Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

Eunapius swallowed and stood forward. He looked again at Nicetas and then about him for moral support. ‘You insult every man of taste in the Empire,’ he croaked in a voice that said double or quits, ‘when you sneer at the verses of our modern Callimachus.’ He looked about once more. A few of the Senators were frowning. One was forcing his way to the back of the crowd.

I smiled at Eunapius. ‘I think our poet has a mastery of the language that all must agree is remarkable,’ I said in the maddening tone I’d used with Leander. ‘I look forward to publication of tonight’s performance. The novelty of his verses will be discussed wherever Greek is spoken — and perhaps beyond.’ That got a snigger from someone lost in the crowd.

Eunapius twisted his face into a mask of outrage too extreme to fool anyone. Somebody else was making for the exit. ‘Leander doesn’t write his poetry in advance,’ he shouted. ‘It’s all a work of the moment. You wouldn’t appreciate that, of course’ Plainly hoping for support, he looked again at Nicetas. Was the response a faint stirring of distaste?

I shrugged and took a step towards the thinnest part of the crowd. But it was now Leander’s turn to make trouble. He bared his teeth in a smile that did his appearance no favours. ‘Poetry that is written in advance, the Lord Nicetas agrees, has too much smell of the lamp,’ he explained in the voice of one who speaks to an idiot child. ‘I have always made it my custom not to write any of my verses. Much has thereby been lost and I can lament that my future reputation will not be all that it might have been. But the Lord Nicetas has provided me with a secretary to take my dictation. Tonight’s poem will surely not be lost.’

I could say I’d learned something. I had an explanation for the repetitions and the unequal length of the books and the loose grammar, and particularly the lines that didn’t scan even according to Leander’s corrupt rules. If the resulting poetry had been any good, I might have been tempted to stay to discuss the merits of oral composition. I might.

I was given no choice. ‘Isn’t that how you barbarians do it?’ Eunapius asked with yet another look at an increasingly displeased Nicetas. ‘Aren’t you from a race of illiterate savages? Do your people have poetry? Or do you simply howl and beat your chests when you rise above grunting at each other?’ This jewel of repartee got a few muffled laughs. I noticed that the Lord Senator Hatchet-Face was now at the front of the crowd, his face impassive. Behind the crowd, Theodore cried out in terror, and I heard him fall off his chair. I bowed politely to Eunapius and didn’t ask why my people should be denounced for a custom that he was praising in Leander. Talk about women’s logic! Of course, there was more to this than women’s logic.

‘I bet you couldn’t do better in any language!’ Eunapius shouted. He struck an aggressive pose and laughed bitterly. ‘Alaric, barbarian from the back of beyond,’ he went on, ‘I challenge you to improvise for us.’ He stopped and cleared his throat. There was no spittoon in sight, and he was forced to swallow rather than spit. ‘I challenge you to improvise on the excellencies of the poet Leander.’ Someone in the crowd sniggered a repetition about howling and breast beating. Then, from near the front, a voice rang out in fair imitation of Leander’s Egyptian accent:

Alaric, Alaric,

Only good for sucking dick!

That set off a ripple of embarrassed laughter. Without seeming to move, Lord Hatchet-Face melted backwards into the crowd. For some reason, the scared look went out of Leander’s eyes. A fresh smirk on his face, he held up both hands to show no stain of ink on them.

‘Poem, poem!’ a few slurred voices began to chant. I fought off the urge to head-butt Eunapius in the face. ‘Poem, poem!’ the drunken crowd was chanting louder and faster. Smiling like a man who’s just won a bet on his entire estate, Eunapius was clapping in time to the chant. Leander showed his hands again, this time to the whole crowd. He raised a cheer. I stared at Eunapius. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. Tough luck Nicetas was now looking thoroughly pissed off.

I waited for the chanting to die away. Less than this would have sent any of my ancestors berserk with a meat cleaver. Lucky for this lot I was His Magnificence the Lord Senator Alaric. ‘My Lord Nicetas,’ I said, bowing low, ‘you will appreciate the hour is late, and that those who are with me have need of their beds.’ I’d get me and mine out of this ghastly room. I’d send in an open and very beautiful letter of thanks the following morning.

But Nicetas was having none of that. He sat up in his chair and poked his monk away with his stick. ‘You have been challenged to justify your contempt for my poet,’ he snarled. ‘I give you the freedom of speech to rise to that challenge.’ He sat back and glared at Eunapius.

This wasn’t going well. The only question was for whom? I could have insisted on a dignified exit. Or I could see what trouble there was to be made. Time for another gamble, I decided. I looked for a moment up at the circular candle racks. What metre? I wondered. Whatever I chose would need to fit the name Leander. It would have to be in Greek. I raised my arms for silence and walked about the edge of the crowd. I caught a look at myself in a silver dish someone had left on its side. The toga did suit me. Looking steadily at Eunapius, I recited:

Leander writes not lest his hand

Lack passion for his prostate gland,

And so that not tonight shall he

Be overcome by ecstasy.

O wicked street boys, to deprive

Our Poet of his daily swive -

As if he’d meant their friend to kill,

Or even much to use him ill.

But threats or cash or plaintive cries

Procured him nothing in their eyes,

As, in some sewer, tightly held,

His manhood and a knife to geld

Those boys without a second thought

In brief though final union brought.

Now, when Leander dwells upon

Those happy, happy days, long gone,

When every cry of boyish fright

For him was cause of fresh delight,

No opportunity has he

To recollect his ecstasy -

Aside from reaching out his hand,

Once more to stroke his prostate gland.

I finished and looked about a silent room. Half the audience had disappeared. The other half might have been at the wedding feast where Perseus pulled out Medusa’s head and turned everyone to stone. The lead sliding off his face again, Eunapius was looking like a pig’s bladder that has been overinflated and is ready to burst. Leander continued smiling and bobbing his head — but that would have been required from a man of his degree if I’d run over and stuffed shit up both his nostrils.

With a cry of rage or pain or both, Nicetas hauled himself to his feet. His stick wobbling as he tried to support his sickness-raddled bulk, he stretched out his free arm. ‘Will no one respect my time of sickness?’ he cried accusingly.

Eunapius was straight on to him. ‘My Lord, My Lord,’ he bleated, ‘did you not hear the gross insult this savage. .’

He was interrupted by a loud and slow handclap from the back of the room. ‘Oh bravo, bravo, My Lord Alaric,’ a voice called out in a shrill attempt at the feminine. ‘We ladies fair dote on poetry. How sad one hears so little of it in our own degenerate age.’

Had I woken at this point and found myself still trussed up in Shahin’s boat, I’d have told Antonia that I’d been having a bad dream. But I wasn’t asleep. I’d gone too far with Nicetas, and only got away so far because, dressed in the most outrageous parody of aged womanhood anyone could imagine, Priscus had broken every part of the word and spirit of our agreement.