The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  'The destroyed city?'

  'Yes.'

  I nodded. Olava's joy chipped her composure. She jumped lightly, and I saw her sandals were black.

  'I've heard of the poem of Ulysses and the Greeks. That's a story.'

  'Yes,' she said.

  'It is one of those fanciful things men seem to need to justify their wants. Domitian and others who lusted for the games said they made good politics. In a way they did, but not to the extent he followed them, because in my last years they had become as much an incitement to the mobs as a palliative. And of course, the siege of Troy by the Greek cities did not happen because someone robbed someone else's wife. No one could keep the cities in a long siege for someone's wife, even an emperor's.'

  'It was Agamemnon's wife, King Agamemnon.'

  'I do not know what king or what city. There were many cities. And this was long, long ago, even in my time. But I do know there was a long siege against the city that taxed the tin for bronze. That's how long ago it was, when bronze was used for sword and plow. And that siege gave rise to the tale of the theft of a wife and great justice in a war.'

  'Perhaps because love of wife and family had declined during your era you cannot undersand it, Eugeni. Is that not possible?'

  'I loved Mir - my wife. And my son.' I could not say her name without sudden weeping. Without saying her name, I continued. 'I loved her and my son. I told you I didn't because I thought you were an agent of Domitian's. If he had known how much I loved them, he would have fed them to animals.'

  Olava nodded. She understood.

  'With my love for my wife and my son, I truly would lay siege to any city, were there a city that I could lay siege to to get them. I would expend my fortune and my life to see her and touch her and make her happy. This I would do. Many years. Yet, Olava, what you don't know or seem not to want to understand is that I could not get other people to join me in such a siege.'

  'What about loyalty?'

  'Loyalty is strongest when there is common self-interest’ 'What about Greek honour?'

  'You sound very Roman in that Honour is sufficient for an afternoon's endeavour, especially against a weak and untroublesome opponent. It suffices to send a legion somewhere while you sit in the baths. Honour is a ship that floats best on seas of wine. It is not something that can keep armies in the field for many years. Tin kept the cities there. You cannot make bronze without tin. That is how a king could keep other cities with him. Not for a woman or honour.'

  'It is a great story, Eugeni, read today by schoolchildren.'

  'I am not judging its metre, woman, but its truth. It is one of those lies people use to justify doing what it is profitable to do. All do it. It keeps them occupied and safe from thought.'

  'What lies do you tell yourself?'

  That somehow things are with me that are not with me.'

  'Like what?'

  'Do you care?'

  'Yes.'

  ‘Why?'

  'Because it is important’ That is your lie, Olava.'

  She thought this quite amusing and even chanted a praise for me saying, 'Hail Eugeni. Hail Eugeni.'

  I told her that I once had many scrolls, and works of Vergilius were undoubtedly among them. The name sounded familiar, especially the Aeneid. Publius knew the poets.

  Olava had a box that reproduced sounds exactly. A similar box reproduced pictures.The box reproduced her voice almost exactly. On mine it faltered, lacing the true lilting resonance of my words. Of course, if her voice sounded correct, there was no reason mine should be incorrect - other than my perception of my voice. I asked her if this were so, and she said yes. So much for human perception. I pointed this out to her.

  She said that if I were not too tired, we should go over the same subjects we covered when I thought she was part of Domitian's plot. She understood now that, if Domitian had known how important Miriamne and Petronius were to me, they never would have had a chance to escape.

  I stood up, my thigh still creating pain, and I did my exercises under the tree. She asked about the exercises. She asked where I had defecated. She asked what I owned. She asked again about Domitian and what people thought, as though, like a slave, I had kept an accounting of what every person thought about everything.

  She explained again why everything was so, important. She pointed to the top of the high tree and said that I should imagine the tree as time, the bottom being ancient Rome and the top being now, and all that has passed between then and now, centuries upon centuries. With her fingernail in the bark of the tree, she made a small scratch.

  That,' she said, 'is a lifetime. In all this tree but one small mark is a human life. Imagine these small marks going to the top of the tree. That is how many generations have passed. Most records are lost, and we have but stones, small works, to re-create what once was. Here you are now to tell us. That is why I ask.'

  'And you, who are you that you dress in black when others dress in white, that your head is always covered, and your body always tight?'

  She belonged to a cult as old as I, a few marks beneath me on the tree. This had survived, just as the word to leave had survived in the sign that I had followed when the lights had terrified me.

  When asked to be translator for me, she had been living a secluded life with other members of her cult. To be a virgin?'

  'No. No. You can be a virgin without seclusion.' 'Seclusion helps,' I said

  Virginity was not her major temptation but rather her love of my language. She began talking of life and death and love and eternal life, and I interrupted to say I was willing to talk more of Rome.

  We talked until sunset, and I realized this big, pale thing was as disciplined in her skills as the best of gladiators. She would sense when I had difficulty with something and go past it on to something else. We spent the afternoon talking of Roman politics, the mechanics of money and property, of slave management, and of the correct pronunications of words, though I told her I was not sure of some because they were only the way I knew. My language was not the best, and I had given up trying to improve the sounds because it would sound stilted. I was strongest being what I was.

  'And what was that, Eugeni?'

  'You're rather cunning in your questions.'

  'It is a simple question.'

  'As simple as taking off a head with one stroke.' 'Did you see that often?'

  'No. No. There are very strong muscles in the neck, and the head will move with the blow. I've seen a head taken off, but it must rest on a rock or something solid, and the blow must move faster going into it. You cannot take a head off without the blade going faster at the moment of striking. Many try it. It does not succeed often. You'll see Germans try it a lot with two hands on the pommel. Only once did I see it succeed with a man standing. And a German did it. The mob loved it. There were cheers for him. The head rolled and he picked it up and ran the arena with it. I had finished a match at the time, and the Aurelii had just bought me ... are you all right, Olava?'

  She was bothered by the blood. And I promised I would not talk of the arena any more. But, she said, I should since it was historical and valuable.

  So I explained how that German was a perfect match for me because he looked so ferocious and was really not dangerous at all. More importantly, the Aurelii could sponsor a match between us cheaply, and thus introduce a family member to politics with much fame and glory, without an exorbitant drain on the family's wealth.

  I showed her how I fought the German on my knees, which looked even more dangerous than it was. Olava, at my request, played the German and I myself. And it occurred to me, as I showed her how vulnerable she would be trying to cut my head off, that she was the first person I had ever explained the arena to.

  'Cut my head off. Pretend you are cutting off my head, you who are so large,' I said.

  She looked down at me, her body sagging.

  'Do it. Do it. No. Imagine you have a big sword in your hand and you must take my head off clean. You're not doi
ng it.'

  I asked permission to touch her body to get her in the proper position. She said I could touch only her back. That was enough. I got her weight on her rear foot and her hands lowered behind her.

  'You see, at your size you cannot come down into my neck without getting into the bony shoulder or chest. You must come level because, while a blade will go through bone, it also loses power in bone. A good thrust rides a bone, it doesn't hit it. Do you see?'

  I showed how I disembowelled the German and what his innards looked like on the arena sand, for he was a big, big man. As I described laying his giant yellow head on my shield so I could appear to sever it in one blow, Olava suddenly started to vomit. We had to fetch rags for her to wipe herself off with. She apologized for vomiting, but I told her it could happen to anyone, depending on the food eaten.

  We ate their big evening meal with Lewus and Semyonus, who was happy when I described taking the officer's poison. Lewus was quiet. Olava produced a short oration for them. She said every classics scholar had been told when studying Latin - a difficult language for her time - that it would all be so much easier if they could produce one Roman who sat by the door answering questions. She told me these men had produced that Roman, a gift to historical and linguistic research.

  Semyonus gave an oration. He said, according to Olava, that his people, the Russian people, were happy to welcome me into a new age of mankind - an age when oppression was dying with a new form of government in which all men shared in the wealth of the land, and knowledge belonged to everyone. A land in which, the physician Semyonus added, all religions were allowed. He smiled at Olava and offered her wine. She refused.

  She asked something of Lewus, and he responded, and then she asked me how I felt. I told her my liver was alive and bubbling. Lewus said he would have some questions for me later on, said Olava.

  Olava explained that Lewus studied the make-up of the earth: geology. The earth, she said, was round. People had walked on the moon - people from a new land beyond the Iberian Sea, which now was called the Atlantic. They had machines that shot out beyond the clouds to other stars. Stars were really very big. People did not fall off the bottom of the earth, if I were interested, because of gravity. Gravity held people on earth.

  'People walked on the moon?'

  'Yes.'

  Then I believe the earth is round and the moon is big.' The earth is not the centre of the universe,' she said. 'Did you know that?' 'I know that now.'

  The sun is the centre of our solar system.' This dessert is good. What is it?' 'It is yogurt, made of milk, fermented.' 'It is good.'

  She said perhaps tomorrow I would be more comfortable talking about my father and my early days in slavery and why I did not slay Publius. She had missed nothing.

  Semyonus asked Olava something. She did not translate until I requested it.

  'He asked to see me to where I live now. I told him thank you, but that it would not be necessary.'

  'I think he wants you, Olava.'

  'No, no,' she said. 'He is very nice.'

  'If no one sees, you would still be a virgin,' I said.

  She said that was not funny. Semyonus asked her something else. She answered briefly. I asked what he said.

  'He asked me to translate what you asked about his translation. Now you know.'

  Semyonus was always attentive to her. He made sure she was offered fruit first. He listened closely, and he waited for her to speak.

  Lewus seemed to smile much, but there did not seem to be enthusiasm in his smiles. He drank his wine unwatered, as did everyone in these days I was told. He drank many cups. He was watching Olava and Semyonus, not obviously staring, rather like someone looking for something in them, and discarding things they said as not the thing he wanted from them. It was as though he sought for them to give him something to use against them. They chatted on, oblivious to Lewus.

  And then his look. I had seen it before. It is not strange on so massive a face. It is a glance totally divorced of malice or fear. The muscles in the face are as unused as death. Neither smile nor grimace nor frown. The eyes do not blink and are open wide. There is a silence in the mind.

  I had seen it only on the arena sand, when another gladiator saw me for the first time. And it was there across this table from me, the table where only eating was supposed to occur.

  He looked away quickly, and then I realized, seeing that opponent-estimating stare, that I, out of training so early and so thoroughly, had returned it. Death eye for death eye.

  Olava said Lewus had to leave for a few days but would be back.

  That night I spent alone under the scrutiny of a slave called a nurse, who was of course not a slave. She was big and yellow-haired and smiled at me whenever I looked at her. I went to my room, and she went with me. I went to the sun porch, and she went there. I pointed to my mouth, and she ordered someone to bring water. I pointed again, and she ordered someone to bring food. Perhaps she did not know what was proper food, but there was a slab of almost raw meat dripping its blood.

  I cringed. She ate if for me, like a wolf. The slab of meat was too big to come from a human unless it was a buttock. But Olava had assured me cannibalism had not been practised here for many centuries.

  The woman sucked up the blood with great enjoyment, making slurping sounds with her red cosmeticized mouth. Every few mouthfuls she offered me a taste. I refused, shaking my head. She offered me some wine. I refused. She offered me vegetables. I took a leafy thing with the taste of good cabbage. She ate enough for three men. She was taller than Olava, who was taller than I. She had massive shoulders.

  She shut the door. She giggled.

  She pointed to my loins and giggled more. She pinched me playfully. But the raw, heavy meat odour from her breath made me raise my nose. She guzzled more wine. It helped the smell. She sat down on the high bed. I felt her wants. She was there. I was there. It was there. Why not? I embraced this large woman, leaning her back down on the high bed, when difficulties began.

  Under her white tunic was a network of webbing to confound an engineer. Straps went from a loose mesh surrounding her legs to a cloth and wire cinch around her loins. So tight was this reinforced cloth around her vagina that it felt like the lining of a snug helmet. It did not go up but was caught about her heavy, pale legs. She helped by pulling it down, and her flesh stuffed in it flowed out, like a punctured winebag pressed with white suet.

  I was not aroused now so much as challenged. She grunted as she pressed down the white and pink cloth barricade to her entrance. She got it to her massive knees, and, with a yank, I had it off her toes. She unfastened her tunic, and there was more defensive clothing, this time around her breasts.

  Metal buckles and two tenting cloths, with straps as though each breast had to be contained from fleeing the body, hung from her neck and buckled around her back. She loosened this protection, and her white pink-nippled breasts were released to the air, full and already wanting. It was a rich flesh banquet of a body with strong thighs and moist entrance. She groaned as I worked her to a crescendo and then entered, ramming home a civilized thrust into a barbaric body. She moaned softly and pressed her lips to my forehead, and I started her passion at her breasts again, and then took it with my tongue to her navel, and then again brought her to crescendo, and then again, before I spent myself.

  But there was a sadness in it as much as pleasure. It was not Miriamne. She made soothing sounds with her grunting language and embraced me. A small, thin gold chain hung around her neck and I played with it, rubbing the links between my fingers. I felt a talisman on the linen beneath her neck, attached to the chain. I felt its corners, and then a small figure in the middle of it.

  I did not believe what I felt. Not even Domitian with blood lust roaring would wear something so ugly. When I brought it around from behind her neck, I saw it was what I felt. And gold no less. They would make it of gold in this world? What creatures! Perhaps the games were gruesome to some and were most certainly
bloody. But no one back in the city wore a dying man in gold around his neck. Yet this sweating hulk of a woman had one made of gold, hanging on a cross.

  She seemed confused when I moved away. She offered a hand to touch me. I slapped it away. Her wild blue eyes teared. I motioned her to stay. I took the little knife from the tray. She might be big, but I could whittle through the flesh.

  The door opened, and the woman covered herself. Olava stood in the doorway. She said something in the barbaric tongue and then to me:

  'Oh. Oh. Oh. I am sorry, Eugeni. I did not know. I am sorry. I guess this is natural. I'm sorry.'

  I did not know why she was sorry, but I put the knife down next to the bloody plate the big woman had eaten from.

  She was stunned there, as though struck. The big woman managed to throw on the complicated and intricate strapping quickly and cover herself, hiding all the things, including the abomination around her neck. She fled the room.

  'Let us go to the sun porch,' said Olava.

  'Good,' I said. 'You say things have changed and people are milder, but this is not so. Killings go on. Crucifixions are loved even.'

  That is not so,' said Olava.

  That woman wore a figure of a man being executed.’

  'I see,' said Olava. 'Yes. Of course. My God was crucified. In remembrance of his death, people wear the re-creation of the crucifixion around their necks. It is a way to honour Our Lord.

  That is my cult, which I am not at liberty to discuss with you now.'

  'No,' I said. 'No honour. There is no honour in that’ 'My God transcended death. He conquers death. I too wore one of those things, but took it off so as not to frighten you. I replaced it with an earlier sign, this fish, fisher of men.'