The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  'She doesn't have to spend all the time with him.’

  'She doesn't. Haven't you read her reports?'

  'Do you think I care whether he urinated when he got up in the morning two thousand years ago ? Lew, do you think Olava has ever known a man?'

  'I don't know. I don't think so.'

  ‘I don't think she has either. Have you ever been to bed with a virgin?' 'Yes.'

  'Your wife?’

  'No. Someone else.'

  'My wife was a virgin, I think,’ said Petrovitch. 'Maybe I should write her even though it is not the seventh of the month yet.'

  'No.'

  'Why?'

  'She'll get suspicious,' Lew said. 'So you have been in similar situations.' 'When my marriage was better, it was as bad as yours, Semyon.' 'Mine is not that bad. It doesn't bother me any more. Goodnight, Lew.'

  McCardle made reservations for an early morning flight to Rome with a changeover in Paris.

  He returned to his hotel and napped until midday, when he called the public affairs office of Houghton in Houston.

  'That's pretty short notice,' said the man at public affairs who had been assigned to give him what he wanted. 'How good does this historian have to be?

  'I don't want anyone famous. No one who has written anything. Just someone to save me some time running through all these books you sent. Have him at a suite at the Excelsior Hotel and make the reservations for me on that It takes forever with these operators.'

  'If you're looking for something maybe we can find it out in Houston, Dr McCardle.'

  'I am looking for something,' Lew had said. 'And if I knew what, specifically, I wouldn't need you.'

  And so saying, he prepared for dinner with his two colleagues and the patient. He was going to stay longer dining with them on the cryonics floor, until that predatory look from those black eyes. And then he just didn't want to be there anymore.

  The next morning the flight took hours to cover what had supposedly taken the subject months. Beneath Lew were the roads Rome had built, and they had paved the world with only slave power. And a road meant more to people than all the philosophies he thought. Roads let people see other people. Before Rome, men were born and died never knowing there were other languages and other peoples, or even growing more food than they could eat.

  'They built the roads, the little bastards,' thought Lew, on his fourth drink. Somehow he felt it was exceedingly unfair that the world remembered the emperors and poets but not the men who made Rome Rome, for every little tribe with a club and a crown had poets and kings. But Rome had roads.

  Lew signalled an attentive stewardess (they were so attentive in first class) for another drink. He nestled his big body back in the wide seat. He was riding on the new roads.

  The airplane was the new road of the new Rome. Lew looked out the window and saw the tops of the Alps in the spring morning, late with snow, and he imagined the legions tramping over passes to extend an empire, bring civilization, take slaves and animals, give law, take freedom, and ultimately leave the alphabet, the Roman alphabet, throughout Europe. The 'A' that the subject's son Petronius learned was the same 'A' that Cara and Tricia, Lew's daughters, learned.

  All this because of roads.

  Even today a road meant getting produce to market. A road meant an iron plough instead of a wooden one because you could buy things, too. An iron plough instead of wood meant you lived past thirty. It changed more than the depth of a furrow.

  Lew was proud of Houghton Oil. It was not pretty, no prettier than a Roman engineer. But it gave life. It gave leisure time.

  When you wanted to go back to nature, more than anything it proved that you were not born in the wilderness. When you wanted to rope cows or shovel grain, it meant that you were born in Rome or Chicago or Paris, not North Springs, Texas.

  People hungered for the natural life when they lived in apartments cooled by air conditioners and sealed from the rodents and bugs that competed on this planet with you for food and space and air.

  Lew hoisted his last drink to the company he served, and the stewardess looked confused because she did not understand the language.

  'It's a language that's not used any more,' said Lew. 'It's old. It's gone. It's dead.'

  Lew realized he was drinking too much when they were slow bringing fresh glasses. He dozed, thinking about the peristilium and atrium of Lucius Aurelius Eugenianus, or whomever they really did have back at the cryonics floor.

  At the hotel in Rome, near remnants of the walls the subject had left nearly two thousand years before, Lew found Public Affairs had done its job better and faster than he expected. Not only was there no trouble getting him a suite, but waiting in the living room of the suite was a middle-aged man with sweaty hands, in a worn tweed suit with highly polished shoes that could not hide the cracks of age. He rose when Lew entered, thanking him and his company for providing the pecuniary aspects of his trip.

  He had been to Rome before, of course, but not in such lavish surroundings, and he had written a poem in Latin for this occasion and for the possibility that Houghton might fund a classics programme.

  'Later,' said Lew brusquely, and got down to business as soon as the bellboy had left the bags. He had never realized before what an impression clothes could make, and at that moment he regretted a life of careless dressing.

  Lew sat on the edge of a hard chair, leaning on his left knee with an elbow.

  'Please sit. I would appreciate no digressions,' he said suspecting this was just the sort of person who could go on into meaningless nowheres with enthusiasm and little regard for time. The man was in his early sixties and could not sit down fast enough, apparently trying to please Lew.

  This was just the sort of person Lew had once planned to become, until Kathy had become pregnant,and Lew found Houghton Oil was the highest bidder for his doctorate. Lew could not imagine now what he was thinking then, or during most of his career.

  'Have you ever read of a Lucius Aurelius Eugenianus?' asked Lew.

  'Gracious,' said the professor. 'It's such a strange thing to rush into, concerning such an ancient subject. It does not lend itself to rush, so to speak, but I would imagine that is a digression.'

  'Yes,' said Lew.

  'No,' said the professor, referring to the first question. 'All right. Have you ever heard of maiestas?' 'Yes. An offence against the gods, but you pronounce it incorrectly.'

  'No. You do, but that's neither here nor there,' said Lew. 'Could, the senate decree maiestas ?'

  'Oh. I don't know. Let's see. Yes. I would imagine. I don't know. You see that is an offence against the gods and—' 'Yes or no?' said Lew.

  'Uh, probably. Yes. Of course. A thing on the name you mentioned. That's not a pure Roman name, you know.' 'Beautiful. What's wrong with it?'

  'Lucius Aurelius is Roman, of course. But Eugenianus is Greek. It would be like someone raised in Russia being named Ivan, and then coming to America and changing his last name to Jones. Ivan Jones so to speak. It was a common practice in Rome, Dr McCardle.'

  'You are familiar with gladiators?'

  The politics of the games, yes,' said the professor.

  'Were there any famous gladiators?'

  'Certainly.'

  ‘A single premier gladiator?'

  'Oh, yes. But at different times. You've got to realize these games in the arena were unlike anything you understand today. They went on for centuries. Although in the latter centuries, there is no record of any single great gladiator.'

  'After Domitian's time, correct?'

  'Why yes. We have records of a few gladiators famous among the city mobs before Domitian, but his reign seems to have ended the idea of one man being important in the games. Interestingly enough, it is Domitian, I believe, who is the most underrated emperor in Rome. He brought the armies under control so that they would not be prone to rebellion. He did that interestingly enough by never letting two legions share one treasury. Sort of keeping the treasury low, so to speak.
One might say we classics professors share the same fate.'

  'Could following through on a charge of maiestas have caused all records on a certain subject to be destroyed ? Could a religious crime do that?'

  'About the only thing that could. Yet there's no record of it. Then again, there wouldn't be, would there?' 'Riots in Domitian's time ?'

  'During the imperial period, almost all emperors had riots. I suspect one of the most severe was AD 80, known as the great fire during Domitian's time, except for my theory on the gap.'

  'What gap?'

  'It's my theory. It's a digression.'

  'C'mon. C'mon,' said Lew, closing his fingers indicating he wanted whatever was coming and wanted it now.

  'The Domitian gap is sort of a historical record process, and by that I mean, oh, gracious, I am just not used to answering questions like this, as though I am in some court for a living current case.'

  'I am sorry,' said Lew. 'Take your time.'

  'Rome was a great record keeper, as were Roman administrators throughout the world. Much was destroyed through time and barbarian invasion by Vandals, Goths, et cetera. But this was not like a single civilization being destroyed, such as ancient Egypt where everything was in one place. No, this was like a bowl of spaghetti. One could burn entire cities to the ground with their libraries and administrative offices, and it would be like only removing a spoon of spaghetti from a whole bowl. Well, there would be other strands. You really couldn't destroy records of an incident because of the great extent of record keeping and references here and there.'

  'So how could there be a gap ?' asked Lew.

  'Because I found a single strand. In an excavation in Tunisia, a fragment of a will by a vigil who was responsible for the fire and police...'

  'I know who they were,' said Lew, glumly. He also knew how much they could be bought for, in detail.

  'Well, he refers to the fire, but he calls it a riot. We have known it as the fire of 80 AD, or the CE, as they call it today. He calls it specifically the "great riot" after the "disaster games", now the games—'

  'I know the games. Where's your fucking gap ?'

  'Oh, sir. Well,' said the professor, feeling strange pressure and heat coming from a topic that had always been discussed in a leisurely way. And never had anyone asked a question about Rome with the angry word 'fucking'.

  Nevertheless, the professor forged onward, gathering his wits and resolve. 'Sir, I came to believe in the gap when I came upon this single strand of spaghetti. The will referring to the disaster games and the riots and a parcel of property damaged during the riot proves the gap.'

  ‘How?'

  'Well, where in bloody blue blazes were the rest of the strands of spaghetti?' the professor yelled out, and then wrestled control of himself, back down to where he felt comfortable.

  'No other references ?'

  ‘We haven't found them yet. Just the references to the fire. But Rome had endured smaller fires before, especially the one romanticized by Nero. Almost the whole city burned down under Domitian. Where were the vigiles ?'

  They were corrupt and incompetent,' said Lew.

  'But why weren't they blamed for the fire? Why weren't they blamed for letting the fire get out of hand? During Nero's fire they had to blame someone, so they blamed the early Christians. Whom did they blame after the bigger fire in 80 AD ?'

  'I don't know,' said Lew, feeling weakness throughout his body. 'I don't know,' he said, and desperately wished it were not a lie.

  'We don't know whom they blamed. So around the world, we pick up references to a blameless fire, and not blamed are the firemen for letting it get out of hand, and only one reference to its cause. We have found a single strand of spaghetti in a desert and not a plate within a thousand miles, or a thousand years if you will. That is the gap.'

  Thank you,' said Lew, weakly.

  'I'm sorry for raising my voice.'

  ‘No. You did a good job. A very good job.'

  ‘If I may say so, Dr McCardle, you appear very disappointed. I don't know what I could do to help, but I feel an obligation, even an indebtedness, to your Public Affairs Department.'

  'Just stay here a while. I'll be back. I want to see the city.'

  'I could act as a guide if you wish.'

  'No. Thank you. I've got to do some thinking. But if you would wait, I may have something. But I'm not sure. Not sure at all.'

  When things went wrong they went wrong without end. Lew found he couldn't even get the right kind of cabdriver. He had come here looking for enough flaws in the patient's story to help convince Petrovitch and Sister Olav to remove the patient from any possible public scrutiny. But first he had to find the flaws himself, those things that might possibly create enough doubt to make his colleagues see the wisdom of further scientific isolation until that doubt was resolved

  He had been assured by the hotel that the cabdriver spoke English. So why did he look so confused?

  ‘I am most sorry,' said the driver, ‘I do not know any Flavian, mister. I don't know it at all'

  'I'm sorry,' said Lew. The Colosseum.' He had used the patient's term, the proper name for the Flavian amphitheatre, which of course the patient would always call the Flavian, for his divinity, his emperor, the man he knew almost two thousand years ago, the man whose father had built it.

  Lights played off the Colosseum - a shell of what the patient had known, just portions of the bare understructure without the statues in every opening to the street, or the fine marble skin. Auto traffic scurried around on new, soft asphalt, at a dizzying pace. Lew told the driver to stop.

  They probably never had night games here, thought Lew, such as he had known. He had played in the first night game of his college, and it had drawn much excitement. He remembered running into the stadium with the banks of light shining down and after the first hit, not feeling any difference. You were so tired at the end of those games you could have played them at the bottom of the ocean and happily drowned for the relief of knowing you didn't have to go on.

  He had been afraid of that first night game because it was new. Just as he had been afraid of his first college scrimmage, just as he had been afraid so recently of a managerial post in a delicate situation.

  He remembered that first practice. There was a halfback from Santa Fe, who was five foot three inches tall and had been famous in high school for scoring more touchdowns than anyone in the history of that city.

  There were wind sprints in the first practices, testing speed. Lew and the little fellow were matched, and they ran ten-yard wind-sprints together. When they had gone the hundred-yard field, he could see shock on the little fellow's face. Lew McCardle out of North Springs was six foot three and a half inches tall, two hundred and fifty-eight pounds, and every bit as fast as the smaller halfback. What had been sufficient for high school ball was woefully inadequate for college, because when there was so much money involved, you could always find a good big guy who was better than a good little guy. That was the law of money, and that was the law of athletics.

  Lew McCardle clapped his hands and let out a Texas yahoo that could have awakened the ghosts of Domitian and Nero themselves. He had found it He had found the flaw.

  He had been thrown off by the size of Romans. Eugeni was the perfect size for the average Roman. But not for the arena, not to be the premier gladiator during his time. That size would be more appropriate for Plutarch, the arena slave who kept being mentioned in Olava's notes, the one who was supposed to have been crucified and was supposed to be inadequate for the games.

  While Romans were rarely over five feet by average, a foremost gladiator had to be at least the size of Plutarch, maybe even as big as Lew himself. There was just too much money involved. Too much.

  He looked for the last time at the Flavian. This was the smaller arena, and it was so big to centuries of men who came afterwards that they copied this misnaming of the Flavian for their stadiums, calling them 'coliseums', not even knowing they referred to a
statue that was no longer there.

  Too much money. Too big. Eugeni, too little. Had to be.

  Back at the hotel, Lew found his professor drinking sherry and reading some Latin poetry.

  'I have something for you to do. It's sort of a rush project, which I will explain later, but you are not to tell anyone you represent us until later. Right now, you are just doing research for yourself.'

  'Why, thank you.'

  'We are interested in the finances of the games, their effect on the economies of the provinces and how far they reached, and how big financially they were.'

  "The greatest testimony can be borne by the European lion,' said the professor, somewhat confused but very happy at this moment.

  'I've never heard of a European lion,' said Lew. The professor grinned wickedly at his little joke. 'Of course you wouldn't. With only spears and swords and nets the Romans made more species extinct with their games than we have with helicopters and guns. The European lion was just such a one.'

  'One more question. A gladiator wouldn't be trained as both a pugilist who could throw a killing blow and a swordsman who could use, let's say, a spatha.’

  'Absolutely not,' said the professor. 'Your common gladiator was a trained slave. No lanista - an owner of gladiators - would invest money in training a slave in something he wouldn't use. No more than a coach would train one of your football players, Dr McCardle, as a tackle suited for some other position - one of those other fellows.'

  ‘A halfback, said Lew. 'Or a cornerback. You know, back home people watch a lot of football on television. And they see these little corner backs running around so quickly and getting hurt against big fellows. Those little fast cornerbacks are usually six feet tall.'