Helena

by Evelyn Waugh

  It seemed to Fausta that her first attempt had failed. It was like being a sower, she thought, like the sower in the Gospel. Sometimes seed fell on stony ground. She could try again. Thus she reasoned that afternoon while Constantine lay silently regarding her, but after her bath, refreshed and restored to good humor, meeting the same hard stare, she felt glad that her hint had passed unrecognized. The old lady could not be a serious danger. She would soon go back to Trèves and not be seen again. Never do harm except for positive, immediate advantage. Beyond that simple rule, Fausta held, lay disaster and perhaps damnation.

  Fausta came from her bath oily and aromatic and Constantine seemed more aware of her presence than hitherto. She wondered whether perhaps he was amorous. Sometimes his black moods ended in that way. She invited; he ignored; stony ground again. It was not that. Constantine had something to think about. He thought Fausta had gone too far.

  *

  That evening Constantine called for the witches. Fausta, in the mood of calculation which her bath induced, had decided that their usefulness was over. This should be their last performance. It was.

  The girl was thrown into her trance with a few passes. She writhed and grunted and muttered as she had done before at many a fateful séance. Constantine watched. Presently she said, as she usually did: “The Sacred Emperor is in great danger.” It was all going according to routine. She sat quite rigid, her breathing almost ceased; her teeth were set, her eyeballs turned up, as they had seen her time and again. Then a change came over her. She broke into a sweat, relaxed, smiled, rolled her eyes easily and began gently and rhythmically swaying and thumping. The old witch looked worried and whispered to Fausta.

  “Something has gone wrong. The old woman says that she had better wake her. There will be no prophecy tonight.”

  Music, unheard by the three watchers, was sounding in the girl’s heart, drumming from beyond the pyramids, wailing in the bistro where the jazz disc spun. She had stepped off the causeway of time and place into trackless swamp. She was anybody’s baby now, caught as it were out of her shell, quite defenseless. And thus wandering and groping the hysteric was suddenly seized by a demon and possessed. From her full young lips broke the ancient tortured voice of prophecy; in soft tones, rhythmical as the beat of the tom-toms, sweet and low like a love song.

  Zivio! Viva! Arriba! Heil!

  Plenty big chief from the Rhine to the Nile.

  He got two gods and he got two wives,

  Got a heap of chips worth a million lives.

  Shook the bones for the world and the City

  Threw himself a natural and scooped the kitty.

  Gobbles his chop in tip-top style,

  Plenty big chief for Helena’s isle.

  Man of destiny, man of grief,

  Nobody loved that plenty big chief.

  The world was his baby, but baby got sore.

  So he lost the world and plenty lives more

  Threw him snake’s eyes, lost all the pile,

  Lost to the world on Helena’s isle.

  Gazing on the ocean, all alone,

  Saddest chief that ever was known

  Nothing but the ocean for mile on mile.

  Played for a sucker by British guile,

  Tied up tight in durance vile

  And left there to rot on Helena’s isle.

  Ave atque vale! Heil!

  She ceased and the old witch looked abjectly at her patrons. She blew in the girl’s ears and shook her and issued sharp commands in her own language.

  “I think we have heard enough,” said Constantine. “Let us go.” And for the first time for weeks he left the private apartments.

  “That was quite the most remarkable performance she has given,” said Fausta.

  “Most remarkable.”

  “Did you notice how she mentioned ‘British’ guile?”

  “I did.”

  “No one knows, do they, about your mother?”

  “No one except you and me, my dear.”

  “Well, I call that proof positive the girl is genuine.”

  “Proof positive,” said Constantine.

  He went to the great hall where he conducted his business. He called for a wig. He called for papers. The court assembled about him. With great dispatch he finished off a number of outstanding cases. Word went round everywhere that the Emperor’s mood was over.

  The Lord Chamberlain brought him a list of those who had applied for audiences.

  “The Empress Dowager every day?”

  “Every day.”

  “I will see her tomorrow. And I shall make an inspection of the arch. Have the architects there to meet me. No prayers today.”

  He withdrew with an officer whom he employed from time to time on confidential business.

  “Those two witches,” he said. “The black ones Nicagoras sent me. I shan’t want them anymore.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “You’ve been keeping them shut up?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Ever since they arrived.”

  “Well, have them destroyed.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “They’ve seen no one?”

  “Only the Empress.”

  “Ah, yes, the Empress. I want to talk about her, too. Where is she exactly at the moment?”

  “I suppose in her bath. It is the usual time.”

  *

  At the usual time, the good time, there in the torrid room, quite alone and quite naked Fausta gazed into the unclouded mirror—for the heat was dry as the desert—and studied her round, moist, serene face, and meditated.

  Twenty years married, surrounded by spies, and not once caught in a peccadillo; the mother of six and still—surely?—deeply desirable; not yet forty, and mistress of the world.

  Quite lately the upholsterers had completed the comfort of this little room with a mattress and cushions of delicate African goatskin; a triumph of the tanner, soft as silk, impermeable, with all the tang of leather artfully drowned in an oil of sandalwood.

  This, the hot dry room was of its nature the plainest. Objects of art stood in the piscina and the esedra. Here even the door had to be simple. Bronze grew too hot and the marquetry of ivory and tortoiseshell which was part of the first design, fell to pieces. This door was a mere slab of polished cedar. But the walls and floor and ceiling were from drawings by Emolphus, elaborate and dazzling as a Persian rug. The lapidaries of the world had contributed their showiest colors and oddest veins for its construction.

  Fausta watched the sweat trickle between her breasts and overbrim her navel. She was content. To out-live one’s enemies in this world; to have the dear Bishop always at hand to commit one, when it became necessary, to immediate, eternal felicity in the next; what heroine of antiquity enjoyed Fausta’s privileges?

  But surely the boiler-men were rather overdoing the heat this evening?

  She reviewed the unforeseen drama of that evening’s séance. There really was no natural, rational explanation. Unprompted, unrehearsed, inspired one might almost say, the little negress had stepped out where Fausta hesitated and had said the one thing that was so precisely needed. And Fausta had been on the point of having the girl strangled. It simply showed the paramount importance of the supernatural. It was all true, what the Bishop described, the whole flighty beneficent world of Cherubim and Seraphim and guardian angels. Heaven had spoken to her as it spoke to Constantine at the Milvian Bridge.

  But it was definitely getting too hot. Fausta rang the bell.

  Waiting for the slave who ought instantly to have been at her side and was now unaccountably tardy, Fausta meditated on this joyful mystery. Why was she, alone among women, so uniquely privileged? It could scarcely be a tribute to her great position in the world. In fact, when one came to think of it, Divine Providence seemed ostentatiously neglectful of the imperial family. No, it was something in herself; some rare idiosyncrasy of soul. Unworthily, perhaps, but most conveniently, she was the elect of God; His own especial favorite
and consort. Eusebius, more than once, had hinted at something of the kind. Now there was plain proof.

  But no one came to the bell. It was really getting unpleasantly, intolerably hot. When she sat up her movement seemed to fan the scorching air about her and her heart began to thump unhealthily. She put her foot to the blistering floor and hastily withdrew it. She rang the bell furiously, fearfully. Something was wrong. No one came and the blood drummed in her ears the witch’s rhythm The world was his baby, but baby got sore.

  It was only three paces across the pavement of malachite and porphyry. They had to be taken. Careful to the last she made stepping stones of the cushions and so reached the door; resolutely took hold of the searing handle, turned and pushed but it did not move. She had known it would not. Somewhere, between one cushion and the next, she had come to herself; had seen through the panel the bolts beyond. No use now to push or ring or knock. The good hour was over. She slid and floundered and presently lay still, like a fish on a slab.

  Nine

  Recessional

  I know, I know. Everything you say, my dear mother, is perfectly true. It just isn’t kind, that’s all, and at a time like this one looks for a little kindness especially from a mother.

  “I haven’t been at all myself lately. I get these moods from time to time. Don’t please imagine for an instant that I enjoy them. They’re an absolute torment to me. I’ve seen doctors about it—the very best opinions in the world. They can’t help. It’s just the price one has to pay for superior abilities. That’s what they all tell me.

  “Well, other people have got to pay the price too. They can’t expect to have everything done for them for nothing. Here am I working myself to death for them, clearing away all their enemies, managing the whole world for them. And if at times I get a bit moody they talk about me as though I were a monster.

  “Oh, yes, I know what they are saying, all over Rome. I hate Rome. I think it’s a perfectly beastly place. It never has agreed with me. Even after my battle at the Milvian Bridge when everything was flags and flowers and hallelujahs and I was the Savior—even then I didn’t feel quite at ease. Give me the East where a man can feel unique. Here you are just one figure in an endless historical pageant. The City is waiting for you to move on.

  “What’s more, immorality is rife. I couldn’t repeat the things I’ve heard. It’s all falling down too, and the drains are shocking. I tell you I hate the place.”

  “You spoke of it once as the Holy City.”

  “That, my dear mother, was before my Enlightenment. Before I saw the great dawn in the East. I hate Rome. I’d like to burn it down.”

  “Like Nero?”

  “Now why did you say that? You’ve seen that beastly rhyme. Someone left it yesterday among my papers. For us the diamond and ruby—Nero’s.’ That’s just the kind of thing the Romans are saying about me. How dare they? How can they be so stupid? In Nicomedia they call me the Thirteenth Apostle.

  “It’s all the fault of that woman. Things will be better now she’s gone, quite different. It was all Fausta’s fault. You couldn’t believe the things I’ve learned about her during the past twenty-four hours. Everything was Fausta’s fault. We’ll start again. We’ll have an entirely new deal.”

  “My son, there is only one way in which things can be made new.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Constantine. He looked calculating; suddenly the politician. “Everyone is always hinting at it. Baptism. Fausta used positively to nag me about Baptism; even Constantia.

  “Damn it,” he added in a burst of indignation. “Constantia is all right, isn’t she? I’ve done nothing to her, have I? And yet they compare me to Nero. Would he have left her safe and smiling?”

  “Not smiling, Constantine.”

  “Well, she ought to be. She had a very narrow squeak, I can tell you. But that’s typical. No gratitude anywhere. Why isn’t Constantia smiling?” Helena said nothing and Constantine repeated furiously: “Why isn’t Constantia smiling? I’ll have her here and make her smile. I’ll… Mother, am I mad?”

  Helena still said nothing. After a pause Constantine said: “Let me tell you about my Moods, as they call them. Let me explain why it is so fatuously unfair to compare me to Nero. Let me explain exactly, once and for all, about my Moods. I want you to understand.

  “Nero had moods. I’ve read about them. He was a beastly person—a neurotic aesthete. He positively enjoyed destroying things and seeing people suffer. I’m just opposite. All I live for is other people—teaching them, keeping them out of mischief, putting up buildings for them. Look what I’ve done even here in Rome. Look at the churches and the endowments. Do I have favorites? I haven’t even a friend. Do I give orgies? Do I dance and sing and get tipsy? Do I ever enjoy myself at all in any way? I should think my receptions are about the dullest parties ever given on the Palatine. I just work. Sometimes I feel as though the whole world had come to a standstill except for myself; as though everyone were just gaping, waiting for me to do something for them. They’re scarcely human beings; just things, in the way, in the wrong place, that have to be moved and put to use or thrown away. Nero thought he was God. A most blasphemous and improper idea. I know I am human. In fact, I often feel that I am the only real human being in the whole of creation. And that’s not pleasant at all, I can assure you. Do you understand at all, Mother?”

  “Oh, yes, perfectly.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Power without Grace,” said Helena.

  “Now you are going to start nagging about Baptism again.”

  “Sometimes,” Helena continued, “I have a terrible dream of the future. Not now, but presently, people may forget their loyalty to their kings and emperors and take power for themselves. Instead of letting one victim bear this frightful curse they will take it all on themselves, each one of them. Think of the misery of a whole world possessed of Power without Grace.”

  “Yes, yes. That’s all very well, but why should I be the victim?”

  “We talked of it years ago—do you remember?—when you were on your way to Britain to your father. I have always remembered your words. You said: ‘If I wish to live, I must determine to rule.’ ”

  “And that is true today.”

  “But not without Grace, Constantine.”

  “Baptism. It always comes back to that in the end. Well, I’m going to be baptized, never fear. But not yet. In my own time. I’ve got other things to do before that. You do truly believe, don’t you, in all the priests say?”

  “Of course.”

  “So do I. And that’s the whole point. There are some lunatics in Africa who say that once you are converted, properly, you can never sin again. I know that’s not true. You’ve only got to look round you to see that it’s not. Look at Fausta. But Baptism, just for the moment, washes away all the sins of your life, doesn’t it? That’s what they say. That’s what we believe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You start again, quite new, quite innocent, like a newborn child. But next minute you can fall into sin again and be damned to all eternity. That’s good doctrine, isn’t it? Well, then, what does the wise man do—the man in a position like mine where it’s impossible not to commit a few sins every now and then? He waits. He puts it off till the very last moment. He lets the sins pile up blacker and heavier. It doesn’t matter. They’ll be washed away in Baptism, the whole lot of them, and then all he has to do is to stay innocent, just for a very short time, just to hold the devil at bay for a week or two, perhaps a few hours only. It shouldn’t be too difficult. That’s strategy, you see. I’ve got it all planned.

  “Of course there’s a hazard. One might be caught unawares, ambushed before one had time for the final coup. That’s why I have to be so particularly careful. I can’t afford to take any chances. That’s what the secret police are for, and the fortunetellers. Most of what they tell me is nonsense, I know, but one can never be sure. There might be something in it. One must act according to o
ne’s information. That’s tactics. You see it’s not just my life that’s at stake; it’s my immortal soul. And that’s infinitely important, isn’t it? Literally, infinitely important. The priests admit it. So you see it doesn’t really matter so very much if Crispus was innocent or not. What are a few years less or more in Licinianus’s life? We’re dealing with quite another scale of values.

  “Have I explained myself? Do you see now how cruelly unfair it is to compare me with Nero?… All I need is to be understood and appreciated. I know what I’ll do,” he continued, brightening. “If you promise not to be angry with me any more I’ll show you Something Very Special.”

  He led her to the sacristy that opened from the great hall of the palace. He called for keys and with his own hands opened a cupboard; inside stood a tall parcel, swathed in silk. A sacristan offered assistance. “Go away,” Constantine said. “No one is allowed to touch this except myself. Very few have even seen it.”

  With eager clumsiness he unwrapped his exhibit and then stood clear, posing grandly with it in his right hand.

  The thing was the size and shape of a military standard. Its head formed a Latin cross, gold-plated. Above was a jeweled wreath of elaborate design and in the center of the wreath a jeweled monogram, the sacred XP. From the crossbar hung a banner of purple satin richly embroidered and gemmed, bearing the motto TOYTOI NIKA and a series of delicately stitched medallion portraits.

  “What on earth have you got there?” asked Helena.

  “Can’t you see. It’s It, my Labarum.”

  Helena studied this magnificent piece of arts-and-crafts with growing bewilderment. “You don’t mean to say that you carried that into action at the Milvian Bridge.”

  “Of course. In this sign I conquered.”

  “But, Constantine, the story as I always heard it was that you had a vision on the eve of the battle and that then and there you changed the markings on the troops’ shields and had the armorer knock you up your own standard in the shape of the cross.”