The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  'He has scars, healed by cauterization’ said Petrovitch. 'Do you remember me pointing that out, Lew?'

  'Ummmmrrm,' said Lew in agreement because he had to answer. His hands lay on his lap and his back hurt. Semyon leaned forward, his left forearm against his thigh. He was so close to being on his knees, Lew would not have been surprised if he dropped to one and proposed.

  The patient is reliving. And he is highly susceptible, physically, to his emotions. I believe that discovering what has happened to him might send him into shock again, and this time, Dr Petrovitch's genius and commitment might not prevail.'

  'You might be right, Sister Olav,' said Dr Petrovitch. 'What do you think, Lew?'

  'Urnmm,' said McCardle.

  'What we are going to do is, if at all possible, to soften his fall from the cliff- provide a cultural parachute so to speak. We won't impose anything more strange on him than we have to.'

  'Very good,' said Semyon.

  'Ummm,' said Lew.

  'I have prepared some suggested guidelines as to how we should treat our patient,' said Sister Olav, giving Dr Petrovitch twenty-two typewritten pages, and Dr McCardle the same. Petrovitch, too, had brought materials - X-rays, his abbreviated daily reports (three days omitted during the period of shock), bis lengthier reports that lacked final analyses of the blood that, he had explained, had retarded crystallization in the remarkable physical specimen which Dr McCardle had so thoughtfully saved for science. Lew McCardle had brought only a package of gum, which no one else chewed, and the sweetness of which proved too much even for him. His stomach told him that if he continued to keep that sweet taste in his mouth it would come up with everything from the night before, and then some. He put the wet stick in his pocket.

  As he silently prayed for a beer, Sister Olav went point by point over how they would provide their cultural parachute, looking to him for his assent.

  'I would suggest that we change our names for use with and in front of the patient. Dr Petrovitch, I think Semyonus, a Latinized name I made up, would do well, if you would agree. Lewus for Dr McCardle and Olava for myself.'

  'Olava, Olava is beautiful,' exclaimed Petrovitch. 'Olava, Olava, Olava. I love it. Love it. I never felt comfortable with Sister Olav. It sounded so, so, well some might say masculine. Olava is beautiful and fits you. Pure Roman.'

  'No,' said Sister Olav. 'Lewellyn is Welsh, Olav is Germanic, and Semyon, Slavic. But he will be able to talk to us more easily, because he can treat the endings more easily in his language knowing how to say "to us" and "from us" and "for us" and things like that.'

  Then there was the problem of what everyone wore. No watches, no lighters, no gadgets. Pens would be allowed because they contained ink, as had styluses then. Semyon would have to give up his cigarettes in front of the patient for a while.

  'It's going to be hard,' said Petrovitch.

  This too is hard,' said Sister Olav, and she removed the crucifix and rosary beads from her waist. This is very hard. I would like to wear a fish to replace them, but that would attract the sort of attention we deal with in section five which I will talk about later.'

  'No. No. You may wear all your religious trappings. I would fight to my death for your right to wear these things as long as you wish. I would never request that.'

  'Not for you, but for our patient. The crucifix, as an object of Christian symbolism, came into public veneration centuries after the probable life period of our subject. At his time it was an ugly execution device. The Christian symbol was the fish. But I forgo even that. And I must recommend to both of you here and now, from the bottom of my heart, that neither of you seek publicity and that you forgo on behalf of your government, Semyonus and your corporation, Lewus, the fame and approval of the world.

  Petrovitch accepted this admonition with a nod and visible rising of his chest.

  'Ummm,' said Dr Lewellyn McCardle, vice-president of Houghton Oil Corporation, Houston, Texas, USA. It was hard to tell his ringing ears from the occasional jet engines of the nearby airport.

  From now on, it was agreed, no nurse was to be allowed to bring a radio or television set into the room, which had not happened so far, but might. While the working language could not be Latin, because all three had only English in common, everyone would try to limit conversation around the patient, although, if he were from Rome itself, he would not be shocked by different languages, since Rome was the centre of the world and had many peoples as guests and residents. The windows would be shaded.

  'He would be shocked by glass?' asked Dr Petrovitch.

  'Not at all. They had glass in Rome, but he would be shocked by a window facing outside. The Roman house faced in. It kept the world out. Just a little thing we're doing here, too, with our imitation peristilium. Now the diet, when he gets off intravenous, is all wrong. I see meat scheduled once a day. A regular diet with meat was not considered healthy. The Roman wouldn't even like it. If our Roman is typical, he covered everything with a sauce called garum or alum, types of a fermented fish product which they used on almost everything. Like you, Lew, might use ketchup.'

  'I don't use ketchup,' said Lew. He took a big drink of water. And he readjusted his position on his backless chair, which he knew was a sella.

  'I meant it was a common sauce,' said Sister Olav.

  'That's what I meant, too,' said Lew. He wanted to yell out he not only knew everything she had mentioned but just might, if he had put in as much time intensively as she had, if he didn't have to earn a living, just might know her subject better than she did. But somehow, that she did not know that he knew, no matter how grating this was proving, could well help him. Lew felt this in his bones. But it did not make the cup he drank much tastier.

  ‘I didn't mean to offend, just explain.'

  'Do we have the recipe for the sauce?' asked Petrovitch, trying to muffle conflict.

  'Not that I know of, but I think if we give him wheat and barley products with plenty of fruit and cheese, and, of course, the staples of the ancient world, olives and olive oil, we will provide an adequate diet.'

  'Possibly even better than ours,' smiled Petrovitch. 'But what about our ties?'

  'Leave them on. He will think you won them. They didn't have medals but they did have necklaces called torques. He will think your ties are some kind of badge, especially since they have no use. And if you want to, wear white and let the nurses wear white, also. He will think he is among the established class. My habit will remind him of a stola, but black like Lewus's dark clothes would make him think we are the lower class. They were not all that different in judging people by clothes.'

  'Us ketchup dunkers sure do dress right peculiar, ma'am,' said McCardle.

  'If I have offended you, Lewus, I am sorry. I really do appreciate your contribution to this project. There is a need for someone to get things done. I appreciate your arranging for a replacement for me at the school in Ringerike. It's not easy to find a civil Latin teacher so readily.'

  'It was very easy,' said McCardle. 'I phoned our public affairs people back in Houston, and I said fly one in. And they did. In a day.'

  'Yes, well, that's fortunate.'

  They just had one of our vendors go to an employment agency in Great Britain. They're plentiful. No difficulty whatsoever. No one even knows Houghton did it. Because no one cares.'

  'Lewus!' said Petrovitch angrily.

  'Please. Please,' said Sister Olav. 'We have important work to do. What was the structure the patient was found in ? I don't see your report on that, which is important, because there might be other artifacts in the frozen cave, although none could be as important as our patient.'

  'No cave, glacial ice. Eight point two metres down. I'm working on it. I had things to do last night. I had to phone home last night,' he said, remembering how he had reached his wife, Kathy, who said Tricia, their daughter, was now planning to do something violent to change the world, and he had asked if that meant sleeping with a triggerman instead of a philosopher, and his
wife had said he should rise above his beginnings sometime, and he had hung up. He had drunk quite a bit and met someone in the lobby. In his hazy stupor, he finally realized she was a prostitute, and that her airfare back home was not a friendly gift from a beautiful, sexy older man to a helpless woman, but a pay-off for a screw. To be exact.

  So, today, Sister Olav asked him if everything was all right, and he said yes and wondered whether he could get a drink this early in the morning without arousing curiosity or contempt.

  'We have another curious fact here,' continued Sister Olav. 'Romans didn't come this far. Never did. The empire ended in Germany, which was considered wild, barbarian country, and farther north here was even more frightening to Romans. There was cannibalism through what we know now as Scandinavia.'

  'Maybe he walked alone. A great trek,' said McCardle. 'He's a tough little bugger by the looks of things.'

  'I doubt it. Nude, at least hundreds of miles beyond the borders of his civilization. I doubt if he walked alone. I don't care who he was, he just would not be going to make this sort of trek through this area. You're looking now at what is the more civilized part of the world, that is, in the sense of safety. Africa in your most extreme thoughts was never as wild, though, as this part of the world at his time.'

  'What were Roman methods for freezing things?' Petrovitch asked. 'Maybe that's a key.'

  'They didn't have freezing, to the best of my knowledge, and if there were evidence they could have frozen things, I would have known. No, they could cool things and warm things, and their baths had a frigidarium for cooling and a caldarium for heating. But they never froze things. The closest they came to using ice was having runners bring it down from the mountains for banquets.'

  'Cooling would not do,' said Petrovitch. 'The action had to be immediate. Both in bloodstream and thermal reduction. Immediate. No one ever had these sorts of things until recent history. I don't know how it was done.'

  'We'll find out, Semyon,’ said Lew. 'Semyonus,' said Petrovitch. 'Yeah,' said Lew.

  Sister Olav suggested that they continue on the morrow because Lewus seemed a bit under the weather, so to speak, or as the Romans would say, his liver was acting up.

  'I second the motion and vote yes,' said Lew and got up, his mind somewhat relieved by the thought of a cold beer, followed by a cold beer, followed by a cold beer.

  'One more thing,' said Sister Olav. 'When do you think the patient will recover complete consciousness?' She asked this of Dr Petrovitch.

  'Any day now. It might come in bits. He might just open his eyes and say hello.'

  'Now I have a problem,' said Sister Olav. 'What are my first words to the man who might have spoken with Virgil or Juvenal ? What do I say to the man who knew Saint Peter or Saint Paul, as we know each other? This man, who may have personally known those who administered their known world. What will be his thoughts when he sees us? I sometimes feel it is beyond me.'

  There was little question what the patient was thinking in his deep sleep when all three visited the room on their way out. It was visibly apparent. Petrovitch and McCardle looked away in embarrassment. Rising underneath the light covering blanket, like a pole under a tent, from the horizontal form, was a full erection. Lew withheld the comment that if the patient were reliving something, he certainly wasn't suffering.

  Sixteen

  Fourteenth Bay - Petrovitch Report

  Condition good. Brief periods of apparent consciousness, swallowed a mouthful of food, but did not chew. Blood pressure normal. Temperature normal. Heart normal. We await his arrival.

  When the senators began appearing in groups and singly to question me, I realized Domitian's problem. In but three days, he had run out of time.

  The city boiled, I was told. After the first day and night of riots, Domitian decreed I had committed maiestas, offending the gods of Rome. For this I would be tried by the senate, neatly focusing the mob's attention on the senators, instead of on him. He didn't get a decision, but a windy debate, while whole sections of the city declared war among themselves. The praetorians and urban cohorts huddled around the palace for their protection, not Rome's. Domitian had tried sentencing a whole area of the city to crucifixion, hoping stern measures would set an example. But he couldn't spare the men to seize them, assuming the likes ofthe urban cohorts or vigjles would follow a dangerous order, and he wasn't about to let the praetorians stray far from his body.

  The senate leaped on maiestas like a dog on a kidney, scarcely realizing Domitian had forwarded his massive nuisance to them. Guilt hardly received investigation. It was the punishment that was debated. The noble senators surprised even me with their inventiveness. I should be blindfolded and set in a box with starving rats, with only my spatha for protection. This was rejected because a closed box would bide my agony.

  Another senator, who had devoted his life to scholarly comparisons of the city-state and the empire, offered that this battle between rats and gladiator could take place in a pit. He suggested covering me with pork fat, lest the rats decline living meat.

  There was a faction for crucifixion, but there is always a faction in Rome for crucifixion, as though hanging a person on two beams were an all-purpose governmental solution. It supposedly reduced crime, inspired morality, and made slaves more productive.

  They had faced, during those three days, what I thought confronted Domitian alone - the problem of showing my agony to enough people. It had to be most public.

  There was a suggestion that I fight ten gladiators simultaneously, thus enabling the people of Rome to see the match to the death that I had denied them. When Domitian heard this, one senator told me, he threw chairs in rage.

  'And what if he wins ? What then ?' the emperor was supposed to have demanded.

  There was the suggestion that I be bathed in pitch and forced to hold a clean arm in flames. This was dismissed, because it had been done on the day that started the major riot - the one that came after my secutor's being killed, now called the minor one. Finally, I was told, Domitian sent word that the arena was out. He did not trust me there, having had two performances and two disasters already. Rome could not survive a third.

  Factions within factions were forming with a good deal of basic, mindless fury that fuels any contention people deem to be a moral issue. A faction of freedmen armed with clubs wrecked goldworkers' shops when a rumour started that the goldworkers thought I should be allowed to fight for my life against a single gladiator chosen by the senate. It did not seem to impress the senate that it was the goldworkers who were attacked for their views and not poor people who were on the bread dole. This of course was not lost on Domitian, who knew that the most wealth was stored in his palace, thus his desire to get the matter before the senate and not himself.

  Should Rome have been faced with a resurrected Hannibal marching again, there would have scarcely been a harsh word. The people would have prepared to defend the city and themselves, the only question being how. And that would sensibly be left to the generals. But given something that had absolutely no bearing on whether they would eat or be housed or live safely, the people tore at themselves with more passion than many men defend their very lives with. People I had known would say it was the Roman mind. But while Rome seized most of the world, it did not hoard all stupidity.

  Witness men throughout all lands who freely squander their lives and fortunes to be remembered by history, seeking accolades from people they have never met or ever will meet, because by then they will be long dead. Such pain and deprivation so that unborn schoolboys will be forced at the end of a rod to remember their names, probably incorrectly.

  As each senator came into my room - the praetorians had already removed the couch they had used in their little charade, real only for the unlucky man I had met in the baths -I found out more and more about their position and Domitian's.

  'You look tired. Were you delayed?’ I asked of one who did not appear all that tired.

  'No. Not tired, just sadden
ed by an offence against our gods, gladiator,' said one senator.

  'Ah so, the praetorians are back in the barracks and they did not delay you.'

  'By Jupiter's balls, no. They are thick around the palace for what you have done, ungrateful Greek,' said the senator.

  'You just happened to meet some on their way to the barracks. Things are not that bad.'

  'Not that bad! They have not left their positions since your atrocity that day. And this, after all that Rome has given you. Taken you from a slave, Brought you into its homes. Made you wealthy. Made you famous. Made you fully Roman.'

  I lowered my eyes in apparent shame. Domitian still felt himself under the sword. Things apparently were turning back in my favour.

  Almost all the senators in their august, judicial process asked me why I did not slay Publius. To an old general I said I could not thrust my spatha into the armour of the legion that I knew protected me and my estates from the barbaric hordes. To another famous for his boy friends, I confessed Publius and I were lovers. One senator, whose children had him watched over constantly by slaves, was known to believe the sun was the robber of life. He wore a heavy brown tunic under his toga, and a slave bore a heavy parasol behind him. He asked why I failed to slay Publius.

  'There was the brightness of the sun, and then the sun, and then the sun was taking me,' I said, 'and I thrust the spatha into Publius.'

  'You did not thrust the spatha into Publius but into the sand.' 'Did I really?'

  'Yes. Undressed you were to the fullness of the sun.' 'By the gods, this is a surprise to me. No wonder I have been charged.'