The Far Arena (17 page)

'Of course I am not happy, Eugeni.'

'It is the way the arena is. And that is it.
’

'I can accept that it is the way it is, but not that it is the way it should be.'

'Why is it that those with the least influence have the grandest schemes for changing all mankind? Rome is what Rome is. The arena is what the arena is, and that is how I have found it, and that is how I will leave it.'

She struggled with tears, her neck quivering with the strain.

'You are a good man, Eugeni. Do not trouble your heart for things you cannot control.'

'I am a man and, like everything living, I want to live.'

'And I want you to live.'

'Good, then let us talk of other things,' I said.

'What have I said to make you angry ?'

'Obviously something, so let us talk of other things.'

She cradled my head in her large hands, too large for Roman beauty, but beautiful to me.

'You are a good man, Eugeni,' she said, and I put my face in her breasts.

'Please. Do not say that,' I begged, and she sang to me, as she had so often sung to our son Petronius, with words I did not know, but which had been sung to her by her mother and her mother's mother before her in the days before Rome had come to her land.

She knew what we shared. Petronius, our son, had yet to be told.

For the shame that was upon me and for my helplessness, I hated Publius. Some gladiators hate or prod themselves to it, but they are always suspect of their willingness to kill. Why heat a dish that already tastes good ? And by that it is meant, if they are willing to kill, why should they need anger ?

Vergilius Flavius Publius had all my anger, titled, acknowledged, and secured. Sculptors had cut his face into it, his name on it. I hated him because he had made me helpless. Because he already shamed me in myself before my Miriamne and, worse was to come, before my son Petronius, who loved me and respected me, and whom I, with my cunning and will, had kept away from the whoredom for almost fourteen years. His life.

Armoured slaves clanked noisily coming through the atrium. Kitchen slaves yelled for wine and apples and sweets. A young voice bellowed an ode of a popular poet, noisily, as though to test the strength more of lung than metre. Petronius, my son, was home.

He marched in eating an apple, bouncing with the sap of an early afternoon and an appetite on the fly. He greeted Miriamne as though she were a visiting ambassador and he were a senator. He greeted me, like an honoured guest to our house, all proper and impeccable. His grammarian was famous for teaching the proper and formal way of things, and not even the oldest family of the city would sway that man to compromise with newer fashions.

We could have bought a grammarian and tutored Petronius at home, but the better families did not do that, preferring that young Romans rub and butt against each other as part of the finest education. Of course, the grammarian owned the best Greeks.

Because my name excited so much emotion in the city, Petronius needed armoured slaves who brought him from house to grammarian and back to house. The slaves were trained by a lanista, not only to use weapons, but never to discuss slave gossip and any other things that might have to do with the arena games. There was not an armoured slave who did not fancy himself a gladiator, unless it was flogged out of him.

'I have something to tell you, Petronius,' I said.

'Yes, father?' he said. He wore a light yellow tunic, of perfect colour and stitch. He was large, already as big as Miriamne, a big woman, but with a touch of sharpness around his black eyes.

His beard was a few tentative hairs around his chin, carefully unshaven, for the first shave would be on the morrow for his fourteenth birthday. Then, formally, in front of the proper people, our family tonsor would cut his beard for the first time, and this beard would be burned as an offering to Mars, officially our household god, and my personal god publicly, even though Miri-amne did not even believe Mars existed and had often told me so.

It was not that I believed in Mars, or that he had anything to do with any victory of mine, or that it made one spit of difference if one burned calves before Mars or urinated down his finely chiselled helmet over his finely chiselled head.

One did not worship the gods of Rome for the gods, but for Rome. Religion properly and publicly pursued was a showing of one's place with Rome, and while Publius with his patrician foundation could afford to mock the gods publicly. I could not. I had to prove my Romanness daily. Because of this, Petronius would have to prove it less, and his son not at all.

'Are you ready for the tonsor, tomorrow?' I asked. Miriamne hugged Petronius firmly, then released him with the admonition: 'He is your father. Honour him.' And she left.

'For fourteen years, my father, I have been ready for the tonsor'

'Good,' I said 'Very good. Very, very good. That is good. It is good. Very.' 'Beards grow, father.'

'Yes, do they not? What is it the famous Greek poet Horace said about beards ? He said something funny, if I remember.'

'Horace is Roman, father, one of us. Homer is Greek. A great poet, father, but not Horace.'

Petronius yelled for a slave to bring h
im
honey and plums before he finished the apple He was ungainly and sat falling into the pillows like so much furniture cracking at the joints. But he had a sharp wit.

'This is a family secret. I am going to be made a senator. It does not mean I will ever be a patrician, but we will get you a patrician wife, and you may someday wear the broad stripe on your toga.'

'Is that what you want to tell me, father ?' he asked. 'You do not seem pleased.'

'Why are you pleased ? You own half the senate anyhow.' 'What makes you think so ?' 'Everyone say so.' 'And what do you say ?'

I
say nothing.
‘
I am your son.
’

And with this he made a reference to what I had taught him on a birthday; for each birthday I gave him not only some toy or gift of immediate joy, but something I had learned in life. A whitish burn welt remained on my right side. Burns remain forever, although it was only seven years before. He grew so quickly, yet it seemed like too short a time for seven years. Seven years before, Petronius was seven, and on that birthday he received a carved wooden doll that spun when a cord was pulled.

On that day, he learned his first lesson of each birthday. That first lesson was on silence about the family. I could never forget. Slaves had heated an iron and were sent away so that Petronius could be alone with me.

‘I
want to show how important it is that you keep family business family,' I had said.

‘I
am seven and big,' he said.

'Very big. You are important, Petronius. Now you must know that some things hurt. Some things hurt very much. You are old enough.'

'A spanking hurts. Pebbles in sandals hurt, oh, so much.'

'Yes, they do, Petronius.'

'Mother spanks me.'

'Because she loves you.'

'You love me.'

'Yes, I do.'

'You don't spank me.'

'No. No. I don't. Petronius, you are a big boy. And you can hurt me. The most dangerous thing in the world is the human mouth. Not its teeth, but its tongue.'

‘I
don't want to hurt you, father. You give me things.'

'Lift the handle of that iron there,' I said, pointing to a rod as red as the coals it rested on at one end. We had done this before Mars's statue. Some soot from the coals collected on the ceiling.

Petronius, straining, lifted the cold, black end of the rod, almost dropping the hot point to the floor when he had raised the rod up and out of the coals.

I lifted my tunic, exposing my stomach.

'Press the rod here as I talk.'

'No. It will hurt.'

‘
Do
it.
^’
‘
No.'

'I will hurt you, Petronius.'

'No,' he shouted, and I snatched the rod from him and made him look as I pressed it burning into my stomach.

'With your mouth you can hurt me more than this, Petronius. Look, Petronius. Look at how little it hurts. But your mouth can hurt much.'

It did hurt, but gladiators are often trained with hot rods to force the muscles and mind to do things they might ordinarily shy from.

The rod sizzled when it went back into the coals.

'You can hurt me more by saying things that are said in the house. The burn does not hurt. You can hurt by saying what is said here to your friends or anyone. What is said at home stays at home.'

'Promise it doesn't hurt,' cried Petronius.'

'It doesn't hurt, darling. It doesn't hurt at all.'

The scar carried two pale welts like marble fingers across the right side of my stomach. Seven years later it had not diminished. But when Petronius said he was my son, I could trust that I could disclose things, knowing he would not carry them elsewhere. The public thing was, of course, Publius.

'I have something else to tell you, which you may have heard. It is, of course, all over the city.'

'Publius ?'he said, smiling.

'Yes', I said.

'You are going to have trouble with the big amphitheatre.' 'How do you know? Where do you hear these things about the arena?'

'I know. Everyone knows. Everyone goes to the games but me.'

'Yes, and not all of them come back from the riots.'

The trouble with your match that started the riot was that it wasn't held in the Colosseum where people could see it. That was the trouble with those games.'

There were other things,' I said, dismissing the subject with a short wave of my hand. 'The arena is none of your business.'

'I have not said anything to anyone. I am told nothing, and it is no small burden you have placed on me, your son, to be ignorant of the only important thing in Rome today.' He gestured like a grown orator, his face grave with the weightiness of his little problem. The grammarian had taught him well.

There are many important things in Rome; they just do not tease the Roman mind,' I said.

The grammarian had all the boys stand and brought me before them. He said I was the son of Roman virtue. He said it was possible with a little Roman blood to be more Roman than someone with a mother and father both Roman and Roman since the founding of the city.'

'And it did not amuse you that Publius is suddenly less Roman than I, because he is a foolish, defenceless person ?'

'It made me proud to be your son. When he said the Roman blood of your courageous father flowed in your body and now mine, and not a drop had been diluted, I wept with pride.'

'Knowing this was the same man who taught you that gods copulated with geese and that my father died trying to retrieve the lost eagles in wildest Germany, when you know quite well I paid in coin you saw with your eyes, put in the palm of the poet taking my instructions on my ancestry, which I told you was a lie.'

'Your father was Roman.'

'Very,' I said. 'And in no way did he ever do anything of virtue in his entire life. Ever.'

'Why are you angry ?' asked Petronius.

'I am offended that your mother's blood and my mother's blood is suddenly inadequate for you. Your mother is a great woman and so was your grandmother.'

'My grandmother was so great that this is the second time you have mentioned her, the first being that you would tell me about her when I grew up. No. Roman is the best thing to be.'

'It is a thing to use, not be. Like my sword. But I do not bring too much of it into our peristilium. I am glad your birthday is close, for there is a truth I have found in the arena that will be the gift I will give you.'

'And the one I want ?'

'That is a surprise,' I said, and I felt good again. For I did not like arguing with Petronius, especially since I now did not have such a secure advantage. And being my son, he knew just which thrust hurt the most.

'I want to see your match with Publius. Isn't it so, that this will be the last time you will be in the arena? That is the rumour. Isn't it so?'

'I thought it was a secret.'

'More than two people cannot hold a secret. You have told me that'