The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  'Just about when would they have?' asked McCardle. "The one on the tape?'

  'At least sixteen hundred years ago. Two to three thousand years ago.'

  'Jesus Christ,' said Lew, forgetting where he was. 'That is the period, yes,' said Sister Olav. 'But I cannot place the work. They just wouldn't do that.' 'Do what?'

  'Use a Hebrew in a play of history like that. Miriam is a Jewish name, and while there were many Jews in Rome itself for great periods, they were not prominent in Roman entertainment. What you have in the second tape there is a love story. The man professes his love for this woman. The world which knows him, or thinks it knows him, will never know him. Will never know how he loves and protects from the world his Miriam, or as he says, his "Miriamne", the Latinized pronunciation. I am trying to think of where I have heard this, and I have never heard this.'

  'Sister, I had Latin, and I don't recognize it.'

  Sister Olav smiled. 'Good. You would be correct because what you get in your schools is the stilted pronunciation. Without the words eliding, they run into each other. In poetry they elide, vowels join. This is an imitation of Latin speech, properly with vowels running into each other. Although the grammar is a bit faulty here and there. And there are only snatches, which would throw off even most scholars.'

  'Are you sure?’

  'Please run your machine back. Here, let me,' said Sister Olav taking the machine. The mother superior watched her, with lips becoming thin, like taut twine on a package restrained from bursting. There had been touching.

  She played back the tape and then got what she wanted.

  'Merahmo,' came the husky voice.

  Sister Olav smiled broadly. 'Now, what you have,' she said, her hands flailing, 'is the Latinized Miriamne - in the accusative case with the first person of "I love," amo. In everyday speech these things run together, and you have, in proper Latin, Miriam, I love you, or Miriamne, vocative case joined to amo. Which you must know.'

  'Amo, amas, amat,' said McCardle.

  'Correct. Each distinct as you learned it but not as a poet or anyone else would pronounce it. Who goes around saying "I love," "you love," "he loves"? What we have is someone who knows how to say "love ya" in Latin. If you had learned English the way you learned Latin, you wouldn't have recognized this "love ya."' 'I see,' said Lew.

  'A very interesting story, and I don't know why anyone would make this effort, unless of course the person is British. They do that, but with better grammar. Interesting. Powerful. Here is a man who says the whole world thinks it knows him, and it doesn't know him. It doesn't have his love, and without that it will never know him. And that is good, because the world crushes tender things. The world cannot allow precious love, defended love, love kept away so successfully these many years.'

  'That's in there?' asked Lew.

  'Very much. Crude but powerful. He has got a problem. He delays telling her about something, and then confusion, then that name that keeps coming back with much consternation, Publius.'

  'Publi, Publius ... Oh, my God, Pebbles.'

  'Dr McCardle,' said the mother superior, concerned for the American losing colour in his cheeks.

  'I'm all right, I'm all right,' he said. He thanked Sister Olav and the mother superior and asked one more question.

  'Sister Olav, if you were unconscious, might you not speak in Latin?'

  Sister Olav smiled. She nodded. A crucifix on large beads that formed a belt rested on the black material that made her lap. To the mother superior's annoyed concern, the young woman absent-mindedly began pounding the palm of her left hand with the butt of the cross.

  'Good question, good question, good question. Would I? I think sometimes I would. And perhaps a line or two or a short poem, but the unconscious does not speak foreign languages. No language learned after five would be spoken by an unconscious person. I take it you didn't hear the language spoken, but are trying to track down who did the tapes, or how?'

  'An unconscious person speaks the language his mother taught him, right?' said Lew.

  Sister Olav nodded. She slammed her open palm with the cross again. The mother superior gently, but with the certainty of a stone pillar, kept Sister Olav's hands from working over the image of their Lord.

  "Thank you,' said Sister Olav, realizing what she had been doing. 'My language, if I were unconscious, would be Norwegian, not Swedish, although I studied in Sweden so long that I have a Swedish accent.'

  'I couldn't tell the difference,' said McCardle.

  'You're not supposed to,' said Sister Olav, smiling with much gusto.

  'We can,' said the mother superior, 'A Swedish accent has a soft haughtiness to it. It is an "I can do whatever I want" sort of sound. An "I know better" sort of sound. We are not all alike, just as you are not all alike. Not every American is a football player, millionaire sort of thing, if you know what I mean.'

  Lew McCardle didn't know what she meant. But the mother superior knew what she meant. Some things were better and more charitably left unsaid, she said. She meant this for Sister Olav, McCardle felt.

  'What I don't understand,' said Sister Olav, 'is why someone would work so hard to pronounce the words naturally, and then play havoc with the rules of grammar? And if he is an actor, his audience couldn't be more than a hundred or so of us scholars across the world, or a people which hasn't been here for sixteen hundred years. Interesting thought that the world will destroy precious loves unless they are hidden. Almost Christian.'

  'Almost,' said the mother superior.

  'Yes,' said Lew McCardle.

  He thanked Sister Olav. He thanked the mother superior. He asked that they help him further by not mentioning these tapes to anyone for a while until his study was over. He also made a gift to the convent in appreciation of its help but, most importantly, to continue its good work. The phrase came easily.

  And then the difference from his old job came upon him in full, as he left the convent in darkness, the rented driver opening the door for him. He lied, naturally, and it depressed him. He had said he only studied a little Latin, and that was untrue. He had hidden what he knew, prompted by some instinct which told him what they did not know would be to his benefit. He was not sure how this would work out for him, but it could not hurt him. And all he gave up was a little bit of pride in saying, 'Why yes, I have had three years of Latin in high school and four in college, and you thought I was some cowboy, didn't you?'

  What bothered Lew McCardle most that night was that he should have been happy to hear that there was a great discovery, a window on the great civilization of the West, once thought to be gone forever. He should have been contributing by providing geographical data.

  The patient's very existence could prove temperatures never rose above certain levels in certain areas of the world for at least sixteen hundred years. It was in itself a historical thermometer, a great scientific tool.

  And Lew had always thought that if there were ever a conflict between corporate profit and scientific advancement, he could find a way to reconcile the two. Now he had such a conflict. And he was not thinking about reconciling it.

  He had never entertained doubts about helping to find energy. Energy was the difference between man dying in his thirties or his sixties. It was that basic. It was necessary for civilized survival.

  Unlike his daughters, he had never viewed transportation, heat, and power as some right of birth, and oil exploration, which made it possible, as some desecration of the earth. He knew there was a price to be paid for a sixty-year life expectancy.

  What he did not know and had successfully kept from himself when he was a geologist was how ready he was to pay any price, not for mankind's benefit, but for Houghton's assured profit More specifically, his own retirement.

  He was not proud of himself.

  He had lied in the convent to the excitable nun. He had studied more than a little Latin. He had three years of it in high school and four at Texas M and C, the only football player in the class.


  'Don't you think you might be happier with another subject?' the professor had asked. It was a woman and she spoke with a British accent, and it was known that she had some reservations about teaching the subject to Americans, and more reservations about teaching it to Texas Baptists, and no intention of giving a football player a passing grade because coach and administration felt obliged to keep muscle in the stadium. If Mr McCardle wanted a passing grade, he should take push-ups, or whatever the requirements were for the football team.

  'I had four years of Latin in high school, ma'am,' Lew had said.

  ‘Yes. North Springs, Texas?' 'Yes, ma'am.'

  "That might not be adequate preparation.'

  'I'll make up for whatever I missed,' Lew had said. She had failed half the class trying to fail him, and only at the end of the semester did she realize that he was a good student, disguised in his big body and Texas twang and with parents he didn't want to talk about.

  She was also the reason why, after eight full years of Latin, even long ago, Lew had not recognized snatches of the language from the tape recordings.

  He had always assumed Latin was spoken with a British accent And it was a shock realizing now how foolish he had been to think Julius Caesar spoke like Claude Rains or Crassus like Basil Rathbone or any British actor, just because the British claimed the grandeur of Rome for themselves.

  Lew McCardle had not recognized the tapes because the subject had sounded - it was too embarrassing even to admit his own stupidity to himself - too Italian.

  In Oslo, he found a Latin-English dictionary, bought a bottle of scotch, and stayed up the night consumed with the tapes.

  Ten

  Fifth Bay - Peteoviteh Report

  Condition remains, critical. Improvement stalled. Several small lapses. Move to new, special intensive-care unit done without any apparent, harmful effects. Closer observation now available. One word quite recognisable: 'Ma'. Unfortunately that is the word for mother in Indo-European, covering every

  European language from Slavic to French, according to L. McCardle.

  It was a good day for the games, sunny, but not draining on the crowds. It would be hot, but not uncomfortably so.

  As always, I was there at dawn with my slaves in my cubicle, resting. Before the first of the crowds were there, I was there. Separated, secure, lying on a couch covered with linen, feeling the soothing hands of a body slave work oil into me.

  Normally, everything is done for me in virtual silence, but this day was the last day of the arena for me, and the fact was shared with the men.

  'Before this day ends, Plutarch is a freedman,' I announced, sitting up in the couch. The big slave, who knew every grain of sand in the arena, trembled like a child

  'No,' I said. 'You are free now. Now you are a free man. This instant. Bear witness, all of you. Plutarch is free.'

  'To do what, master?' he asked, his giant hands searching the air helplessly.

  To be free.'

  'But I have not built a peculium. What will I live on?’ ‘I will make one for you.'

  'If I did not accumulate money as your slave, how will I keep it as a freedman ? I would prefer to remain yours, where the food is good, where I have my woman, I have my wine, I have a place to sleep which is comfortable, and most of all, my skills are always used well'

  'So be it.'

  'You have never beaten me,’ he said, and he wept. He was a bulky man, having once been trained for the arena. The tears wet his fat cheeks.

  'You have never deserved it, Plutarch. I have never complimented you here, because under your guidance perfection has become as sure as the sunrise and as plentiful as the air. And, therefore, just as unnoticed in its regularity.’

  Plutarch kissed my hands.

  'We need my hands, Plutarch. Stop,’ I said. All the slaves laughed and so, finally, did Plutarch.

  'Since I am free, I tell you, seal your mouth,' said big Plutarch, his eyes still with the tears of happiness. 'Rest.'

  He pushed me playfully down, face forward into the linen already darkened by the oils from my body. The first joyous shouts of the people came to us in the lonesome cubicle like calls of birds. There is a pathetic sound to voices from people who know that whatever they think or say at that moment will be meaningless compared to the great event they are going to see. Woe to him who fails to provide it. Domitian would be equally invested in that sand with me.

  More than a city-state, more than the village of my birth would come here this day.

  This quiet time is always set aside for me to empty my mind and then, bit by little bit, to fill it with my purpose this day. From empty to full.

  Perhaps it was because there was Publius facing me who could not strain my skills, perhaps it was my son who confronted me with my mother, perhaps it was remembering that I had been distracted by the latifundia in the bad games that led to this, perhaps because this was the last time I would ever lie like this, so quiet, but this time I allowed myself to think and to remember how I came here, how I became a slave, how I became a gladiator whose single presence could fill the biggest arena with more people than the village I was born in.

  It was small, in northern Greece, and my mother was the daughter of the king. King? He could lead twenty men at most and this meant, more than likely, that he was the one who had the helmet and the sword. I remember horses, but I do not remember riding them. We spoke only the Roman language, and my mother reminded me how Roman I was, and that my father, an important man and a Roman, would come back to take us to that great city where he was an important man. In this Greek village, I was raised with the mother tongue of the centre of the earth.

  When the villagers told me about my father, they spoke well of Rome, for the taxes did not appear heavy, compared to the previous great taxes demanded by robber bands. Rome ended the rule of the big cities, cleared away the robber bands, and built the first roads giving us access to the wisdom and beauty of the great city of Athens. This I learned from my mother, Phaedra, whom the king married to a Roman merchant Gnaeus, Gnaeus sired me, took the dowry, and did not return until my eighth year. I do not even remember what he looked like.

  My mother packed things on a cart and told me everything would turn out fine. I had not been aware until that time that there was something coming that needed a good resolution. I was eight, I was trusting, and I do not remember raising a hand to anyone, it being considered unvirtuous to fight friends.

  We travelled many days, with my mother and me in the back of the cart and my father driving. He did not play with me as other fathers did with their sons, but seemed to try not even to look at me. He never called me by my name and gave orders to my mother when he wanted me to get on and off the cart, as though I were a pet of hers.

  One day we stopped at a large latifundium with more people than I had ever seen. My father drove off, leaving my mother and me. I would find out when I was older, through agents, that he had lost my mother and me in a game of bones. It was beneath his honour, after the wager was lost, to impose stipulations upon the loss, such as that my mother and I should be used in a city house, that she should weave, and I should be used for reading and writing.

  It was the first latifundium I had ever seen. In later years I would have paid five times its worth just to know its name. I do not remember the first night there, but I do remember the second day. I was put on carts, rubbing grease into wheel axles. After a while I grew tired and said my back ached, and I ran away looking for my mother. I wanted to go home because I did not like this place. Another slave stopped me. When I told him my back ached and I wanted to go home, he asked where it ached, and there he hit me harder than I had ever been hit before. I looked for grown-ups to make him stop hitting me, but they were laughing. I remember thinking this is not happening. This could not be happening. Grown-ups do not act this way. This is not happening. I went back to the wheels crying, thinking I could not endure the pain.

  At night, when I told my mother, she became angry with
me, saying these were ignorant slaves who did not know our special status. We would go home shortly. There were stipulations that we were not slaves but only on loan to this place. The slaves could not know these things because merchants did not take the slaves into their confidence concerning business affairs. My father was using us as a point of honour to show the owner of the latifundium he could be trusted while he went out to make lots of money. He was going to return for us and make us wealthy. We were going to see Athens, maybe even Rome itself.

  The one thing my father did not want was to return here and see that I had turned into a slave. Then he would never take me out. A person was only a slave if he thought himself a slave. She told me not to associate with others because I would pick up their slave habits

  But I knew better. On the wagons that brought water to the fields, I knew better. In the cold nights that made me hate the cold forever, I knew better. I knew better in the long barns in which we slept surrounded by a stench that at first made me vomit, but then became welcome because it meant sleep. I knew better, when I stole food and brought it to my mother. She would not eat it, because stealing was a slave's way of doing things. She made me return that handful of barley to the wagons hauling it. The slave I gave it to laughed and threw it on the ground for he worked at the storage houses and had access to wheat itself.There was no condition so low that there was not a lower one.

  I told my mother about that, but she said it was not the food or whether anyone needed it or cared about it. The important thing was that we did not eat stolen food. We were not slaves.

  She made no secret about what she thought was our special status. One night, the men in the barn, goaded by the women raped my mother to show her who she was. She screamed they would be crucified because there were special stipulations for her release and that she was only collateral for a business loan made by her husband, her legal husband, a Roman citizen.