The Kingdom of the Wicked (52 page)

       'I fear it's very roundabout. Rome by way of little Asia.'

       'A mad voyage for a mad man. Not so mad a man, not so mad a voyage. The procurator was eager to get me away, but doesn't seem so eager to get me to Rome. A procurator's relations with Rome should be very simple — taxes delivered on time, nothing more. Now he has to get involved with the legal department. I'm afraid I'm an embarrassment to the procurator. I have a feeling that he'd be happier if we were shipwrecked somewhere.'

       'We'll be sailing into the season for shipwrecks.' Julius smiled. Paul smiled. Seagulls crarked. Paul said:

       'Tell me, do you understand my situation? Do you understand what I've been preaching and teaching and doing? Your superior officer clearly doesn't.'

       'I have a certain advantage over him. My wife is Jewish. My brother-in-law claims to have known you. You were students together. In those days they called you Saul.'

       'Who is he?'

       'His name's Caleb. In his revolutionary moods he calls himself Caleb the Zealot.'

       'Oh, I remember. But what's a Zealot doing in Rome?'

       'Finished with revolutionary politics — for the time being, he says. Married with a son. A trainer of wrestlers and gladiators. I look forward to your reunion.'

       'I look forward to a number of reunions. Including one at Sidon — if you'll permit me to go ashore. Ironic. I persecuted the Greek Nazarenes of Jerusalem, and some of them flew off to found a church at Sidon. In a sense, I founded that church. The ways of God. You don't think me mad when I say God and not the gods?'

       'Sara says God too.'

       'Sara? Caleb's sister. I can't remember their parents. I remember an uncle, though. The twelfth disciple.'

       'The name Matthias is sometimes mentioned.'

       'And there was another girl —’

       'Ruth. A name that lives on in our daughter. Ruth died. Oh, why hide what happened? Ruth was slaughtered. Rome was vicious under Gaius.'

       'And under your new Emperor? The one I'm petitioning?'

       Too soon to say. He's young. But he has Seneca to keep him on the right road.'

       'Seneca, yes.'

Seneca, yes. Nero was at breakfast and already tipsy when Seneca achieved at last a long-requested interview with him. Tigellinus sat apart from the Emperor's table, a small one befitting a small meal, though it was covered with silver dishes — crayfish stewed with saffron, plover's eggs hardboiled, a piece of cold braised beef in a crust, cold water he did not touch, warmed wine he did. 'I would prefer to make my request in private, Caesar.'

       'No secrets from the praetorian prefect.'

       'I — don't understand.' But he did.

       'The lord Burrus has unaccountably vanished. I was in need of a replacement. What better man to fill the post —’

       'Than a fishmonger. I see.' Tigellinus took no offence, grinned comfortably rather. 'And when you say that Burrus has vanished —’

       'I mean that Burrus was not well. Was not happy. Was dissatisfied. Was not greatly efficient in his office of praetorian prefect. Don't disparage fishmongers, Seneca. They know how to sell fish. What you and Burrus tried to sell found no market. Not here.'

       'My request comes opportunely then. I'm growing old. I have books to write — ideas to contemplate. I need to go into retirement.'

       'To which of your many estates? See, Tigellinus, this egg is undercooked.'

       'I don't doubt that I've accumulated more property than is perhaps fitting for a — Stoic philosopher. I'm beholden to Caesar for his gifts. Now I wish to return them.'

       'So at last you become really a Stoic. You were right, Tigellinus. They're all damned hypocrites. Preaching the virtues of the simple life and cramming their chests with gold and silver and title deeds. I don't think I want to let you go, dear Seneca. You write me good speeches. They impress the Senate.'

       'Yes, Caesar. You're right to talk of hypocrisy.'

       'And what,' sucking a marrow bone, 'precisely,' blowing a hoarse note through it, 'do you mean by that?'

       'I've discovered that politics and morality have little to do with each other. I beg you to let me go into retirement. I can't cleanse the Empire, not with mere words. But I can do something for myself.'

       'Shall we let him go, Tigellinus?'

       'It would be useful,' the new praetorian prefect said, 'if Caesar knew precisely where he is going. A man as talented as Seneca ought not just to vanish — as Burrus did.'

       'So stay in Rome, Seneca, or on its immediate outskirts. I may call on you to write me the occasional speech. And, of course, it would be pleasant if you would say a few words at my forthcoming marriage. Something about the virtues of marital love and the glory of a woman's fidelity to her husband.'

       'Marriage? I don't understand.'

       'You never seem to understand anything, do you? For a philosopher you've precious little understanding of the real world. Your protegee the Empress Octavia learned nothing of virtue, for all your lessons in moral philosophy. Adultery is always a crime. When the Emperor is cuckolded it becomes the crime of treason. To which, of course, there is only one answer.'

       'You mean,' Seneca said, appalled, 'you propose to marry that — I assumed that — I thought that was —’

       'Get it out, man. You're as bad as that clown Claudius. No, not Acte, delectable as she was. Acte's finished with. A lady, sir. The Emperor is to marry a lady.' He belched in finality. 'All right, go.'

They sailed north, hugging the coast, to the old Phoenician capital named Sidon, seventy miles of calm. Two bales of Galilean grain were unladed, and a rift in the rigging had to be repaired. Paul and Luke were permitted to go ashore, with Julius accompanying them. There were two harbours here, and they anchored briefly in the one called Leucippe. Here members of the local church assembled to meet Paul, under a screaming sanhedrin of gulls. It has been Luke's task to get the message through. Some of the Sidonese Christians believed that Paul was long dead, and they fingered his limbs as in a meat market. There were tearful embraces badly interpreted by some of the low soldiers at the taffrail, who knew all about the Christians as cannibals and perverts, and then Paul spoke urgent words he had already dictated to Luke in their cabin:

       'The Holy Spirit has made you overseers or bishops of a flock always in danger from wolves. This flock, this church, he bought with his blood, he who, in conjunction with the Father, maintains this Spirit to guide you. I know that already the enemy is at work, trying to draw Christ's followers in the direction of lewdness and bad habits and spitting at what they formerly reverenced. Work hard, help the weak, give of your strength and love, remembering that it is more blessed to give than to receive.'

       Then they had to get back on board. But, following Julius, Paul suddenly turned and cried words to the faithful not, it seemed, previously meditated. 'I know how things are. You think Christ's blood has bought you from sin for all time and that you're free to sin without reproach or punishment. But Christ's ransom works only retrospectively. You think you're special, rightly aloof from the sanctions of both Jewish and Roman law. You think you can sleep with whoever you wish and eat garbage if you want to. Well, you can't. You've seen a light which others haven't, and that gives you a moral responsibility the rest don't possess. I shan't be around here again, and you'll hear my voice only in the ghostly form of letters I shall write, but remember what I want from you, what Christ wants — purity, purity and again purity.'

       'We have to get aboard,' Julius said apologetically.

       'All right. I've said my say.' Some of the troops at the taffrail were making a little song about purity, a word that had clearly carried. Paul grinned at them, but his eyes were angry. Julius gained the notion that he was angry with himself: work not well done, mission not well understood, the voyage a voyage towards the realization of failure. But he could not be sure.

       They sailed east and north of Cyprus. This was summer, and the prevailing winds were from the west, so they kept to the lee of the island. Paul lay on his bunk, hands joined behind his head on the filthy straw pillow. Luke sat on the edge of his bunk, looking at him. Nothing to dictate? Nothing. How is your stomach? Well enough. On the deck some of the troops were playing the game of trying to ring a peg with rope quoits. Their coarse shouts rang in, the cabin door being open for the breeze. Pone in culum. Fili scortorum. Luke went out and saw they were letting the west wind carry them to the Asian coast. It would be a matter of creeping north, embracing the land, dropping anchor in inlets when the wind defeated the coastal current and the little breezes from the Asian landmass. A slow long journey. By the rights of it Paul should get up from that bunk and start preaching the word to the troops or those genuine prisoners who lay in the dark brig in chains. Somehow God seemed landlocked, a thin voice high in the rigging, slave to tide and winds, overawed by the sea he had made. What did the God who hammered the universe together have to do with virtue, redemption, the strange doctrine of hypostasis?

       Everybody except the chained was up on deck to see the port of Myra dance sedately towards them. Here they were to change ship. 'That,' Julius said, pointing, 'will be ours. One of the grain fleet.'

       'From Alexandria.' Paul had reduced himself to the mere knowledgable traveller; he had sailed more than anyone here, except for the captain-owner. 'They all put in at Myra. Due north. A good bay.' Their ship danced towards dancing Myra, unpestered by bum-boats; these flimsy craft, laden with fruit, small idols, gaudy trinkets, yelling vendors and a rowing boy, swarmed about the grainship. Prostitutes, their faces modestly veiled, languidly pulled up their skirts to tempt the jeering troops. The gangplank went down. The chained prisoners came up painfully blinking. The sun was a hot bath; slave breezes shook cooling towels. The soldiers, making finger gestures at the whores and crying bad Aramaic, humped their gear to the land. Civilian passengers in robes, who had remained nameless even on the communal messdeck, shouldered nameless goods in sacks and waved at greeting knots by the godowns. Paul and Luke stood patiently by bales for loading, under the eye of a soldier who spat out datestones like dirty words. Marcus Julius Tranquillus handed money over to the captain-owner, who wailed to heaven about Roman sharp practice. Then he went to look for the master of the grainship. Sacks were being craned on board. 'Look out,' Luke cried, as one of them split and discharged its content. Paul dodged. It was yellow, a very fine and quite unknown grain. Luke let some run through his fingers.

       'Sand?' he said.

       'Sand for Rome,' the foreman said, 'believe it or not. It's a mad world.'

A pair of wrestlers stirred up sand as they fought. One of them was Caleb, muscular still but carrying too much weight round the middle. The crowd swallowed sausage gristle and roared and booed. All Rome was there, as ever, doing no work. Wheat from Egypt and sand from Myra. The world paid tribute and granted leisure to watch blood being spilled, less precious than sand. Not that blood would be spilled now. A mere interlude. The Emperor had asked to see Jewish wrestlers. Well, here was one, somewhat past it. His opponent, whom he had trained, was Sicilian and knew when to hold back. Caleb would yield when he felt tired.

       The Emperor sat chewing dates and spitting out the stones petulantly. Behind him stood Tigellinus in uniform. Next to him sat his new wife, whose husband had been banished to Lusitania. I note that in this chronicle I have not mentioned one ugly woman. I would, for variety's sake, make Poppea Sabina ugly if I could, but I cannot. She was of the jet and ivory race of Messalina and Agrippina, her perfection of face and body rendering description a bore, but she was, unlike those ladies, good. She was also clever, but not in matters of intrigue. She read the poets and philosophers. She had even read the Septuagint. Nero frowned at Caleb's performance and said:

       'Too old. I like to see young bodies.'

       'That man,' Poppea said, 'has a reputation. He nearly strangled the late Gaius Caligula. In a wrestling bout like this. Caligula challenged him. It was his own fault. The Jews fight well when they have to.'

       'You admire the Jews, don't you? An intransigent people. Riots again last week outside one of their what do you call them —’

       ‘Synagogues.'

       'Something to do with this crowd that worships Chrestus. I think that Claudius's idea was a reasonable one. One of his few ideas that were. Throw the Jews out. They're a nuisance. They spit on the gods of Rome. And that's a way of spitting on Caesar.'

       'Such Jews as I know are respectable and intelligent. They read books instead of going to the games. They regard the games as bloodthirsty and childish.'

       'Do, do they? They're also too rich. I think the imperial exchequer might do a little dipping there. Oh, that was well done.' Meaning that the pseudo-Jew had caught the real one in an excruciating armlock, and the real one hammered the sand to show he yielded. They stood, bowed, ran off quickly for fear the Emperor might order the diversion of throatcutting, and then Nero said: 'What's next, Tigellinus?'

       'Elephants, Caesar.'

       'Ah, elephants. "Proud with his pachyderms piling the perilous passes." Part of a poem I once started on Hannibal. Never finished it. Poppea, dearest, I think I could profitably use your friendship with these people. Find out how much they're storing up. Rifle their whatdoyoucallthem synagogues. Rome needs money. I have the most gorgeous plan for Rome. Art. I can't finish my poems. I sing, I act, I dance, and it's all spent, gone, impermanent, smoke on the wind. "Do not expect again a phoenix hour." I couldn't finish that poem either. I dream of a lasting work of art.'