A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom

by John Boyne

  “I’ll make a man of you yet,” he said, looking at me with contempt as I rolled on the grass, trying not to weep through the pain. “When this is over, when we have chased the Romans away, it will be time for you to stop spending so much of your days around women and learn how to be a man. Like me.”

  * * *

  • • •

  We fought valiantly but, faced with an entire cohort of Roman legionnaires, our small army found itself outnumbered five to one and it took only a few hours for the Empire to bring us to heel. Just over sixty of our men were brutally slain and the remainder were brought back down the mountain in chains. The ankles of each man were shackled together and it was a grim sight to observe the defeated villagers lined up, humiliation carved into their faces and an expectation of death in their eyes.

  As the battle raged, I had hidden as instructed in a tree, watching in horror as men I’d spent weeks with were slaughtered before my eyes. When the remaining rebels were captured, a group that included my father, I was surprised to see them being led back toward the village rather than killed on the spot.

  Watched over by a smaller group of soldiers, they awaited the arrival of the centurion Priscus, who had been charged with supervising the stone wall fortifications that surrounded Rhaetia. He had not taken part in the battle, probably thinking that our ragtag group of rebels was unworthy of his attention, and failed even to appear that night, when the chained men could be observed collapsed on the ground in their manacles, half-asleep and starving, stinking of piss, shit and vomit. The dead bodies had been recovered the previous day before being piled atop a pyre and the women had been given permission to burn their lost husbands and sons. The stench of roasted flesh in the air lent a sickening perfume to our defeat and the night was filled with the calamitous sound of weeping and mourning.

  I followed at a safe distance and managed to return to my father’s house under cover of night without discovery. Fabiola and Naura were comforting their children, who were traumatized by the horrific sights and smells, so it was Alba who first saw me slink through the door, and she cried out in delight as I stumbled inside. In a moment, they were all upon me to offer kisses and hugs, my mother, the woman I had come to think of as my aunt, the twins and my crippled cousin. I answered their questions as best I could about what had taken place and, while they were terrified at what might happen when the centurion finally arrived, they were at least relieved that my life had been spared.

  The entire village was summoned outdoors the next morning when Priscus rode in on a white horse fitted with a fine turquoise-colored saddle, flanked by four young contubernales carrying the flag of the Roman Republic, a golden eagle, its wings outstretched across a garland of laurels, with the letters SPQR—Senatus Populusque Romanus; the Senate and People of Rome—printed beneath it. Priscus was an enormous man, unnervingly tall and broad, with a startling yellow beard. I looked at the filthy men shackled on the ground; how could they compare in splendor with their muddy skin and rough, worn clothing? Priscus must have felt the disparity, too, for he did not even offer us the respect of dismounting his horse, humiliating his captives by remaining aloft as he addressed the surviving men, women and children of Rhaetia.

  “Helvetia is conquered,” he shouted, “and these tedious local skirmishes waste all our time! Many of your neighbors died yesterday, more still will die today. A message must be sent to others who would defy the rule of the Emperor Caracalla.”

  He looked around at the row of men before him, who had been dragged to their feet now and stood in a long, single file. At his signal, four of the legionnaires moved behind the first group of men, each one drawing his sword and raising it vertically in the air, so it was pressed against the base of a prisoner’s neck. The women screamed, begging for mercy, but Priscus held his hand out, demanding silence. When all that could be heard was muffled weeping, he turned to the first soldier and rotated his hand so the thumb pointed upward. The soldier sheathed his sword and stepped down the line, so he was now standing behind the fifth man, at which point he withdrew the sword once again and held it as he had before.

  There was a great cry of relief that our first neighbor had been spared but then Priscus held his hand out again, this time turning it so the thumb pointed toward the ground, and as he did so the second soldier’s sword descended through the spine of a man who had once carried me on his back as a child and who cried out for only a moment before collapsing to the ground, dead. The crowd screamed, the soldier moved along the line and Priscus granted mercy to the third man in line, then execution to the fourth, fifth and sixth, mercy to the seventh, death to the eighth. It seemed that half were being reprieved and half killed, although the order was random and there was no way to tell whether the next man would live or die.

  I glanced toward my father, who was standing close to the end of the line, and saw no fear on his face, although the scar on his left cheek seemed more inflamed than usual. I held my breath, watching the murderous hand of the centurion, certain that he was going to bring my father’s life to an end, but no, he saved him, and while he may not have wished to show any emotion, I thought I could see a trace of relief on Marvel’s face.

  By the end, only sixteen men were left alive, and Priscus addressed us for the final time.

  “Every man that remains, every woman, and every child, you have forfeited the right to live as free people. You are now bound in servitude and will be taken to Rome, where you will be purchased by new masters and work for them according to their whims. And if you want to blame anyone for your change of circumstances, then look only to yourselves.”

  SOMALIA

  A.D. 260

  THE NIGHT BEFORE the slave auction took place, my father, mother and aunt sat down to discuss how many new purchases we would make at the fair. It had been almost two years since Bal Priscumi, the slave trader from Mombasa, had last come to the Seat of the Shah with fresh attainments and many of the great households, including our own, were in need of replenishment. My mother, Furaha, was in charge of domestic arrangements but had already discussed her needs with Nala.

  We owned eight slaves already and Makena had a strict rule that we should neither give them names nor permit them to use the ones they had employed before coming to Sarapion, as names were for people and slaves were not people, but chattel, subject to the whims and desires of their owners. One to Five had lived in a hut toward the rear of our property since before my birth, Six had arrived when I was a child, while both Seven and Eight had been acquired the last time that Bal Priscumi had come to town. It was a source of great distress to Furaha, however, that we owned so few; she believed that a family like ours, with wealth and position, should keep twice that number, but my father preferred to keep his slave numbers low, saying that being greeted by such miserable, ungrateful faces every morning got his days off to a bad start.

  “Why are they so unhappy anyway?” he asked. “They should feel honored that we purchased them in the first place.”

  “Who knows?” replied Furaha with a shrug. “You cannot expect me to understand the minds of slaves. The point is, Husband, that we need nine more. It shames me to see how empty our slave hut is compared to—” And here she named neighbor after neighbor after neighbor who were better endowed with slaves than we were. This was always an effective way of winning an argument with Makena, for he could not bear to be viewed as inferior in status to anyone.

  “Nine more to house, nine more to feed, nine more to look at,” he groaned, placing his head in his hands in frustration. “While you two sit around all day doing nothing?” He looked from Furaha to Nala, who bowed her head and remained silent. Typically, she did not involve herself in matrimonial disputes, allowing my mother to make the case for both of them.

  “Us? Do nothing?” cried Furaha, throwing her arms in the air. “All we do is work, Nala and I, from morning till night, because the slaves you’ve bought in the p
ast are so useless. Lazy good-for-nothings from Nubia and Punt who act as if they should have the freedom to live their own lives instead of according to their mistresses’ wishes. You won’t even consider buying strong, young slaves because heaven forbid that we diminish our coffers! We have more money than anyone for miles around, but will you spend any of it?”

  “We have it because I won’t spend it!”

  “Then what use is it? Will you still cling to it in your shroud?”

  “All right!” cried Makena, growing weary of her shouting. “But why nine? Why so many?”

  “Two for cooking and three for household work,” said Nala without hesitation.

  “And two more for the garden,” added Furaha. “The garden is a disgrace, Husband, as you can see, because Three and Five are getting too old to manage the land.”

  “That only makes seven,” replied my father, counting them off on his fingers.

  “And two more to help with the children,” said Furaha.

  “The children are your responsibility!”

  “Two more to help with the children,” she insisted.

  “And where are they to sleep, these wonderful, strong young slaves? We would own…” He thought about it for some time and I could see his lips move as he calculated the number. “Seventeen slaves in total. So, tell me, Wife, where are they to sleep?”

  “In the slave hut, of course,” she said. “The others can make room. We will put Two and Four out onto the street for their laziness, and Three and Five can join them, as they are too ancient to be of any use anymore. So, in truth, our numbers will only rise from eight to thirteen.”

  “Good Brother,” said Nala quietly, using the peaceful tone that she always employed at such moments and the name she sometimes assigned to her lover. “Beloved Sister Furaha is correct to say that your name is held in less esteem since you own so few slaves. These new additions will only enhance your position in the town. We do not speak to cause you weariness or upset, only out of love and concern.”

  My father considered this and, knowing that he could never win when these two combined forces against him, gave in and nodded his head.

  Nala, I realized, was more skillful at convincing him on these matters than my mother, who was growing into a more aggressive presence in our home. Of course, she knew that Makena had taken several new lovers in the village, much younger than either she or Nala, and lived in fear that one of them would give him a baby and the pair would also be brought to live among us.

  “You win, as you always do,” said my father. “But if you want these slaves, then you must choose them yourselves. I have better things to do with my time. Nala, you go. You have more sense than my wife.” He stood up to leave but then, thinking better of it, turned back. “And take the boy with you,” he added, nodding in my direction. “He can keep hold of the money.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The marketplace was busy but our status in the town ensured that most people stepped aside to allow Nala and me through. Many attended solely out of interest, lacking the resources to make any purchases but keen to observe the drama of the afternoon.

  Traders from the town had set up tables to take advantage of the increased business that the slave fair would bring. There were food stalls selling teff pancakes, sambusas and quraac, jewelers holding precious gems in their hands, and a display of ornamental objects, including a golden eagle, a silver statue of Minerva and a collection of glass fruit that captured the sun, sending prisms of color onto my palms when I held them aloft.

  The sale was due to take place in the colonnade at the center of Sarapion and pillars had been erected on the dais where the slaves could be tied up and examined without fear of their trying to escape. Nala and I took our place at the front, alongside other wealthy men from our town, and they looked so surprised to see a woman given such responsibility that I took my father’s pouch of money from my pocket and tossed it from hand to hand so they could see I was no longer a child but had at last earned Makena’s trust. The purse was filled with gold fragments and arrowheads, and I felt a surfeit of pride to be the guardian of such treasures.

  At the end of the row I noticed the tavern owner, Vinium, whose daughter was my father’s latest mistress. I had spied on them recently, following Makena through the town to a hut in a forest where she waited for him. When he appeared, she smiled and removed her dress without a word and I almost cried out in pain to see how beautiful she was. My father took her, quickly and without any pretense at tenderness, and I felt a mixture of contempt and confusion at his actions. After he left, I climbed down from the tree where I was hiding, and as I turned to make my way home, the girl, Sanaa, emerged from the hut and discovered me. As our eyes met, I felt sick with humiliation, but to my surprise she simply smiled lasciviously at me, asking whether I wanted to indulge in the same games as my father.

  “You’re young,” she said, loosening the strap of her dress from her left shoulder and letting it slip down just enough that I could see her breast, the enticing heft of it and the darkened nipple which both excited and terrified me. “But every boy must learn to pleasure a woman at some point.”

  I wanted to touch her but was embarrassed by the unexpected engorgement beneath my tunic and, uncertain how to conduct myself in this moment of potential initiation into the ways of adults, I ran away as fast as I could, hearing her mocking laughter echo through the forest. Returning to the village, I fell to my knees and prayed she would not betray me to Makena, who would surely have beaten me, had he discovered that I had been spying upon them.

  “I wonder how they feel,” I said quietly now, shifting uncomfortably in the chair.

  “How who feel?” asked Nala, turning to me.

  “The slaves. Being bought and sold like this. Is it an insult to their dignity?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, as if I had asked her to explain a simple fact of nature, like why the sky was blue or why we needed sleep. “It hardly matters, Beloved Nephew,” she said. “They have no dignity. They’re only slaves, nothing more. Their feelings are not important. I don’t know if they even have any.”

  “Seven has feelings,” I said, because only a few days earlier I had discovered it crying in the corner of one of our fields when it should have been busy herding cattle. When I asked why it was weeping, it replied that it missed its home. Naturally, I pointed out that Sarapion was its home now, but it simply shook its head, looking at me with something approaching hatred on its face. For as long as I could remember, I had barely noticed those who toiled at our pleasure, any more than I noticed the grass or the well or the rugs on our floors, but Seven’s reaction had confused me and made me question why some were masters and some were slaves.

  “Seven is headstrong,” replied Nala. “It needs to stay with the animals where it belongs. Eight can be emotional, too. When it gave birth last year and Makena sold the baby, it wouldn’t work for days afterward. Your mother and I had some sympathy but, eventually, even we grew tired of humoring it. Still, whenever Eight passes me by, it gives me a look as if it dares to have an opinion about me.”

  I remembered that event from the previous summer. No one knew who had put the baby inside Eight but my father had insisted on selling it as soon as it was weaned. He got a good price for it, too, I remember, but Eight had screamed for hours afterward and it could only be silenced when a gag was put in its mouth. Now it never spoke at all, but I was surprised to learn that it continued to show such disrespect toward my aunt. Like a wild horse, I thought, it had been broken.

  There was a rustle of noise in the colonnade now as Bal Priscumi appeared, older and fatter than I remembered him from his last visit but his yellow beard as impressive as ever, followed by a group of men, women and children, each with their heads cast down and wearing distraught expressions upon their faces, which were far blacker than mine or any of the residents o
f Sarapion. The whites of their eyes were studded with blood-red veins, which frightened me. They were almost naked, too, the men and boys wearing nothing but loincloths around their waists, the women and girls draped in rags that barely covered their private parts. I stared at the young girls, who wrapped their arms before their breasts, and felt desire for them, just as I had felt for Sanaa. This longing had been a constant concern of mine in recent months. Where once I had felt no interest in girls, believing them to be useful only for housework and child-rearing, I had recently found myself staring at them in the street and, when one glanced back at me, feeling an inexplicable anxiety, along with a desire to touch myself, for I had lately discovered that my body could provide previously undiscovered pleasures if manipulated carefully.

  In a deep voice that carried across the marketplace, Bal Priscumi announced the number of slaves on sale—sixteen men and just over twenty women and children—and I wondered whether we would be able to buy the required nine if others were equally interested. Nala walked over to inspect the men, ordering them to show her the soles of their feet, to run on the spot, to flex their arms and display their muscles. She ran her hands over their skin in a way that suggested she was already their mistress. She lifted the loincloths of some and examined those parts that made them men and, when she reached out to weigh these same parts in her hand, the slaves wore expressions of humiliation on their faces. Next, she turned to the women, examining their hands for signs of hard work and their teeth and gums for symptoms of disease, as one might study a stallion or a brood-mare before deciding whether or not to make an offer. The children were not of much interest to her but she moved around them anyway.