The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  She ate very well, with more enthusiasm than she had ever shown. She finished her plate, she finished my plate. I had some cheese. She attracted more looks. She could be beautiful, I thought. The skin was smooth.

  Before dessert, she said she knew what she was going to do. She was going to teach me about her God and other things. She was very interested, she said, that I felt at home in Saint Peter's.

  'I find out how Roman I am,' I said.

  That night, she made copious notes, and fell asleep in the chair. I used the bed.

  The room was small, with a meagre tile on the floor and heavy bars on the window. Why they continued to build windows on the outside and then bar them and drape them and shade them, I would never know.

  So short a time ago, I would have owned this building and many like it. I would not have even known I owned it. Which of course struck me as funny, because here I was missing something I would not have known I had.

  Yet I did miss my peristilium, and I thought that knowing where the Flavian arena was, and gauging by the rising or setting of the sun, I might pace off the distances to where my house was. Olava had said they found houses all the time when they dug for new projects. They might find my peristilium.

  But, I thought, if it were like the rest of Rome, better to be gone and gone, instead of gone leaving only a trace.

  It was a peaceful moment, and I still had my blade, and perhaps, I thought, if the right time were to present itself, I might then be able, in a sudden move, to take my life. Not now, but some day. After all, I had only failed on the first try. It would be fitting to say good-bye. Both right and just.

  I fell asleep missing my Rome, and in the morning Olava was up and humming and praying and washing and asking me why I slept so late. She said if I continued to sleep she would eat my liver which she always wanted, and everyone had lied to me about the eating of human flesh. They all ate human flesh nowadays, Norwegians, which she was, most of all, and if I continued to sleep she could not control herself, especially since I also had a thigh that looked so tasty, a piece already having been taken out.

  1 was on the bed, my head in a soft pillow, my blade handy, and I gave it to her, telling her to cut whatever part she wanted.

  'I am going to throw it away, Eugeni. Thank you,' she said, and

  I was up and at it and got the blade after a very short wrestle, but I was up. And I could not go back to sleep.

  'You're happy,' I said.

  'Yes,' she said.

  ‘I liked you better melancholy,' I said. 'I liked you better frozen,' she said.

  'Frozen. I did not have to converse with barbarians as equals.’ "That is because we are better, therefore we cannot be equals. 'Dress,' she said, the logic satisfactory only to her.

  She was skilled now in her cosmetics, knowing enough to make them be there, and alter her face slightly, but not gross any more. The colours belonged on her. She wore a light, common white blouse, the understrapping somewhat visible, a short skirt, and flat black shoes. She had everything neat and packed, which she did herself. We had three small trunks now. She carried two. I carried one.

  As we left, a slave of the hotel, who of course was not a slave, merely at everyone's call and service, offered me a very big and lascivious wink, looking at Olava pay the bill. She drew attention here, also.

  In the desecration of the language now common here, someone almost managed to finish the word beautiful. I gathered from the bowing and light concern that she was indeed most beautiful, yellow white hair being treasured now.

  'Today, Eugeni, we go to Pompeii...'

  'Pompeii, woman, was obliterated even in my time by Vesuvius flowing lava.'

  'Which is why we have it today. It was kept from the hands of vandals by the burial. The little city of Pompeii has been dug out. It is your Rome. And I think it will help you see some things. Their dark night is your daylight.'

  And on that, Olava was happy.

  'Woman, so often you have said that even in the darkest night there still exists a sunlight so bright we cannot look at it. Now if this is so, somewhere in this bright day is a night so dark the terrors know no bounds. So let us not be so happy.'

  At that she laughed.

  'I wish you could have seen the real Rome, you would not have taken me to this one, Olava,' I said.

  'We go to the real Rome,' she said. 'In Pompeii is the spirit.' We drove in Olava's automobile, and she sang and orated all morning.

  We entered Pompeii by a sailor's gate and had to pay to enter.

  The advantage of Pompeii was not that it had withstood time unscathed, for it had not. It was as though an army of slaves had gone through it with clubs and scrapers, leaving only the stones of the streets, shells of houses, and some interior. Almost all the external marble and wall paintings were gone. And, of course, the people - the living people - were not to return again, whether felled by lava or not. Whether felled by volcano or not, all were dead now.

  There were no lights without fire, nor automobiles, nor glass grinning from every structure. What they had done was keep ensuing centuries out more than my time in, which was enough. It was almost home again, if I forgot the nearby towns, and ignored the new volcano Vesuvius. Olava told me I was crying. I did not know it.

  Groups of people walked together, pausing every once in a while to hear a man tell them things in a foreign tongue. It was a guide, who was paid to show people poor Pompeii. Everyone was interested in common things. We followed one group to Jupiter's temple. His head was still there on a metal statue, although the temple was removed. It was open to the seasons.

  I told Olava where people sat, what the sacrifices were, how there had been contention for who would be priest of this temple, and how a bribe of but a few sesterces decided the will of the gods. I knew the name of the priest and how he worked at making Jupiter the most revered god of all by making a triad of Juno, Minerva, and Jupiter. I said hello to Jupiter and informed him I had outlived him. Olava smiled.

  'Do you know, Olava, this triad once spoke?'

  'I find that hard to believe, Eugeni.'

  'It is so. They said, "We are three, but we are but stones. There are three that do rule, but they are one, and in one they are here but not here."'

  'What ?' said Olava, her large, pale hands seizing my shoulders. 'Oh, it was quite an incident. The priests suppressed what the three stones said, but I remember most of it'

  ‘What was it?'

  'How much would you pay for exactly what came from the mouths of stones?' 'You could get much money.'

  'Then I will tell you for nothing what they said. They said it is not lies that people dislike, but specific lies. If they look down upon the Roman games, it is not that they look down on games, but Roman games. If I, Eugenianus, should mount a woman for profit, that is disgraceful and Greek. But should I tell you the lie that three stones suddenly spoke with human voice to vindicate the fancy stories of your cult, then it is most valuable and not disgraceful at all.'

  'You've told me a lot already, even in your lie. You've told me about early Christian belief concerning the trinity. You know more of Christians than you allow.'

  'I knew the respected cults better. But if Christians are respected now, I will know so many things you will be stunned, Olava.'

  'You would know for profit.'

  "There are worse motives.'

  'Profit doesn't last, Eugeni. Even stones don't last. I had hoped you would see what was obvious to me, that the Word lasts. The Word, Eugeni. Even the misnaming of the Colosseum has lasted longer than its marble. And the good things last longer still. The two cults that lived on the Word, Jewish worship and the Christian flowering from it, both relied on the Word, not the stone. In the beginning and the end, Eugeni, is the Word.'

  The group went by us and another group came up the good and regular stone walks. I thought a moment. I remembered the food shops of this city.

  'Do you know if they discovered garum or alum when they dug Pompeii out?' />
  'I talk to you of eternity, and you think of your stomach.'

  'Not only can eternity wait, woman, it does not growl.'

  There was little left of the forum, and I showed Olava which temples were where, and which shops were where, and I told her which were assumed to be profitable, and which were not, and where some of my investments were, and the politics of the times. The games had been banned here by a decree of the senate, for there had been a battle between Pompeians and Nucerians over the games. Many were injured, although not one fraction of the damage done by a good riot in Rome had occurred. However, morality is a garment watched more closely on others.

  We went to the baths, the caldarium, the frigidarium, and it was strange - the first time I had entered the women's baths. Somehow I felt I was stealing something. This was Olava's first time in Pompeii, she said, and my twentieth. I had always liked Pompeii, although Herculaneum nearby was considered a better place. Pompeii was once a Greek-controlled city, before Rome took over the entire peninsula, which was now one country again and unified as Italy.

  Under a glass case were a slave's bones encased in concrete. The volcano had come down upon everyone, covering all with dust. The flesh decomposed, but the form was recreated by injecting mortar into the spaces left by the disappeared flesh. It was a rough likeness. The slave - I could tell he was one by his belt -was about my size. I did not recognize him.

  Looking down with me at this slave was Domitian. I could not believe it! That fat face, the handsome nose, the strong eyes, the weak mouth. Except of course it was not Domitian. For this man, while his face was pure Domitian, had a body as gigantic as Olava's. And then I knew it was very possible that Domitian's seed - not a hoarded commodity - had like other seeds gone on and on. Like the apple I had eaten in the car when my friend Lewus found me. Seeds in the apple. From all came seeds. Whoever was here now had ancestors who had lived once in my time. Each seed dying, yet it survived by being born again. Better than rock did it survive.

  The man became upset at my staring and Olava explained. I could tell he was threatening even as he left, and I smiled most politely even though, if he should assault us, I could decorate these remnants of baths with his insides.

  We went into a house said to be owned by the Vetti. I told Olava I honestly didn't remember. One room here had wall paintings of sexual acts, and most people walked out of it with grins. The house, although smaller, reminded me of my own peristilium and it was good to stand for a moment at the central garden and remember, although the smells were gone, and no longer did one smell human waste about.

  I tried to find the house of Messalus. He had had a daughter who was promiscuous, and there was a race to get her with husband before she was with child. They married her to a drooling boy barely eleven.

  'How did it end?' asked Olava, as we passed the cold ovens of the baker's, large cones and tables and the grinding stone for once living wheat, now cold and useless. It was a good oven.

  'How did it end?' she asked again.

  'What end?'

  'The daughter of Messalus and the drooling boy?'

  'Like they all end, Olava. They end. The hot passion and the drowning avalanche of love, the daily caress and the screaming hate, the quiet boredom and the sufferance of another body. They end. Emperor's throne and slave's belt. They end. Like the legions and the flowers. Like even the stone some day. It ended. That is the end of all things. Words, too.'

  And as we walked I talked of this house that had ended and that house, and this merchant and that one whom I had never known, and he had ended without my knowledge as he had begun. No, I did not know the poets and the historians, but they ended the same. The slave merchants and the lanistae, whom I did know, ended. Like Peter ended and Domitian ended, and Petronius ended and Miriamne, and like Olava would, untouched by hand of man, as the very same prostitutes down the street ended, and the vestal virgins ended, and I would end.

  We walked all day through the little city. Finally, we passed the gladiators' school; now we entered the arena. I took her to the very best seat at the closest edge, although all the seats were good here, most now covered well with the grass and the sand of centuries and centuries, just the bare stone unadorned by marble.

  Still the form of this arena, old when I was here last, had held the original tight design. A gladiator's arena if ever there was one. It had lasted.

  For me.

  It was both right and fitting, in a world most unfitting. My age and city gone without a game or song to mark its passing, now I was here to give it its farewell.

  With my hand, made great by them, known by them, and now forgotten partly through maiestas and the senate's decree, but most of all by their leaving with their memories and respect for me, I, Lucius Aurelius Eugeni anus, took blade in hand and, saluting the shades of their passing, raised blade to the sun-filled sky.

  'For the eternal glory of the senate and the people of Rome, I now commit my flesh. Father and mother both, I honour you, I honour all of us.'

  With blade in front of me, high and obvious to every seat, although only one was filled, I leaped from the little wall above the cinder and grass and gravel that had once held sand. As I dove down, the blade went handle forward to hit the ground first, the point directed at my chest.

  I had always wanted to enter an arena like this but never found the situation quite right, because in later years when I controlled things I never worked in a small arena, and this entrance required a closeness of the audience.

  I caught the upcoming point between my left arm and left side, and rolled over it. The beauty here being that the crowd could have seen the blade appear to come up through my back. Obviously it worked perfectly.

  Olava screamed.

  Thirty Three

  born Marit Vik;

  daughter of Per Vik, physician,

  and Kirsten Rud Vik, teacher;

  member of the order of Saint Dominic;

  graduate of Norwegian schools;

  scholar at Oxford;

  legal owner of no property on earth;

  lover of the Creator of all things and

  professed daughter of same,

  shrieked as she saw her friend dive into the arena from the little retaining wall. The knife point came out of his back, and he rolled forward, and there was no blood. It was a theatrical trick, and it had worked.

  In this empty stone arena, she had witnessed a perfect entrance. She called down to him that he should not have frightened her this way, and he did not answer her. Eugeni was performing for this little arena of ghosts. He slowly ran around the edge, his arms above his head as though giving himself to the games, as a witness they had begun.

  And Olava knew these were the last games to mark the passing of the civilization he knew, not that it had disappeared without its strong echoes living still. Rather his friends and his enemies were gone, and most of what they believed was gone. And the great structures were but worn markers of what had been, like tombstones in a world they had once ruled.

  Eugeni hopped easily from arena floor to wall. He was a tumbler, also. His feet made crunching sounds on the Vesuvian cinder that had replaced the white sand.

  He stopped and saluted her, as though she were the emperor or local magistrate, whoever was the honoured personage at the games. He announced whom he would fight, this to be a succession of foes. And he paused and walked over close to her, the blade at his side. He explained, as he would to a friend, how the arena could be cut off, and where he wanted to be all the time during the match, and how this really was the best size for a long match, because here everyone could see everything and appreciate it. And then he told her something that put tears suddenly into the rims of her eyes, and she was glad they were so sudden he did not see them, because he was walking back to face an imagined retiarius with tridens and net.

  He had said he was the best ever and that Olava should not worry. And then he told her what had made her cry, suddenly. He was glad he had a friend to
see his last performance, and by that he meant that he had a friend. The tears were wiped away by the time he gracefully turned to salute her again, and then commanded that she should pay attention, because this was what was important in Rome, the likes of Virgil or Peter probably not even being able to fill this arena and certainly not to cause as much passion.

  In the midst of defeating the imagined retiarius, with moves that seemed either overdrawn or very jerky, but which Olava knew too well were deadly, Eugeni stopped, tripped, and lost the blade. But the blade stuck upright, which showed he had not lost it at all. He got it back immediately.

  From inside this arena where she sat, she could not see the surrounding modern town. The air was clean, and the seat was hard stone, and Eugeni's moves made a rhythmic shuffling sound coming to her from the arena floor so close.

  She understood now what made a language dead and what made it live. It was not great thoughts, but the little things that made languages live, asking for directions or to pass the salt or how one felt that morning. That was what made a language live, and all the Virgil and Church edicts and precision of its structure could not add one breath of life as meaningful as when a person said; ‘Not that door, use another ... No, I don't want salt... Where did you put the shirt? ... What did you say? ... How many of these do you want? ... I don't understand.'