Fanina, Child of Rome

by Pierre Sabbagh

  ‘That imbecile Druentianus will never guess that you only have to catch sight of him to become as pliant as a glove.’

  ‘Yes, Tertius, like a glove,’ she replied. ‘Let’s drink some of Domitius’s wine, then you’ll see....’

  Chapter Four

  Still clasped close to Tertius, appallingly tense, but her eyes very clear behind the curtain of her half-closed eyelids, painfully lucid, exasperated, her mind working at prodigious speed, Fanina had come to a halt in the shadow of a thick clump of bushes to examine the scene.

  A vast crowd moved this way and that beneath the trees of Brazen-beard’s garden, between the wooden side-shows the miniature arena, the dummy triumphal arches and plaster fountains that had been set up here and there in haste around a vast low platform, protected by a monumental awning, where twenty slaves were being kept permanently busy, ceaselessly pouring the contents of amphorae that were passed from hand to hand, into enormous bronze mixing-bowls.

  A haze of water vapour was rising from the crowd into the cold night air, and mingling with the stinging smoke from fires, above which sizzled rows of chickens, whole oxen, deer, wild boar, African antelopes and quarters of aurochs from Germany.

  People were singing, dancing and shrieking with delight. They were fighting like ravenous wolves over bits of half-roasted meat, dripping revoltingly with fat and blood. They gorged themselves with ham, pies and pastries, and crowded on to the platform round the mixing-bowls as they were constantly replenished, to fill cups, vases, any imaginable container, or even to plunge their heads in and lap noisily at the wine, like beasts at a drinking trough.

  The ‘festivity’ had only just begun, and yet there were already scores of drunks sprawling all over the place, even between the legs of the musicians, as they blew for all they were worth into their flutes or their bagpipes, or twanged frantically at the strings of their harps. There was another heap of them lying abandonedly snoring their heads off at the foot of the stages, on which actors were bawling out their lines at the top of their voices without managing to make themselves heard above the din.

  Everywhere there was danger, for all these men knew Fanina. They had booed her, they had demanded her death in the name of public morality; they had escorted her as far as the Regia where she had been condemned to be buried alive.

  All these men? Yes, indeed, for women were few and far between in this crowd greedy for crude pleasure. There were a few old hags, and a handful of drunken women of ill-defined age, their features bloated by drink. And that was all....

  Tertius on his side seemed to be hesitating, looking anxiously around. He did not seem in a hurry to fill the cups he had undertaken to drink to his partner’s health.

  ‘Did you bring me to this ... er ... fashionable gathering for people to admire me?’ Fanina asked sarcastically, giving him a scathing look. ‘I’m delighted to see what elevated company you keep.’

  ‘You open your mouth when I tell you to!’ growled the young ruffian furiously.

  Fanina gave a dry laugh. She hated this man Tertius. She had forgotten the nasty situation from which he had extricated her. He had blackmailed her, had wanted to take what belonged to Vindex, had tried to take advantage of her. First and foremost she must get out of this dreadful situation, but not before she made this fellow pay for getting her into it. She had suffered too much at the hands of the spiteful and unscrupulous, and one at least of them was going to pay for it.

  ‘Before shutting my mouth, would you, my ... lord and master, have the kindness to fetch me a cup of one of the wines you recommended so highly.’

  Tertius did not budge.

  ‘Ah, I understand,’ Fanina went on. ‘The high-and-mighty Tertius does not deign to mix with this sordid rabble.’

  ‘This is no place for you!’ he burst out.

  ‘I’m delighted to hear you say so. This is no place for me because you are afraid of competition. You’re afraid someone might take me away from you....’

  ‘Can’t you see there isn’t another woman here ... and that....’ The sound of shrill vulgar voices made them turn, and a band of dishevelled prostitutes burst into the garden while a freeman in a Phrygian cap shouted from the platform:

  ‘My good friends, ur host the worthy Domitius Aenobarbus, in his incomparable munificence, has paid these women to treat you right.... Take your pick! Help yourselves! They are at your disposal.’

  With yells of delight, Brazen-beard’s guests bore down on the new arrivals.

  ‘My good friends,’ the freeman went on, ‘my master the most illustrious Domitius, in his immeasurable generosity, has decided to offer you the most precious jars of wine from his fantastic stocks...’

  A long line of slaves appeared, bearing heavy, dusty amphorae, which they emptied into the huge bowls.

  Falernian more than twenty years old! Falernian of the year in which the illustrious Apronius and the illustrious Vibius Habitus were Consuls....

  Meanwhile the women had mingled with the crowd of men. The merry uproar gave way to a strange, uneasy silence.

  ‘Where did they get this lot from?’ shouted one man.

  ‘In the name of Vulcan, couldn’t that scum Brazen-beard have found us a few uglier specimens while he was at it?’ yelled another.

  ‘The most illustrious Domitius has done his best to please you,’ proclaimed the freeman. ‘It is not his fault if the younger and prettier ones refused to come.’

  ‘How’s that? Do we disgust them?’

  With a vulgar laugh, a wrinkled, toothless old tart, dressed in rags and smothered in lurid make-up said:

  ‘They haven’t forgotten what happened to the girls who came here last time ... Youngsters don’t like hard work. A hundred men to each woman, that’s all right for the old ’uns like us ...’

  A furious roar went up from the crowd:

  ‘Console yourselves with this old Falernian,’ stammered the freeman, who had suddenly gone very pale.

  ‘Your Falernian can wait, by Teutates,’ bellowed a Gaul swaying on his widespread legs. ‘If you want to get rid of it, empty it into your lanterns, since it’s the only wine that will burn! We want women, and proper ones at that!’

  A piercing voice rose above the roar of the crowd, the voice of a man who had just appeared on the platform, holding a half-naked girl by the arm:

  ‘Be patient, my friends. Within the hour you will have as many women as you want. Within the hour two hundred slave girls, the loveliest in all Rome, will be yours, that I promise.’

  With a shudder, Fanina instinctively huddled closer to Tertius. The man was Brazen-beard, whom the crowd greeted with a prolonged burst of applause.

  ‘Nothing is too good for you, my dear friends,’ the ginger-haired man went on. ‘I can refuse nothing to those who helped me to appease the wrath of the gods by having the shameless Fanina condemned!’

  There was another outburst of applause.

  ‘Let’s go, quick!’ murmured Tertius.

  But Fanina made no move. There were barely thirty paces to the gate from the dark shrubbery where they stood concealed, but neither threats nor force would make her move an inch. She was rooted to the ground. Something was about to happen; she felt it in the depths of her being. She was not afraid, and she wanted to see.

  Over yonder, the Gaul was shouting again:

  ‘While we’re waiting for these beauties you’ve promised us, why don’t you give me that one you’ve kept for yourself?’

  ‘May the gods rot you to the roots! Why not give her to me?’ bellowed another man standing beside the Gaul.

  ‘No, give her to me!’

  ‘To me, by Bacchus!’

  Fifty men had rushed forward, and were laying siege to the platform, holding out their arms towards Domitius’s companion. Fanina saw the girl struggle and heard her shriek:

  ‘No! No!’

  Domitius burst out laughing:

  ‘Everything that belongs to Brazen-beard belongs to his friends!’ he proclaimed.
/>
  And he gave the girl a shove, brutally pushing her towards the forest of hands which grabbed her, stripped her, bore her aloft for a moment over the heads of those who were fighting over her, like dogs tearing their quarry apart.

  Before she vanished into the hideous throng, she started up and was visible an instant, ashen, dishevelled, her mouth agape but no longer producing any sound. Fanina recognized her: it was Melixo.

  Melixo who had betrayed her. Melixo who had never shown a trace of pity for Catia, her girlhood friend, when she died as a result of the tortures that had been inflicted on her.

  And now Melixo had been handed over to these half-crazed men by the man to whom she had sold herself and was paying a terrible price for her crimes ...

  ‘Let’s go!’ Tertius repeated.

  White-faced, he added:

  ‘I don’t want them to do that to you!’

  He no longer bore any resemblance to the young ruffian who had stalked along arm in arm with the girl he had conquered by threats, taking advantage of her fear of the watchmen. His thin face looked hollow, older, and his lips trembled as he looked at her with eyes like those of Vindex, of Vibius the butcher, of Caligula, and of the young men who had sided with her at the foot of the Rostra, on the last day of her life as a vestal.

  Fanina trembled. So Tertius was in love with her too. After acting the cynic, the tough, he had seen the light. It had been enough for him to witness Brazen-beard’s lewd guests fighting over Melixo’s young body to realize just how much he cared for the girl he had so odiously involved in this terrifying adventure.

  ‘Come on! Do come, I beg you!’

  A stocky figure appeared between two bushes in the shrubbery, and a harsh voice sniggered in a strong Syrian accent:

  ‘By Jupiter, my friend, it would seem that you don’t care for sharing.’

  Petrified, Fanina saw Tertius leap in front of her.

  ‘Clear out!’ he growled.

  Something sharp glistened in his hand. The other man gave a quiet little laugh, plunged his hand into the open neck of his tunic and drew out a long cutlass.

  ‘Have it your way, mate,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘There’s nothing so exciting as winning a girl at knife-point.’

  In the dense shadow of the shrubbery, with half flexed legs, shoulders and stomach drawn in, and a fold of his tunic wrapped round his left arm, the stranger slowly circled Tertius, who, leaning forward and pointing his weapon towards his adversary, nervously made to parry every feint made by the other man. Then suddenly the man seemed to trip and lurched forward with his cutlass clasped flat against his chest. Tertius leapt swiftly to one side and brought his knife down to strike, thus lowering his guard.

  His opponent’s arm shot out with fantastic speed and his steel blade described a glittering arc. Tertius grunted and lurched forward ...

  Staggering, he whispered:

  ‘Lydia! Lydia! ’ The name he had given Fanina!

  Bent double, he took a few more steps, and seemed to be struggling with all his might not to leave the protective shadows of the bushes and draw attention to the woman for whose sake he was dying; then he fell on his face.

  A deafening roar went up:

  ‘Hoc habet!’ He’s had it.

  Fanina looked away from Tertius’s body. His long legs, in the grip of a violent spasm, bent up and straightened convulsively several times before finally growing rigid and motionless.

  The huge crowd of men and women from Subura formed a circle around her. She had been so absorbed by the combat that she had not heard them approach. Her ears had been so full of their everlasting shouting that she had not heard their roars of excitement as they egged on the combatants just exactly as they did at the circus when stirring up the warlike ardour of their favourite gladiators.

  Wildly acclaimed, the victor carefully wiped the blade of his cutlass on Tertius’s tunic. When the steel shone like a mirror he straightened up again and advanced towards Fanina, with a cruel smile playing about his fleshy lips.

  ‘Come on, my beauty,’ he jeered, holding out a hand to her. ‘One man’s as good as another. Come, you won’t regret it.’

  Fanina quivered with revulsion. Where could she fly to? Whom could she appeal to for help?

  Still the man drew nearer. An idea born of desperation made her rush towards the light cast by the myriad lanterns that illuminated Brazen-beard’s gardens, and, pointing first to Tertius’s body then to the victor, she cried out:

  ‘He killed that man. Who will kill him?’

  Fanina stood waiting, a slim pale silhouette, her face hidden in the shadow cast by her hood, her cloak thrown back over her shoulders, her pallium clinging to her body, accentuating its shapely curves and her high, quivering bosom. With heavy heart she waited.

  The crowd shrieked its approval. This delectable game of love and death promised by the struggle for possession of this madly desirable creature was a hundred times more exciting than the most spectacular of all the attractions offered by Brazen-beard.

  ‘Who will kill him?’ roared a thousand voices.

  The noise grew louder. A man had leapt into the improvised arena. He picked up Tertius’s knife and took his guard....

  Who was he? Which of them would win? Little did Fanina care, for every blow put off the moment when payment would be demanded, and that she dared not contemplate.

  Everyone was shouting, still shouting ...

  ‘He’s had it.’

  ‘Cut his throat for him!’

  The spectators turned their thumbs down. The latest challenger, fleeing from his adversary’s blade, had dragged himself despairingly on his elbows to the feet of a horrified Fanina.

  ‘Cut his throat,’ the crowd repeated.

  Now another body, convulsed in the final paroxysm of death, gradually grew livid on the ground bathed with its blood, while the crowd took up Fanina’s words:

  ‘He killed this man. Who will kill him?’

  Sometimes, before engaging, the man about to enter the arena would walk over to Fanina and stand looking at her for a long while. What could he see of her features? Could he recognize in this stony face, lost in the blackness of her hood, the pathetic face of the vestal virgin against whom he had undoubtedly demonstrated in the Via Nova and whose death he had surely demanded, in order to earn the handful of coins promised by Brazen-beard? What at that moment were the thoughts of the man who was about to embark on this crazy competition in which each victor found his master? What mysterious charm emanated from her to make them all fight like this to their last breath?

  The slow shuffle of sandals on the hard-frozen earth began again. A few paces from where she stood, two men were circling one another cautiously, stopping only to observe one another, to size one another up, or to defy one another. Then suddenly they would leap forward....

  The crowd was wild with enthusiasm. How many bodies had been dragged from the field of these crazy combats ? They would all kill one another. They would all die; after seeking her death....

  Over yonder a grinning colossus, his bare chest painted every colour of the rainbow, was acting umpire. Fanina recognized him: he was the gigantic Caledonian beast-fighter, one of the six who had escorted Brazen-beard ten years before when he had invaded her father’s home to announce:

  ‘I shall take cruel vengeance on your daughter, Faninus! You will not have eyes enough to weep all the tears I shall make you weep!’

  Where was Brazen-beard now? What was he doing while all these men reddened the earth of his fearsome garden with their blood?

  Of a sudden the crowd fell silent.

  The man stood with one foot on the throat of the opponent he had just disembowelled, his hand gently stroking the blade of his sica shaped like a boar’s tusk, a massive fellow with a wrestler’s shoulders, a very low brow, a coarse face framed by a thick black beard, wearing a short waxed leather tunic. He spoke calmly:

  ‘I’ve killed four. I’m not tired. Who wants to be the fifth?’

&nb
sp; Not a man moved. No one dared utter the cry that had punctuated the terrifying series of duels: ‘He has killed his man! Who will kill him?’

  ‘No more contenders for this girl?’ the man went on.

  Fanina turned to the spectators, her face convulsed. The time for settling accounts could surely not have come yet. Surely another man, another ten men, all these men would come forward to fight for her against this man.

  Then the beast-fighter who had acted as referee said with such a strong foreign accent that his words were almost incomprehensible:

  ‘She would suit Kald, comrade.’

  The man with the ring of black beard gave a little husky laugh.

  ‘Would my comrade Kald want to fight an old pal?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, if he refused to go shares,’ replied the Caledonian, screwing up his eyes and flexing the bulging muscles of his huge arms. ‘Kald fights bears with his naked hands. Thracian gladiators do not impress him.’

  Without wasting time bragging, the two gladiators challenged one another with their eyes. No matter what their eventual decision, no matter what the outcome of their eventual battle, no man in the whole crowd would dare to defy either of these professional killers, thought Fanina, trembling with horror. Especially the terrifying Kald. Without knowing the man they were referring to, she had often heard her former vestal companions relating the fantastic exploits of Kald the bear-slayer, to whom Tiberius, in spite of the fact that he was not given to enthusing over circus contests, had awarded a gold bracelet the day he saw him strangle a huge lion from the Atlas mountains.

  ‘Let’s share her, mate,’ the Thracian said at last.

  As cold and detached as a couple of horse-dealers deciding to go shares in the purchase of a filly, the two gladiators arranged the terms of the deal they were about to conclude.

  ‘After all, I did beat four men to get the girl,’ said the Thracian.

  ‘Kald is not particular, my friend,’ replied the beast-fighter with a hearty laugh. ‘Kald will be satisfied with the leavings.’

  The Thracian’s face lit up.

  ‘I won’t keep you waiting long, my friend. I’ll bring her back in an hour’s time.’