Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  Despite the many contradictions and arguments, these were invigorating days; every morning was a new dawn, the world fresh as a field grey with dew in which no footsteps had yet imprinted their darkness. They called it the city of the possible, where all things were possible; the city of freedom, where all things were free; and it was a city of the young, where everyone, or nearly everyone, was young, and beautiful, and intelligent, and those who weren't well educated were working on it with the help of those who were.

  Karite's school had grown; Simonides now held separate classes in the grove, and she'd asked Egerius to lecture on poetry, though he could only spare a few mornings every month. He'd asked her what it was divided her classes from Simonides'; was it the level of the teaching, or the subject matter, or was it simply a way of coping with the increased number of students?

  "It's difficult to say," she'd answered. "We talk about the same things; but I think we're asking different questions. Simonides wants to ask, what is the good life? - but I want to know what we are, what the world is. When I look at the stars, what am I seeing? When a baby looks at me, what is it seeing?"

  "You're not interested in how to live the good life, whatever it is?"

  "Yes, but I don't think we can understand what that is till we understand what the world is."

  "I don't get it."

  "What is the soul? Do you have any idea?"

  "It's the bit Vanth takes away when you die. Er, your mind? Your individuality?"

  "That's three different things, Egerius."

  "Well... so it is. So what?"

  "Does your soul die?"

  "I have no idea. No – no."

  "No, you have no idea, or no, it doesn't die?"

  "Well, it can't die, or Vanth wouldn't take it, I suppose."

  "So, leaving aside whether we believe that Vanth is real, the soul is immortal."

  "Yes."

  "But imagine if it wasn't."

  "Does that make a difference?"

  "If this is all there is. Just this, the world we see, and when we die, it's over."

  "It's not over. If you died right now..."

  "Thanks."

  "… just for the sake of argument, not meaning anything personal, but if you died right now, the world would still exist; I'd be here, I'd be seeing your body, everything would go on."

  "Not for me it wouldn't."

  "This is true."

  "So for me, the world would end. And perhaps – how do I know you are real? That you aren't an impression in my mind?"

  "I know I'm real."

  "But I don't. And so if I don't know you are real, and if this world is all there is, why shouldn't I do whatever I like – whatever best pleases me? Is there any moral constraint?"

  "No constraint," he said, and thought; none at all, none, just like the republic I wanted to found, and how difficult that's been, gods know. "No constraint at all."

  "So you see, unless we know what the world is and how we perceive it, how can we live a good life?"

  He wondered what Daryush would have said to that; that the world was a lie, and darkness? And he wondered whether what he'd always done, which was to live as best he could, to try to be virtuous, even in the absence of fathers or gods, was somehow lacking in rigour, and consequently a doomed attempt; would Karite even call it immoral to ignore the intricacies of her thinking about the world before setting out on an ethical course? He wondered, and kept silent, not knowing how to speak without opening up more questions, like ripples spreading on a pond and gradually destroying the bright reflections in which he'd put so much faith.

  For Kallirhoe, on the other hand, Karite's speculations were a source of pure delight; the more outlandish the ideas, the more she enjoyed them – it was a game for her, like trying to throw five knucklebones in the air and catch them all on the back of her hand. (And she could do that, too; Egerius could never manage more than four.)

  "Imagine! The whole world might be contained within the breath of a god. Or it might be only a reflection of a thought..."

  "...in the mind of a god?"

  "In the mind of a woman milking a goat on an island in another world, for all I know, and when she stops thinking that thought, we will be nothing again."

  "Don't be silly," he said, "that's not going to happen;" but the idea still disturbed him, as if he'd been given an apple and knew there was a maggot in it.

  Gaius, of course, was not happy. He wanted practical skills to be taught – stone carving and surveying, forging or engineering. The Etruscans, he said, were good at such things, but Egerius spent too much time on luxuries like poetry and goldsmithing. That was the trouble with nobles; that's why there was no room for them at Rome. Romans had to work for a living, yes, even the kings. (He was slightly uncomfortable when Kallirhoe reminded him how useful her calculations had been in planning the stoa; but then mathematics, well, that was practical knowledge, he said; not like philosophy, no use to man or beast.)

  Egerius could have kicked himself; he'd meant to do something about surveying, but for some reason the settlers were short on Etruscans – perhaps the cities of the League were so wealthy that Etruscans didn't want to emigrate, perhaps they wanted to go to cities where the trading networks were more established than in Collatia. He'd have to do something about that; perhaps he could ask Tarquinius to bring a young augur over from Tarchna – but then even Tanaquil didn't really swim in the currents of Tarchna society any more. They were becoming more Roman than Etruscan, that family; and he didn't feel he could ask Servius, whose links were more current. These ideas always seemed so easy, till you started planning how to put them into effect; and then problems began to arise, like brambles tearing at your clothes and sticky-burrs pulling you back, and a whole undergrowth of difficulties barred your way.

  Still, the school, or the grove, or the academy, or the studium as some called it – that was one of the things that happened in Collatia, names were never fixed, so that the Stoa was also The Parade, or The Walk, or The Arcade, or to some The Greenmarket, depending on the race or occupation of the speakers or just their individual preferences – the school wasn't a problem. It took people away from the practical job of building Collatia; but not too many, and not too often. He could cope with it. And as Simonides said, if people learned to think, they'd apply that thought to every facet of their lives, just as Kallirhoe had applied the new calculations to the job of getting a building erected.

  "Teach a man to think and he'll design you a government," he said; "or a temple, or a stoa, or a better ship or chariot."

  ("Teach a man to think?" Karite had said in response to that.

  "You can try," Kallirhoe had said sourly; then she'd winked at Karite and the two had burst out laughing.)

  It was Melkart who was the problem – Melkart and the stoners. Simonides asserted freedom of thought; Melkart was an out and out libertarian. He wanted total freedom; he disconcerted Egerius by reminding him of his commitment to liberty.

  "What is freedom if we don't use it?" he asked. "We owe it to ourselves to use our freedom; to experience everything – drunkeness and sobriety, vice and virtue – every kind of intoxication, every science and every art..."

  The words tumbled out in a jumble; Melkart was improvising, and sometimes would break down, then take off in another direction as a word snaked its way through his brain and set off a reminiscence or a new thought. It was strange, Egerius thought, that despite what he said, Melkart seemed more interested in investigating the liberty of intoxication, rather than that of work; and though only a Roman would think that sexual freedom was a vice, any Etruscan or Greek would feel ashamed to spend all day in bed, without achieving anything more.

  "I had a marvellous idea, Egerius. A wonderful, wonderful idea." Melkart waved one arm in a sweeping gesture that included the whole of Collatia, and swayed slightly as he did so. "You need to... you ought to..." He closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.

  "Your great idea," Egerius
prompted.

  "Did I say a great idea? Did I …" Melkart started to sway forwards and back, forwards and back, like an old tree in the wind. "Experience everything possible... everything..."

  One of the students began to laugh. For a moment Egerius thought the girl was laughing at Melkart; then he realised her eyes were closed, she'd not seen any of this, and he couldn't even be sure if she'd heard any of it.

  Melkart jerked his head up, scowling at Egerius.

  "You've never been there, have you?"

  "Where?"

  "There..." He waved his arms vaguely; he might have been demonstrating the girl who was still giggling quietly, and he might not. "You never have, have you?"

  "No."

  "You're too rigid, Egerius. You don't bend. You don't float. You need to do like us... how can you see the future if you don't have visions? You think a city's built with bricks."

  "Isn't it?"

  "It's built with dreams. Beautiful dreams. Come and dream with us, Egerius."

  "I can't. I have no time."

  "Time? What is time?"

  Egerius felt his face tighten. Simonides had been asking that same question; but he meant something else by it.

  "Take the drug with us. Come!" Melkart took a pinch of brown paste from a pot beside him and crumbled it in his fingers.

  Egerius shook his head. He didn't want to go there; where laughter welled up like vomit in your mouth, where your eyes were filmed over, where the world distorted and fell apart. Not those dreams. Rather the warmth of wine, the simplicities of hangover or sleep.

  Melkart became insistent. "Eat it, Egerius."

  "I don't have the time for this."

  "Eat it, boy."

  The students were watching them. Even the stoners seemed to realise something was happening; they'd stopped mumbling, were sitting with their almost vacant eyes on Egerius.

  "You don't dare," Melkart said. "Full of piss and wind and great ideas, but you don't dare eat it. You're scared."

  Egerius could never decide, later, whether Melkart was devious enough to have been leading up to this challenge all the while, or whether he was simply flinging out stray drug thoughts; whether Melkart had intended the challenge, or had no idea what he was doing. He could not refuse, he knew; he couldn't let Melkart hold this threat over him.

  "Give."

  He picked his way towards Melkart, through the tangled limbs of stoner students. Not bending, not willing to bend, he held his hand out for the drug.

  The paste was thick, gritty, brown as rotten apple, sticky as squashed fig. He chewed doubtfully, feeling grains grate on his teeth. The taste came slowly, as the paste dissolved in his saliva, separating into a thin syrup and the hard seed that remained. He held it in his cheek, swallowing the liquid, pushing at it with his tongue, wondering why it seemed so familiar, what it reminded him of. He waited for the drug to work.

  Waited.

  Waited, looking at Melkart.

  Waited, and thought; my left hand is tingling. Perhaps that's the beginning. Or perhaps I've just held it down by my side too long, perhaps it's just pins and needles. The light is dazzling my eyes. Blink. It's still dazzling. Perhaps that's it. But I still feel... very much the same. No god descended, no sudden blaze of light shone forth, I am not suddenly benevolent or all-loving or all-knowing, just Egerius, as I was yesterday and probably will be tomorrow. Nothing.

  He waited, everything silent around him except distant birdsong and one giggling student.

  And Melkart laughed. Laughed uncontrollably, nearly choking himself with it, his body shaking and sagging. Laughed at Egerius standing there with that earnest look on his face, waiting for something that wasn't ever going to happen.

  "Sorry," Egerius said; "it does nothing for me."

  "Of course it bloody doesn't!"

  One of the students was laughing now, too, high and thin, goat-like, and this nervous laughter spread to others as Egerius stood there, puzzled.

  "Does nothing for him! Does nothing for him!" Melkart was roaring, breathless.

  "What's so funny?"

  Melkart looked at him squarely then, stilling his laughter. "Dried figs. Dried figs. What do you expect dried figs to do?"

  "Might make him shit," one of the students offered sotto voce, and a few of them sniggered. Melkart swigged from a jug, passed it to the girl next to him.

  "You fool! We take our poppy juice in wine!"