Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

Julien listened wide-eyed, completely captivated, for Sautel was a good storyteller and a natural teacher. He told Julien of the legend of the phoenix, its death and rebirth. Julien understood little of it, but was rapt with attention. In his imagination, he saw the men walking through the rooms, the vanished paintings on the walls mysterious in the candlelight, heard the waterfalls in the gardens as they moistened the air on afternoons such as this. He almost heard the conversations, and thought how wonderful it must have all been. Better than any fairy tale, like the bird was better than any real bird.

“You see,” Sautel continued, “an example of how an archaeologist works. That mosaic you like so much. Look near its beak. What do you see?”

“A patch,” Julien replied promptly.

“Quite right,” he said. “Now, this was a rich man’s villa. A very rich man, I’d guess. The mosaic is Italian work, third century. All the different stones brought from the corners of the empire. The villa was destroyed suddenly in the fifth century, I reckon. And in the middle of the centerpiece of the entrance hall, there is an ugly patch. Where a worn spot was filled with concrete. What are your conclusions?”

Julien stared at the mosaic, momentarily angry that the bird should be discussed in such a dry way, that he should be robbed of its perfection by having its faults so clinically pointed out. He shook his head.

“The owner was short of money, couldn’t pay to import new stones for a proper repair, couldn’t afford the workmen, if there were any left to hire,” Sautel continued. “The whole place was crumbling. The fields were overgrown as there were no workers. The great estates were breaking up. Trade collapsed, the cities, too. In that little patch you can see the decline of an entire civilization, the greatest the world has ever known. I see you were cross when I pointed that hole out to you. It makes me angry, too.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark. These people gave in. They stopped caring. And because they did, this land fell under the darkness of a barbarism which lasted for hundreds of years.”

He shook his head, then glanced at Julien to remind himself he was talking so intently to a mere ten-year-old.

“Anyway,” he said. “You’re lost. And I am meant to be showing you the way home. If you’ll wait a few moments while I pack my satchel, I’ll take you to the road.”

It wasn’t far. His newfound friend was walking in the same direction, and Julien padded alongside him, taking two steps for the big man’s one, trying to think of ways to make him keep talking. Sautel needed little encouragement; to every question, he gave a thoughtful, considered, serious reply. He talked to Julien as if to someone his own age, and listened to his responses in a way his brusque, unapproachable father never did.

When they reached the house, Sautel spoke to his mother, saying the delay was his fault, not Julien’s, and asking if he might be allowed to come to the dig once again.

“Surely you don’t want him, Father,” Antoinette Barneuve replied. “He would be so much trouble.”

“On the contrary; he is a lad of sense, and I have a high opinion of his views. He also has a pair of strong arms, and I could do with all the help I can get. I have little money to pay laborers, and if he is prepared to work for free, I will be happy to make use of him.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Please, Maman,” Julien said desperately, scarcely believing that she could even consider rejecting such an offer.

“I’ll think about it,” she said eventually. “We’ll see.”

Sautel knew he had won; as he turned to go, he gave the boy a wink. Secretly. Between friends.

Julien watched as the big priest disappeared down the road, whistling to himself, then until he disappeared out of sight around a corner. He thought of nothing else for the rest of the evening, and went to sleep dreaming of him.

THAT SAUTEL was a priest caused little concern to Julien, who was at the age when it is still possible to judge people according to how they behave, nor to his mother, whose faith was strong though hidden from view. It enraged his father, however, and when he heard of Julien’s summer occupation, he wrote from Vaison demanding that the connection be severed instantly. For he—a doctor and a freethinker—prided himself on his liberation from superstition and his rigorous attachment to the modern. He detested priestcraft, and one of the major causes of his distance from his wife was his contempt for her weakness in this regard. The Barneuve family, indeed, was defined by this difference between husband and wife for, although it was never mentioned, both were at war, and the object of the conflict was Julien’s soul.

At any other time, the elder Barneuve might have agreed; the scientific excavation of the past was something that, ordinarily, would have appealed to him. But that summer was not ordinary; he was in no mood to brook the slightest opposition. Merely because his wife wished it was enough reason for him to say no.

It was not cruelty that led to this decision; rather, he was looking after the welfare of his family, that of his wife as well as that of his only son. For that Easter, while his wife and child were once more staying in the little farmhouse, he had arrived to pay a surprise visit, clattering out on the horse that took him around the large area containing his patients. One was nearing death, and the good doctor—for he was such—came to give such comfort and ease as he could. The patient lived in the same village, so he turned out his horse and set off. As he trotted past the village church on his way to his patient’s bedside, the door into the sacristy opened and out came some children from their catechism lesson. He looked, and saw Julien amongst them.

Julien only faintly discerned what followed; he was sent out of the room, out of the house even, and did not witness his father’s cold rage, his fury not only at the lessons but also at the disobedience. He heard his mother crying, and tried to comfort her, but she turned away from him. He did not understand what had happened; for him the lessons were a way of playing with the other children in the village; only rarely did the solemnity of the exercise descend on him. For the most part, he remembered the way he giggled with Elizabeth, the grocer’s daughter, then his particular companion, and the way they would go afterward back to her house and be given a cake by her mother. But his father stopped all that; no more lessons, no more sunny, careless afternoons. Julien was never received into the church and for much of his life was inclined to attribute to this lack his slight aching sense of something missing.

His father had no regrets about his action; he would not tolerate disobedience in his own household. Circumstance, a certain fear of ambition, had brought him to be a country doctor in an isolated town, but in this small universe he was determined to rule. And for him, saintliness was hysteria, miracles naturally occurring phenomena misunderstood by the simple, belief mere self-delusion. A rigorous education in science was the antidote to all such afflictions, and to strengthen this medicine, he added a healthy dose of derision, sarcasm, and contempt.

Had anyone suggested that the violence of his dislike seemed excessive, that it suggested fear rather than confidence, he would have reacted with disdain. Few educated people in that region, after all, disagreed with him, and Vaison was in an area that had thrown off the shackles of the church long ago. Even his wife submitted quietly and humbly, never questioning his decisions, never answering back to his barbed remarks even though the hurt they caused was obvious on her face.