The Far Arena (65 page)

'I see, Olava. I could not understand before.'

Happiness came to her so suddenly she almost cried.

'Eugeni, what? What do you understand ?' she asked.

'I did not understand before about you and your discipline and your education and your cleanliness, for you wash as much as any Roman. I did not connect you and the poor little fisherman. I did not know where Rome had gone either. And now I see. I see it all.'

'Yes? Yes?' she said, her hands clasping in front of her, her body tense with joy, expectant of the giant revelation I would now share.

'You are not some little Jewish sect following someone executed in a shameful manner. You are Rome living. Here is Rome. Peter would never have been allowed in such a fine building.'

The joy left like a hammer smashing a stone smile.

'No. You're totally wrong.'

'Look about you. To the backward Jew a beautiful statue is blasphemy. They prohibit graven images. I remember Peter. I remember him. He spoke of no graven images. And Miriamne hated my bust of Mars, where Petronius burned his first hair. I like this place, Olava.'

'The form may be Roman. It is the Word that is different. You don't understand.'

‘I
feel at home.'

The Word is everything.'

'Hail Rome. Hail Rome,' and I cried out the words, and people who had hushed smiled politely, for they too had caught my enthusiasm.

And like Rome, there were all manner of foreign people visiting here, black Aetheops, blond, brown hair, black hair, tall, short. 'Most Roman of them all,' I said.

'Peter is buried here, not Julius Caesar. Peter who believed in eternal life through love and its sacrifice, who believed the poor were blessed, not the legions. Peter, not Caesar, Eugeni. Christian, not Roman.'

‘I
know only by the fruits that are born, and it is a tasty Roman blossom I feel now. No one else could have built this but the Roman. Not the Christian. Christians don't care for big buildings. Christians worry about how they do things, not how they build things. I knew many Christians. They weren't all Jews, you know. They had Romans and Germans. I knew Christians as well as any one. And better than you. And this has not the slightest taint of Christian.'

‘I
am a Christian.'

'Not at all,' I assured Olava.

And we left that place and went to a hotel called the Atlas, which was small like a tenement. But I liked the narrow street. And we ate at a place like a tavern of which there were many.

We were in Rome that night, and not a drop of garum or alum to be had. The food, Italian, which meant many cities, all up and down the Italian peninsula, Sicily and Sardinia being included, was a strange thing, which, Olava said, had come in later years.

'This is spaghetti. The design comes from China and was so well adopted by later Italians that people today think of spaghetti as Italian.'

It was not bad, nor was it good, rather a base for a sauce made from tomatoes, which were not eaten regularly and commonly. They made a red sauce, also a later thing. There were meats stuffed into casings called sausages, and Olava did not know if they had been frozen.

She ate very well, with more enthusiasm than she had ever shown. She finished her plate, she finished my plate. I had some cheese. She attracted more looks. She could be beautiful, I thought. The skin was smooth.

Before dessert, she said she knew what she was going to do. She was going to teach me about her God and other things. She was very interested, she said, that I felt at home in Saint Peter's.

'I find out how Roman I am,' I said.

That night, she made copious notes, and fell asleep in the chair. I used the bed.

The room was small, with a meagre tile on the floor and heavy bars on the window. Why they continued to build windows on the outside and then bar them and drape them and shade them, I would never know.

So short a time ago, I would have owned this building and many like it. I would not have even known I owned it. Which of course struck me as funny, because here I was missing something I would not have known I had.

Yet I did miss my peristilium, and I thought that knowing where the Flavian arena was, and gauging by the rising or setting of the sun, I might pace off the distances to where my house was. Olava had said they found houses all the time when they dug for new projects. They might find my peristilium.

But, I thought, if it were like the rest of Rome, better to be gone and gone, instead of gone leaving only a trace.

It was a peaceful moment, and I still had my blade, and perhaps, I thought, if the right time were to present itself, I might then be able, in a sudden move, to take my life. Not now, but some day. After all, I had only failed on the first try. It would be fitting to say good-bye. Both right and just.

I fell asleep missing my Rome, and in the morning Olava was up and humming and praying and washing and asking me why I slept so late. She said if I continued to sleep she would eat my liver which she always wanted, and everyone had lied to me about the eating of human flesh. They all ate human flesh nowadays, Norwegians, which she was, most of all, and if I continued to sleep she could not control herself, especially since I also had a thigh that looked so tasty, a piece already having been taken out.

1 was on the bed, my head in a soft pillow, my blade handy, and I gave it to her, telling her to cut whatever part she wanted.

'I am going to throw it away, Eugeni. Thank you,' she said, and

I
was up and at it and got the blade after a very short wrestle, but
I
was up. And I could not go back to sleep.

'You're happy,' I said.

'Yes,' she said.

‘I
liked you better melancholy,'
I
said. 'I liked you better frozen,' she said.

'Frozen. I did not have to converse with barbarians as equals.
’
"That is because we are better, therefore we cannot be equals. 'Dress,' she said, the logic satisfactory only to her.

She was skilled now in her cosmetics, knowing enough to make them be there, and alter her face slightly, but not gross any more. The colours belonged on her. She wore a light, common white blouse, the understrapping somewhat visible, a short skirt, and flat black shoes. She had everything neat and packed, which she did herself. We had three small trunks now. She carried two. I carried one.

As we left, a slave of the hotel, who of course was not a slave, merely at everyone's call and service, offered me a very big and lascivious wink, looking at Olava pay the bill. She drew attention here, also.

In the desecration of the language now common here, someone almost managed to finish the word beautiful. I gathered from the bowing and light concern that she was indeed most beautiful, yellow white hair being treasured now.

'Today, Eugeni, we go to Pompeii...'

'Pompeii, woman, was obliterated even in my time by Vesuvius flowing lava.'

'Which is why we have it today. It was kept from the hands of vandals by the burial. The little city of Pompeii has been dug out. It is your Rome. And I think it will help you see some things. Their dark night is your daylight.'

And on that, Olava was happy.

'Woman, so often you have said that even in the darkest night there still exists a sunlight so bright we cannot look at it. Now if this is so, somewhere in this bright day is a night so dark the terrors know no bounds. So let us not be so happy.'

At that she laughed.

'I wish you could have seen the real Rome, you would not have taken me to this one, Olava,' I said.

'We go to the real Rome,' she said. 'In Pompeii is the spirit.' We drove in Olava's automobile, and she sang and orated all morning.

We entered Pompeii by a sailor's gate and had to pay to enter.

The advantage of Pompeii was not that it had withstood time unscathed, for it had not. It was as though an army of slaves had gone through it with clubs and scrapers, leaving only the stones of the streets, shells of houses, and some interior. Almost all the external marble and wall paintings were gone. And, of course, the people - the living people - were not to return again, whether felled by lava or not. Whether felled by volcano or not, all were dead now.

There were no lights without fire, nor automobiles, nor glass grinning from every structure. What they had done was keep ensuing centuries out more than my time in, which was enough. It was almost home again, if I forgot the nearby towns, and ignored the new volcano Vesuvius. Olava told me I was crying. I did not know it.

Groups of people walked together, pausing every once in a while to hear a man tell them things in a foreign tongue. It was a guide, who was paid to show people poor Pompeii. Everyone was interested in common things. We followed one group to Jupiter's temple. His head was still there on a metal statue, although the temple was removed. It was open to the seasons.

I told Olava where people sat, what the sacrifices were, how there had been contention for who would be priest of this temple, and how a bribe of but a few sesterces decided the will of the gods. I knew the name of the priest and how he worked at making Jupiter the most revered god of all by making a triad of Juno, Minerva, and Jupiter. I said hello to Jupiter and informed him I had outlived him. Olava smiled.

'Do you know, Olava, this triad once spoke?'

'I find that hard to believe, Eugeni.'

'It is so. They said,
"We are three, but we are but stones. There are three that do rule, but they are one, and in one they are here but not here."'

'What ?' said Olava, her large, pale hands seizing my shoulders. 'Oh, it was quite an incident. The priests suppressed what the three stones said, but I remember most of it'

‘
What was it?'

'How much would you pay for exactly what came from the mouths of stones?' 'You could get much money.'

'Then I will tell you for nothing what they said. They said it is not lies that people dislike, but specific lies. If they look down upon the Roman games, it is not that they look down on games, but Roman games. If I, Eugenianus, should mount a woman for profit, that is disgraceful and Greek. But should I tell you the lie that three stones suddenly spoke with human voice to vindicate the fancy stories of your cult, then it is most valuable and not disgraceful at all.'

'You've told me a lot already, even in your lie. You've told me about early Christian belief concerning the trinity. You know more of Christians than you allow.'

'I knew the respected cults better. But if Christians are respected now, I will know so many things you will be stunned, Olava.'

'You would know for profit.'

"There are worse motives.'

'Profit doesn't last, Eugeni. Even stones don't last. I had hoped you would see what was obvious to me, that the Word lasts. The Word, Eugeni. Even the misnaming of the Colosseum has lasted longer than its marble. And the good things last longer still. The two cults that lived on the Word, Jewish worship and the Christian flowering from it, both relied on the Word, not the stone. In the beginning and the end, Eugeni, is the Word.'

The group went by us and another group came up the good and regular stone walks. I thought a moment. I remembered the food shops of this city.

'Do you know if they discovered garum or alum when they dug Pompeii out?'

'I talk to you of eternity, and you think of your stomach.'

'Not only can eternity wait, woman, it does not growl.'

There was little left of the forum, and I showed Olava which temples were where, and which shops were where, and I told her which were assumed to be profitable, and which were not, and where some of my investments were, and the politics of the times. The games had been banned here by a decree of the senate, for there had been a battle between Pompeians and Nucerians over the games. Many were injured, although not one fraction of the damage done by a good riot in Rome had occurred. However, morality is a garment watched more closely on others.

We went to the baths, the caldarium, the frigidarium, and it was strange - the first time I had entered the women's baths. Somehow I felt I was stealing something. This was Olava's first time in Pompeii, she said, and my twentieth. I had always liked Pompeii, although Herculaneum nearby was considered a better place. Pompeii was once a Greek-controlled city, before Rome took over the entire peninsula, which was now one country again and unified as Italy.