Threshold of Fire

by Hella S. Haasse

  “He’s in danger now of being tried together with Olympiodorus and his circle.”

  “Anyone who wants to, may take a hand in his destiny.”

  Hadrian personally intercedes for this lost sheep, takes pity on him, takes him into service as his secretary. When, after a long time, he visits Eliezar once more, he says he believes that he has presented an example of Christian charity, and that he has reaped rewards from it. Without exaggerating, he can praise the character and accomplishment of the young man, whose name he has latinized to Claudius. Claudius’s Greek is perfect. He composes excellent letters. He has an obvious literary gift. He writes strikingly beautiful verses and recites them with talent.

  “So. A Greek,” Eliezar says; he shrugs, fixing Hadrian with a sad, searching look. “A little Egyptian Greek — there are so many in Alexandria. Does he practice Greek customs too?”

  Hadrian stiffens. He hurries to hide his discomfort under a flood of words.

  “Every day his Latin gains in force and finesse. He would have an assured future, even in Rome.”

  “As an Egyptian Roman then?”

  Hadrian, suspecting hidden meanings behind these words, is stubbornly determined to show this skeptic that a soul is capable of change, that base instincts may be overcome.

  Time passes. Claudius — who prefers to be called Claudianus in honor of the rhetorician with whom he studied — gradually becomes well known in literary circles. Hadrian’s visits to Eliezar become less frequent. Each time he comes, he offers to bring Claudius with him, but each time Eliezar refuses. He has sat for a long time over a much-admired work of Claudius’s, the Gigantomachia, which Hadrian gave him to read. In masterly language, it presents a vision of the sound and fury of the Titans, the ancient inhabitants of the earth, who rebelled against the gods.

  Eliezar has never seen the boy since that day when he had stared from the dahabyeh across the water at his bloody palms. He might have brushed past him a hundred times in the streets and parks of Alexandria, may even have looked into his face without recognizing him.

  His praise of the poet’s work is measured; he is aware that Hadrian is watching him. One line haunts him: “I shall never hesitate to become the weapon which brings Zeus to destruction.”

  When someone is being long sought in the jungle, his footprints and other clues like broken branches tell what sort of start he has had and what direction he is taking. In the same way, Eliezar proceeds — in silent doubt — to read, in the secret language of themes and word choice, the history of a rebellion which is ignorant of its own roots.

  He congratulates Hadrian on the results of his intercession and begs to be left in solitude. For some time now he has suffered attacks of sharp pain which the doctors have not been able to relieve.

  When, some months later, Hadrian visits once more he is struck by the disturbing alteration in Eliezar’s appearance: this man, who had once been straight as an arrow, sits huddled in the folds of his garments; he is emaciated, withered; his eyes are glassy. The conversation doesn’t flow. After some hesitation (the subject now seems inappropriate), Hadrian reads aloud a new poem by his protege about the Phoenix — dying, its eyes frosted over (Eliezar nods imperceptibly), it mounts its burning nest, which will be both its grave and its cradle:

  In a single flight he soars, the son from the father

  Who has begotten himself: between life and life

  Only brief torment: a threshold of fire.

  Eliezar sits without moving, his averted face in shadow.

  Reports: Emperor Theodosius has moved his household from Constantinople to Milan. Administrative reforms are imminent, officials are being summoned from all the corners of the Empire. New appointments have been made. Hadrian is among the privileged; news about his merits and his religious zeal has reached the ears of the Emperor — and his Archbishop. A post awaits him overseas, at the Northern court, where he will exercise the function of Magister Officiorum.

  He prepares to take ship shortly with his staff and his retinue. A last visit to Eliezar: a last goodbye, both of them know it. Eliezar hands him a paper, a copy of a clause in his will: “Klafthi servus meus liberesto… that my slave Klafthi shall be free.…

  “This will become legal in the hour of my death. My heirs will not be able to claim him. Don’t say anything to him about this. Promise me. He has never been treated like a slave.”

  Hadrian is assailed by mixed emotions. Something in him shrinks back, hides itself at the thought that — if he had known — he could have bought the boy from Eliezar, that the jewel of his personal staff, whom everyone in Alexandria envies, could have been his inalienable possession.

  Eliezar senses the other man’s inner turmoil; for Klafthi-Claudius’s sake, he wants no misunderstanding about the nature of his benevolence and the reason for it. He gestures for silence with his sallow, bony hand and begins wearily to say what has to be said.

  After the confession he does not give Hadrian a chance to react. The decision has been pronounced but more arrangements must be made.

  “In his interest, don’t tell anyone that he’s a freedman. It’s only as a free-born man that he can have the future he deserves. That holds true everywhere, but especially in Rome. He’s a poet, not a clerk. Introduce him into illustrious houses where his gifts will do him justice. I’m thinking of the Anicii — there are two young men in that family who I have heard are going to receive the highest honor. Let him become their protégé. You’ve made a half-Roman of him — now complete your work. He must not come back to Alexandria. And now one other thing, the last thing that I shall ask of you: swear by everything that you hold most sacred, Hadrian, that he will never hear about his relationship to me and mine.”

  Under the spell of those lackluster eyes, Hadrian raises his right hand: I swear….

  In the dream, the ship vanished behind the horizon. Whoever abandoned him there had sailed away out of his life, forever. The Prefect has only to close his eyes to stand once more on the marble steps, to hear again the whisper of the wavelets as they come to lick the steps and retreat, leaving a fringe of foam meandering about the tips of his shoes.

  Just as the sea, in deepening layers of greens and violet, suddenly becomes an abyss — so those who explore their pasts find, in their memories, chasms of unsuspected darkness.

  Silence at his back, the loneliness of the narrow colonnade along the precipice. In his dream, he was aware, even without seeing it, of the fragment carved in the rock behind him — a hand raised in the gesture: I swear …

  The Prefect forces himself to open his eyes, to look directly at the tangible objects of the here and now — the row of empty chairs, for example, opposite him along the wall; the bronze lamps on their pedestals, the patches of glaring daylight behind the arched openings of the windows.

  “I swear that I shall pass judgment in the spirit of the law.”

  At dawn, before the hearing began, he had spoken these words, the customary oath taken by every magistrate who acts as justice; he had, for perhaps the thousandth time, raised his right hand.

  5.

  Now as then — thinks the man who calls himself Niliacus — now as then I am condemned to silence. Then, ten years ago, I was silent (or rather, I didn’t deny that I had sacrificed a cock) because otherwise suspicion would have fallen on my benefactor and friend Mallius Theodorus, who had in fact done it. Now I’m silent about Marcus Anicius Rufus (who perhaps had, perhaps hadn’t, been about to sacrifice a cock) so that his relationship with me won’t make his burden heavier.

  With his face turned toward the wall of the holding room reserved for the humble (after the reading of the record of evidence he had been separated from the patricians), he laughs, a grimace of self-mockery. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from posing a riddle to the Prefect, from sowing confusion in that brain, to leave an impression there which would stimulate further investigation. Why? For the first time in ten years, he finds himself once again face to face with this foolish
, this arrogant pedant. He has hardly changed, Hadrian — his hair somewhat thinner, somewhat greyer, his mouth more compressed than ever, always wavering between affability and disapproval. He plays with his signet ring as he played with it then. No trace of recognition in his look (of course I have decidedly changed) but signs of disquiet, uncertainty, irritation.

  The man must have a boundless capacity for self-delusion. Indefatigable in pursuit of his enemies, those who don’t think like him… He imagines he smells heresy, high treason, even when the air is pure. Always a morbid urge to humiliate those whom he suspects of lacking respect for his own perfection. He has hated Marcus Anicius Rufus since the day twenty-five years ago, when he obtained for me — a budding little poet — a post with real Romans, real aristocrats.

  The soldier posted at the door begins to stir, his attention caught perhaps by the immobile figure of the accused who sits with his back turned. The man who calls himself Niliacus turns to face forward again on his bench, stares before him at the filthy, defaced marble of the opposite wall.

  Hadrian, the light of Egypt — he was far from being the disinterested protector whom he pretended to be. He had no sympathy, no joy over his protege’s swift rise — on the contrary. The first time he did what he intended, his interference (Slander? Half-truths? Colored account of a past that even he never really knew?) cost me my friendship with the Anicii. Then came the return of the prodigal son; at least that was the impression he wanted to give. But was Hadrian’s inclination the same as fatherly love?

  The marble of the wall, discolored, red-brown and yellow, makes one think of sick flesh. What is going on in his head, Hadrian, now Prefect of the City: does he crave money, property, and above all, authority, because he cannot completely possess certain people, because he cannot impose his will on them? He demands lifelong gratitude, tries to hold a man fast in exchange for one past favor, even when the relationship has been outgrown — that’s worse than stupidity, that’s an outrage!

  How refreshing and interesting, above all, how charitable and open-minded — compared to his phrases and platitudes — did I find the gruff, often irritable manner of Mallius Theodorus there in the North — a really learned and well-read man — and devoid of any trace of vanity or ambition. The epigram in which I compared the two of them — the uncorruptible dreamer versus the meddling insomniac — was a mistake, caused by the desperate wish to be free, to prick his thick skin — violently, if need be. Four lines, no more; they all but cost Mallius his life — and cost me more, in another sense. For having written them, the rising poet — which I was then — had begun to weave his own destiny.

  I didn’t think about that jingle for a long time after I wrote it, and for a long time after I was elevated above the crowd of Mallius’s connections and entered Stilicho’s powerful retinue. Hadrian — in the meantime dispatched from Milan to Rome under the pretext of a promotion — apparently always carried within himself this injury to his vanity like an open running wound, which would never heal.

  In the marble of the wall, a confusion of threads and reddish spots, like exposed bloody tissue.

  Ten years ago, only a short distance from here, somewhere in a subterranean vault, seized by desperation and rage, I smashed my fist against the wall. Not because of the sentence I could expect when I let myself be accused of sacrificium and divinatio… but at the certainty that no one — not Stilicho, not Mallius, not the Anicii, not a living soul in Rome or anywhere — would risk his own skin for me or think of me as anything but a use fill instrument, amusing company, an interesting connection — now, alas, unfortunately led astray.

  6.

  Imprisoned between sea and rock without a way out — for he could not follow whoever was calling from afar. The memory of the fear he had felt in his dream fills the Prefect with discomfort. He stands up, walks quickly back and forth; he can’t lose his shadow — the room is filled with the invisible past. The last visit with the condemned man then, ten years ago, a visit prompted by the need to explicate in detail why, after the cruel offense which he, Hadrian, had sustained, he was forced to undermine, systematically, the other’s reputation.

  Suddenly the face of the man opposite him — exhausted and dirty after days of detention — flamed with a fierce look which Hadrian had never been able to forget:

  “I have — haven’t I — asked for forgiveness publicly, in a poem, so that everyone would know about it. An apology in good and proper form. I’ve cringed at your feet like a suppliant. Isn’t that enough?”

  Hadrian: What can I do with that? It comes too late. You cannot undo the measureless damage you have caused me with that epigram. I can’t undo the fact that all of Rome now knows who and what you are: a Jew’s freed slave — and most important — found by me in the most dissolute pagan clique in Alexandria. I spared you during the proceedings. I didn’t mention your real name or reveal your background — nothing about that will find its way into the documents. It would be impossible for me to show you greater leniency. Out of respect for your merit as a poet that silence is accepted, but everyone knows the truth and those who prize the favors of court and authorities and value a spotless reputation, have forgotten that they ever opened their doors to you or applauded your verses.

  The unspoken words behind this speech, carefully suppressed out of self-preservation: “I have heard your pleas. Not because they were full of pathos or because you compared me to Alexander, Achilles or Hercules. Not even because you acknowledged my authority before the whole world. Two words have touched me, have roused compassion in me for you: misererer tuorum … Have pity upon those whom you own. Because of these two words, I open my doors to you anew, I offer my protection anew. So you know that you have never received more attention from anyone; no one has ever shown you more affection. I will do my utmost to free you.”

  Hadrian did not say these words. Distrust and fear paralyzed his tongue. Distrust: How much of what Claudius said was sincere — how much was just rhetoric and poetic exaggeration? What were Claudius’s real feelings? Fear: if he said these words to Claudius, wouldn’t Hadrian be revealing too much, wouldn’t he be giving himself away? He had no desire to throw off the mask. He could not bear the possible consequences. He stood to lose social standing — he might even have to quit Rome. And there was also the danger that Claudius would reject him, that he would lose Claudius forever.

  The lighthouse of Pharos: a warning finger on the horizon, the vanishing coastline of Egypt. On the ship’s after-deck, overcome with emotion (at the leave-taking but even more at the fulfillment of his most fervent wishes: first Rome, then Imperial Milan and advancement), Hadrian swore silently at that time to let the young man at his side share in his glory — as a son, as a brother; to serve the unfolding of his talent, to elevate the soul of the heathen — an indispensable condition to the noble harmony between the two of them.

  The Prefect starts up, jarred from his reliving of the past. His clerks, his officers, the herald have made their entrance and taken their places again. How much time has passed since he ordered a pause so that he could examine the confiscated library? He is still not prepared to resume the hearing. They can wait.

  He repairs to the room where he holds private conversations. Some staircases and galleries separate him from Niliacus there in the holding room. He knows that he has only to issue an order to the praetorian who has accompanied him and who waits now by the open door. And then? When the man appears before him, huddled in his threadbare mantle?

  Hadrian summons Aulus Fronto, the Commander of the City guard. He brings news of what is happening in the dungeons below.

  The slave Milo has admitted under pressure that on the evening of the man Niliacus’s first visit to Marcus Anicius Rufus, he — on the latter’s orders — gave the former a book roll from the library which this Niliacus took away with him.

  “What text?”

  “No text. A blank paper.”

  “What then? Go on.”

  “It appears that
on the day of the entry of our august Emperor Honorius, Marcus Anicius Rufus was protecting the man who calls himself Niliacus from the City security service after he damaged a statue in the Forum of Trajan.”

  “What statue?”

  “Of the poet Claudius Claudianus.”

  The Prefect is silent for a long time. Finally, still seated, he says, “Bring the mime Pylades and his dwarf. Not in the justice hall. Here.”

  7.

  With a grimace, Urbanilla thrusts herself away from the gate behind which Marcus Anicius Rufus’s wife has just passed on her way to the hearing.

  “Stuck-up bitch!”

  “Shut up,” hisses the dwarf. Now in his Priapus costume in the clear light of day, he looks like nothing so much as a walking cucumber with a red top or an enormous stuffed sausage. He cannot take off the outfit because he has nothing on underneath, not even a loincloth; his face is shiny with sweat; he curses and rubs himself against the wall.

  Urbanilla stretches; her naked breasts, with painted nipples, tremble under the five rows of cheap gilt strings. From the corner of her eye she can still see, in the distance, Sempronia at the door which opens onto the galleries of the hall of justice. A matron wearing the same ceremonial dress she had worn when she had received her guests twelve hours earlier, as much in control of herself in the halls of the prefecture as in her own triclinium. Urbanilla mimics the gait of the patrician lady and doubles over with soundless laughter, her hands on her hips.

  “Looks like sour grapes to me. Her style — you’ll have it when chickens have teeth. Balcho, give the bitch a kick.”

  “If you’ve got the balls to come near me, Fatso, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

  “Listen to her — the goddess Ariadne! Get away, you stink of the fishmarket!”

  “It’s your disgusting hide you’re talking about — that’s what’s closest to your nose!”