by Gerald Kersh
Meanwhile familiar, harmless objects assume menacing outlines, and omens may be read in the petals of a flower. ‘If that bird flies away before I count three,’ you think, ‘something dreadful will happen.’ Nothing happens; your anxiety redoubles. Everything hangs by a thread. There is an eternity of indecision in a tremulous drop of water, and in its fall ruin absolute and ultimate. Your humour feeds itself by forcing you to think of whatever happens, at the moment, to be particularly distasteful to you. Nothing helps; the bouquet of a fine wine is destroyed by a thought of the sweaty feet that trod the grapes; a fore-knowledge of the dung that nourished it mars the scent of the rose. There is death in such moods.
Thus, the handles of an inoffensive earthenware amphora made me think of Little Lucius’s prominent red ears. Bored with hating Lucius, I began to think of the Pharisee Joseph of the Tent-makers, Paulus’s father – he would not be pleased that Barbatus paid his debt in full, because he had known that while the interest came in regularly the principal was always secure. So, in giving Barbatus the cup, my little Paulus had wounded his father in two ways; and this was a comforting thought. For although Joseph was everything I had said he was, and one of the most righteous Jews in Tarsus into the bargain, he was an easy man to hate.
He gave to the poor; but there was not a pauper who did not feel somehow poorer for having taken Joseph’s coppers. It being against his Law to lend money at interest to a fellow-Jew, he never lent a fellow-Jew money. But he frequently went into a ‘brotherly partnership’ with a Jewish merchant who wanted ready cash – bought the business for a song, and kept the merchant as his servant. He had a ‘sanatorium’ for sick slaves, whom he bought very cheap, patched to a semblance of health, and sold abroad for a good price. He transacted no business on the Sabbath; but he kept a Roman steward, with whom he had a tacit agreement. Two hours before the Sabbath he ceremoniously dismissed this steward; two hours after the Sabbath he ceremoniously reinstated him, and so they balanced the books.
And if some ragged Elijah had asked him: ‘Why do you condone your son Saul’s transgressions, letting him come and go as a heathen Roman or Greek, shaving his beard and eating unclean food at unblessed tables?’ Joseph would have replied: ‘My friend, under Caesar our hands are tied. Under Caesar we have no power to cleanse Israel in our own way and by our own means. If we exterminate our own heretics, Caesar says this is riot, and we pay dearly. Now Saul is our ambassador, our key. Who breaks a door when he can pick a lock? Let Caesar think he rules. Is it not to my credit that I give my own son to eat pig for the greater glory of Israel, so that Rome may be our digger of drains and our public hangman?’
The idea made me smile, the smile made me mellow again, and I felt like a wise old father overhearing the tiny plots of little boys playing conspirators. I remembered that variation of the riddle of Oedipus:
‘Who starts life a Master, lives Slave and dies Master?’ The answer is, of course, Everyone – everyone is served in his helplessness as a baby; spends his mature strength in service; and is served again in his helplessness as an old man.
‘He who will not serve may not be served,’ I said, to the image of Joseph – and I must have spoken the thought aloud, for there was Dionë at my elbow, kneeling in graceful humility, and saying:
‘In what way have I failed to serve you, my lord?’
She had come in so silently that I had not heard her. Only half a minute earlier I might have been startled into a sharp answer; which would have sent her, red-eyed and tragically mourning, into a three-day spell of secret weeping.
But luckily for me I was relaxed again. ‘I was talking to myself, Dionë,’ I said.
She said, with a half-stifled sigh: ‘I know I fail to please you.’
‘Nonsense, Dionë, nonsense.’
‘You have not come close to me for three weeks and two days.’
‘And how many minutes and hours?’ I asked.
‘Now you are laughing at me, my lord Diomed. Well, that is better than not seeing or hearing me.’
‘There, there, my dear.’ I caressed her head.
‘That is right,’ she said. ‘Pat me like a dog. If I were a dog you would love me a little, perhaps. It would be good if I could turn myself into a dog. I would not mind even if you would beat me – I would lick your hand and then you would stroke my ears. But I am not a dog. I am only a woman. You are right to turn your head away from me. I am old and ugly and my body stinks.’
‘Dionë,’ I said, ‘you are twenty-five years old, and at the height of your beauty; and you are sweeter than a flower.’ All this was true, but Dionë would not let me forget how I had once wrinkled my nose at some musky-smelling perfume with which she had sprinkled herself.
‘No. It is ten years since you bought me. I was fifteen then,’ she said.
‘This much arithmetic even I know, Dionë. And I was twenty-eight. And now I am thirty-eight, and feel fifty-eight. So?’
‘You looked like a young king then, and now you look like a king of kings, my lord Diomed. Ah, but you would not buy me now,’ she said.
‘If you are not a good girl, I will sell you.’
‘But who would buy me?’
This, as she knew, was empty talk. I am to a certain extent a practising Stoic, and do not keep slaves. The ethical aspect aside: if a man takes kindly to slavery he is demoralised from the start; if he takes slavery hard, he ought to have fought it to the death in the first place. ‘A living dog is better than a dead lion,’ the Jews say – but dogs also die. I do not like slaves: they invented slavery.
Soon after I had bought Dionë in the open market ten years earlier, I formally freed her. She was little more than a child then, and slender for an Armenian girl – it was I who changed her name to Dionë from Kheherahadj – and the dealer told me that the blood of Artavazd the King of Kings ran in her veins. But it was not for this that I paid his price. Royal blood must be commoner than, say, the blood of a good blacksmith; for a king on the march scatters seed like a dandelion. Dionë’s beauty was of a lost, lonely, forlorn kind, and it touched my heart at the time.
I said: ‘Dionë, I have a lot to think about, and you are talking like a little fool. You know that you are free to come or go. And if you want to return to your own people, I will send you home with a handsome present. I keep no slaves, and you know it.’
‘It is you who are talking like a fool,’ she replied. ‘You are my people, and where you are there my home is. And if I love you, how could I be free, even if you hated me? And as for not keeping slaves, you say what isn’t true – you keep more slaves than any man in Tarsus!’
‘Is this some new Armenian riddle?’ I asked. ‘I keep five servants, all free men.’
‘No, they are slaves, because they love you. You could not drive them away with a stick!’
‘In that case, they are the masters and I am the slave; and if I ran away they would have me brought back and crucified,’ I said. There was grim truth, I felt, in this jest.
‘But you would not run away.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I would not run away. And now for pity’s sake let me wash and be shaved, and you shall rub my back.’
Dionë clapped her hands with pleasure. ‘Yes, I shall rub your neck and your back, and sing you a quiet little song, and make you go to sleep on my breast.’
For sleeping, I prefer a hard, flat bed, but I said no more; I was afraid that I might hurt Dionë’s feelings.
It is good to be beloved. But occasionally I thought that I might feel more my own man if Dionë loved me a little less.
When I rose, much refreshed, two or three hours later, Dionë said: ‘My lord, a messenger from Melanion the Physician has been waiting to speak to you.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me up, then?’ I asked.
‘Because you were asleep.’
There are three things against which only a fool argues: an earthquake, a thunderbolt and the logic of a woman in love.
I went out. Melanion’s messenger, a
white-faced man who had the appearance of a professional mourner, said: ‘My master Melanion has ordered me to beg you to come to his house without delay. My master has told me to assure you that he would not dare to trouble you unless the matter were of some importance. My master offers –’
‘Tell your master Melanion that I am coming immediately.’
‘… his most humble apologies for –’
‘Go and tell him that I am on my way.’
He went. Preparing myself for the streets, I said to Sergius: ‘I smell trouble, Pugnax.’
‘All right, sir,’ he said.
3
MELANION sat in his library, in a litter of scrolls and tablets, grim diagrams, tortuous instruments of steel and ivory, and pallid things that floated in jars. He lived in an atmosphere of pungent herbs macerated in spirits of wine, of aromatic gums and strong vinegar. From an adjoining room came a biting odour of hot metal mixed with sulphur and something that might have been stale blood. At his feet sat a mighty, yellow-eyed wolf-hound, black as night, wearing a collar of five gold chains hung with a hundred tinkling charms and amulets.
This was Hector, better known as Melanion’s Devil Dog. Although he was a free-thinking man who despised superstition, and as honest as a rich physician may be, Melanion was not above letting it be believed that this dog – wearing his collar; that was essential – had certain God-given powers of healing.
There was no more intelligent-appearing, murderous-looking beast outside the Circus; and none more stupidly good-natured. He liked to lick people, and out of this affectionate predilection his master made capital. Melanion really did believe that the fresh saliva of any healthy dog has a quality that helps to heal raw wounds and cleanse unhealthy skin; so, in certain cases, he put Hector to work with his lapping tongue. The appearance of Hector alone, Melanion said, stimulated the natural curative principle in the human blood. In order not to cheapen the dog, who would have licked the face of every beggar in the street if he had been let loose, Melanion let him be taken out only in a litter mysteriously curtained with black silk. Thus, rich men had travelled from outlying districts and paid heavily to be licked by Hector. He was supposed to have cured an Assyrian potentate’s daughter of acne.
Seeing the dog there with his collar on, I said: ‘Beg pardon, Melanion – are you two healers in consultation?’
‘No,’ said Melanion, caressing Hector’s ears, ‘but we might be called in. I hope not. Actually, it is more likely to be a matter for your attention than for mine. So I asked you to be good enough to come here. Forewarned is forearmed.’
‘My dear Melanion, why waste time in preamble? What’s the matter?’
‘Well, very simply; things occurred exactly as I predicted,’ said Melanion. ‘Little Lucius awoke a short while ago, and as I told you, he was shaky. And of course, his right hand was shakier than his left. Naturally, the memory of last night came to him like a slap in the face with something wet and cold. He was sick as a cat that has swallowed feathers. From the depths of his revolting being he was sick! He produced fruits out of season – wild strawberries – aïe, aïe, aïe!’
Melanion was enjoying himself. I asked: ‘Were you there, then?’
‘No, I wasn’t; and that’s where the trouble begins. Of course, a bad morning after a heavy night is no novelty to a pig like Lucius. He vomits on rising as you or I yawn. It was the memory of Paulus’s so-called “curse” that struck him prostrate. His symptoms were precisely according to my prognosis. My messenger had them in detail from Lucius’s body-servant.’
‘So he sent for you?’
‘No, he sent for Paulus. And Paulus sent back word that he was otherwise engaged – urgently engaged.’
‘Please go on, Melanion.’
‘Well, then, Lucius sent for me. But I was with Soxias, and could not come. In any case, Lucius’s physician is that fool Mnesicles – not that Mnesicles could have helped – but Lucius ought to have sent for him in the first place. I would not trust Mnesicles to worm my dog. Still … However, by this time, Lucius had got it firmly into his head that he had been smitten by the wrath of Jehovah, and that only one of Jehovah’s hand-picked people could help him. So, instead of sending for Mnesicles, he sent for Parnach the Jew.
‘Parnach came, with some reluctance, and Lucius poured out the entire story of last night. Parnach told him that the whole affair was foolish; that, in effect, Paulus was not qualified to curse anyone. Then he gave Lucius a purge and an emetic. Lucius raved all the more. Parnach put leeches on his temples and wrists. Lucius started screaming that the Jews had sent worms to devour him alive. Parnach had hot stones put on his belly and cold compresses on his forehead. Lucius howled that the Jews were burning him to death and freezing his brain. Parnach gave him a terrific dose of valerian; it worked in reverse, and Lucius had the horrors.
‘So Parnach fled the house, and soon after Mnesicles came in. That jackass washed out Lucius’s stomach with hot milk; dosed him – of all things! – with hemp and with foxglove; and gave him a steam bath. Naturally, Lucius got worse. Equally naturally, Mnesicles blamed it all on Parnach, and Jewish sorcery in general, while Lucius lay there crying piteously for Paulus to come and lift the palsy that had fallen upon him.’
‘Damn that Paulus!’ I said.
‘Oh, damn him by all means, my friend. He’s your pup, in a manner of speaking: you’re his arbiter, his mentor, his Soldier’s Handbook, his –’
‘Well, well, go on. You did not bring me here to chatter, friend Melanion, if I know you.’
‘No, I didn’t. And as for damning Paulus – admit that when he played that game with Lucius last night you were proud of the boy! Yet you, of all people, Diomed, might have foreseen some of the consequences at least.’
‘Whatever I might have foreseen, could I have made that winedrop fly back?’ I asked, impatiently. ‘What consequences do you mean, anyway?’
‘Don’t pretend to be more of a fool than the gods made you. Paulus having laid the “curse” on Lucius, only Paulus can take it off, and Paulus –’
‘Paulus is inaccessible,’ I said, interrupting. ‘And Mnesicles is the biggest mischief-maker in Tarsus, and he hates the Jews in general and Parnach in particular. Right? And so by nightfall there will be riotous mobs in the Jewish quarter, yelling “Death to Parnach, and death to all Jewish sorcerers!” Is that it?’
‘Yes,’ said Melanion.
‘And so will I use my influence upon Paulus to restore Lucius to his normal state, and so avert trouble in the city? Eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘The root of the potential evil being, in fact, the mischievous physician Mnesicles, eh?’ I said.
‘He is an inveterate gossip, and Paranach is his rival, it’s true,’ said Melanion.
‘So that I might really be acting in the interest of law and order if I suggested to Mnesicles that he might be well advised to leave the city for a while, eh, Melanion?’
‘It’s possible. Mnesicles doesn’t interest me.’
‘No, no. Only, next to you, he is the most popular physician in the city. That would in no way influence your public spirit, would it, Melanion?’
‘Now look here, Diomed – this fragment of information is, I know, useful to you, and since I got it before you did I passed it on to you without delay –’
‘You being so little interested in Mnesicles that you keep spies to watch his movements. I understand, and I am grateful for the information, old friend, upon my word I am!’
Melanion growled: ‘I deny your implications, and beg only to point out that if my information is of service to Rome, my private motives – if any – are none of your damned business.’
‘You are a public benefactor, and let it rest at that,’ I said, and we parted cordially.
I told Sergius: ‘Double patrol from sunset to sunrise.’
‘Yes, sir. Trouble, sir?’
‘Why trouble? Do you wait until you stink before you wash yourself?’
‘No,
sir.’
‘Very well, then.’
I went, now, to the house of Mnesicles, a solemnly opulent establishment furnished with well-executed statues of all the gods and decorated with charts of the heavens. Mnesicles stopped pretending to read a great scroll and said:
‘I am delighted to see you, but I thought that my esteemed fellow-healer Melanion was your physician? However, I shall be happy to help you, most happy. The physicians of Cos are very well indeed in their way, but between you and me –’
‘I am in perfect health, Mnesicles,’ I said, ‘and have no physician at all.’
‘Ah, but you very prudently desire to be examined. Most proper! Many diseases lie hidden, gathering force to strike. No chimera like the illusion of perfect health, and only the gods know where they will be tomorrow. Diseases are cunning: they lull us into a feeling of security so that they have us on our backs in agony before we can lift a finger to defend ourselves. If there were more like you, we doctors should have a hard time of it, believe me! Nothing ails you, you say? We’ll see about that.’
I said: ‘I was about to say, I have no physician at present. As for Melanion, well, it is my business to associate with all sorts and conditions of people.’
‘Too true, too true!’
‘I came to see you concerning Lucius.’
‘Oh, unlucky gentleman to be cursed by one Jew and poisoned by another! Oh merciful laws, that permit a Parnach to practise medicine … or a Melanion, for that matter!’
‘Melanion has a certain tendency, perhaps, to play upon people’s credulity,’ I said, ‘and I thank you for bringing me so gently but so unerringly to my point. Otherwise I might have wasted some of your time beating about the bush – for I am only a rough old soldier, and clumsy with words – and your hours are more precious than gold. Melanion told me, while we were talking of other things, that Lucius was sick and you were treating him.’