The Far Arena (15 page)

'Maybe there are. But the Russians have cleared you, we trust you, and you have been accepted to take your sabbatical leave from us with this university here.'

James Houghton Laurie turned off the thin little black box on the elegant coffee table between them.

'My name's Jim, Lew,' he said. And poured another drink.

'All right, Jim,' said Lew McCardle.

'Lew, whatever happened to your pro career? If I remember, everyone said you could have been another Luke Sikes. He was all pro with the Chicago Bears, wasn't he?'

'He died two years ago.'

‘
I know. I read the alumni news. Had two pages. He was something. He was the best to come out of M and C 'He was a day labourer in Sante Fe.' 'I thought he was a policeman ?' 'He was for a while.'

"The alumni news didn't say he had stopped.' 'No. They didn't.'

'You know, Lew, Luke Sikes is in the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.'

'I know,' said Lew McCardle, who had contributed to a fund-raising appeal for a sustained monument to Luke Sikes, which also took care of the family's funeral bills. Sikes had died owing almost two thousand dollars on an annual income twice that. And he owned nothing. And Sikes had been arrested twice for breaking and entering in petty crime. 'I know,' said Lew McCardle. But what he knew was that he could have been another Luke Sikes, and he wasn't.

Lew and Jim, two old Makys, had a final drink, and old Jim boy said he didn't expect to hear from oP Lew for a while.

Vice-president McCardle finished the bottle of Tennessee sippin' whisky. He drank from the crystal glass. He phoned Houston, Texas. He phoned home. A housekeeper answered.

'Lew who ?' she asked.

'Lew McCardle. Mrs McCardle's husband. Tell her Lew is on the phone. I'll hold.' He cupped a bit of the whisky in the cradle of his tongue and breathed in its aroma.

'Yes, Lew. Is that you?'

'Yeah, honey. How are you ?'

'I am fine. More than fine. Do you know that they are investigating us for the club? Not any club. But the o
ne with Lauries andHoughtons?'

'I'm a vice-president.'

'Fantastic. What a surprise,' she said. The voice still had the clipped Connecticut sounds. She had never lost her accent. And she had always sounded like money, and, once, she said money didn't matter. But that was when they were young, and he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and money didn't seem to mean any more than how much you had instead of who you were. Which is what it was back in Houston.

'I'm in Oslo, Norway. Why don't you and the girls come on out and visit ? I'll be here a while.'

'What about Paris?'

‘I’
m in Oslo.'

'You said that. Can you get to Paris ?' 'Not right away.' 'When can you, Lew ?' 'I don't know.'

'When you can, let us know, and all of us will fly out to meet you. That's wonderful about your vice-presidency. Fantastic, Lew I didn't think you had it in you. When did you say you'd be in Paris?'

'I didn't, honey.
’

'Oh,' she said.

'Give my love to the girls.'

'They'd go to Paris. I know.'

'Yes. Well. When I can,' said Lew McCardle wearily and ordered up whatever kind of whisky they had in the hotel. They brought up a bottle of scotch. He drank it from the bottle. In his whole career as a geologist, the most important thing in it was keeping a hubbub away from that little fellow he found in the ice. He wondered what the men back at the site were doing, and he could bet they weren't drinking scotch whisky in a fancy hotel suite.

He tried to remember the Arkansas game that had so impressed James Houghton Laurie. The old man used to come into the lockers and stuff twenty-dollar bills into your hands, and a Ulysses Grant fifty-dollar bill if you put someone out. He used to talk of Maky guts.

In McCardle's first game, one of his team-mates rubbed some blood from his jersey on to McCardle's as they were coming off the field.

'That's for Mr Laurie. You'll see.'

In the locker room, there was Laurie wearing a cowboy shirt tucked into what McCardle would find out later were British tailored pants, which were tucked into five-hundred-dollar cowboy boots, so everyone on the team said.

As young McCardle passed by the older man, he felt a handshake and something crisply folded in it.

‘
That's hittin', boy. Makys hit. We're hitters.'

It was his first payoff from James Houghton Laurie III. 'He loves to see blood,' said the team-mate. 'What he give you ?'

Young Lew McCardle had opened his hand to find a ten-dollar bill. The team-mate looked at it unimpressed. He had twenty dollars.

'Wait until you put someone out. If you do, jump around a lot and don't go back to the huddle right away so he'll see your number and remember it.'

There was a hundred-dollar game once. Was that the Arkansas game? Lew McCardle couldn't remember. He tried to remember other things, good things. He tried to remember when the love was good with Kathy, and it was so long ago, and he had spent so much time trying to get back what the marriage had promised in the beginning, that he had never really made note of when was the last time the lovemaking was good.

It was not bad, he knew. But it was not good. It was just there. And he had often felt that it could have been better. But then again, it could have been worse, too.

He had done all right, considering.

Eight

Fourth
Day
-
Petrovitch
Report

Condition critical. Plasma volume totally restored. White blood count remains high,
1200
mm, yet hemolysis appears to be cUminishing, and red blood count increasing. EEG activity enormous. A state of semi-consciousness.

Repetition of one word 114 times over a six hour period. Word: 'Meramme'. Language as yet unidentified. Shock still remains severest danger.

It was too silly for a comment, so she got an embrace.

'Eugeni, be serious,' said Miriamne, laughing. She could in her good way scold like a song and laugh like an admonition, never hurting but enlightening. We were in our peristilium, open to the good summer sky, surrounded on the sides by fresh and growing things with water bubbling from a small fountain into a long, curving marble pool that caught the reflection of each white fluff of cloud above.

Outside, through corridors, was the atrium where my personal business was done, the retainers and emissaries met and formalities were dispensed with. Outside that was the vestibule where people waited to be allowed into the atrium, and outside that were the streets of Rome, with walls surrounding my house of such plain and unadorned countenance that none who did not know I lived here would take a second glance.

'Miriamne, how can I be serious when you tell me that not only is there an all-powerful god, but that he takes specific interest in everything on earth, and that if I let him, he will lift my worries also.'

'It is true.'

'Then enjoy your truth privately.' 'I want to help you,' she said.

'You may worship privately in any manner that you wish, and this has always been so ... Even according to your legends, he didn't help his own only son who was executed like a criminal. In disgrace. I do have something on my mind which I must tell you, and it makes me sad.'

'You don't understand, Eugeni.'

'Shhh, woman. I must tell you something unpleasant.'

'Then quiet. I have something pleasant, and you yourself said that this place, our place, for you and Petronius and me, was only for good things. I have a good thing to tell you.'

'You have an interesting defence when cornered - to hurl our son at me.'

'You are cornered. Now listen,' she said, and her finger pointed right into my nose.

'If you promise not to strike me,' I said in mock horror.

‘I
make no promises,' she said and pushed me back on the soft pillows where we sat. There were couches but we both preferred the pillows. 'Now listen. The pain was not a punishment. It was God's gift to take away the sins of the world.'

'Then he is not all-powerful because he could do it by decree if he wanted.'

'He wanted to show his love by his suffering.'

'Don't you ever show your love for me that way. I get no pleasure from someone else's pain, least of all someone I love. Enough of that talk. It is sweet nonsense. Thank you, but please, listen. I have something I must tell you. It is about Publius, your friend, and our son Petronius' friend. It is a sad thing.'

'The only sadness, Eugeni, is not to hope.'

'There are other sadnesses in this world.'

'They are but the seed dying so that the flower may bring new life. You do not know the plan of the one God who gave his one son for us.'

'Very pretty, Miriamne, and you are often eloquent, but please, this is about life and death.'

‘I
talk of that, too.'

'No, you don't. I do not interfere with your private things that you have kept private. But this has to do with the world.'

'And you are foolishly sad,' she said. She put a finger to my nose and pushed me back on our pillows. 'And it was you who said nothing sad should be talked of here in our special place.'

‘I
had hoped this would be so.'

'Could you imagine that God has made this whole world, all the empire and beyond, his own sweet garden if we but used it right.'

'No,' I said. Except for this Jewish cult of hers, which many slaves fancied, she was ordinarily most reasonable. This was not a time for her religion. There were serious and real things to be discussed. She could believe thos
e good things because this peri
stilium in all Rome was perhaps the most protected place in the empire, well hidden and well for
tified with armoured slaves. Pro
tected by informers and retainers and, as the last barrier, myself.

Through all this, Publius had brought the blood and screams of the arena and the heavy smell of urine and vomit and death, as though he had dumped them all from baggage carts into the clear waters of our peristilium pool.

'I am wiser of the outside world than you think, Eugeni,' said Miriamne.

'Perhaps,’ I
said.

'But if I am not, then how do you know your trust in me is true? How do you know my love is true? For that which is not tested is still unknown.'

'That which is not tested is not broken,' I said. "There is nothing that cannot be broken at the right time against the right things.'

The pool fluttered with circular rings. Perhaps a pebble had fallen from the roof, or a passing bird had dropped something. The water calmed, and nothing was visible on the bottom of the gold and silver design. The water was clear and sweet-scented. Miriamne waited for me to talk. It was hard. How did Publius wreck things so easily? Even my house was cunningly arranged into defences and ruses just to keep things like this out. There was a public and private life that were supposed to be separate. Even the house was organized publicly and privately. The public area - the atrium - was where I did business. I had built a large vestibule with statues and wall paintings and some ornate sellae -chairs with arms. In this vestibule did my retainers wait in the morning for me to receive them. The vestibule led to the atrium, which was a large room surrounded by cubicles for slaves whose specialities were associated with my businesses. In the centre was a luxurious three-legged table of rare citrus wood with inlaid gold and ivory. Like the statues, it was to show that here was wealth and power. Yet the atrium was sparse, to show that it was not an easy wealth. There was one sella for visitors. Thus, a group must show its leader by who sat. There was a sella for myself and one for whichever slave I needed for the visitor. There I had met Domitian's emissary.

Behind the atrium, through a long corridor where muscular armed slaves were posted, were the peristilium and the sweetness of my life. In the centre, it was open to the sky above and a rich, gentle arbour below with a clean water pool of marble and gold tile.

Here were my sleeping cubicles, behind which were the kitchens with their cooks and undercooks and cleaners. Here too were the rooms of the tonsores, for shaving and cutting hair, and unctores, whose fingers worked soft oils skilfully into the body. Here was the room for eating. Here was the room for my son Petronius' scrolls. Here was the room for my wife Miriamne's worship of her peculiar god without statues. Here was the room of our household god, Mars, and, since slaves had been known to talk freely, here was the room with the bust of Domitian, giving him more hair than nature thought fit. Here, too, were the entrances to my baths.