The Implacable Hunter (24 page)

Then Paulus and Afranius left with the guard.

‘The jackals will have to dig for their supper tonight,’ said Paulus.

Afranius said: ‘If the gods give me only one-tenth of that man’s courage when my time comes, it will be said of me: ‘“He died like a gentleman!”’

‘He was stoned by the People, and he died like a dog.’

‘Oh no. The People are the dogs. He died like a man. Bite your tongue, little one, before you talk like that!’ cried Afranius, in vexation. ‘The gods are offended by such
presumption
. Not one in five of your People but will feel in his own heart two stones for every one he threw this day! And can you see yourself, Paulus? Ixion on the wheel – Tantalus between the grapes and the water – Sisyphus at the stone, yes, Sisyphus – Prometheus on the rock! Oh, for the skill to paint your likeness at this moment! If you are one of the Righteous, let me be one of the damned!’

‘You are excited, my dear Afranius,’ said Paulus.

‘I am sick,’ Afranius said, and he must have used that iron voice of his that came when he was angry. ‘Oh, small man with a tortured heart, your god has made you mad! You think you have stoned Stephanas? Wait, and you will see that Stephanas has stoned you – yes, stoned you in the streets! Upon you, Paulus, will fall the weight of the shame that has been carried away in the souls of all who were at this place. Their guilt shall be your guilt, and they will tear you to pieces for it at last. Stephanas? Gone, little man, gone where
the honest brave men go. But you are here, and his ghost will certainly be with you, frantic companion of spies and blind traitors and hangmen that you are! And whenever you go out to one of your feasts of blood and stones, Stephanas will be there to say: “See? You could not hurt me.”’

‘Afranius, enough!’ cried Paulus. ‘I am tired.’

Afranius said: ‘What rage like impotent rage? And what weariness like exhausted impotence? Oh, stallion in desire but worm in Atë’s bed!’

Paulus quivered like a bowstring but said, in a level voice: ‘If this tiny incident has so upset your dainty Roman stomach, Afranius, you had better go home to Tarsus.
Because
this is nothing but a light proem to what you will witness in Damascus.’

Regaining his composure, Afranius said: ‘Yes, I don’t
suppose
you’ll sleep until your mistress says: “Ah, Paulus, that was marvellous!”’ He was speaking figuratively, of course, in terms of Paulus and his Atë, his Goddess of Vengeance. ‘Then, poor fellow,’ he went on, ‘your self-inflicted miseries will really begin. It will be, “Who comes here when I am away?” And it will be, “What are you thinking when you smile to yourself?” And, “Tell me every little detail about your past.” and, “Did you do with other men all the things you do with me?” For Atë is a bitch, and she will eat you up. And if you have juice enough to fructify her, none of her children will resemble you enough to satisfy you. And rant as you may, you will always know in your heart that if you came home and found her in bed with a scavenger, she would only have to say: “Oh, it was only a passing fancy, darling; you are the one I love” – and you’d forgive her, hating her with all your shameful heart and crazy with contempt for yourself … Bah! Let us go to Damascus, then.’

‘The day after tomorrow,’ said Paulus, coldly.

‘If you take my advice, eat and sleep between now and then. It’s a rough road.’

‘I am free to break my fast now,’ said Paulus, ‘but I am not hungry, only thirsty.’

‘Then get blind drunk, and sleep.’

‘Attend to your own health, Afranius.’

‘Oh, chase yourself until you drop, like a starved dog with a bone tied to his tail, then. I think a girl would do you good.’ Without replying, Paulus went away to wash and pray.

Afranius went to his cousin’s house to bathe; but, as he wrote, he had no appetite for supper. ‘… Call me effete, call me a milksop, but I cannot enjoy venison pasty with savoury jelly so soon after a stoning, any more than I can relish roast lamb after a burning. But there was a good fish, and some young ducklings with a preserve of quinces …’ He added: ‘To deal plainly with you, my dear Diomed, your Paulus has become indescribably repulsive to me …’

Yet when they met again next day, Afranius was all
compassion
. ‘My boy!’ he cried. ‘You have a face to frighten Cerberus! Have you broken this madman’s fast of yours?’

The acrimony of the day before seemed forgotten. ‘I ate but I could not hold down what I ate.’

At this, Afranius who could be gentle and stubborn as a woman, pleading in a manner that may only be described as ‘winning’, explained that more than a hundred miles of very hard road lay between them and Damascus, and spoon-fed him a sop of bread, new milk, and honey, and made him drink (‘Just one sip more … there, now just
one
little sip more …’) raw eggs beaten in sweet wine, all the time telling him curious little stories until, having in spite of himself eaten enough to preoccupy his stomach at the expense of his head, Paulus dozed.

All the time wondering why he was doing all this, Afranius picked Paulus up and put him on a couch. He covered him with a quilt. The young man groped in the air, found Afranius’s hand, and held it for some time before his grip
relaxed and he breathed strongly and steadily. Afranius went out on tiptoe, whispering to an old manservant whom he met: ‘Your master is asleep.’

‘Thank God!’ said the old man.

‘I pity you if you disturb him, or go into the chamber until he calls for you.’

‘May I never be the father of my children if I do!’ the old man said. Leaving, Afranius turned and saw him creeping into Paulus’s room, to keep watch, no doubt. For Paulus slept all through the day, awoke at evening, ate heartily and slept again.

And he was so cheerful and talkative when they went away on the road to Damascus that Afranius said to him: ‘Save some of it. There are six days and five nights between here and there.’

But he talked on and on, aroused and excited, like a soldier at the prospect of a furlough, or a girl before her wedding; but with a certain feverishness. His chatter was glistening rather than polished, glazed but not bright. Soon, Afranius felt, the heat would break through, and the varnish would peel; and there would be the knotty, cross-grained,
unworkable
Paulus whom he had come to know – dry, tight and splintery by nature, growing like a desert weed, happy in dead sand and solitude, proud of its obstinacy, uncrowded because it offers no shade.

Paulus said: ‘Diomed has talked to you, no doubt, of his projected work? I mean the book,
Arachne:
or,
A
Theory
of
Centralised
Intelligence
and
its
Relation
to
the
Security
of
the
State?
’

‘Yes,’ said Afranius.

‘Will Diomed ever write it?’

‘If Diomed says he will write a book, Diomed will write that book. But Diomed is not one of your happy-go-lucky slapdash boys. Such a book is the work of a lifetime. If I know my old friend, he won’t moisten a pen until he has
forty years of working experience to draw on,’ said Afranius. ‘I believe he has drawn up a
Protocol,
but even that remains tentative. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, I was merely thinking. The idea,’ said Paulus, ‘is ingenious.’

‘Tell Diomed that,’ said Afranius, beginning to be irritated again. ‘Praise from Paulus is praise indeed. No doubt he will blush like a girl.’

‘I used the wrong word; I meant sound,’ said Paulus.

They were talking of my cherished dream. Taking Rome as the centre of the world, let there be established there a great Prefecture, sensitive to a certain number of main
filaments
extending to every quarter of the world; these
filaments
being in turn connected each to each by shorter
filaments
; the pattern of the whole resembling, in effect, a spider’s web. At convenient intervals throughout the web, a Sub-Prefecture, or Station, manned by agents trained in Rome, and equipped with fast horses, ponies or camels, according to the terrain. The intervening spaces to be
constantly
patrolled. Thus, a branch could not fall in the British forests, say, without its being heard almost immediately in Rome. For the patrolling of the rivers, armed barges. For the seas, news-bearing galleys, light, lean and fast as hounds. … As the saying goes, a virgin with a pot of gold on her head should be able to walk unmolested from the Persian Gulf to the tip of Gaul. The Law made omniscient,
comprehensive
, and therefore generous. Its servants dedicated; corruption a madness, crime a folly; all gods respected, all customs hallowed, all persons sacred. My Badge: a sword for strength, a book for understanding, an olive branch for peace, and an eagle for Rome…. A dream? A dream! But what more dare a man lay by for his old age?

And here was Paulus with his ‘ingenious’!

‘Solomon should have thought of it,’ said Paulus.

‘He was too busy plagiarising his Song from the old
Assyrian,’ said Afranius, ‘when he was not compiling
platitudes
which you call Proverbs.’

‘The radiations in the concentricities,’ Paulus mused. ‘He might have conquered the world!’

‘It takes tolerance to conquer a world,’ Afranius said. ‘Alexander was tolerant. But you know what happens to a tolerant Jew, don’t you?’

‘A wise ruler knows how and when to be lenient.’

‘Are you tired?’ Afranius asked, after a while.

‘Tired? No, why should I be tired?’

‘You are not looking well. Another day or two of rest would have done you no harm.’

‘Who knows? On the Lord’s business, who dares to rest?’

‘Oh, God himself took a day off, I hear. Calm, calm, there will still be Nazarenes in Damascus for you to play with.’

‘What do I know?’ Paulus passed a hand over his eyes.

‘A headache?’

‘No, a noise, a noise not unlike a swarm of bees.’

‘The flies, perhaps.’

‘No, if I stop my ears I can still hear –’ Paulus stopped abruptly. ‘Why are you talking to me as if I were a child?’

‘Was I?’

‘No, I beg your pardon, Afranius. To tell you the truth, I think I must have been a little over-wrought, but I feel better now…. Has it ever happened to you that when you shut your eyes you saw little threads of light slowly moving?’

‘Once or twice, when I was sick and weary. When we stop you must eat.’

‘I may not, until sunset.’

‘Look here, fasting is not for those on the march. When we rest, I say, you shall eat if I have to pry your jaws open with my ringers. And don’t think I’m not capable of doing it.’

‘You were a great athlete, I have been told.’

‘Average, average,’ said Afranius, ‘so-so, so-so.’ He liked
to be reminded that he had won a wreath, once, in a Pankration.

‘I used to wish I were a big man,’ said Paulus.

‘Bah! A man is only as big as his heart. Why, even in Jerusalem they are talking about how you overcame that great fellow what’s-his-name.’

‘Iscamyl. I hated to be called
Paulus,
at first …
Concerning
threads of light, and all that: when you suddenly opened your eyes, did you see a kind of procession of black dots, as it might be a line of ants each carrying in its jaws a little bit of fire around the balls of your eyes and into your brains? You know how ants make a hill? Well, instead of grains of sand, sparks. Did you see that?’

‘No, I can’t say I did. If you don’t eat a good meal this evening, you know, we’ll have to carry you tomorrow; and that will delay us quite a lot. We might even have to leave you behind at some village. I’d stay with you, of course, but it would be devilishly awkward,’ said Afranius.

Paulus sighed. ‘Perhaps, perhaps…. Do you think Stephanas really suffered?’

‘Did you ever have anyone suddenly step on your naked toe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, then, why ask?’

‘I know it offended you, Afranius, but it was the Law, you know.’

‘All right, all right.’

Paulus was growing excited. ‘I am not my own man, Afranius – I am not yet my own master!’

‘Yet? Who is his own master, ever?’

They were riding, now, between two steep, stony slopes. The trail narrowed. Afranius made the sign against the evil eye, muttered some lucky charm phrase, and spat three times.

‘Why do you do that, Afranius?’

‘Why, because I never yet had good luck coming this way,
as I told you. We are coming into the Pass of the Shamir.’

‘Of the what?’ asked Paulus, absently.

‘The Shamir, Solomon’s Worm….’ Afranius intended to add: ‘After we have passed through it, my bedevilled friend, you shall sleep if I have to stun you,’ but Paulus turned to him so suddenly that his horse started.

‘What, must you be for ever at me with your accursed worms?’ cried Paulus with a snarl. ‘Is there rotten cheese in your head, that nothing crawls out of your mouth but worms, and
worms,
and
WORMS
?’ His voice had risen so that the officer at the head of the file turned in some amazement. ‘Worms! What have I to do with your worms? Your
stallions
and your harlots and your worms – what are they to me? Worms!’ he shrieked.

Afranius sat, aghast, while Paulus grasped himself by the hair, covering his eyes with the heels of his hands, and moaned: ‘Oh, where is the sense in burnishing your armour so that it bedazzles your friends? Tell them to go away, with their blinding armour! … Or stain it brown with burnt bulls’ blood…. And will no one stop the thunder of these bees? Will no one stop me the tramping of these ants? …’

Then he took his hands away and groped in the air, yelling: ‘Who has stolen the sun? I am bitter cold! I cannot see – the ants have eaten the sun – the roaring bees have sealed my eyes in a cell with six walls! They were not eggs, you fools, they were my eyes, my eyes!’ And, with that, he slipped out of his saddle and fell. Afranius leapt down, and was at his side in an instant.

The officer halted his men, and rode back. ‘Civilians,’ he said. ‘The gods damn all civilians!’