David Wishart: Food for the Fishes

Baiae may be the jewel of the Campanian coast and the playground of the beautiful rich, but like any other place it’s got its good points too. You have to look hard to find them, mind, and Zethus’s wineshop had taken me three days. Zethus’s was just a glorified shack, tucked away just above the beach on the Misenum side of town, right on the edge and well off the main drag, but the wine was good and although some of the clientele could seriously get up your nose at times they were okay company on the whole: all locals, and definitely not members of the gilded-eyelashes-and-pet-peacock-on-a-lead set who come down from Rome for the summer. Which suited me just fine. Three days’worth of town-centre wineshops patronised by bleating chinless wonders in holiday mood had had me practically climbing walls. Mind you, since the alternative was spending quality time in the company of Mother and Priscus I couldn’t be too fussy.

Currently, the said punters were whiling away the evening by indulging in the quaint old wineshop custom of winding up the drunk.

Me, I wasn’t getting involved. No way. Drunk-baiting in general’s a purely local sport, restricted to regulars, and any outsider stupid enough to shove his nose in is likely to get it punched; also, although Baiae may be the playground of bright young things with full purses and fluff where their brains should be, outside the luxury coastal villas belt a Roman purple-striper’s there on sufferance. If he wants to stay welcome he learns fast to sit and drink his wine without giving no offence to no one. Besides, baiting drunks just isn’t my bag.

This one was a beaut, mind; the drunk’s drunk, a real dedicatee: small, seedy, puffy-faced and with a nose on him you could’ve used to guide ships through fog. He’d been propping up the bar for two solid hours to my certain knowledge, getting silently smashed on Zethus’s cheapest house wine which he’d been pouring down his throat like his legs were hollow. By this time it was the bar that was doing the propping, he’d gone through the muttering-to-himself stage and out the other end, and the punters were feeding him free cups just to see how long it’d be before he ended up a sodden lump on the sawdust. Call it a spirit of scientific enquiry if you like, or just morbid fascination. Me, I’d say it was pure simple bloody-mindedness, which was par for the course: wineshop punters, especially places like Zethus’s, have a pretty basic sense of humour, and they tend to make their own amusements.

The guy lifted his cup for the umpteenth time, found his mouth at the third try, took another swallow and glared at them. ‘Fifteen years,’ he said. ‘Fifteen years I been in that place, right? Am I right?’

The punter next to him at the bar — the elected straight-man — was nodding like a sympathetic owl while his mates behind chuckled into their drinks. ‘Yeah. Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘It’s a crying shame, no mistake.’

‘Old Juventius, he’d never’ve done it, never. Juventius was a proper gentleman. Not like that bastard. We had a deal, the old man and me.’ He belched. ‘“Trebbio, boy,”’ he says, ‘“I’m not greedy. You drop me a lobster or two when you can spare them and we’ll call the rent quits.” Bastard!’

‘He is that.’ The punter took a pull at his own wine, reached for the jug and topped up the drunk’s. ‘No question.’

‘Him and his fancy fish farm, raking it in hand-over-fist. Fifteen years. Fifteen bloody years.’ He belched again and wiped a trickle of wine off his chin. ‘Hotel. Man like him, money to burn, what does he want to build a bloody hotel for anyway? Go on, you tell me. You tell me that, right? ’S not his business, hotels.’

‘Some people’s never satisfied with what they got, sure enough.’

‘You’re right there. He’s a bastard. A greedy bastard.’ He took another swig. ‘We’ve enough of the sods already.’

‘Bastards?’ one of the other punters at the back asked innocently. The rest sniggered.

The drunk turned, one elbow on the bar for support, and fixed him with a poached-egg stare. ‘Tourists. Tourists, boy, that’s what I mean. Come down from Rome, swan about like they own the place — ’

‘Yeah, that’s ‘cos they bleeding do, most of it,’ the punter said. His pals sniggered again, and he shot me a wink. ‘Isn’t that so, Corvinus?’

But I wasn’t going to be dragged in; no way was I going to be dragged in, not even by invitation. I sipped my wine: Zethus’s does a fair Campanian that his partner gets from a friend in Neapolis. His male partner: both of them are Greek, like most of the natives around Baiae, and the Greeks tend to be pretty open-minded about that sort of thing.

‘Don’t look at me, pal,’ I said easily. ‘I’m just staying with family, and they borrowed the villa, they don’t own it.’

The drunk took a firm grip of the bar and turned to give me a slow pop-eyed stare, taking in my mantle and purple stripe. ‘Got nothing against Romans, me,’ he said finally. ‘Notassuch. Notassuch.’ He picked up his cup and raised it to me. Wine slopped. ‘Didn’t mean to cause off — …offnss — …’ He drained the cup and belched. ‘Offence.’

‘None taken.’ I raised my own cup. ‘Cheers, friend.’

‘Only some of them. Like that bastard. Some people, though, they’d be better off dead, know what I mean?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Just happens he’s a Roman too, right? Pure coinc — ’ He hiccuped. ‘Coincidence. Could be anyone, but he’s a Roman. No offence, though.’ He blinked, staggered, grabbed the bar again and stood swaying. ‘Fuck! I’m plastered!’

Zethus was washing cups. He glanced up. ‘Maybe you’d best be getting home, Trebbio,’ he said quietly.

‘Nah, there’s still plenty of wine in the jug.’ The straight-man punter — his name was Alcis — slapped him on the shoulder and steadied him with his other hand. ‘Come on, Trebbio, I’m buying. Okay, lads?’

The other punters grinned. One of them said: ‘Sure.’

‘No, Zethus is right. I’ve had enough.’ The drunk straightened. ‘Anyway, ’s a full moon tonight. Best be going. Got to check my lines.’ He rocked back and forward on his feet and made a lurch for the door. ‘’Night, all.’

The door closed behind him. Yeah, well; maybe he was smarter than he seemed, even if he was pissed as a newt. He’d come out a winner, anyway, at least a jug of free booze ahead and still mobile. If you could call it mobile. Certainly the punters were looking disappointed as hell, like cats left watching an empty mousehole. Not that I’d much sympathy there. I tapped my own empty half jug and Zethus came round the bar.

‘He be all right?’ I said quietly.

‘Oh, yeah. He’s only going half a mile or so along the beach.’ Zethus took the jug. ‘Mind you, he’s had a bigger skinful than usual.’ He turned round to the punters. ‘That wasn’t nice of you lads. Not nice at all.’

Alcis gave him a cheerful finger and turned back to chat with his mates.

‘Who was this bastard he was on about?’ I said.

‘That’s Murena. Licinius Murena. He owns the big fish farm and villa just down the coast from here.’

I chuckled. ‘Murena, right? Good name for a fish farmer.’ A murena’s a moray eel. Sure, it’s a regular surname in the pukkah branch of the Licinius family, too, so the coincidence isn’t as remarkable as it looks, but then Cicero didn’t raise chickpeas for a living, did he? Not that one of the Licinii would be exactly strapped for a copper piece or two.

‘His grandfather started it a century or so back. It’s the oldest and biggest on the bay.’ Zethus nodded at the jug. ‘Same again?’