The Uncertain Hour (19 page)

“She’s very attractive, your Pollia,” Martialis said noncommittally.

“Very.”

“Not my type. I like them slutty.”

“Really?”

“And foul-mouthed. But still.”

“Not easy to find a slutty, foul-mouthed patrician virgin in your price range.”

“She’s out there, I assure you. It’s just a matter of time. And patience. And money. And charm. And tact.”

“I’d been thinking about bedding her. Pollia.”

“Better get a move on.”

“Too late now.”

“What would Melissa say?”

“Melissa? What’s she got to do with it?”

“Titus? I was wondering.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think it would be all right if … After you’re gone … If Melissa and I …”

“You must be joking.”

“Well…”

“First of all, she’d never have you.”

“You don’t think? I fuck like a lion.”

“So do lots of men. Many of them endowed with patience, money, charm, and tact, all of which you lack. And besides, she thinks of you as a son.”

“It’s just that I thought, if the two of us could somehow get together … afterwards … it would be keeping something intact. Perpetuating this … whatever it is we have, the three of us. Almost like building you a shrine.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Marcus. Why don’t you just build me a real shrine, and the two of you can make me chaste offerings whenever you like.”

“It was just a thought.”

Martialis would always, and forever, be able to make people laugh, even, or perhaps especially, against their own better instincts. Petronius was grateful to him now, and grateful to have known him, however briefly, and pleased, despite all the anger, with all he had brought to the evening. He was fairly confident now that it would all work out for the best, that Martialis would prove himself a faithful and good-faith biographer, and a steady comfort to Melissa, at least in the short term. Still, he worried about the boy, about his ability and willingness to keep his impulses in check—the sarcasm, the surfeit of emotion, the puritan honesty. Did he genuinely not understand how to get along in Roman society? Of all people, a poet at the mercy of patrons had to understand how to work the system; and yet, in spite of all his vaunted ambition, he made no effort to sweeten those who needed sweetening, to flatter those who needed flattering, or to cultivate a successor to Petronius, despite Petronius’s utter and abject failure to promote his career. And what would he do tomorrow?

“Marcus, why do you cry all the time?”

“I don’t cry all the time. I cry when I’m sad.”

“And why do that?”

“That’s how we do it in Spain. We cry when we’re sad, laugh when we’re happy, shout when we’re angry. It’s a relatively easy concept to grasp, even for a Roman. You should have met my uncle. He was a champion crier. He could turn it on and turn it off like …”

“What I mean is, why don’t you try harder not to? It does you no credit, and will not endear you to potential sponsors.”

“Endear me to potential sponsors? I’ve been accused of many things in my short and disreputable life, but no one has ever had the gall to call me ‘endearing’ to my face.”

“Oh, stop. It’s not a game.”

“You are so right. It is not a game. If it were a game, I should have no qualms about playing a role, counterfeiting my sincerity, making nice to those I despise. But it is my dignity, my integrity that we are talking about, the wide-open, unguarded corridors that connect my imagination to my pen. Those I will not compromise at any price.”

“Oh, listen to you, a man without a denarius to his name. Can’t you see there’s no one else out there like me?”

Martialis burst into tears and buried his face in Petronius’s shoulder, heaving and shaking.

“But there is!” he snorted wetly.

“There isn’t! I know my own peers far better than you do.”

Martialis pushed away angrily. “And there’s something you will never know, Titus. There
is
another you out there somewhere, and he’s waiting for me, he’s waiting to give me his money and his friends and his prestige. He knows what I look like, and if I go about dolled up like a pimp and a clown he won’t recognize me. I’ll walk right past him and lose him forever if I take your advice. It’s bad advice, understand? It’s
bad
advice. And I need a drink. Why am I always so thirsty around you?”

Martialis stalked off, leaving Petronius to marvel at the consistency with which every conversation with the boy ended in absurdity and recrimination. One might imagine that, on a night like this, their exchanges would be mellower, conciliatory—reflective, even. But that would hardly be in character, for either of them. Maybe it was better this way—after all, wasn’t the entire conceit of the evening that all should proceed as if nothing unusual were unfolding? Of all of them, Petronius included, Martialis seemed most determined to observe the edict, to play the petulant contrarian to the bitter end. Petronius shook his head. No, not bitter.

Petronius shut his eyes and allowed the rhythmic sighing of the tide to envelop him. After a few moments, it felt as though the sea had invaded him, that he had become its container, that its ebb and flow were gently rocking him back and forth from within. He knew the feeling was just a side effect of the blood loss, but he permitted himself to indulge the pretense, that this was how his spirit would be absorbed into the natural world when he was dead. It was a lovely feeling, soothing and benumbing, but he could also sense resistance. His mind, or his soul, or whatever, was not ready for that release and would not plunge absolutely into that dissolution. It still had work to do, and it pulled him elsewhere, away.

SHE DID NOT
take the news of her husband’s death with the equanimity Petronius could have wished for. He would have hoped that she could share in his joy, but she was positively mournful. She did not weep or make sacrifices, but she remained thoughtful and quiet for several days, as one might upon hearing of the death of a long-lost companion of one’s youth, and she forbade him to touch her.

He allowed as to how she had certain ambivalent feelings for the late Junius—an all-but-illiterate, clumsy brute, as far as Petronius could make out—of which Petronius had but the dimmest grasp. In the circumstances, he thought it perhaps best not to be overly demonstrative in his newfound optimism, and to allow some time to pass before raising the subject of altered circumstances.

Finally, one evening in mid-September, with the crushing heat of the day just beginning to release its grip on the city, and the first hint of breeze for days stirring the muslin hangings on the palace terrace, as they sat on a vast daybed sipping at chilled pomegranate juice, Petronius felt he could hold off no longer.

“Melissa,” he began tentatively. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can put off this conversation any longer.”

“I agree,” she said softly. He turned to her in surprise, and found that she was smiling, perhaps somewhat sardonically, in his direction.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Of course I do. You were going to ask me to come to Rome with you. And I will, Governor.”

Petronius was so flabbergasted, and so at a loss for words, and must have been wearing such a ridiculous, clownish expression on his face, that Melissa burst into laughter. It was not happy laughter, nor yet even loving laughter, but Petronius reveled in it nonetheless. Rolling across the daybed, he took her in his arms, and although, consciously or not, she had crossed both her own arms over her chest, he allowed himself to bask in what he took to be a triumphant, threshold moment.

“You don’t know how happy this makes me.”

“I have an idea.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m a widow now, and my hand has been forced. I can’t very well return to my father in Cremona.”

“I understand,” he said, burying his face in her neck to distract himself from the very brutal fact that he did not understand anything, and that it made not the slightest difference to him.

In the following weeks, he tiptoed around the issue of their future plans. It was odd that, now she had finally made an unequivocal commitment to their life together, he felt the slightest strain, or constraint, in their relations, as if they were in an arranged marriage. Having dreamt of this moment for months, he now found himself almost embarrassed to be asking her about her preferences and desires, as if he barely knew her. He’d been summoned back to Italy without receiving an immediate new posting, and he assumed, for instance, that she would want to avoid living in Rome, prefering the quiet life of a rural estate in Campania or Tuscany. Yet when he began painting a delightful picture of their life in such a place, a life of letters, philosophy, and simple pleasures such as Horace himself would have approved, she interrupted him forthwith.

“Won’t we live in Rome, then?”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested. I have so many social responsibilities in Rome, too many business and tribal connections. It would be a whirlwind, and Nero’s court is a viper’s nest.”

“No. I’ve spent my entire life in the provinces. I won’t finally return to Italy, only to be isolated in some backwater yet again. We’ll take our chances in Rome.”

Petronius had misgivings about this course of action, and about the wisdom of exposing Melissa to the snobbish and gossip-riddled Roman aristocracy, but he suppressed them in his eagerness to accommodate her in any way he could. His heart, however, was heavy with foreboding.

It was in this solemn and far-from-satisfactory atmosphere that they prepared for their journey westward. There was remarkably little to do, as Petronius insisted that everything she chose to leave behind could be replaced with more and better in Rome, and she was pleased to acquiesce, packing just a modest trunk of clothing for the sea voyage. He deeded their lakeside villa to the Fourth Scythian as a house of recuperation and recreation for wounded soldiers. As for himself, aside from his several ceremonial togas, he chose to return home with only his gold-hilted dagger, the myrrhine ladle, and the Prusa
kouros
.

In late September, word came from Rome of the election of his successor, who arrived shortly thereafter. He told Petronius that his star was on the rise in Rome, and that his letters to Nero were often read aloud at imperial dinners and literary gatherings. The emperor, it was said, had lofty ambitions for Petronius upon his return. Petronius spent two days briefing the new governor on his duties—the very least he could get away with without an unseemly appearance of impatience—but even that minimal nod to duty was too much for his successor, whose attention often wandered to the drapes and furniture, which apparently were not to his taste. In the end, he was kind enough to lend the couple the proconsular yacht, equipped with a luxurious stateroom, for the homeward journey. They left Nicomedia in early October, calling at Smyrna, Athens, Knossos, and Syracusa.

At first, the sea air and new prospects appeared to agree with her. She spent several hours a day alone at the railing on the prow of the ship, her face uplifted into the sun and wind. At meals, for the first time since they’d met, she seemed genuinely curious about Petronius’s life and occupations in the capital, peppering him with questions about domestic arrangements on the Esquiline and how she might expect to be received. She appeared to be genuinely eager to prepare herself for all the personal adaptations and accommodations she would need to make. Yet as the coast of Sicily hove into view and the yacht eased its way throught the Straits of Messina, the weight of the unknown began to sap her of her vitality, and she fell silent. She seemed to be living in a state of suspension, neither in one world nor in the other, like a fish hibernating beneath the ice. He thought that perhaps she was in shock, not yet fully able to grasp the immensity of the gift that fortune had bestowed upon her, and so he gave her some space to grow into understanding. The subject of her husband’s death, and most particularly of Petronius’s hand in precipitating it, did not arise. For his part, Petronius had not a single thought to spare to the luckless Aulus Junius or his sacrifice to their happiness.

It would have been much faster to bypass the city center on their way to his house, but she had never been to Rome before. If she was awestruck by her first sight of it, she kept her impressions well concealed. As their litter negotiated the crowds on the Ostia road, passing through the old cattle market, with the racetrack to the right, the ancient temples to the left, the imperial palaces looming above, and the great central forum directly ahead, she nodded serenely at each, as if she were running down a mental checklist or, better yet, as if she were an empress passing through a crowd of well-wishers. “Look!” Petronius would say, as they trundled down New Street, “There’s the rostrum” or “It’s the Temple of Apollo,” and she’d say “Yes, there it is.” It was like watching someone talk in her sleep, in response to some unseen questioner in a dream. As for Petronius, it had been three years since he’d last seen the city of his birth, and he was giddy enough for the both of them. Beyond the forum, the road began to rise, and they soon found themselves on the hushed, immaculate streets of the Esquiline, with their walled gardens and discreet mansions.