by John Hersey
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Hersey was born in Tientsin, China, in 1914 and lived there until 1925, when his family returned to the United States. He studied at Yale and Cambridge, served for a time as Sinclair Lewis’s secretary, and then worked several years as a journalist. Beginning in 1947 he devoted his time mainly to writing fiction. He won the Pulitzer Prize, taught for two decades at Yale, and was president of the Authors League of America and Chancellor of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Hersey died in 1993.
BOOKS BY JOHN HERSEY
BLUES
THE CALL
THE WALNUT DOOR
THE PRESIDENT
MY PETITION FOR MORE SPACE
THE WRITER’S CRAFT
THE CONSPIRACY
LETTER TO THE ALUMNI
THE ALGIERS MOTEL INCIDENT
UNDER THE EYE OF THE STORM
TOO FAR TO WALK
WHITE LOTUS
HERE TO STAY
THE CHILD BUYER
THE WAR LOVER
A SINGLE PEBBLE
THE MARMOT DRIVE
THE WALL
A BELL FOR ADANO
INTO THE VALLEY
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1972 by John Hersey
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1972, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Ebook ISBN 9780593080856
www.vintagebooks.com
v5.4
a
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by John Hersey
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Afterword
To my good friend
Lillian Hellman
ONE
64 A.D.
September 15
To TIGELLINUS, Co-Commander, Praetorian Guard, from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
I have information. When can I see you?
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
Come to me after the baths.
September 16
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
This morning I told Himself about our talk. He has no fear of these people because, he said, they are men of thought, not of action. His advice was: Listen, gather, wait. The time to sharpen our scythes, he said, will come. I must add: Your informant is not well known to us. I was amazed again this morning, as I so often am, by Himself. Poppaea was in the room while we talked. Perhaps for her benefit, Himself joked about assassination. Think, Paenus, how the Caesars have died—three out of five violently; four if, as some people say, Tiberius was smothered in his bed. Yet Himself clapped me on the shoulder and said, “How will I go, Tigellinus? Will you be the one to let the air out of me?”
I have an uncouth soul, I laughed like a drunk when he said that. I thank my stars that after I began laughing he did, too. Also the Empress—a bit too heartily, I thought.
To cover ourselves, we need a full report on the dinner at Piso’s. Have it done.
To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
The report has been ordered. The informant, as I told you, is a certain Curtius Marsus. He is more or less a poet, morbidly ambitious, about twenty years old, recently taken up by Piso on recommendation of Bassus. It seems that he is willing to reach fame by any ladder that offers itself; he obviously hopes that his work as an informer will bring him to the attention of the most eminent poet of all. His immense crushed nose, which seems to have been imprinted with great pressure on his face—no doubt at birth, because there could scarcely have been passageway for both him and it to come into the world at the same time—describes curves left and right as it plunges down his long face and is, I am told, larger than his talent. He has become a curiosity among the intellectuals, however, not on account of his nearly beautiful ugliness but because he has a freak memory which, like one of those cloaks of black Leuconian wool, picks up every bit of lint that floats in the air and will not let it go. I will cull his report. I will also set a watch on his reliability.
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
Enough about snouts. You put them in every report.
To CELER, Office of Planning and Construction, from TIGELLINUS
Prepare me a barge. I want it for an occasion on the Lake of the Golden House. It should hold about fifty persons at a time and should delight all who board it. One principal chamber and several alcoves, with hangings. Bulkheads, pillars, and doors of rare woods inlaid with gold, ivory, copper, tin, lead, and silver. Place a high throne for Himself near the bow, facing forward. Illumination. And as to illumination, a warning. Watch out for fire hazard. Himself is presently capable of becoming dangerously irritable at the smallest lamp that licks or flickers. Banners. Also, for the shores, numerous booths. Prepare their separate walls in secrecy at a distance, so they can be assembled by the lake at the last moment. Colored gauze hangings for the open side of each, to face the lake. Brilliant lights within.
You have a month.
To CANUS, Imperial Household, from TIGELLINUS
Procure, for an occasion on the Lake of the Golden House, various animals, birds, and monsters.
Flamingos from the Nile, guinea fowl from Numidia, pheasants from the Phasis and Macedonia. Particular care to have pheasants of many colors.
Domesticated leopards, elephants, apes, to walk naturally in the gardens among the guests.
At least two hippopotamuses, some freshwater serpents, water monsters as discovered.
And above all, a difficult task, the successful outcome of which will win you much favor with Himself. It will be—must be—a surprise to him. Procure one thousand swans. Have made for them body harnesses of brilliant colors with long cords attached to them, which will be used for the towing of a barge. A gold collar for the neck of each swan, a long colored ribbon, of lightest weight, as a rein; a system of consolidation of the reins so that one pair of final ribbons can be held by Himself at a conning throne. Small gilded boats to guide the mass of swans. Rehearse this at a distance and in secrecy.
You have a month.
To AMMIANA, Imperial Household, from TIGELLINUS
Be warned of an occasion for special foods for about four hundred persons in one month. Send now for apples and pears from Ameria; persimmons from Judaea; figs, dates, plums, and pomegranates from Damascus and Alexandria.
Let us discuss what will be served. You of all people, Ammiana, know how in bad times pleasure eats pleasure, how tired our tongues become of scandal and condiments, how wide the net must be thrown for things that are new.
To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
About my insistence upon noses: I suppose it comes from the fact that my only competence is putting mine in other people’s business. But wait till you see this one belonging to the informant, Curtius Marsus. We shoul
d have Sulpicius Castor carve a likeness of it. I would suggest the veined pink marble from Numidia.
September 19
To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
Herewith the report from Curtius Marsus on the dinner at Piso’s—or, rather, parts of it. I have cut out some passages that are diverting but not to the purpose. Some of what I have left in may seem irrelevant at first glance but may prove useful in procuring informants, suborning, blackmailing, etc.
From here on, words of Curtius (who, by the way, seems to be neither especially reliable nor especially unreliable, as yet, for he is too raw, too ungainly, too ambitious, and too mediocre to be judged by the highest standards either of danger or of literary criticism; seems, anyway, to have a memory; makes no mention of his nose, so I will not either):
“An ‘intimate’ dinner at Piso’s. Twenty-seven guests, all of the moment. After Beneventum, where I have been recently, the Roman women seem breathtaking to me. Piso’s wife Atria reclines next to me, her black hair in tiers of curls arched by a vulgar diadem, her forehead and arms chalked, her cheeks and lips glowing with lees of wine, her eyelids shadowed with powdered antimony—but the cosmetics cannot hide either her young ripeness or her restless dissatisfaction. You probably know that she is lowborn. She is slack in her duties as hostess, and she seems to melt and actually to lose physical strength when flattered—not by me, but by Natalis on her other side. I detected eye signs of a growing understanding between them….
“The dinner starts out sedately—one of Piso’s usual evenings for literati and their admirers. The important thing to remember is that the men at the dinner are serious. Worried, proud, and unafraid. In love with the idea of Rome. Notorious, some of them—but without exception these men are scornful of notoriety; do not need false supports. They are dangerous because they are complacent.
“I give you, for example, Scaevinus. Here he reclines between two beauties. He seems, as he always seems, drowsy, as if the heavy dregs of dream years of excruciating delights have settled in his thick eyelids and in the bold veins of the whites of his eyes. He drinks more than most of these men. I saw Scaevinus one day at the palestra of the baths at the Field of Mars, playing snatchball, looking half drunk and three quarters asleep, yet I was astonished at his agility, feints, dodges, bursts of speed, while what must have been nearly pure wine cascaded from his pink pores. His mind, too, has agility, no matter how much he drinks; one must not be taken in by the stupid nodding, the sticky eyes, the hanging lower lip. Here at this dinner I overhear him expound, with a facility of tongue and depth of knowledge that are dazzling, on beekeeping, on the management of the grain supply at Ostia, on the method of stiffening lawn cloth, on the mechanics of earthquakes. He is Piso’s best friend….
“There is a current of expectancy. I have heard beforehand that Lucan is going to read a new passage from his long poem. The prospect, however, is not as promising as it might be. Lucan, at the place of honor at the uppermost table, is in one of his distant moods, staring. He will speak to no one. Piso tries to stir him with questions, one of which is: ‘Lucan, why did Seneca refuse to come tonight?’ No answer. Lucan gazes blankly at his own hands. He may get up and walk out and go home without a word, as I gather he often does—leaving his superb Polla, by the way, to temptations that are surely pressed on her the moment her husband trails his mysterious preoccupation out with him.
“MYSELF (I am new to this, a new little carp caught in the gauze net): How does he dare do these readings?
“ATRIA: This is not publication. We are in a private house.
“MYSELF: Yes, but can you trust all your guests?
“ATRIA: Trust? My husband says all you can hope of a guest is that he will enjoy himself while he is in your house.
“Piso is to me a disconcerting host. He is one of the most popular men in Rome. I know that. It is clear that he knows it. When I first approached him this evening he appeared to be thinking very hard about some household detail; he was raising his arm and twiddling his fingers to summon a freedman when my face swam into focus in his eyes. One saw the instantaneous lighting of an interior lantern, one heard a tempestuous clacking of the tablets of a file in his head, and then, his face composed, his tall frame canted forward, his expression rather bleak and unkind, he said he was delighted to have me in his house; he had met my mother once when he argued a case of a cousin of hers in the courts; he remembered her expert knowledge of cameos cut from ivory and mother-of-pearl. This was extraordinary. The case of my aunt Aemelia was eight years ago. His exchange of chitchat with my mother must have been brief and most casual, and must have come when he had pressing legal matters on his mind. Yet this feat gave me no pleasure. Water is water: I love the baths, I take no great pleasure in the display of fountains. He gave me, besides, the distinct feeling he had decided, after having invited me to the dinner, that it had been a mistake to invite me. I had a sense that he had made the crudest and cruelest of literary judgments—that which is made, not on the basis of reading or hearing a man’s work, but on the basis of gossip.
“The dinner proceeds. The food is overspiced to appease the love of sensation of writers. Not love. Need. Craving in the false name of art. Lucan remains immobile. He suddenly stirs to eat; wolfs a small amount of food with twisted face and violent chewing; then as suddenly subsides and reassumes a face of wax.
“Polla, at another group of tables, vivacious to the point of being silly as if to compensate for her husband’s lugubrious silence, occasionally glances at him. She plays the dutiful wife to perfection. Her face is never in repose. Even when no one is speaking to her or looking at her, she wears an attentive mask, with a vaporous smile hovering on her lips like a frail morning mist on a pond.
“The gossip on our couch was all about Lucan. Two women in his life. The first, this Polla. Atria says: 1) Polla is in love, not with prickly Lucan, but with being great Lucan’s wife; 2) she leaves things—a purse, a necklace, a comb, a shawl—at other people’s houses, as a way of laying a claim on their premises; 3) men say she is unbearably beautiful, women say she has blue veins on her legs; 4) she is desperate to entertain the newest ‘arrival,’ particularly any young writer to whom the Emperor has decided to nod his head; 5) her curiosity overpowers her, and she will walk into a friend’s house unannounced the morning after a dinner, perhaps coming after something she has left or on a flimsy errand of solicitude, penetrating right to the bedroom, where she will finger the material of a gown or without leave lift the cover of a box and inspect her friend’s jewels; 6) whatever her curiosity discovers she retails in gossip, but she often gets things mixed up, sometimes to the detriment of reputations; 7) she herself has a reputation of being an angel of kindness, sympathy, understanding, charity, connubial fidelity—a reputation which the pursed lips of Atria, speaking of it, seem to belie. It is my conclusion, watching Polla’s tense and self-conscious ‘ease,’ that she is half crazy from the effort of keeping this bubble from bursting in her face.
“Natalis does not think Polla knows about Lucan’s other woman. Since Natalis lays claim to a full catalogue of all Roman indiscretion, his knowing and her not knowing does not seem odd to him. This second woman is a certain Epicharis, the mistress of Lucan’s father, Mela. What a strange, perverse tangle! Mela has abandoned his wife—Lucan’s mother—in Rome. He lives near Misenum with this Epicharis, who is twenty years younger than he is—and ten years older than Lucan; but it seems she is a remarkable natural actress who wears age lightly and changeably, as if it were clothing to be chosen for the occasions of each day. She is a by-the-way daughter of an Eastern slave and a Roman Senator. She has, Natalis says, tawny beauty and a nervous, demonstrative warmth which teeters always on the edge of anger. When she shows anger she glows with an almost irresistible lambent seductiveness; she is a tempting fruit then for the male senses of touch and taste. Natalis says she loves every hurt thing on earth and nourishes sufferers
with a fierce and challenging gift of provocation—stirs up anger (but not at her) and desire (for her and for a vague, abstract idealism) in those for whom she is sorry. Little pink resentful Lucan is her perfect suitor. Lucan goes off often on mysterious trips, Natalis says—where but to Misenum, to distance himself from a mother he loathes and bitterly to cuckold a father he loves with this ripe persimmon?…
“It takes only one sentence from Piso, saying it is time for the reading, to bring Lucan out of his trance. The poet moves languidly to the center of the room, with the nine couches in a semicircle around him. A reading stand has been set up, but the poet recites from memory. The first lines of a new book of the vast poem. His voice is resonant, and I am shaken by it. All evening I have seen this man sunk in a daze of unnatural meditation—unnatural because it has been at the heart of a cheerful dinner party—and now the passionate trembling of his deep voice is startling, for one senses a vibrancy that must have been caged until now in that impassivity, a fever of intense emotion.
“The passage describes a visit of Julius Caesar, newly arrived in Egypt, to the tomb of Alexander. It is the scathing portrait of Alexander that opens the dam of Lucan’s feelings—and that unlocks much else this evening. At the phrase ‘madman offspring of Philip,’ one senses a deep waiting silence in the room. There follow other words and phrases like flashes of fateful lightning. ‘Pellaean robber,’ the limbs in the sarcophagus that ‘should be scattered over the earth,’ ‘these tyrant days.’ Then the lines:
For if the world were once set free again
All men would mock the dust of one who taught
The evil lesson that many lands can serve
One master….
“ ‘Plunging his sword through peoples.’ ‘Curse of all earth.’ And finally tears well in Lucan’s eyes as he pronounces slowly the phrase ‘the madman king.’