The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

'But your god did not have freedom,' I said. 'And he is the greatest of all gods, greater than Rome itself.' He had to be, in their minds of course, because years were numbered from his supposed birth until recently, the years being called 'Before Christ, BC and then after his birth, 'Anno Domini, AD', until the god Science, which did not like to be called a god, was given homage by calling years BCE and CE, meaning Before Christian Era, and Christian Era. And by that it meant you did not have to believe Olava's cult had produced the single god when you counted years. We were in the twentieth century. Domitian's reign being in the first century from here, but in our seventh century because we dated everything from the founding of the city, the city being Rome, of course.

  My attempts to comfort her brought her to tears. She told me how good her god was, and that often he was so mysteriously good, we could not perceive how good he was. Basically, he knew what was better for us than we did ourselves.

  'As you said, good woman. So do not grieve for me, but grieve for those who are not under the protection of the great god.' And truly great he was, for he had survived Mithras and Juno and Mars and all the other gods. How could there be any worry with a great god like this?

  'You do not believe that. You only say that because you are so good. You are a good person, Eugeni. I know that. A better person than many who sing songs of love. You have goodness in your heart.'

  Again, she confused me greatly for this god was supposed to reward those who had goodness and, if I were to be rewarded, what was the worry ? At this she wept.

  We talked through the morning and afternoon, and she asked me about my early life, not as someone recording, but as a friend. So I told her. But I told her a lie because she was already so overwrought. I told her of the good of my mother and father and how, while slavery was a poor way to exist, there was much love and always food. For why would a master deny food to those who served him?

  I even told her why I did not slay Publius. When he mentioned the name of the Jewish god. I knew then that this man's blood should be spared because her god was greater than the empire itself.

  'I went to Oxford, not Saint Tweedledum's,' she said in a new assault of weeping. 'You are beautiful, blessed, good-hearted, and you are a liar, Eugeni.'

  'I am not a liar, good woman. If you are my friend, you would not call me that.'

  In explanation she said Oxford was a school of great discipline and Saint Tweedledum's was not a school, but represented a somewhat overly pleasant and simplified view of the world, the sort of school her cult sometimes supported.

  'But I tell you, Eugeni, my God shines brightest and most glorious in the blood of His cross, true and painful He is beyond pain and is truth, and while at first. He may seem to be discredited by the truth, yet the full truth shows Him more glorious than any schoolgirl wish. This know you, when you said He is stronger than Rome, as but comfort for me, you said true. And don't patronize me, Eugeni.'

  'If you want the truth, Olava, let me ask you why so fine a person as you wastes her learned life in that slave religion? True friend, you abstain from men, but what is your reward? You do not dress as well as a proper virgin should, for our vestal virgins dressed with jewels and splendid whiteness, even the slaves who did their hair cost more than all the garments you ever wore.'

  And this made her happy, for she liked combat of wits. We were too late to be served food, and we went to the food-preparing area, called a 'kitchen' in this Germanic language. It was on the lowest floor of the building. It had large boards for cutting and storage boxes which preserved things through cold, and when I saw the knives hanging above the wooden workbench, I laughed.

  Olava wanted to know what was funny, and I climbed on the bench to reach a blade, which, barring the thin, smooth pommel, was one of the best designed short swords I had ever seen. Well pointed for thrust and sharp for blocking slash, if that should be open, and solid for a block. I pressed the point into the wood. Flexible, too. Beyond belief. One would not find oneself holding a useless pommel with one's life ended at the crack of the blade. Not this one. And it was strong.

  'Eugeni, are you sure you were a gladiator?' Olava asked. She prepared fruit and bread and cheese herself.

  'Yes, why do you ask now ?'

  'The way you handle that knife. You seemed unable to stick it far into the wood. You seemed, well, slow and weak. Have you lost your strength ?'

  'I would say I am almost up to my peak, not far off it.’ 'But you moved so slowly with so little force.'

  I put the blade horizontally into the wood.

  'Yes, that's it. It seems so slow and lacking in force. There is no force in it. It looks like no movement at all.'

  'It is deceiving, Olava. Come. Mark where the blade went in.'

  'Eugeni, sometimes the mind plays tricks. Perhaps you wished to be a gladiator, and after so many years in the ice, I don't know what happens to the mind, but perhaps you adopted some way of life that would be appealing to you. You were in a comatose state for a long while here in this hospital And you are not all that muscular, in truth.'

  I looked at the blade. How did I know she was not right ? I did not even know the difference between today and tomorrow and yesterday and centuries before. The thrust seemed good to me. I pulled out the blade.

  'But I remember the training,' I said. 'Even my muscles remember. How could I remember the training? The training was harder than the others. Much harder. I was a murderer at eight. They didn't care if I survived. I remember the training, Olava, and have scars from fights.'

  'Do you, Eugeni?'

  ‘I remember remembering.'

  'Do you, Eugeni?'

  'Yes.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'I think so,' I said, and what a grand time it was to doubt myself, for suddenly I faced a man who wanted to kill me with a blade. Olava had thoroughly stripped me in that instant of the armour of my mind. The large man I had kicked to the ground had entered the culina, called kitchen, and approached with the tip of his thrusting blade without its blunted tip. Lewus and Semyonus, trying to restrain him, but at a distance. Suddenly his movements seemed incredibly fast, he was formidable in his rage. He threw me a weapon. I almost picked it up for defence, thinking he knew better. I backed away quickly from his rage, tripping on the weapon he had thrown.

  I tried to keep one of the backed chairs between him and me. He was going to kill me. I knew it. I had but a meat knife in my hand.

  And then he drew blood from my cheek. And where my mind had failed, my muscles remembered. One does not survive the arena without some skills as deep as bone.

  Lew McCardle stumbled into his hotel suite, his shirt front covered with vomit, his body trembling. James Houghton Laurie was talking to three subordinates around the large coffee table in the sitting room of the suite.

  McCardle told the subordinates to get out. There were things they weren't supposed to hear. He took a drink out of one of their hands and gulped it himself.

  'Move!' he yelled at them. 'Get the fuck out of here.' To Laurie he raised a hand for silence. Then he took Laurie's drink. The speckled sausage skin on Laurie's face sagged. He stood up. McCardle signalled him to sit McCardle got a bottle of bourbon from the bar and poured his glass half-full. It had just contained gin before.

  'Everything's going to be all right OK,' said McCardle. 'Get out of the country, and don't phone me again. It's my trouble.'

  'Lew, I thought everything was in a nice, safe seal. We were going to celebrate. I only came because you had said in your message that, quote, "the egg is in the shell and will be in the country for months." Did I misinterpret ?'

  'No. Something happened. Terrible. I miscalculated. Goddamn I never want to see that again. I've seen men killed. I've seen death Jesus, I've seen the state troopers pick up pieces off the railway tracks. Those were accidents. Oh, God! God. It was awful!'

  'What happened?'

  'You don't want to know. You're not involved,' said McCardle. 'Just go.'

  'So I'll have
to lie on some witness stand somewhere. I won't remember a word you say.' 'You don't have to know this, Mr Laurie.' 'I want to,' said Laurie, ‘I wouldn't :f I were you.' 'You're not me.'

  When McCardle told Laurie the revived patient had said he was a gladiator, Laurie looked up as though presented a giant Chris mas present.

  'Really,' he said and demanded all details. General information would not do. How big was he, how did he move, did he have any unusual sizes to anything? This, from the chairman of the board of Houghton.

  'Eugenianus is small by our standards.'

  ‘In everything ?' asked Laurie.

  ‘I don't know. I don't remember.'

  'Well, what happened, Lew? Just settle down.'

  Lew tried to explain. His eyes blinked uncontrollably. He kept focusing on nowhere.

  There was sufficient data to indicate he was not a gladiator and, in order to get him and the Russian doctor and the nun out of the hospital where rumours were growing, I staged an exhibition, and one thing led to another, and we have a mutilated body on our hands. I had to try to get them the hell out of that hospital because publicity would ultimately compromise our bidding atmosphere. I thought it would work.'

  Laurie wanted to know more about the mutilated body, exactly how it happened, who did what to whom, where Lew was standing, was the nun there, what did she do ? Sometimes women went sexually crazy at the sight of blood.

  'Mr Laurie. Please get out of here. I ran here myself. Jesus, get out of here.'

  'You should have phoned. It would have been faster,' said Laurie. 'You worry a great lot, boy.'

  The red-crease smile appeared on the tan blotched face. James Houghton Laurie wanted to hear everything, now.

  Lew sat on a couch near the table. He had staged a match with an Olympic fencer against the subject. The subject refused to fight and kicked the fencer, who took it to heart and later found the subject in the hospital kitchen. The fencer had a known temper. Lew and the doctor had tried to stop the fencer, who had sharpened a foil. The fencer was dead now. There was massive readjusting to do now. And that was it.

  'From what ah know, Lewellyn McCardle, Jr, a boy from North Springs ain't about to puke up his clothes from seeing a fatal sticking.'

  The old man was enjoying this, Lew realized. He was playing Texas Ranger again.

  'No one should ever have to see how a gladiator kills,' said McCardle.

  'From the beginning. Who was standin' wheah? Ah jes wanna get the fixings on this here brawl.'

  And Lew gave him the fixings and all:

  'Eugeni was in the kitchen with a large meat knife. The fencer entered, chased him to a corner, and cut a cheek. Then, Eugeni smiled very big in a large, comic gesture, and proceeded to dismember and ultimately disembowel someone fencing for his life, all the while smiling and bowing.'

  'Like what, what first ?'

  Eugeni had appeared to move slowly; he caught the tip of the fencer's foil with the tip of the salad knife and, as though the two weapons were soldered, he moved it with the tip until everyone could see he was dominating and directing the fencer's foil.

  'Like you would hold a two-year-old's hand and move it around. That easily,' said McCardle.

  Then Eugeni, who was half a foot shorter, did the same thing with the two fingers of his left hand, while his knife teased the genitals of the fencer. No, Eugeni did not cut him there. Still with a big grin, he pushed his belly into the fencer's belly, then turned around so that the fencer's sword arm was under his own arm. He was showing the fencer how to move. He yelled into the fencer's ear that he should practise more. He accused the fencer of not listening properly, took one step back and took off an ear. The knife seemed to move slowly, just touch the ear. Then the ear was off clean, and there was a hole surrounded by blood on the side of the fencer's head. Then he accused the fencer of talking too much. That was the fault of his poor training. He took off the upper lip and part of the nose. Then he looked as though he slipped, and the desperate fencer lunged, and Eugeni opened his belly like a surgeon and with skilful hand yanked out his intestines and dragged him stumbling around the kitchen. He looked to the nun for the death signal, and getting none, he finished off the poor man, spinning him over the butcher blocks and taking off the head.'

  'I saw a head go in Riyadh once. The Saudis did it with one stroke. It's not like you imagine. It's not that easy taking off a head. They had this African, black as a mine shaft, I mean it was black, and it was crying,' said Laurie. 'Mr Laurie, please.

  'Yup,' said Laurie. 'You're right. I've got to go. You've troubles on your hands, and we're just going to have to do whatever the hell we can do. The tight, exclusive find is gone. It's going to show. But don't feel all that bad, Lew. Nobody knows for sure but us.'

  'I don't understand,' said Lew.

  'Well, we've got to rush. Cat's got to be out of the bag soon, and if we rush, we can't drive the kind of bargain we want. We're not dealing with fools nowadays. Everyone knows oil. It could have been nice. It could have been seven, maybe eight points.'

  'What?'

  'On the American Stock Exchange. Houghton Oil. It's sixty-seven and three-quarters. If we had the right bidding atmosphere, with plenty of time to haggle and not rush, we could have been sixty-four, sixty-four and a half, without the market doing anything.'

  'Eight points? Is that what "big" was?' asked Lew McCardle in horror.

  'If you're Houghton people and you're talking Houghton, it's more than ten per cent. Give us as much time as you can, Lew,' said Laurie, picking up a little overnight bag and checking for anything else in the room that might be his. 'You know, when you're blocking on a pass play, you keep the other guys away from your quarterback. You don't try to stop them completely, only sort of misdirect them. But I don't have to tell you, Lew. You're an old Maky tackle and you're gonna give us your best. You'd kill to protect your quarterback if you had to. Because you know Houghton takes care of those who take care of Houghton.'

  Laurie shook hands, winked, patted Lew on the shoulder, and was out of the room. Shortly thereafter, a man in a business suit entered, put a pistol on the table near Lew McCardle, and was leaving when Lew said:

  'What the hell is that for ?'

  'I don't know. And I don't know you,' said the man.

  Twenty six

  Perhaps it was Olava's hysterical shrieking. Or Lewus's vomiting. Or Semyonus staring open-mouthed, emitting the same low grunt like a chorus of deep-throated birds sentenced to a lifetime of a single note. My body was already in its dance of glory to share the triumph with them. But there was no yelling of approval, no stamping of feet, no cheers with my name for a match that would have glorified Rome. If Publius had had the strength and quickness of this slain gladiator, I would now be surrounded by my wife and child and wealth and power, living a life devoted to my wants. I would have been manipulating a good marriage for Petronius. I would have been sharing my wisdom with Domitian, but not too much. I would have been moving my wealth to even stronger positions.

  Instead, I was jumping up and down in a slave work area for a cultist, a physician, and, from what I could understand, someone akin to one of my wealthier slaves who managed my affairs under my close scrutiny.

  I ran. And when I started running, I realized it was what I wanted to do. I ran for the running of it, as though if I ran hard enough and long enough, something I desperately wanted would either catch me or fall in front of me. I searched for a way away. I was running home. I was running.

  Running hadn't changed.

  Through the corridors I ran and down the iron steps I ran and, unlike the streets of Rome, here I did not know where I was going.

  People let out startled little gasps as I crossed the big hall to the glass doors that opened to the night. I ran, seeing the fast-moving lights of what Olava called automobiles. Out into this strange land of machines I ran.

  I ran towards a wooded hill I had seen from the sun porch. The roads and cities were the barbarians' arena; the fores
ts, I felt sure, were more familiar ground. It was good that this was at the edge of the city, for cities are confusing to strangers.

  I was clumsy through the trees, for, in truth, I was a city person all my life - except for the years of the latifundia and those first precious moments in the hills of Greece, when I was with my mother and grandfather as a family.

  I collided with a tree and paused in the darkness, smelling the freshness of the forest, feeling the chill finally come over me, my weapon hand bloody to the elbow. I was cold. Behind me I could see the lights of the hospital far off and, in my isolation, could hear yelling, made faint by distance. My breath stayed with me, but weakly. I sat down under a tree on what felt like a leafy patch of ground, and for the first time since I had entered the arena before Domitian, I was free.

  It was delicious. Through the leaves above, I could see the white specks of the heavens. Lewus's people had taken the gods from these very heavens by walking on the moon.

  It was chilly, but the chill was a good discomfort. I was free. I shut my eyes in the joy of my escape. When I opened them, the good chill was a gnawing cold and I was hungry. The blood of the swordsman was now clotted on my tunic and my weakened right leg pained. The stars were no longer in the sky, for the infinite black background was now a close grey blanket in the time before the sun.

  I was in a wooded land where leaves from a previous autumn covered the ground. If I had fire, I could burn the cold from me, and then I realized that I did not know how to make a fire. Since I had entered the lanista training school, slaves or others had always prepared my fires.

  In the forests I would not be on even ground with the people of today. Most of my life had been spent in the city, being served for my minor needs. I realized then that my long-ago dreams of the hills of Greece were just that. I belonged in no hill country; for I, who had imagined myself as an innocent lad from the hills of Greece thrust into a cruel Roman world, was in truth a Roman. In my habits, in my comfort, especially in the scheming of my mind, I was inescapably Roman. Not because of my father's blood, but because of my mind. A Greek lad of the hills would have had a fire by this time. A Roman of the city would sit helpless, shivering, waiting for a slave - a Greek slave - to do the work for him.