The Far Arena (53 page)

The old man was enjoying this, Lew realized. He was playing Texas Ranger again.

'No one should ever have to see how a gladiator kills,' said McCardle.

'From the beginning. Who was standin' wheah? Ah jes wanna get the fixings on this here brawl.'

And Lew gave him the fixings and all:

'Eugeni was in the kitchen with a large meat knife. The fencer entered, chased him to a corner, and cut a cheek. Then, Eugeni smiled very big in a large, comic gesture, and proceeded to dismember and ultimately disembowel someone fencing for his life, all the while smiling and bowing.'

'Like what, what first ?'

Eugeni had appeared to move slowly; he caught the tip of the fencer's foil with the tip of the salad knife and, as though the two weapons were soldered, he moved it with the tip until everyone could see he was dominating and directing the fencer's foil.

'Like you would hold a two-year-old's hand and move it around. That easily,' said McCardle.

Then Eugeni, who was half a foot shorter, did the same thing with the two fingers of his left hand, while his knife teased the genitals of the fencer. No, Eugeni did not cut him there. Still with a big grin, he pushed his belly into the fencer's belly, then turned around so that the fencer's sword arm was under his own arm. He was showing the fencer how to move. He yelled into the fencer's ear that he should practise more. He accused the fencer of not listening properly, took one step back and took off an ear. The knife seemed to move slowly, just touch the ear. Then the ear was off clean, and there was a hole surrounded by blood on the side of the fencer's head. Then he accused the fencer of talking too much. That was the fault of his poor training. He took off the upper lip and part of the nose. Then he looked as though he slipped, and the desperate fencer lunged, and Eugeni opened his belly like a surgeon and with skilful hand yanked out his intestines and dragged him stumbling around the kitchen. He looked to the nun for the death signal, and getting none, he finished off the poor man, spinning him over the butcher blocks and taking off the head.'

'I saw a head go in Riyadh once. The Saudis did it with one stroke. It's not like you imagine. It's not that easy taking off a head. They had this African, black as a mine shaft, I mean it was black, and it was crying,' said Laurie. 'Mr Laurie, please.

'Yup,' said Laurie. 'You're right. I've got to go. You've troubles on your hands, and we're just going to have to do whatever the hell we can do. The tight, exclusive find is gone. It's going to show. But don't feel all that bad, Lew. Nobody knows for sure but us.'

'I don't understand,' said Lew.

'Well, we've got to rush. Cat's got to be out of the bag soon, and if we rush, we can't drive the kind of bargain we want. We're not dealing with fools nowadays. Everyone knows oil. It could have been nice. It could have been seven, maybe eight points.'

'What?'

'On the American Stock Exchange. Houghton Oil. It's sixty-seven and three-quarters. If we had the right bidding atmosphere, with plenty of time to haggle and not rush, we could have been sixty-four, sixty-four and a half, without the market doing anything.'

'Eight points? Is that what "big" was?' asked Lew McCardle in horror.

'If you're Houghton people and you're talking Houghton, it's more than ten per
cent. Give us as much time as you can, Lew,' said Laurie, picking up a little overnight bag and checking for anything else in the room that might be his. 'You know, when you're blocking on a pass play, you keep the other guys away from your quarterback. You don't try to stop them completely, only sort of misdirect them. But I don't have to tell you, Lew. You're an old Maky tackle and you're gonna give us your best. You'd kill to protect your quarterback if you had to. Because you know Houghton takes care of those who take care of Houghton.'

Laurie shook hands, winked, patted Lew on the shoulder, and was out of the room. Shortly thereafter, a man in a business suit entered, put a pistol on the table near Lew McCardle, and was leaving when Lew said:

'What the hell is that for ?'

'I don't know. And I don't know you,' said the man.

Twenty six

Perhaps it was Olava's hysterical shrieking. Or Lewus's vomiting. Or Semyonus staring open-mouthed, emitting the same low grunt like a chorus of deep-throated birds sentenced to a lifetime of a single note. My body was already in its dance of glory to share the triumph with them. But there was no yelling of approval, no stamping of feet, no cheers with my name for a match that would have glorified Rome. If Publius had had the strength and quickness of this slain gladiator, I would now be surrounded by my wife and child and wealth and power, living a life devoted to my wants. I would have been manipulating a good marriage for Petronius. I would have been sharing my wisdom with Domitian, but not too much. I would have been moving my wealth to even stronger positions.

Instead, I was jumping up and down in a slave work area for a cultist, a physician, and, from what I could understand, someone akin to one of my wealthier slaves who managed my affairs under my close scrutiny.

I ran. And when I started running, I realized it was what I
wanted to do. I ran for the runn
ing of it, as though if I ran hard enough and long enough, something I desperately wanted would either catch me or fall in front of me. I searched for a way away. I was running home. I was running.

Running hadn't changed.

Through the corridors I ran and down the iron steps I ran and, unlike the streets of Rome, here I did not know where I was going.

People let out startled little gasps as I crossed the big hall to the glass doors that opened to the night. I ran, seeing the fast-moving lights of what Olava called automobiles. Out into this strange land of machines I ran.

I ran towards a wooded hill I had seen from the sun porch. The roads and cities were the barbarians' arena; the forests, I felt sure, were more familiar ground. It was good that this was at the edge of the city, for cities are confusing to strangers.

I was clumsy through the trees, for, in truth, I was a city person all my life - except for the years of the latifundia and those first precious moments in the hills of Greece, when I was with my mother and grandfather as a family.

I collided with a tree and paused in the darkness, smelling the freshness of the forest, feeling the chill finally come over me, my weapon hand bloody to the elbow. I was cold. Behind me I could see the lights of the hospital far off and, in my isolation, could hear yelling, made faint by distance. My breath stayed with me, but weakly. I sat down under a tree on what felt like a leafy patch of ground, and for the first time since I had entered the arena before Domitian, I was free.

It was delicious. Through the leaves above, I could see the white specks of the heavens. Lewus's people had taken the gods from these very heavens by walking on the moon.

It was chilly, but the chill was a good discomfort. I was free. I shut my eyes in the joy of my escape. When I opened them, the good chill was a gnawing cold and I was hungry. The blood of the swordsman was now clotted on my tunic and my weakened right leg pained. The stars were no longer in the sky, for the infinite black background was now a close grey blanket in the time before the sun.

I was in a wooded land where leaves from a previous autumn covered the ground. If I had fire, I could burn the cold from me, and then I realized that I did not know how to make a fire. Since I had entered the lanista training school, slaves or others had always prepared my fires.

In the forests I would not be on even ground with the people of today. Most of my life had been spent in the city
, being serv
ed for my minor needs. I realized then that my long-ago dreams of the hills of Greece were just that. I belonged in no hill country; for I, who had imagined myself as an innocent lad from the hills of Greece thrust into a cruel Roman world, was in truth a Roman. In my habits, in my comfort, especially in the scheming of my mind, I was inescapably Roman. Not because of my father's blood, but because of my mind. A Greek lad of the hills would have had a fire by this time. A Roman of the city would sit helpless, shivering, waiting for a slave - a Greek slave - to do the work for him.

I realized only then, separated by centuries and miles, that I was not only most Roman of them all, I was the only Roman of them all. Eugeni, the Greekling.

And it was not the best century to be such. The barbarians had civilized themselves, and why not? The patricians were now less than dust, and even the tombs of marble could not keep their bodies from becoming part of the air and land. Was that what tombs were for ? To keep the bodies from feeding the ground ? To keep your bowels from contenting a dog who would defecate your remains for the afternoon glory of a lily ?

It was no big thing at all. Even without the senate voting me guilty of maiestas, what would I have been ? Had they made me a god, and had marble images lined every
r
oad for every mile in every land, who would know me today ? Only to reproduce the sounds of my name and recount happenings they did not understand?

Domitian was remembered. Olava knew his name his birth, his death, and some triumphs attributed to him. And what did he have? The unflawed stupidity of exerting oneself for later generations, called posterity, banged me like bound rods across the nose. Many great men talked of it as the most significant achievement. Men who would not so much as lift a piece of bread for someone sitting at their side would march themselves and thousands of comrades to destruction, just so that other people, who could never possibly know them or even return so much as a seeable nod, would think approvingly of them.

With a fingernail I made a scratch on the bark of the tree I leaned against. The tree would grow that mark away, as though it had never been. And why not? I should not have even intruded myself upon its skin.

There was nothing here for me, not even hate. In a time when there were no slaves, I did not even have dominion over my urine, which was taken away daily to be examined.

I allowed the moments of the long night to pass, and I understood how I could in a small way make things right.

There was a place I could go to where I would be home. I rubbed leaves on my blade to make it shiny. I rested its pommel on a rock lest it sink into the ground. And I knelt before the rock and touched the point to my chest.

I faced south. I knew, because the new blood sun was coming up from my left, unless of course it had changed. Many things change in a long, long time. I would have to plunge myself down in such a way that the blade went up into my heart. A small animal moved through the dead leaves. 1 smelled the trees and listened to the sharp, seldom-heard sounds of morning in this north country. I lifted myself away from the blade and examined the point. I had time now. There was no need to rush this. I tried to sharpen the point against the rock, but I only dulled it.

Demos, a slave I once had, could take a blade even of raw iron and craft a point and edge on it to slice cloth. Not improving the blade, I put the pommel back on the rock and prepared to die.

I made myself quiet within myself and waited for my body to suddenly do the rest in a solid lunge to earth. When the sun was yellow, and the morning heat came upon me, I knew I was not going to kill myself. I was not Roman enough. The Greekling and gladiator were too much in me to end my misery in so Roman a fashion. I was a slave to my desire to live and, surrendering to that, a slave to the wants of my body. There was no Aurelius to free me from this bondage. I descended the small hill and found a stream with water. The taste was horrible. It had been either poisoned or infected with some putrid substance. Near the stream was a road, not of good rock, but black and soft to the foot, that stretched like dark, flat honey up one hill south and down another north. Should I take this road to its farthest extremity in either direction, it would not lead me to where I wished to go.

On these roads, built for enclosed chariots that needed no horse and were called 'automobiles', meaning things that moved by themselves, did I rest, careful to stay off the road itself. The automobiles moved faster than horses and probably required less skill to operate, once one knew what to do. Everything did today.

Suddenly I noticed one had stopped. A large man opened a front door and came towards me. It was Lewus, and I was happy to see this face because I recognized it.

He was grim, and I could see distaste and determination on his face. In his right hand, he held a metal bashing piece with a tube. How I knew it was a weapon, I do not know. But I knew he was prepared to kill with it, and assumed so with the way he carried it, for it was not a package, and one knows by the gravity of step that a novice is ready to kill.
‘

He looked down at me, and I rose to my feet, and he still looked down at me. I motioned to him that it was all right. I pushed my thumb into my chest to tell him that he should strike there. Did he want me to fight in order to kill me ?