Vita Brevis (17 page)

She picked out the theriac bottle, empty but for a brown smear in the bottom, and smelled it before asking him to identify the contents. “That’s what I came here to ask you,” he explained.

Keeping the bottle out, she gestured to him to close the case.

“I’ve taken over a patient who’s had this prescribed by Kleitos,” he told her. “I’m told it’s theriac. But there’s nothing on the bottle to say so.”

“I would say it might be.”

“I need to replace it. And to know if a day or two without will affect his protection.”

The woman sniffed the bottle again. “A few days, no. A few weeks, yes.” Then she clawed up a long feather from a pot on the table beside her, slid it into the bottle and gathered a touch of the medicine before painting it on her finger, sniffing again, and finally giving it a tentative lick.

The silence that followed was punctuated by shouts from the ball game.

“You are wise to come to me,” she said. “There are people who mix up all kinds of concoctions and pretend to offer protection. Most of them know nothing. Some of them know a little. They are the worst. They are the ones who kill.”

Glad that he had not attempted to guess the recipe, he said, “Did you supply Kleitos?”

“Leave the bottle and ten sesterces. Come back in two days.”

“I’ll be able to check with him when I see him,” he said, annoyed by her refusal to give a straight answer. “I just need to know it’s the same stuff.”

“And will he be back within two days?”

“Possibly not.” He handed over the coins.

“You are looking after his patients but you do not know this?”

“I don’t know where he is. Do you?”

She did not. “Come in two days,” she said, flapping a chicken’s foot to shoo him back out past the curtain and into the dazzle of the exercise yard.

He was still blinking in the sunlight when a delightful young lady appeared by his side. Observing that he was looking weary, she claimed that her master had just the thing to restore his vigor.

“Really?”

“I take it every day myself, sir, and I’m always ready for anything. Come with me and let me show you.”

Ruso declined the offer on the grounds that he had patients waiting. At least, he hoped he did. He needed to find a new job for the youth currently frightening everyone away from his door. Perhaps he could use him as a model for public lectures on anatomy. Others were keen to show off their expertise: why not someone who, after years of treating wounded men, genuinely had knowledge worth sharing?

The trouble was, educational demonstrations with no beautiful girls in peril, vanishing pig squeaks or exotic dead apes would appeal only to his competitors and the exceptionally studious. What he really needed was a miracle to attract patients. There was Tilla, of course, whose once-fractured right arm truly was a marvelous piece of work, but he doubted she would want to put it on display.

He glanced at the sweating weight lifters. He wondered how much he would need to pay one of them to swear that he owed his glowing health to his doctor. When competition was fierce, it was not hard to understand the temptation to cheat.

He pushed this unwelcome thought aside. His final errand here was to find Simmias’s recommended supplier of medicinal wine.

He found the man next to a snack stall. The wine tasted acceptable, even if the seller did appear to have been sampling it himself. Ruso bought a small amphora and received along with it a torrent of unwanted information about customers who didn’t “appreciate quality like you do, Doctor,” and about the cost of renting a pitch in the bathhouse. No, he had no idea where Kleitos might have gone, but he didn’t blame him. If he had the chance, he would get out of this place himself. Somewhere by the sea. Baiae—now that was a fine town. Or up in the mountains where the air was healthier. Instead he was stuck here heading into another cauldron of a Roman summer. When Ruso asked if it was likely to be hotter than the south of Gaul he offered a glum “You’ll see.”

Turning down a haircut and shave and the offer of the finest raisin pastries in Rome, Ruso finally escaped. As he nodded a farewell to the giant statue of the emperor Trajan in the entrance hall, he found himself wondering how his household of pale Britons would cope with a hot summer. Quite possibly he would be the only one left standing.

Seeing Esico still guarding the surgery door, Ruso thought there must be a philosophical treatise somewhere on ambivalence. If there wasn’t, there should be. It would explain exactly how a man could be glad that at least one of his unwanted slaves had not run away, while at the same time be annoyed to find that he was still bloody there.

As Ruso approached, a shabby middle-aged man detached himself carefully from the side of a nearby pillar and said, “Excuse me?”

“Can I help?”

“I’ve been here for hours. That useless boy doesn’t seem to know anything, and the woman behind the bar is positively rude. When will Doctor Simmias be back?”

He definitely needed to take Esico off door duty. “Doctor Simmias doesn’t work here,” he explained.

“What? I’ve wasted half the afternoon!”

“I’m standing in for the doctor who does. Can I help?”

The potential patient glanced down at the wine amphora under one arm and the medical case in the other.

Ruso countered this impression by quoting his service with the Legion. The patient conceded that he might let him try, and
lowered himself to grope for a bag of scrolls by holding on to the pillar with one hand and sliding downward, keeping a straight back and bending only at the knees.

Ruso resolved to place a bench outside so patients had somewhere to sit and wait without bothering Sabella. He ushered the man in past Esico and an unexpected smell of lavender. “Take a seat,” he suggested. “I won’t be a moment.”

His return to the domestic hearth was acknowledged in very different ways. Mara shouted “Ah!” and waved her arms and legs in the air. Narina set aside whatever she was polishing and stood back with her head slightly bowed. To his surprise and pleasure, Tilla stepped forward and gave him a kiss. Here, at least, was a temporary respite from all his other worries. Perhaps it had been worth buying her those slaves.

He propped the amphora in the corner and rewarded his womenfolk with a warm smile. It was made warmer by the knowledge that soon, thanks to his investment in a baby-minder, he and his wife would be enjoying their first nocturnal privacy in many weeks.

Tilla glanced at the table, then sniffed his shoulder. “You have been to the baths.”

“I didn’t think you’d want a husband who smells worse than the staff.”

“I have not been to the baths.”

“Never mind,” he assured her, pulling her close. “I like you the way you are.”

She said, “I have been here dealing with the slaves and the patients and seeing off more debt collectors.”

He tensed. “The one with the limp again?” While he was dallying at the bathhouse, Birna could have come straight here from the undertakers’.

“No, two new ones.”

They could be some of Birna’s cronies. “Did they say where they came from?”

“I do not care where they came from. Also there were patients. One for me, and two who wanted to talk to a man, but I could not tell them when you would be back, so one of them went somewhere else. The other one wants you to visit his father, but it is not urgent.”

“There’s a new one waiting in the surgery too.”

She said, “Do not let him smell that strong wine on your breath.”

Her tone seemed a little sharp, but no doubt she was tired. With no time to dwell on it, he went back into surgery and apologized for keeping his new patient waiting.

“I’m Tubero the Younger,” the man announced. “You might not have heard of me.”

“Ruso,” said Ruso, who hadn’t. “How can I help?”

The man snorted. “I’ll bet you heard about that big crowd in the Forum of Peace last week, listening to the fine verses.”

“No, I must have missed it.”

“Well, you must be the only man in Rome who did. Spellbound, they were! You should have seen them. The woman next to me said, ‘He’s very good, isn’t he?’ And I said, ‘He’s very good at thieving.’ Half of his lines were mine. But of course I couldn’t get her to believe me. Nobody believes me. They’d rather listen to a pretty boy sponsored by a silly old man who thinks he’s in love with him.”

Recalling the debate about the content of arteries, and the crowds that had gathered to see the woman being dropped off the amphitheater, Ruso suggested, “If you object, you sound curmudgeonly.”

“Exactly!” cried the poet, shooting out an arm to grab at Ruso while carefully keeping his torso still. “Exactly. It’s such a relief to find someone who understands, Doctor.”

Ruso lifted his patient’s hand from his arm and recalled Tilla’s warning about his breath. “So, how can I help?”

As expected, it was back trouble. Ruso performed the usual examinations on Tubero the Younger’s flabby white torso. The man’s effort to touch his toes was not a great success, and his attempt to squat was accompanied by a gasp of “I never have to do all this for the other doctor!” As Ruso noted the way the poet’s head was permanently inclined to the right and his shoulder rose slightly to meet it, he was entertained by a monologue on the difficulties of earning a living as a man of letters.

There were the friends who borrowed a scroll and then had copies made by their own slaves rather than pay for one. “I donate to the libraries, of course—one has to do one’s bit. And
then they go and hide my work away in a corner where nobody can find it!”

“It must be a struggle,” Ruso conceded, regretting his earlier sympathy. “Does the pain go down your legs at all?”

No, the pain did not go down his legs. “People don’t appreciate the professional requirements of the job. I have to have my special desk, like you have your instruments. And my routine. The muse of poetry has to know where to find me. Although sometimes it must be very difficult for her. I get invited out a lot, you know.”

“That’s good.”

“I used to think like that. But just because I recite in the Forum from time to time, people think I’ll be happy to keep their whole dinner party entertained all evening for nothing. You’ll meet new readers, they say. You can have some of the food, they say. Leftovers, they mean. But then, one of the guests might be a patron on the lookout for new talent. So I say, ‘I’ll come if you send me an escort,’ and, you know, I never hear from most of them again. How’s a man in my condition supposed to walk all the way across the city at night on his— What are you doing?”

“Testing your reflexes.”

“Oh. Anyway, I’m not paying for transport to go and recite my poems. That’s not how it’s supposed to work at all.”

Ruso, who was frequently expected to work for free himself, recognized the frustration. Still, it was hard to see exactly why anyone should pay for anything as pointless as poetry.

“A little respect is all I ask,” insisted the poet.

“And payment. You can get down now.”

Tubero the Younger grasped the scarred edge of the operating table with both hands and carefully lowered his feet to the floor. “Payment would be a token of respect. I’m thinking of going into funeral orations.”

“That should be a steady trade.” Ruso shoved the table aside to make more space. “Just turn and walk away from me, will you?”

The poet complied, announcing to the far wall, “Doctor Kleitos just gives me something to rub in.”

“And back again, please. I thought you were looking for Doctor Simmias?”

“Only because I heard Kleitos is away.”

“But Simmias doesn’t—”

“Simmias covered for him last time he wasn’t working,” explained the poet, coming to a halt in front of Ruso. “If your doorman had had the sense to explain, I’d have gone straight over to the night watch barracks and asked to see Simmias there.”

“He was working here?” So why, when they met at the slave market, had the portly doctor had claimed he and Kleitos barely knew each other?

“Only for a few weeks. Kleitos broke his arm—or leg—I can’t remember. Are you going to give me some more of that rub?”

“Mm,” said Ruso, pondering this new information. “Sit down somewhere here and write something.” The new slave had left the workbench covered with clean, damp jars and bottles. He moved the stool across to the operating table.

The poet eyed the makeshift desk with distaste. “I can’t just write to order, you know. People imagine I just scribble down the first thing that comes into my head. But a real poet has to consider every word.”

“I don’t mean compose something,” said Ruso. “Just put your name on that tablet.”

When the poet had finished slouching over the operating table the name appeared so deeply gouged through the wax that it was probably engraved in the wood underneath.

“You write very forcefully.”

“I write with passion!”

Eventually Ruso prescribed light exercise, frequent breaks, and massage.

“No medicine?”

“I can give you something to help relax the muscles, but I think it’s the way you sit,” Ruso explained. “Maybe you could raise your special desk and stand instead.”

“But I need to think!”

“Can’t you walk up and down and think at the same time?”

“I have to think in the thinking position.”

“You told me the pain and stiffness is interfering with your work. I’m telling you what you can do about it. Keep moving. Walk in the gardens. Go for a swim in Trajan’s very splendid pool.”

“Hmph. You military types are all the same. You’ll have me sleeping in a tent next.”

“You could write a poem about it,” Ruso suggested as he
scooped some greasy white muscle rub from the main pot into a smaller one. “Rub that in morning and evening.”

“I suppose you want to charge me?”

“I’ll throw in the rub for free. Two sesterces for the consultation.”

“I’m prepared to offer you and your friends a private dinner recital—”

“I don’t give dinners,” Ruso told him.

“I know!” The poet pulled a scroll from his bag and helped himself to the inkpot Ruso had set up for writing labels before turning back to the operating table. When he had finished he handed over the scroll. “Careful. The ink is still wet. Enjoy!”