aunt's house. Inside the church was deserted. A few leaves had blown into the open doors and made a scratchy sound under my sandals. Augustine was waiting for me at the door and led me toward the altar in the middle of the nave.

Then, still holding my hand, he turned to me. “Before we take this path, you must decide if this is a journey you want to make with me.”

I began to speak but he placed a finger on my lips.

“Hear me out. You know I come from a family of landowners, that my father is a Roman citizen, that I am the youngest son.”

I nodded.

“Then know this: I will inherit nothing. I must make my fortune by my wits.”

“I understand,” I said. “My father had to make his way in the world with only his skill to keep body and soul alive.”

“No,” Augustine said, sorrowfully, “you don't understand. If only it were so simple. I have certain . . .” He stepped back, frowning. “
Obligations.
I am expected to succeed in my chosen profession, but to do so I shall have to marry.” He raised his arms and then let them drop heavily to his side. To marry
well,
” he said.

I thought of Paulinus and the way he had presented himself in the best possible light—a steady job, a rich gift to show he had the means to support a wife. By contrast, Augustine was pointing out all the obstacles that lay in our way. If what he was saying was not so serious, his misery so acute, I would have smiled at the irony. And smiled, too, because he had given me yet another thing to love. His honesty.

Interpreting my silence for dismay, he went on in a low voice: “Believe me when I say, I would marry you if I could, but I am not free to do so; my family would never permit it, not even if we had a child. Do you understand? I can offer nothing but myself. I offer you my love and my fidelity, but, under the law, you can only ever be my concubine.”

Concubine. Common-law wife. In the eyes of the law the terms were much the same. The emperor Vespasian had had such a concubine—a freedwoman named Caelis—whom he had loved many years but only lived with after his wife died. A former secretary in the Imperial Palace, she had been much respected for her wisdom and integrity. To be a mistress of a married man was a shameful thing, censured by Roman law and the Church alike; to be the concubine of a man who was faithful was another thing entirely.

I thought of the alabaster box sitting on the table in my aunt's kitchen and then of the shell Augustine had given me. One gift was man-made, one was of nature. It seemed to me that I would rather follow my heart and make my own destiny than have it given to me whole.

“I would rather be your concubine than another's wife,” I said.

“You are sure?” he asked.

“I am sure,” I replied.

Augustine looked at me for what seemed a long time, then took my hand in both his own.

“Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?” he said softly.

“I do.”

Taking off his iron citizen's ring, he slid it on my finger. It was so
big I had to make a fist to keep it from slipping off. Then we kissed as we had seen married couples do in church, our only witnesses the eagle, the angel, the ox, and the lion my father had made. I did not realize until many years later that Augustine had not spoken a vow to me but only I to him. This was the bitter part of the honesty I loved, not the sweet.

He accompanied me to my aunt's house, where I gathered up what few possessions I owned and left for good. I could not write a note but I left a copper bracelet threaded on a ribbon I had worn as a child. It was a gift, but more than that it was my way of asking for forgiveness, for although I did not regret the decision I had made, I knew it would break my aunt's heart.

We left the house and ran hand in hand through the streets, so eager to be in each other's arms we did not heed the people in our path but barged right through a group of slaves in the market buying food, a huddle of important-looking men on the steps of the law courts, a gang of urchins tormenting a dog, heedless of the slaves' indifference, the men's angry shouts, the boys' lewd jeers. At the
insula
where Augustine lived he led me up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Outside the door, he paused. I looked at him questioningly. With a solemn look and with such care he might have been lifting glass, he picked me up in his arms, kicked open the door, and carried me across the threshold.

He put me down in the middle of the floor and closed the door. Finding ourselves alone at last we looked at one another shyly, almost anxiously, as if only now we realized the momentousness of what we had done, what we were about to do. Even now his eyes pleaded with me to be quite sure of what I did, for society decrees
that once a woman gives herself to a man, forsaking all others, if she does not remain true, she is forever marked a whore.

I looked about me and saw a room small and cramped, a narrow bed pushed against one wall, a table and bench below the open window, scrolls heaped untidily in a basket, a tunic hanging on a hook. A cracked cup and half-eaten roll lay on an upturned bucket beside the bed.

“It's not much,” Augustine said ruefully, following my gaze. “In fact, it's pitiful.”

I removed my veil and stood there holding it. He took it from me awkwardly and hung it on the hook. Perhaps it was this simple act of courtesy such as a husband might make for his wife when they returned home from market, perhaps the sight of our two garments hanging there, the darker cloth of the tunic now overlaid by the veil's gauzy weave, but in that moment all my shyness fled. Of doubt, I had none; nor later did I have regret. The ancient playwrights tell us that life is fated and all we do predestined; the Christians say we have a choice which path we take, the right-hand turning or the left, and whether we end up in paradise or hell is of our own devising. I do not know who is right and who is wrong, not then, nor now. I only know that I could not do other than to love him. And so I chose the way ordained for me and spoke the words he said to me that first day:

“I want to love and be loved.” And when he came to me I trembled not from fear but from desire.