The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  'I told him I had faith in him also and in you, Eugeni.'

  ‘You reassure with confidence wonderfully,' I said.

  ‘Thank you,' said Olava. 'And Semyonus thanks you.' They were so grave in this matter, I did not want to hurt their feelings by telling them their reassurance was like waking someone to teach them to sleep. It was not reassuring. But what could anyone do to me now?

  They took me to a room like a small indoor arena, cut in half with a flat side, like actors might use. The lights went on and all three of us sat on chairs on the floor of this arena. Lewus was late. He arrived, smiling that smile I used for the arena. He wore dark clothes, as did Semyonus, dark and coloured being a sign of wealth, and white being worker clothes, but only in places like hospitals, and physicians were not workers but were on higher levels. Although colours themselves did not tell rank always, not even the expense of clothes, which was a hard thing to judge sometimes, even for those who lived in these times.

  Lewus carried machines in his arms, and Semyonus explained to Olava who explained to me that these machines were the machines recording the pictures that moved that I saw. Upon further questioning, I found out the ones used for dramas were bigger.

  Lewus made adjustments. The machines purred like a cat with a rusty metal belly. Lewus asked Olava to stand. He asked Semyonus to stand.

  'And he wants you to stand also, Eugeni,' said Olava. 'Between us.' It felt like a family, although we all would have had an argument over who was the parent.

  Olava related that Lewus said he did not know all that much about ancient Rome. He was from a small provincial community where the schooling was not as good as in the large cities of his country, a country which did not even exist in the time we were talking about. He would look to Olava and Semyonus to assist him. They had great educations, he said. Olava, with sombre countenance, assured her help. Semyonus did the same with haughtiness.

  Only I was alarmed. Olava told me not to worry. I told her I would worry less if she worried more. She asked what alarmed me.

  'What sort of a person tells you he is weak, and why does he want you to believe so? That is the danger.'

  Lewus asked what I talked about, and Olava translated into the almost indistinguishable grunts of his language, a language which Olava had explained lacked order. Through Olava, he asked what I should have to fear of him? He asked this several times, and only he and I knew he was already drawing blood in his battle. The interrogation was not long and it went like this:

  Through Olava, he established the great costs of the arena games in man-hours worked in gold, in silver, in animals, in blood.

  Essentially I said, Lewus was correct, very correct for someone who had lacked great schooling, someone who, despite his lack of schooling, carried the academician's highest title of doctorate, something which Olava, with all her great schooling, lacked. This warning to Olava to be aware went like rain upon stone. It landed and went away, as though it had never been at all.

  'If this man,' translated Olava for Lewus, 'were premier gladiator of Rome in Domitian's time, I think that's about 80 CE, he would literally be worth a city. In farmland, let me try to explain, he would be valued at most of the Ukraine or roughly one and a half times that of Iowa, plus you could throw in the worth of the Suez and Panama canals. Or if one likes cities, he would be worth, literally to the penny, the combination of Dallas and Marseilles. Astronomical.'

  Of these places I did not know.

  Then he said that, according to Olava's reports, I had been given my freedom by the Aurelii. Was this correct? 'It was,' I said.

  'Could they afford such a great gift, tantamount to letting General Motors run itself for itself?' said Olava for Lewus. She explained General Motors was a gigantic latifundia organisation which produced machines instead of grain.

  'The Aurelii were wealthy in heart as well as gold,' I said.

  Olava thought this a wonderful answer, translating for Lewus with a warm smile. Only 1 noticed that he began his next question before Olava had finished her translation.

  Was it correct that I had been convicted of maiestas with my name stricken from all records?

  'It was.'

  So that if I did really exist as such a gladiator, premier gladiator of the entire empire. I would not be known of today in any of the multitude of records. True.'

  'You seem to have an excellent understanding of the politics of the imperial period of ancient Rome. That and finances.'

  'I knew enough to keep bread and wine in my house,' I said.

  'And after killing, oh, a hundred and twenty men I guess, even knowing the disaster you would create, you decided not to slay one Vergilius Flavius Publius. Correct?'

  'Correct.'

  'And this Publius was a loudmouth, correct?' 'Correct.'

  'And you, who were supposed to have known slavery, and now knowing we are not Domitian's agents, admit you loved your wife and child, yet risked their lives to possible slavery, correct?'

  'That is correct.'

  'And a whole cohort takes you out into what was then barbarian lands far north, then poisons you, and then leaves you to die of cold. Correct?'

  'Correct.'

  'One more question. Why didn't you slay Publius?' 'In all honesty, I am not sure.'

  Olava entered into a discussion with Lewus in his own language, and he became heated on one question. And asking what that was, I was told he asked where the European lions were. And I said I presumed in the forest, and Olava said I had missed the point.

  'Lewus says, and correctly so, that games were so important to Rome that with nets and spears only they made an entire species extinct, something the world could not do until recently with the help of great motor-powered machinery. The European lion is the example.'

  And Lewus said two words and Olava said one.

  ‘Stand.'

  I stood.

  'And we are to believe that the energies of the known world could not find something more deadly than that, even though men were smaller then? No, too much. Too many things do not conform to logic' And to Semyonus, according to Olava's translation, he mentioned something about a frog. Semyonus, raging, yelled at the large man who, like an innocent child, suddenly looked upon the entire world with innocent wonder. Lewus knew only what Lewus knew, he said. This from Olava, who translated.

  So Lewus had created great doubt about my story, not the least being because of my size.

  'He didn't prove you were a liar, Eugeni. He didn't prove that at all. He only created some doubts. That's all he did.'

  'Perhaps that is enough,' I said.

  'For what?' she asked.

  'For whatever he wants,' I said.

  She explained he had come from a provincial place and, despite his schooling in science was still a simple peasant sort of person, as were most from his area of his country. She suffered from the common Roman notion that provincials always told the truth because they never learned to lie like civilized people.

  But in the arena, which drew from all places, we knew that lying was most natural to the uncivilized, even though civilized man had perfected it as an art called 'oratory'. One only has to look at a child to know that lying is quite a natural thing, like breathing. The telling of the truth is something that has to be learned like any other painful training. And this is so.

  Twenty Four

  Lew McCardle felt the sweat on him when he left the operating room with Dr Petrovitch yelling after him, Sister Olav stunned, and that little olive-skinned fellow smiling. He could have sworn the short, muscular guy was the only one of the three who understood what was happening. But of course, he couldn't know. Probably.

  McCardle returned to his office and dropped the movie camera and the tripod upside down, camera first, leaning against the wall. He wouldn't need the film. The camera was there for Sister Olav and Petrovitch to have seen him use. So they would think about their size and the size of the subject. It was their minds Lew was working on.

  A sm
all refrigerator, slightly larger than a bread box, balanced atop a Jaeger's Paedeia - a book on life in the world of classical antiquity. Lew opened the door and put a hand around a chilled bottle of imported Schlitz, which he needed. His throat was dry and his body perspired, and the cold beer felt good going into his belly and easing off the tingles from the night before. He knew he was drinking too much, but after this he would moderate it. Things were just going too quickly to work on not drinking.

  He cleaned manila folders off the two leather chairs facing his desk. The desk was covered with notes, beer-bottle caps, and a Latin-English dictionary, opened, covering the phone which Lew made sure was not on the hook. The room smelled faintly of beer and last week's whisky. It had been spotless just a few weeks ago It was small. It was cluttered. And it was a great place to work.

  Petrovitch and Sister Olav should be coming right away. It was trickier to play with people than with rock formations. He reminded himself he had not wanted this and felt very good that, once faced with this sort of thing, he could work it quite well. Not the least asset for this being his size and down-home Texas attitude, which could be so deceptive. Lew took another beer.

  Dr Petrovitch and Sister Olav came into the office without knocking. Lew offered Semyon a beer, which was declined. Lew cleared papers off his own chair and, with a beer in each hand, sat down, resting his legs on his desk, creating heel marks on notes he would no longer need.

  'What's going on?' demanded Petrovitch. Sister Olav blinked nervously.

  '1 don't know. You tell me,' said McCardle. 'I'm not the expert. I look to you people to clarify things. I just had some questions.'

  'You have cast a pall of doubt upon this project,' said Sister Olav.

  'I was sharing my own doubts, Sister. Again, I'm not the expert.' 'I believe Eugeni,' said Sister Olav. 'I believe he is what he says he is. Religious, Dr McCardle, does not mean naive. I have run several tests myself, not the least of which was having him listen to an old tape recording of Vatican Radio.'

  'What did he do? Translate all of it?' said Lew, who knew better.

  'No, he barely understood a word here and there, which would be a sure sign that he did not study Latin, because then he would have undoubtedly come across the Vulgate used by the Church. No, I believe him.'

  Dr Petrovitch had one question. Was Lew McCardle, PhD, now claiming the subject was not discovered eight point two metres in the ice? Is that what Dr McCardle was now claiming, because if he was, he should get his honest cards on the table.

  'No, that's not what I'm claiming, Semyon. I just know that back home when someone comes up with something super ring-ding, it's better not have no hay between the ears,' said Lew.

  'And by that you mean what?' asked Semyon.

  'If you say you cured a head cold, nobody is going to care whether the patient fibs or not. But in something like this, they're going to, excuse the expression, Sister, look up his ass with microscopes, and when we say not only have we successfully managed a resurrecting process, if you will, but that the subject is nearly two thousand years old and, wait a second, ladies and gentlemen not only a gladiator, but the premier gladiator, I mean, we had better have our facts straight.'

  'Eugeni is not a liar,' said Sister Olav.

  'Neither am I,' said Petrovitch.

  'Gee,' said Lew, shrugging his massive shoulders, 'I didn't mean to say that. I'm sorry if 1 gave that impression. Real sorry. I am just one of three. I have only one vote. I'll do what you say. But you know and I know there are serious questions here, which I wouldn't want to attempt to answer in the fanfare and glare of publicity.'

  'What publicity? We are working in scientific isolation,' said Petrovitch.

  'Not if you listen to the crazy talk around the university.'

  'What sort of talk?' said Sister Olav.

  'That we've got Julius Caesar or Marc Antony in that private room,' lied Lew. 'That we resurrected some great historical figure. I don't know who's been talking or saying what to some young nurses, but the word is out that Dr Petrovitch has produced a miracle.'

  Dr Petrovich shook his head sadly. 'Just what I didn't want.'

  'What I'm saying is, all of us are going to look pretty damned foolish academically until these questions I've raised have been answered. I'm not only talking about me, but your department Semyon, and maybe your church, Sister Olav. It's gonna look like, excuse the expression, some bullshit hustle, and by that I mean we're going to look like frauds. And maybe that won't be the worst part of it. There's going to be more international noise around us than the biggest circus. We can forget any honest scientific inquiry once Marc Antony here gets on that television station in this town and starts beaming his nonsense around. Your reports, Sister are all over this place. That's one effective little liar we've got.'

  'He's a showman,' said Sister Olav. 'They staged bloody shows then.'

  'That's neither here nor there,' said Petrovitch, obviously realizing that a showman and television were not exactly combined guarantees of scientific integrity.

  'If your reports are correct, Sister Olav, and I believe they are, our little fellow in there was at one point giving Semyon, or trying to sell Semyon, a special lurid sex technique in which you lost weight, too. This is not a person who can be let loose upon the world just yet.'

  'He is not a liar,' said Sister Olav, standing firm beside the chair, refusing to sit. 'He is not a liar.'

  'We have no evidence but your supposition, Lew,' said Semyon, forgetting his politeness and sitting down despite Sister Olav's standing. 'Besides, I am offended by all the dramatics, camera cross-examination, and everything. You hardly take part and when you do, you try to cast doubt on this achievement.'

  'Yes. I did. I did try to cast doubt. Because a lot smarter people will do it outside, when this becomes public, and it's becoming public. A lot smarter people with great backgrounds in Latin, who don't have some interest in protecting the patient.'

  'What does that mean ?' asked Sister Olav. Petrovitch looked up at her with some wonder. His left eyebrow cocked. He was quiet.

  'That means, I, a geologist, a North Springs, Texas, boy, provincial, if you will, have found out that not only didn't gladiators get trained in many weapons, but that a normal-sized little fellow could not possibly have been the foremost gladiator of his time. Impossible, even if he did have agents making sure of who and what he met in the arena. It's an economic impossibility, and even I can prove it. And I'm not a Latin scholar.'

  Petrovitch had a new gold cigarette case. He removed a French Gauloise cigarette and lit it with his British Dunhill lighter.

  'I don't know,' he said sombrely. 'You might be right.'

  'Just a minute, Dr McCardle, I think you're herding us like some of your cattle on your ranch,' said Sister Olav.

  'Never had a ranch, ma'am. Never had cows. Never even had a shootout. I earned a doctorate, not a notch on a gun.'

  'Not all notches, Dr McCardle, are carved in gun handles.'

  'I'm yours to command, ma'am.'

  'I doubt that,' said Sister Olav. 'But was what you have put forth in your cross-examination of our charge-and it was a cross-examination, and Eugeni is our charge - reason for us to believe he is lying? I don't think this is so.'

  'Neither do I,' said McCardle. He finished one beer and balanced the bottle behind a plastic case that was supposed to organize file folders. Petrovitch finally took a beer. Sister Olav declined an offer of one with a shake of her head.

  'I think he believes what he is saying. That's not the point. The point is, and this is the crucial one, he could not possibly have been, what is it, the foremost gladiator of the empire at his time. Impossible.'

  'He would be about the average size in ancient Rome, not small,' said Sister Olav.

  McCardle agreed. She was correct except for the crucial economics of things. He pointed out the vast amount of wealth connected with the games. She agreed that was correct. With that sort of wealth, they were bound to get larger
, faster men in the arena, McCardle said. Many were six feet tall in a civilization where five feet was average, if not a little bit tall. While there were no records of this, it was basic logic that a five-foot man was not going to regularly defeat what must have been an unending flow of six-footers.

  Sister Olav pointed out there were no records of the numbers and sizes of arena people. McCardle shook his head. With the kind of economics that went into the games, there had to be a flow of incredibly fast and skilful giants, with longer reaches than Eugeni. ,

  Sister Olav said she had read of fights where smaller men ruled their fisticuff divisions. Dr Petrovitch said Muhammad Ali had beaten bigger men.

  'Have you ever stood next to Muhammad Ali ? I once did. He's like a building. He only looks small compared to some other giant he fights. The best boxer, pound for pound, was Sugar Ray Robinson, another American, and he literally would be killed if he stepped into a ring with any of the heavyweights. In America we have a game called basketball. The short, fast men are six feet five inches tall, six feet four, six feet three. That's short. And they're incredibly fast. In football, those speedy little quarter backs we see are brick buildings, and those linemen are giants and run faster than you can believe. And that's just American sports, and today with all the millions of dollars we put into our professional sports, we have yet to build an arena the size our Julius Caesar says he fought in.'

  'The colosseum in Rome held only fifty thousand people,' said Dr Petrovitch.

  'That's the small one, Semyon,' said McCardle. 'The big one was where the Vatican is now. It held one hundred and fifty thousand people, larger than many of the city-states at that time, built without gas engines, electricity, or any of the power tools we know today. And that guy ruled there for what, ten, twenty years? C'mon.'

  'You seem to know quite a few things for someone who says he is not an expert, Dr McCardle,' said Sister Olav.