The Young Apollo and Other Stories (21 page)

"Have you ever known me to swim
with
the tide?" his host inquired. "Let us sit down here and enjoy the sight of our city at its finest hour. You've always been one for dawns, my friend, and I for sunsets. Which is why I've decided to resume this old residence."

"Does a sunset get the preference even if it's political as well as celestial?"

"Much more so! Rome, even in its greatest days, would have been too noisy and crowded for my tastes. Without the gilded trappings of the imperial court, which I fled a decade ago, we shall be more restful. I shall sit here quietly in the evenings with my Horace and think of you listening to the ravings of the hairy priests of the Jesus god over the Arian controversy."

"You know I won't be doing anything like that. I don't even know what your Arian controversy is."

"Please don't call it
mine.
But I have indeed made a survey of this new cult that Caesar has seen fit or politic to join. And I advise you to do the same. You may find it handy in the days to come."

"Isn't it just another religion that we've agreed to tolerate? As we have done all the others? Hasn't that always been our policy? To respect the gods of the people we conquer? What's new about it?"

"Two things. First and foremost, Caesar has adopted it. Secondly, they, the Christ lovers, do not admit the existence of any god but their Jehovah. Now that was always true of the Jews, of course, and Titus finally had to lay waste to their capital and their temple. Unhappily, he didn't kill them all. And now they've spawned this new sect. Granted, the new sect hates them, for they slew the new sect's god, or god's son, whichever it was. And so they're busy killing each other. But when they've tired of that, they'll look for other prey. For they're peculiarly ferocious. They like both being martyrs and making martyrs."

"Lentulus, you're a bit of a stuck whistle on that subject. Let's have a look at some of this art you've brought out. Is it all Greek?"

"A good deal of it. What else? But you know, it's funny. Some of this stuff is so bad I can hardly imagine what I originally saw in it. Look at that old matron taken from a tomb in Thrace. I must have thought she was a masterpiece of Greek realism. But she's nothing but a hideous old crone, and she's going back to the cellar. I'm not so sure one's eye improves as one ages. Perhaps we begin to dote on what we like to think is our rare percipience. But now there's a beauty! Bought when I was near the age of the subject!" He pointed to the glorious marble effigy of a nude youth.

"Antinous?"

"Of course it's Antinous. And one of the finest of a thousand versions. I could almost forgive Hadrian his silly idolatry of the Bythinian lad if the lad were really as beautiful as that. Of course, the sculptor probably never saw him. It was only after the poor youth had drowned himself as some kind of weird eastern sacrifice to his beloved master that Hadrian ordered his image put up throughout the empire. Think of it!"

"But Hadrian was a very great emperor, Lentulus."

"Have I denied it? One of the greatest. But even with the best of them, there's always something one has to put up with. We don't care on whom they discharge the seed of their natural lust, but for Hadrian to spread nude statues of the boy he buggered throughout the marketplaces of the empire was going a bit far, you must admit. Still, he was the least vulgar of the imperial lot. Compare him with a brute like Diocletian. But let's not. Let's have some wine."

The two were silent for some moments, gazing out over the forum as a Greek slave boy, silent and immaculate in white, brought them wine in round golden cups, pleasant to hold in the palm of the hand. Publius reverted to the subject most on his mind.

"Wouldn't you and Cornelia consider at least a visit to Constantinople? You could stay with us and see whether it wouldn't do for perhaps a part-time residence."

"Are you serious? That I should take that ghastly trip twice a year? And for what, pray?"

"To be in the city of the future! It's going to be more splendid than Rome. You should see the building plans. And, of course, everyone of any importance will be there. Not that you care about politics and power. I know that." He held up a hand to foreclose the anticipated rebuttals of his host. "But it will also be the world center of arts and letters. The most eminent poets and philosophers will flock to your friendly salon."

"Not to mention the smelly and unwashed rabbis of Constantine's new faith."

Publius's frown was now impatient. "Lentulus, you know as well as I do that the adoption of Christianity was only a political move. It was the wise and practical thing to do. Matters were getting out of hand. Rome has always known how to deal with alien gods. Augustus would have done the same thing. So would Hadrian. The time had come. It's like our tolerating the gore of the public games and gladiatorial combats. You and I don't go to them, but they keep the mob happy and out of trouble. This new sect isn't going to make any difference in our lives. We needn't have anything to do with Christians. The old gods will be undisturbed."

"Well, that's good to hear, anyway. If it indeed be so. But it's not only the Christians I object to. It's the new court. One hears it's to be swamped in the stiffest kind of eastern ceremonial, with jeweled crowns and incense and prostration before the throne. Is that true?"

"There'll be some concessions, yes, to what is expected in that part of the world. But you know how people exaggerate. The basic Roman things will be preserved."

"Just tell me one thing, Publius. One thing. And please be honest with your old cousin."

"Very well. What is it?"

"Does Constantine dye his hair green?" As Publius twisted his shoulders irritably without answering, Lentulus continued, "They won't throw you off the Tarpeian rock if you tell me, will they? If he dyes his hair, he must expect it to be seen by the multitude, mustn't he? Perhaps they take it as the natural color of a god's tresses."

"Actually, it's a wig," Publius snapped. "And he doesn't wear it all the time."

"Only on special occasions? Perhaps on Christian holidays?"

"It's not an aspect of our imperial master's personality that I care to stress," Publius retorted. "Constantine has enough virtues to be forgiven a minor weakness."

"But so visible a one! Must we paint his statues accordingly? I wonder really, cousin, if you should not drop a hint in the imperial ear that he's going a bit far. As a quaestor, are you not one of the seven greatest powers in the land?"

"Lentulus, you're too astute an observer not to know that the tide is nothing. It's the proximity to Caesar's ear alone that counts."

"But I thought you were indeed close to that august organ.

"Constantine listens to me at times. But he listens to others more often. He is not a man to be led by anyone."

"Not even by the high priests of his new faith?"

"There you go again, Lentulus. Can't you stay off that subject for one afternoon?"

"No! Not, anyway, until I've explained something to you. Something that I feel very strongly a quaestor should know. And that is this: Where this sect differs from others and where it is dangerous is that its priests aim not merely to control the conduct and the creed of its faithful; they aim to rule the state. And if the faithful are converted, and if the faithful become a working majority in the empire, to which end Constantine may have unknowingly contributed, they may raise their ferocious priesthood to the seats of power it claims."

"Lentulus, you go too far. Much too far. I don't know much about the sect, but everyone knows it was founded by a lowly Jewish thaumaturgist who promised an afterlife of bliss to the lowly and never offered the least threat to the empire. He even allowed himself to be crucified by the Jews, who took him from our procurator, who found nothing wrong with him but who, like all wise governors, knew when to throw an occasional tidbit to the mob."

"I know all that, of course. It's even in their creed. But here's the rub, my friend. The man Jesus was harmless enough, I concede. He believed that the end of the world was imminent and that it behooved him to preach preparedness for some kind of final judgment that would decide whether you would be transmitted to a state of bliss or cast into outer darkness. Obviously, with such a fate around the corner, there was no point worrying about your business or your family ties or your government. Just get ready, that was all you had to do, and the ticket to a happy afterlife was faith. That was what his god wanted: laudation and plenty of it. None of this was of any concern to Rome. Why should it have been? It seemed a harmless delusion. But when time passed and it became evident that the end of the world was not coming, it was necessary for the now established priests of the sect to fabricate a revised religion to hold on to the converts they had already acquired. And this they have done in one of their councils at Nicaea. And where does the revised religion put the priests? One guess! Right! At the very top of the ecclesiastical and political ladder!"

"All of which is highly speculative."

"All of which is verifiably true."

"In any event, it will take a long time. I think we can count on living out our lives under the old regime."

"Don't be too sure of that!" Lentulus rose with his guest, who was preparing to depart. "In the meantime, I can enjoy a Rome more peaceful and benign without the glitter of your eastern court. And highways uninterrupted by the blare of some general's alleged triumph."

"A Rome shorn of its old glory!"

"A Rome that may have found its soul."

"Let us hope so, anyway." Publius strode to the doorway and turned back. "I'll see you before I go. We'll have a banquet or something. And Lentulus, one word of caution. Say what you like to me and men you trust about the Christians, but don't air your views in public. After all, our emperor has adopted their creed. And you know that Constantine can be vindictive."

"I know that he killed his wife and son."

Publius raised a finger to his lips. "Hush about Fausta. That's not acknowledged. Crispus, of course, is."

Lentulus chuckled. "Ah, I'm right then. You
are
afraid of him. And of the Christians. Shall we be baptised, you and I?"

Publius shrugged as he departed. "You make a joke out of everything, cousin."

"Perhaps it keeps me alive. Or will it do just the opposite?"

P
A'S DEATH,
in the cold winter of 1960, at the age of eighty-seven, was a crucial event in the lives of his two daughters, but particularly for myself, the supposedly most loved, the adored Kate, the oldest. As I sit in my multichambered apartment, the last of my many wasted efforts to impress him, looking out on the strangely white and oddly dreary expanse of Central Park, with the newspaper clippings of his laudatory obituaries in my lap, it seems a timely if unsettling opportunity to review my own life, no longer, I can only hope, in the shadow of his, unless it will be even more so. For people, I know, always think of me not as the widow of the brilliant young attorney Sumner Shepard, gallantly dead in the 1940 fall of France, nor even as the present wife of Dicky Phelps, senior partner of his distinguished Wall Street law firm, but as the daughter of Lionel Hemenway, the great judge of the New York Court of Appeals, renowned sage and philosopher, author of provocative books on law and literature, and the witty deity of the Patroons Club. God rest his soul if it be capable of resting.

I have decided to write up this assessment of my past to make a probably vain attempt to get it off my chest. Whether I shall ever show it, or to whom, I do not know as yet. I am sure, however, it will not be to my husband, fond of him as I am. Perhaps to my daughter. Or to a grandson, if I ever have one. But that needn't concern me now.

As I have already suggested, I was always supposed to be Pa's favorite daughter. He made a good deal of me, particularly before company; he liked to show me off—he was proud of my good looks, of what he called my "pale-faced, raven-haired beauty." But he was like a financial magnate showing off a master painting he has just acquired, inwardly confident that the owner of the picture is superior to both the work and its artist. There was always a distinct vein of sarcasm in his ebullient mirth. Did he really value me very much? Did he even value women very much? Oh, he had to make a fuss over them, of course; he had to be the gallant gentleman who elevated the fair sex to the skies and left them there, but when it came to a question of real work, the real thing ... no, give him a man.

But I have now just learned that all of this may have been the cover-up of doubts as to his own masculinity. This exploded before me last night, at a family gathering in this apartment. It erupted from what Uncle Jack Sherman, brother of my other, also now deceased parent, told me when he and I, after dinner, were sitting apart from the others in a corner of my living room, discussing who among Pa's surviving friends and disciples might be the best qualified to write his biography.

After considering and discarding several names, Uncle Jack paused and glanced cautiously about the room, as if to be sure that none of the others were within earshot. This, I knew, was his usual prelude to some particularly odoriferous piece of gossip. He was a tall, thin, rather emaciated old man, a lifetime bachelor, who wanted to bring down any man who had done more in life than he, which was almost everyone. He liked to pretend that he and I were the only truly sophisticated members of the family.

"The first job of your father's biographer," he told me emphatically, "will be to explain why he lived for so many years on such intimate terms with his wife's lover."

"Oh, Uncle Jack! That old canard! Surely you don't believe it. Of your own sister?"

"My dear, I had it from Sam Pemberton himself. One night when he was in his cups."

"The filthy braggart! And you credited him?"

"I did not. At first. But when I warned your mother about what he was saying, she explained the whole matter to me in her own cool, measured way. Your father, it appeared, had become impotent while only in his forties. He had agreed to her finding an outlet for her very natural desires in this unconventional but by no means unique fashion. She assured me grimly that she would see to it that Sam Pemberton should hold his tongue in the future. And indeed he did, to the very day he died. He even became a teetotaler! And your mother pledged me to silence in your father's lifetime."