The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  'Sacrilege. How dare you?'

  'No one worships Minerva today.'

  ‘I will.'

  'You never did before.'

  'I want to now. She is so forgotten. So alone.’

  'I cannot let you do that. I cannot let you make a prayer to Minerva in that temple of my God.'

  'I will do it,' I said pushing her aside. She had good speed and bulk, but she was not athletic, and I pushed her away easily. And she fell. The forum was quite reasonable, surrounded by many buildings, a far finer arrangement than in the northern countries. Yet in this square were the leavings of water here and there. Olava fell in one. And people looked out from windows, for nothing entertains like someone else's distress. I marched forward to the little temple, stripped of much of its external marble. I could feel Olava run after me, clumping along with her big body.

  I let her grab me and carried her forward. She held on. Men with broad felt hats came, yelling things. Someone threw something at them. I slipped my blade out of my pants leg. This forum was as good as any place to honour the dead.

  It was, of course, chaos. Sister Olava had to put herself between Eugeni and the carabinieri, who thought their size and authority gave them an advantage.

  She had noticed that the respect had disappeared with her black nun's habit, to be replaced by a sexual concern, an almost hovering, hidden agenda for bed with so many passing men. It was tiring at first, and somewhat strange, then complimentary, but more often annoying.

  Now the carabinieri were at it, going to impress her, she knew, with the way they handled the little man who had thrown her in the puddle. But Eugeni had that blade and what they could not know was that, with all their size and numbers, they would more than likely be only victims, fast and bloody victims in an ancient game for an ancient reason they did not know.

  The carabinieri threatened him with gestures. The townspeople, now looking out of their windows around the square, were yelling down. Eugeni was yelling back. It was drama to him.

  One carabiniere started to close on the knife. She got in the way. And obviously he thought she was protecting the little fellow instead of him.

  Her right hand stinging from where the heel of it had scraped the stone paving, and the mud tasting bitter in her mouth, Olava kept easily in front of the carabinieri with fast moves, which seemed sluggish for Eugeni, who was around her with ease.

  Eugeni, apparently feeling the crowd, became someone else again. A grin came to his hard face, so wide it hardly looked as though a mouth could contain it. He made sweeping hand gestures to the people looking out the windows. Some started to clap. Others yelled. He ran to the central fountain, right through the legs of one of the carabinieri.

  He leaped on the fountain, then ran around the rim of its basin, then jumped on the back of one of the carabinieri. Olava knew someone was going to get killed. They did not understand he was only exercising them for the slaughter.

  They could only think of him as some agile miscreant they were going to fine or jail when they got their hands on him.

  The carabiniere Eugeni had mounted tried to spin off. In desperation he lunged backward, but Eugeni was off his shoulders and dancing around. He offered the blade handle first to another carabiniere, running up for support. The man reached for it, and got air, the blade was at his throat, and then it flashed, and it wasn't there again. The people knew a performance when they saw one. The carabiniere, who could have been killed, wasn't.

  Two thousand years and a crowd was a crowd, and this man came alive for it. He pretended to fall. He lay stricken, on the stones of the square, until a carabiniere tried to get a handcuff on him. Then his legs closed around the caribiniere's head, and it appeared as though the man were performing a homosexual act, but Olava noticed that the groin area really pressed against the bridge of the nose. The little gladiator would never risk so sensitive a part of his body to teeth.

  While hiding this fact easily, Eugeni undulated his body as though in sexual rapture. Laughter filled the square.

  Eugeni was up and running, falling to his knees, supplicating the carabinieri until coins rang out, hitting the stones with sharp little pings. People threw paper lire, also, and the carabinieri, no fools, decided to retrieve their self-respect by pretending to be part of the act. They knew he was too much for them.

  Olava told Eugeni to give them the knife, and she would get him another. He asked if there would be one as good elsewhere, and she told him there were many in almost any kitchen.

  But he would not give up the knife. He made great comic gestures and the carabinieri, now playing along, did not try to take the knife but treated it as a stage prop. For if it were a stage prop and not a weapon, they would not have to risk embarrassment.

  And thus they drove from the town and the once temple of Minerva, and Olava, her nerves shredded by these frightening and strange new duties she had, finally pulled the car to the side of the road and told Eugeni exactly what had happened to Christianity. It was about time.

  The old gods of Rome were dead. Gone many, many centuries. In its place was Christianity and its many sects, no longer a Jewish sect, but a far bigger religion than the worship of any god Eugeni ever feigned worshipping. Any cult ever.

  It was a desecration to make sacrifices to Minerva in a Christian church, just as much as it would be to smash a statue of Minerva when the temple belonged to Minerva. Did Eugeni understand?

  What, he asked, was her god afraid of? It must be a weak god to be so fearful of one small prayer to Minerva, now dead these centuries.

  She knew he was jousting with her, but she could not control her rage. She screamed out helplessly that Eugeni was not cooperating, that he could understand if he wanted to understand, and he wasn't trying. It did no good. He answered that he had made his prayer to Minerva by the little games to mark her passing. She was a nice goddess, he said. Nicer than Olava's god.

  She knew this was a challenge, but she was too tired to take it. She found a hotel and begged Eugeni for no more games. He practised shaving with a razor, while she slumped on to the bed and tried to think.

  She had no idea what would happen next, other than that it was something she could no more handle than could an emperor with a riot on his hands. Already everything felt beyond her grasp, or even reach, it seemed. She was so unprepared for this sort of test. And in a moment of fury she prayed, not as she had been taught to pray, but as a Roman might pray who had just built a temple to a god and now demanded performance.

  God, she said in her mind, you will help me tomorrow because I won't be able to handle it, and I can't handle things right now. So do it. It is a real effort being chaste. But I'll do it. But you've got to help me tomorrow. There's just no other way. I am not getting through tomorrow without your help. So do it. Because your performance has been minimal until now.

  Minimal, she told God, and sleep became easier. She longed for morning prayers and evening prayers, and most of all she longed to go to the altar and open her mouth and receive God on her tongue in the form of the eucharist. She longed for people who prayed as she prayed. She longed for the mass. She longed for the convent. She even longed for the familiar acts of penance. This was so hard, and tomorrow would be the hardest

  She felt a peace come over her, having given the responsibility for that next day to God. And if anything went wrong it was his fault, primarily for choosing her and giving her this test which she felt was beyond her, especially when it was said he never gave a test beyond what a person could do. The score so far was one dead, one in Russia, probably in prison, and she herself being whittled down to the emotions and stability of a child.

  One more day, she thought. If she could do one more day. Eugeni finished shaving, and went to sleep in a chair curled around his knife, the pommel near his cheek.

  She was so tired. Nerve-drawn tired. Bang-slapped tired, beyond tired. She could go only so long without knowing whether Eugeni would fall on that knife in deep depression or cut up a village.T
hose carabinieri had been so close to death. Just a flick away, had one done something to launch Eugeni, as he had been launched in the kitchen back in the university hospital.

  She could imagine the blood on the stones, and there would be no laughing from surrounding sidewalks then.

  It was hard going to sleep this night, despite her weariness, and she lifted her head from the pillow of this hotel room and stared at her charge curled up on the chair.

  She had never needed anyone as much as she had needed him the first night alone with him. He could have taken her sexually, she knew, for she would have done anything just to keep someone holding her.

  She had been shattered that night; her will had been broken into uselessness. She was sure he did not understand what her chastity meant in relationship to her God. But he did know vows and obviously knew her and what the breaking of that vow would mean, and he gave her, that first night, the same gift she now passed on to her God - her virginity. He could have taken it, and not taking it, forswore it forever.

  She knew, as frightened as she was now, she would not be as weak as that first night away without permission from the convent.

  She turned in the soft bed, and she could not sleep. She needed sleep, a mind-cleansing rest, more desperately than she could remember.

  But one did not force sleep, any more than one tried to force the grace of God.

  She had not slept well since that day they left the cabin, and each moment driving she feared, unreasonably, she knew, being stopped by some policeman and asked if Eugeni was the man who had mercilessly butchered the world's finest fencer. Was he that man ? Was she the nun from Ringerike ?

  That would not happen, she knew. Lewus had paid the price of their freedom. So had Semyonus. She thought of herself now as Olava and the dead American as Lewus and the Russian doctor as Semyonus - Eugeni's terms.

  Everyone had paid a price, and she had thought, that night back in the cabin, hers might be the easiest. She had thought there would be some apprehension, by staying away from her order for a while. But she had not expected this.

  This was nightmare.

  The leaving without permission had unhinged something so deep in her that she only now realized she had felt invincible before, never knowing how strong indeed she was, until that strength had left her and she found herself just begging to be held at any price that night, just to have warm human arms around her.

  Now at the centre of her being was a frightened little girl who had run away from home. She had never needed before, and she needed now. She needed her mind back again with all its security. She needed to know for certain she was doing right. If she knew that, she could be strong again.

  Eugeni was speaking in his sleep. Olava listened. A word here or there was recognizable, much like the first tapes of his voice. He slept with that kitchen knife inside his curled arms like a child with a doll. He talked much in his sleep. The only night he hadn't talked in his sleep, perhaps, was that one that lasted centuries.

  He had seen her weaker than anyone had ever seen her. And he had given the hand of a friend, when he could have been a lover. Perhaps she was not beautiful enough in his eyes. Whatever it was, she was grateful that on that one night a man could have had her, that man did not. He helped her with her gift to her God. It was so hard to know him. He went from depressed to happy and back again so quickly, she was not sure what triggered these things. Was he insane? Olava wondered. Would any other response be anything but sane ?

  He wept easily, but perhaps not too easily given the way he was raised. Perhaps those tears, when he saw the Via Flaminia, when he looked for that town that had gone, were a gift of God, like a wound bleeding clean, or like the soul getting rid of pain it could not handle.

  Sometimes he wept with his hands over his face, but at the Via Flaminia moisture rimmed his eyes, and he was quiet. The wound was deep.

  Olava looked up at the dark ceiling and listened to her charge mutter away. Dreams, too, were where people cleansed their wounds.

  And now Olava realized why she was not allowing herself to sleep. Because if she slept, she would have to awaken. And that would be tomorrow.

  And she did not want tomorrow.

  For tomorrow was Rome. She had promised Lewus and Semyonus that Eugeni would walk the city he had lived in. He would return where he had been. This had been agreed on. She would first take him out of the country, and then, it seemed so natural and wise at the time, take him back to Rome.

  'Show him where he has been,' Lewus had said.

  But what terrified Olava this night, what she had not understood in the cabin in Norway, when nobility and correctness seemed like such a clear duty, was how Eugeni would react to Rome.

  If the little temple of Minerva, a goddess he had made no special sacrifice to when she was worshipped back in pagan times, could evoke that display in the square in an instant...

  What then would he do when he returned to Rome and found home had left him so long ago ?

  Thirty Two

  Rome?

  Did she expect me to believe this was Rome? Did she expect anyone to believe this was Rome?

  All right, I could grant a road falling to disrepair. But did time have teeth to eat stone as it ate all flesh ?

  'Yes, Eugeni,' she answered.

  She was highly distraught, a condition which at times was hard to discern because Olava's natural way was an inner tautness. But today it was worse, so I went silently from one disaster to another.

  I had expected damage, but Olava had said there were preserved things. Nothing was preserved. There were poor, pitiful, worn stones. It could have been anywhere. The lovely temple at Caesar's forum was a mound of rubble and a few worn columns. I tried to remember what the temple had said above it. If I remembered, the temple was beautiful white marble with fine sculpture above inscriptions that the Julian Caesar had donated this temple. It was to grand, one could smell the incense in the entire forum. Now there were bushes and grass, and some wildflowers, as there probably had been before the founding of the city.

  'To the left, there were statues, Olava, and the workmanship was so fine you would have sworn they could breathe. Between those little pillars there,' I said.

  Olava nodded. She understood. She smiled too quickly this day, and darkness had begun to appear under her eyes.

  'There was no grass here, of course, there was marble. Are you sure this was Caesar's forum ?'

  'Yes. It was.'

  There had been a tomb we had passed that was still left. I forgot the man's name, but I remembered that he had built it so that for eternity people would know who he was.

  The marble had been stripped like an apple skin. Olava had said that many of the buildings had been shorn of their fine marble covers to build other buildings in later ages.

  But what buildings could they have built to justify these desecrations ? There was nothing but tenement garbage. I remembered the stacked cubicles the poor lived in, and now everyone lived like that. The finest hostel Olava pointed to, just inside the remnants of a city gate, stripped to its inner brick, was like a tenement. My slaves outside my house lived like that, and now everyone, even the rich, lived like that.

  Olava thought I would mind the vendors, but vendors were one of the few things that reminded me of Rome. Still this was called Rome.

  'What a price to pay for so little in return,' I said of the new buildings being built from old. What had been done to the vestals was worse than rape. I looked at a little field set aside.

  'This is the House of the Vestal Virgins, where it had been. See. Some statues are left,' said Olava.

  'Statues. They look scarcely carved. The features have been melted back into the stone they came from. And worse. If this were...'

  'Yes?’

  ‘If this were the home of vestals, then those statues would have been on the inside. But there is no outside.'

  Olava said something about the old style of the House of the Vestals being copied by cults within h
er religion.

  'Olava, I am going to talk to you.'

  ‘I don't want to argue with you today, Eugeni. I am very tired.’ 'Arguing is the nicest part of knowing you. You are good at it. Don't fear me. You are inconsistent and illogical, but you do not shame either your race or sex.'

  Olava cocked an eyebrow. There are many who, given so much in ability, rarely have to use it all. So that when they are called upon to strain, it appears to them like some gigantic, insurmountable obstacle. Had Olava come to my Rome, instead of me to hers, in one week she would have been at Domitian's elbow or someone equally important. Olava's tiredness came from knowing the fear and uncertainty that most people dine on as a weekly fare. For her it was the first time. And that was why she was tired. And that was way she was distraught. And while she asked for respite, I knew she didn't need it. Many, while tired, are stronger than those who are fresh.

  ‘I am not going to argue,' she said, which, if I gauged correctly, meant she was going to argue, but this time would allow her normally courteous self a bit of vindictiveness.

  'Woman, I may have been like the fish or the meat, stone and cold, but to me, looking at this field with some stones in it is difficult. To me, it is but a year since I was marched from the city. Miriamne is dead a year. Petronius is a young boy, and yet, if he had been lucky, he would have been an old man, and gone so many years before. I cannot accept that this was the House of the Vestals.'

  That is all right,' she said.

  'You give me permission T

  She did not answer. But I pursued my line. 'So here we have a garbage dump in place of Rome, and you telling me that your cult has taken this or that from my time. And I see all has passed, and not even a game to mark its going. And I am told this is preserved and that is preserved and lives still and nothing lives. Nothing. It is dead. Dead.'