Part 7 (2/2)
”Seize another man's goods. Drive curiales to desperation and then profit from their misery. Buy barbarian prisoners of war cheap and then resell them at a profit to work in the copper mines. Buy parcels of land from bankrupt farmers at ridiculous prices so that you can add them to your own holdings. Use heavy fines and severe regulations in certain districts to exercise a reign of terror among artisans who are barely earning a crust of bread, so that you and people like you can profit more from having the work done by your own slaves. And while you are doing all this, kneel three times a day - if not more - in basilicas and chapels and recruit disciples for a new Rome flooded with the light of grace!”
”In the past you asked me to forgive your sarcasm. You called it a youthful sin. Do you expect leniency again?”
”I expect nothing. When I apologized then, I was appealing to that good relations.h.i.+p that you kept talking about all the time.”
”It was not I, but you who destroyed that relations.h.i.+p. Where has he gone, he to whom I gave the name Claudius, and who looked up to me with friends.h.i.+p and respect? For admit it - you were grateful to me because I rescued you from Olympiodorus.”
”I wors.h.i.+pped you as a G.o.d of light - a Mithras, a Helios - that's true.”
”Have I ever been anything but a benefactor to you?”
”A G.o.d who wants to be wors.h.i.+pped like the sun should not come too close to his wors.h.i.+ppers.”
”Who's talking about wors.h.i.+pping? The protection I offered you was disinterested, not like that beast -”
”When Olympiodorus - worse than a beast, believe me, because he knew what he was doing - necromancer, l.u.s.tful torturer, cheat and much more still - When he saw that I was useless for his private pleasure, he offered me work in his library so that I could accept his hospitality without shame as long as I needed to.”
”Do you dare to compare me to Olympiodorus? Have you ever felt shame in my house, in my company?”
The guardsmen, holding the torches in this central vault from which the cells emerge, can hear from behind them the voices of the Prefect and the prisoner. As disciplined members of the vigiles, they force themselves not to listen. They cannot quit their posts; they have to hold the torches high so that the light will penetrate the cell. They try to think about other things: they are not interested in lawsuits, nor in the personal problems of the prisoners or the officials they deal with. It is only when the Prefect issues an order that they turn automatically and stand to attention.
”Fetch the wench Urbanilla.”
The prisoner, who has a view of the pa.s.sage leading to the adjoining dungeons, sees a vague glimmering light, hears a jingling as of countless little metal plates. It is the Great G.o.ddess in an archaic panelled skirt, b.r.e.a.s.t.s and arms hung with gold, eyes outlined to large glittering ovals, staring fixedly like a statue. It looks, too - he draws in his breath - like Serena, when she stumbled out of the temple, guilty and victimized, both hands raised to the stolen jewelry, unaware that she had been ordained to die.
She stops quite close to him, the comedian Urbanilla in her messy costume, pale, wide-eyed, her filthy strands of hair in a sticky tangle. The gilded strings and beads sparkle on her heaving b.r.e.a.s.t.s but she shows no sign of fear. She jerks herself free from the guard and rubs her upper arm.
The Prefect barely deigns to look at her. With an expression of distaste, he turns once more to the man behind the bars.
”Let us look at the state of your sense of shame. Let us now examine your refined desires and pleasures.” To Urbanilla. ”You will be subjected to the most rigorous interrogation if I catch you in a lie. Do you know this man?”
”Yes. The schoolmaster.”
”How do you know him?”
”Through the boss - Pylades.”
”You've seen him in the Subura. What did he say?”
”About the sun, the moon, the stars. About a fellow on a raft at sea and a giant with one eye. About how the black people of Africa hunt elephants. About - about Seneca - or whatever her name is.”
”To you?”
”To those boys.”
”Which boys? Where?”
”Under the awning next to the fruit market where they learn.”
”I mean, what did he say to you when you went with him in the insula Iulia?”
”Who knows?”
”What did he want from you?”
”Nothing.”
”You slept with him.”
”No.”
”Then surely some playfulness and caresses...”
”No.”
”That's what you came for, wasn't it?”
”I was sent.”
”Don't try to make me believe that you could not seduce him. A wench like you knows all the tricks.”
”I didn't want to. Not with him.”
The Prefect is becoming upset. He perceives a subtle change in the att.i.tude of the guardsmen. They stand at proper attention, immobile, but - he suspects - very conscious of the half-naked woman and surely secretly laughing, astonished at the nature of the interrogation.
Worst of all for the Prefect is the silent presence of the other in his barred cage - he who was the cause of this bizarre performance in the first place. The Prefect feels like a character in a farce by Plautus, comically out of place in his robe of office between a seedy poet and a woman of pleasure, revealing with every word what he would give anything not to reveal, looking ridiculous or - worse - possibly pathetic, in his pa.s.sion. He has descended from those imposing halls with their distinguished symmetry; he should never have left them. Now he must descend further, whether he wants to or not.
”Did he ask for love potions from you, forbidden practices?
”Oh no.”
At this umpteenth, casual denial, the Prefect is beside himself. In a voice made unrecognizable by rage, feeling dizzy with dismay at his irreparable error, he shouts at her, ”Don't lie! You got him where you wanted him, just as you did with all the others!”
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