György Spiró - Captivity

Uri laughed because he thought Narcissus was putting him on, but Diespiter confirmed that he had heard exactly the same story.

When Diespiter had left, Narcissus did not fail to note that the man had made a fortune by peddling documents of Roman citizenship.

Anyway, there among those scrambling for the best morsels was the ex-consul and ex-legate Vitellius, along with his sons; Uri could not see them close up, so he couldn’t figure out which of them was Aulus, who as a boy had allegedly been one of Tiberius’s lovers.

As compared with the presence of Vitellius, negotiator of the Roman peace pact with the Parthians, that of Philo and the alabarch’s sons was indeed negligible.

They learned from Pallas that among those who had come yesterday evening had been Corbulo, the consul in office who, under orders from the emperor, was nagging the road commissioners about the poor condition of the roads and had demanded they repay the funds they had received from Tiberius for keeping the highways in good repair. It was a large sum of money, and of course the road constructors, according to Narcissus, had embezzled no small amount. Claudius withdrew with Corbulo into one of the library rooms.

Uri sauntered around: he could not see Titus with the broad cheekbones, nor Kainis.

They were making love somewhere.

Another innovation about which there was plenty of gossip was a new imperial dwelling that was being built on the Capitoline because the emperor wanted henceforward to live close to the statue of Jupiter, apparently undisturbed by the noise of the bell fit to the statue.

Philo was speaking at length with a stubby senator with rugged features, who, Uri was told by Pallas, was Aemelius Rectus, the man whom Caligula had initially appointed to take over Flaccus’s prefecture before he ended up giving the position to Macro, only to have Macro dispatched. By then the emperor had forgotten about Rectus, though Rectus would have been happy to return to Alexandria to do a bit of extorting.

Messalina’s servants led in musicians and offered all some rare fine wines: Messalina herself was very jolly, dancing and whooping it up, and although people did not know the cause of her strikingly high spirits, they gallantly held up their end of the bargain by quaffing what they were offered. Claudius shuffled out with Corbulo, blinked tiredly and stared at his wife, who, shaking her wobbling breasts about, started to screech like a roadside innkeeper’s wife “My bleeding has stopped! I’m going to give birth to a son at last!”

Silver-haired Vitellius childishly clapped his hands and in his enthusiasm rolled his eyes back to show their whites.

Claudius forced a grin and put up with a stream of people slapping him on the back or clipping his big mop of a head as if he were a child. Broad-headed, puny idiots also ran up to him, adding their pummeling; these were the sort of people who were kept as domestic pets and taken everywhere by rich folk, that being the fashion, much like the costly monkeys with ropes around their necks who were allowed to run free among the dishes of food. One wise monkey, on seeing what people were doing to Claudius, sprang over and joined in the patting of his head. That garnered the loudest applause of the night, with calls of “Even the monkeys know! Even the monkeys know!” ringing out. The beast’s owner, Domitius Afer — he had once sprawled out on the ground and worshiped Caligula after a serious speech for the prosecution which threatened him with the death penalty and, as a result, was not executed but was made a consul — jumped across and stroked the monkey, giving it a nut to stuff in its muzzle. Afer, in turn, was applauded as well. Afer and the tame monkey bowed in acknowledgment of the applause, and more than a few wisecracks were made to the effect that the master increasingly resembled his pet.

Narcissus silently groaned, so Uri sympathetically put an arm his shoulders.

A tall, strikingly beautiful dark-haired woman hugged Claudius in congratulation, while a stocky, bald man shook him by the hand. Uri asked Pallas who they were, because Narcissus had run off angrily.

“She’s called Lollia Paulina,” Pallas said.

So that good-looking woman had been Caligula’s second wife. The emperor had asked for her hand from her former husband, Memmius Regulus, so the betrothal was lawful. So was the stocky chap Memmius Regulus perchance? Pallas confirmed that. The emperor had seen Lollia at her wedding with Memmius Regulus and desired to have her there and then; he may have been imitating Augustus, who had seduced Livia when she was pregnant, but in any case Caligula had lived with Lollia for just two months before getting bored and exiling both her and Memmius Regulus, alleging that they were still in contact; they had, however, finagled it so as to be allowed to stay in Rome while they prepared to travel, and they had been preparing ever since.

“He’s always saying ‘I do it because I can do it,’” Pallas grumbled softly. “He said the same thing to Antonia, advising her to take her own life as swiftly as possible: ‘I do it because I can do it.’”

Uri thought he had passed into depths of Sheol when he noticed a venerable Hindu man beside him. He had handsome, wizened features and a dazzling shock of white hair, but no arms at all; indeed, he had no shoulders either, with his trunk commencing without interruption from the neck downward. Uri shuddered; he looked down and saw that the armless Indian was standing barefoot on the mosaic floor, and that he had conspicuously long toes.

“The Hindu! The Hindu! The Hindu is also here!”

“Fetch a bow and arrows!”

A big circle was formed and the Hindu old man lay on his back on the floor. Messalina placed an apple on the head of her slave Polybius. With his legs kicking up in the air as if they were strong arms and the toes like fingers, the old fellow stretched the bow as he lay there, placed an arrow on the bowstring, and by raising head and trunk slightly he aimed and loosed the arrow. The apple, pierced by the arrow, flew off Polybius’s head.

Loud cheering worthy of a tavern broke out among the drunken worthies.

Sixty years ago, Augustus had been presented with this agile crippled man, together with the first tigers, as a gift from an Indian embassy. Back then he had looked like statues of Hermes. He had settled down in Rome, married, and had fourteen children. He was also supposed to be able to play a trumpet with his feet, but there was no trumpet in Claudius’s house. Messalina fumed that there wasn’t even that much in this tin-pot house and raced off in a flood of tears. Claudius had a shamefaced grin on his face.

Caligula traveled into Campania for the summer, with the foreign embassies scrambling after him to carry on their canvassing at the seaside. Political commentators thought it increasingly likely that Caligula would not be holding a triumph and would only enter Rome in ceremonial procession at the end of August: the Senate could not deny him the celebration of his birthday.

Claudius and his household also journeyed into Campania, and they too would only be returning to Rome for Caligula’s birthday on August 31 to be present at the ovation.

Uri hoped that these three months would allow him to rid his mind of Kainis — and not only hoped but also vowed to forget her, indeed sealed that vow with a donation of money to the Eternal One. He paid twelve sesterces to the treasury of the Elders; that would travel to Jerusalem for next Passover as part of the voluntary sacrificial offerings— aparchai as they were known in Greek — along with the annual didrachma ritual dues payable in February. He felt better after making the donation, though he did not think that the Creator would strive any more assiduously to soothe the pangs of love racking the insides of a believer: indeed, he was amazed that he felt better than he had for several months.