Threshold of Fire

by Hella S. Haasse

  “A god who wants to be worshipped like the sun should not come too close to his worshippers.”

  “Who’s talking about worshipping? The protection I offered you was disinterested, not like that beast —”

  “When Olympiodorus — worse than a beast, believe me, because he knew what he was doing — necromancer, lustful torturer, cheat and much more still — When he saw that I was useless for his private pleasure, he offered me work in his library so that I could accept his hospitality without shame as long as I needed to.”

  “Do you dare to compare me to Olympiodorus? Have you ever felt shame in my house, in my company?”

  The guardsmen, holding the torches in this central vault from which the cells emerge, can hear from behind them the voices of the Prefect and the prisoner. As disciplined members of the vigiles, they force themselves not to listen. They cannot quit their posts; they have to hold the torches high so that the light will penetrate the cell. They try to think about other things: they are not interested in lawsuits, nor in the personal problems of the prisoners or the officials they deal with. It is only when the Prefect issues an order that they turn automatically and stand to attention.

  “Fetch the wench Urbanilla.”

  The prisoner, who has a view of the passage leading to the adjoining dungeons, sees a vague glimmering light, hears a jingling as of countless little metal plates. It is the Great Goddess in an archaic panelled skirt, breasts and arms hung with gold, eyes outlined to large glittering ovals, staring fixedly like a statue. It looks, too — he draws in his breath — like Serena, when she stumbled out of the temple, guilty and victimized, both hands raised to the stolen jewelry, unaware that she had been ordained to die.

  She stops quite close to him, the comedian Urbanilla in her messy costume, pale, wide-eyed, her filthy strands of hair in a sticky tangle. The gilded strings and beads sparkle on her heaving breasts but she shows no sign of fear. She jerks herself free from the guard and rubs her upper arm.

  The Prefect barely deigns to look at her. With an expression of distaste, he turns once more to the man behind the bars.

  “Let us look at the state of your sense of shame. Let us now examine your refined desires and pleasures.” To Urbanilla. “You will be subjected to the most rigorous interrogation if I catch you in a lie. Do you know this man?”

  “Yes. The schoolmaster.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Through the boss — Pylades.”

  “You’ve seen him in the Subura. What did he say?”

  “About the sun, the moon, the stars. About a fellow on a raft at sea and a giant with one eye. About how the black people of Africa hunt elephants. About — about Seneca — or whatever her name is.”

  “To you?”

  “To those boys.”

  “Which boys? Where?”

  “Under the awning next to the fruit market where they learn.”

  “I mean, what did he say to you when you went with him in the insula Iulia?”

  “Who knows?”

  “What did he want from you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You slept with him.”

  “No.”

  “Then surely some playfulness and caresses…”

  “No.”

  “That’s what you came for, wasn’t it?”

  “I was sent.”

  “Don’t try to make me believe that you could not seduce him. A wench like you knows all the tricks.”

  “I didn’t want to. Not with him.”

  The Prefect is becoming upset. He perceives a subtle change in the attitude of the guardsmen. They stand at proper attention, immobile, but — he suspects — very conscious of the half-naked woman and surely secretly laughing, astonished at the nature of the interrogation.

  Worst of all for the Prefect is the silent presence of the other in his barred cage — he who was the cause of this bizarre performance in the first place. The Prefect feels like a character in a farce by Plautus, comically out of place in his robe of office between a seedy poet and a woman of pleasure, revealing with every word what he would give anything not to reveal, looking ridiculous or — worse — possibly pathetic, in his passion. He has descended from those imposing halls with their distinguished symmetry; he should never have left them. Now he must descend further, whether he wants to or not.

  “Did he ask for love potions from you, forbidden practices?

  “Oh no.”

  At this umpteenth, casual denial, the Prefect is beside himself. In a voice made unrecognizable by rage, feeling dizzy with dismay at his irreparable error, he shouts at her, “Don’t lie! You got him where you wanted him, just as you did with all the others!”

  Urbanilla looks from the Prefect to the man behind the bars and back again. She takes her time, then drops her lashes over her sharp glance. “He’s not like that” — with a gesture of her elbow in the direction of the guardsmen — “not like them there.”

  The Prefect does not want to ask her precisely what she means. He feels lightheaded, assaulted by a sensation which he scarcely dares to recognize. (The justice hall in Alexandria, the figure of the student Klafthi among the elegant youths who surrounded Olympiodorus…at the same time, despite his indignation, he felt intoxicated, under a sort of spell ….)

  Suddenly, toward that stupid creature Urbanilla, he is seized by a feeling of indifference bordering on generosity. She is uninteresting; an earlier interrogation conducted by the commander Aulus Fronto has revealed that she had understood nothing about the role that Pylades made her play; she knows nothing, is nothing, no, she is not dangerous. A strange feeling of satisfaction, which he pushes aside while he recovers his dignity. No one is close enough to him to notice the twitch at the corner of his eye, the nervous trembling of his lips.

  “Take her away.”

  “Where to, Excellency?”

  “Let her go.”

  The torches crackle in their tubes. Under the low ceiling, each movement, each gesture throws flickering shadows.

  “Are you then so obstinate a heathen that you choose death over the opportunity to convert?”

  “As one condemned to imprisonment for life, I would then become a hermit, a walled-up anchorite … And the dungeons of the prefecture could be a place for pilgrims to visit. After my death, do you want to distribute my bones among the faithful? That prospect doesn’t attract me.”

  “You mock. You are filled with distrust and disdain for what I and countless others hold most sacred. I recognize that look and that slight smile. If there were a chessboard here before you now, you would not look at me. You would avert your face and move one of the pieces while I’m talking to you.”

  “I think you’re dreaming out loud. You think you’re talking to somebody else.”

  “I thought about him this morning. Now I understand why.”

  “Chessboard. Eliezar? I’ve never seen anyone else play that game. I didn’t know that I resembled him. Maybe those who are born slaves end up looking like their masters. A brand of nature…”

  “Exactly right! He has put his stamp in your blood, in your soul. You are his grandson.”

  Now something seems to press down upon the Prefect; it is as if there is a heavy burden on his shoulders which sinks into him, into his chest, crushing his heart: a chunk of marble or granite, a piece of a relief. A thin voice calls out in the distance, or is it only his imagination? Two stone fingers, larger than life, stab through him before raising themselves aloft as though taking an oath.

  The other stands motionless behind the bars. When he finally speaks, his voice is very soft. “His grandson. So, never a slave?”

  “Both; grandson and slave, through the mother.”

  “Who said that, and when?”

  “Eliezar ben Ezekiel himself, on the day that he arranged in his will for your emancipation.”

  The prisoner moves back, away from the barrier, withdrawing into the depths of the cell where he had been standing when the conversation b
egan. Now it is the Prefect who grips the iron bars, bringing his face close to the opening in order to see the other, to catch a glimpse of him in the darkness.

  “It’s appropriate — a life that began with a testament should end with a testament. Order them to bring me writing gear.”

  “You’re not going to die, not for a long time yet.”

  “You haven’t been able to control my life — don’t think that now you have power over my death.”

  “You forget where you are and who I am.”

  “I know now who I am.”

  “Claudius, in the name of God, convert!”

  “Not that name any more. Give me paper, a pen.”

  “You made a will ten years ago. You bequeathed your poetry to Rome.”

  “Because I have survived since then, I want to rescind that bequest. I want to make a newer testament.”

  Undeniably it is the same voice, softer now, but still marked by a natural authority. Hadrian, suddenly reminded of those conversations in Alexandria, yields to something stronger than he, to a consciousness older and more profound than his own. Some moments earlier the man standing a few feet from him in the darkness had seemed to him to be an extension of Klafthi, a Claudius certainly changed but always recognizable in essence. Now that is over. The distance between them can no longer be bridged.

  The Prefect turns away, motions to one of the guardsmen, orders him to bring light and writing gear to the prisoner.

  4.

  In a palanquin, under armed escort, the Prefect is brought back to his villa. After a bath and a hasty meal (alone, silent, served by slaves who move like shadows), he paces back and forth for a while in the peristylium. The moon rises, reddish, at first deformed, then growing sharper in contour, a disc of light. In the garden, the leaves begin to gleam. How can he state the grounds, in the morning, for the fact that this one time the customary sentence will not be carried out? Transfer the prisoner from the death cells of the Tullianum where he awaits execution, pretend to forget him and, after a decent interval, convey him to a suitable place of custody? Give everyone, including the prisoner, the impression that justice will run its course? Justice?

  Suddenly the Prefect is overcome by a devastating feeling of exhaustion. His limbs are as heavy as stone; he still feels the constant pressure in his chest. He lies down on a couch which has been pushed to the edge of the gallery, close to a basin in which the reflection of the moon floats among the water plants. Memories of Canopis and the bright nights on the Nile. Something — a leaf, an insect — has fleetingly stirred the surface, which quivers slightly — fragmented silver. Gazing at it, he must have fallen asleep for a moment; when he wakes with a start, the moon is scarcely higher above the rooftop. Clammy, with pounding heart, he sits on the edge of the couch.

  He thinks of the dream which had haunted him yesterday. He knows suddenly who it was who called to him from across the sea. In the dream he was himself a prisoner of the basalt wall; the other had abandoned him, sailing away over the horizon. In reality it was the other way round: the fugitive returned, as if by a miracle, and was imprisoned. But I shall not abandon you, says the Prefect aloud; at the sound of his own voice, he looks about him, startled. It is silent in the galleries. He wants to believe that the cry — “Hadrian!” — was a call for help. Although secretly he knows better, he forces his memory to obey that interpretation: the ship was not sailing away; it was approaching. He himself was not there, alone and destitute on the seashore, waiting. This wait is rewarded. I will not abandon you. I will temper justice with mercy. Justice?

  What is justice, what is injustice? whispers the Prefect, desperately attempting once again to substitute the illusion for the dreaded vision. His voice is so low that what he says cannot be heard.

  As first magistrate of the City, of course he knows the regulae juris, the rules of law. He enjoys showing off his knowledge of them: during hearings he adorns his arguments with citations. At this moment, his memory turns against him, suggesting to him what he least needs under the circumstances — the ancient rule concerning questions of justice and injustice, a theoretical sentence to be chiselled in marble: Better to free the guilty than to risk the condemnation of the innocent.

  A dissident inner voice attempts to justify the innumerable decisions, which he has made in the past, conflicting with the golden rule. Is it injustice to condemn an atheist for a crime he has not committed? Isn’t his impiety enough to render him guilty by definition? Who will deny that his mere existence is pernicious, that everything he does is a crime? Is it unjust to bring about the condemnation of such a person by creating the appearance of guilt, with the intention of purifying the State and society for the greater glory of God? Hasn’t a magistrate the right to take preventative measures? Haven’t the emperors, over the course of the last two centuries, issued edicts and decrees giving the law greater freedom of action on just this point?

  The Prefect stands up, dazzled by the double light of the moon — in the sky above the eaves and in the water at his feet. He moves into the depths of the house, lingers irresolute in one of the apartments between the peristylium and the forecourt. He deems himself justified this time in altering a judgment. What is more, it is impossible for him to execute that judgment. But he knows that no lawbook contains a formula which can be used to make his determination acceptable, without at the same time weakening all precedents and stopping the administration of justice — or so it would seem.

  From within the gallery (furnished with deceptive austerity: the stiff chairs are fashioned from ivory; the unembellished lamps are silver), he stares at the blue glow in the distance beyond the pillars. He is convinced that he has the right; he has no doubts. At moments like these, the sort of life he leads (must lead, he thinks) weighs heavily upon him. What has so often filled him with satisfaction — the sight of his valuable possessions, the knowledge that he is being served with the deepest submissiveness and care —now seems only to emphasize his solitude.

  You shall learn to pray, just as I now go to pray, he says, half-aloud in the silence, to the other, who is far out of earshot in the vaults of the prefecture. At first you will curse the darkness and the isolation, but then, later, you will acknowledge with gratitude that this is the only way you could gain insight. For you will come to realize that the world is only a pretense, a desert from which those turn away who are truly saved. When you are desperate, when you need guidance, I shall be there. In my capacity as Prefect of the City, I am taking a great risk. I hope that you appreciate the depth of my friendship.

  He wants to rescue the other from his obstinacy and to restore their initial closeness. The prisoner will certainly have a strong ongoing aversion to his environment — that will help him to develop a completely new perspective. In the brown and green hills of Umbria, an isolated monastery. If the other, at some later date, after years of repentance, should renounce his worldly involvement, and if he himself, after fulfilling his administrative tasks, should decide to choose a life of retirement from the world, then perhaps for both of them, a shelter in the pious community of monks. Doing penance, finding redemption. A perfect victory.

  Another image intrudes: the worn face of Eliezar ben Ezekiel in the shadows — his sorrowful eyes closed, his head nodding almost imperceptibly while he, Hadrian, reads him the poem about the Phoenix. He remembers his feeling of triumph, hardly tempered by pity, on seeing Eliezar dying, defeated, abandoning his habitual reserve, recognizing Hadrian as a person of consequence. Why else would he have confided to a stranger that secret, the source of his worry and his doubts?

  For over twenty years, Eliezar has been in his grave. If he were still alive, how would he approach this ragged schoolmaster from the Subura — his counterpart?

  Although the night air is mild, the Prefect trembles with cold. He knows quite well why it is that his body feels as heavy as stone. He wants to cry out, a protracted lament — to call back the Hadrian of an earlier day, not yet rigid, not yet burdened wit
h guilt over injustice and perjury. Standing in his quiet marble house, he begins to grasp the real meaning of his dream.

  He spends the rest of the night in his oratorium, a closed, bare space, windowless, a cell. He kneels, his head bent, muttering incessantly.

  The stars have grown pale when he reappears in the gallery. He wakes a slave, summons his secretary, sends them, despite the early hour, with an urgent message to the hall of justice. Leaning back on his couch — in the garden the flowers and leaves are regaining their colors — he savors the victory which he has won over himself.

  Claudius. Now you will be forced to see what you have always stubbornly denied until today — that I am your friend and your benefactor, that I have come forward to help you in your hour of need, that at great personal sacrifice, I have given you your liberty. No one has ever behaved more generously to you. Unthinkable that this act of mine should not convince you. Now it is obvious that your resistance rests on a misunderstanding. You believe that I act only out of self-interest, driven by God knows what predilection to tyranny. But I am the master of my emotions. I am setting you free. You will not be pursued. Go in peace. Of the two of us, I have been the stronger, just as I was stronger than Eliezar. Wherever you are, whatever you do, you will not escape me any longer. Your conscience, all that is best in you, will remain tied to me forever.

  Exhausted, he has dropped off to sleep in the early morning. Hadrian! Suspended between dreaming and waking, he feels a deep pleasure, like a sick person who knows that he will soon be cured. Hadrian! Clarissime! The voice of his secretary at the foot of his couch. Now he will hear that Marcus Anicius Rufus and his friends have been arrested in the night and transported to the prefecture for a speedy trial. A confused dream crosses his consciousness just on the border where images are created by repressed pain and distress. He no longer knows what it was, nor does he want to know. He opens his eyes.

  His secretary is indeed standing there. The message has been delivered. The previous afternoon, on the Prefect’s order, wax tablets had been provided to the prisoner, now freed; his writings were retrieved from the cell.