by Jeremy Reed
Jim occupied himself with this network of thoughts as he headed off in the direction of the café. Decadence, he reminded himself, involved a total preoccupation with the moment. To live as Heliogabalus had, fast and recklessly, meant addressing the moment without concern for an illusory future. By magnifying the instant and living within its register, Heliogabalus had succeeded in maximizing immediate sensation. Immediacy, Jim realized, was also the counterthrust to an acute awareness of threatened mortality.
When he looked around him at faces in the street, bleached from long hours of sitting in front of terminals, he was aware they were working for a future they would probably never meet. All the rewards offered for their corporate lifestyles were conditional on service. It was a system he despised. He was determined to be free at all costs.
Walking always allowed him to think in sustained sequences. It was for him the best method of booting up ideas programmed in his unconscious. He ignored the red buses blasting their way down Gower Street towards an irate gridlock at the lights. Unable as yet to contemplate life without Danny, he took advantage of the high that came with the thought of beginning a new life. He felt a brief-lived but intense excitement at the prospect of being without commitments, a rush that almost immediately gave way to feelings of vulnerability and isolation. Looking for comfort it was Masako to whom he turned. He was suddenly glad he had taken up her offer to stay. The thought of going back to her flat later was a welcome one and an incentive to work hard throughout the afternoon.
He carried on walking, his mind full of his thesis. It was odd, he reflected, to be out in London with a little-known emperor in his head and to be preoccupied with restructuring his life. It was the business of imagination to recreate history, and he got off on the thought of feeding this outrageous third-century Syrian youth some of his own intransigent ideas about the nature of the individual in contemporary society. He saw the two of them bonded by a conspiratorial pact. They were subversives, and their weird hyperlink was maintained by a sort of cyber-telepathy.
He had just got into Monmouth Street when he stopped dead in his tracks. Something made him look across the road to the entrance to Neal’s Yard. The bare-footed emaciated person emerging from the yard was none other than Slut. Dressed in leather and denim, and seemingly impervious to the wet streets, he had a carrier of groceries in one hand. Jim backed up against the wall, quite certain he hadn’t been seen, and watched Slut go off down the street towards St Martin’s Lane. The man carried a bad aura and kept his eyes turned down to the pavement.
Jim watched him go with the certain knowledge that he meant evil. There was something about his debasement lived on his skin. The almost colourless eyes and ravaged features were a pointer to the twisted emotions that undoubtedly governed his thinking. He took a last look at Slut disappearing into the crowd before slipping into his café. He felt safe there in its bohemian ambience and in the unpretentious atmosphere that it offered. Things were basic but perfectly acceptable. He sat down at a table by the window and thought of Masako. Her image lived in him today like a single carnation in a vase. He looked out at the revisiting shower, then quickly lost himself in his work.
5
He wished he’d never married Julia, and she’d quickly driven him to drink. As he lay in bed with the early morning haze fuzzing the park, he could think of nothing but Hierocles. They had met only yesterday in the steamy fog of one of the more notorious bath-houses, but one thing had led to another and now he was obsessed.
It was cold for early summer. The great shock of burgundy roses arranged in a vase by his bed were at odds with the sea-chill that hung over Rome. The smoky morning sky was flecked with pointillistic drizzle. He needed a drink and didn’t care that he allowed for no resting point in his intake.
He realized he would have to put an end to this marriage, which anyhow had been little more than a political move on his part. In marrying Julia he hadn’t anticipated encountering so formal a partner. Her lack of humour, the correctness instilled in her by her father and her refusal to experiment sexually left him feeling cold in her company. Nothing about her turned him on, least of all the possessiveness that came from her insecurity. Alone with her, she wouldn’t let him be but endlessly questioned him as to his friends, whereabouts and the amount of time he spent downtown.
At first he had put it down to the fact that she was at least twice his age. She was not unattractive but evidently still carrying the scars of an earlier marriage, and their chemistries hadn’t gelled. More tedious was the fact that she had taken to having him followed. He was aware that she knew all about his visits to the public bath-houses and the dockside area of the river and that her inquisitiveness gave him grounds to annul the marriage. While he wished her no harm he wanted her out of his life.
He felt too young to be restrained by her class-bound consciousness and her beliefs in strict monogamy. The structured life she wanted for them was the exact opposite to his idea of freedom.
What the drink couldn’t erase in him was the knowledge of his mortality. The taste of it was so acute at times that he longed to die in order to be free of the apprehension. When the awareness of death peaked in him then the sensation was like sex. He surfed it ecstatically in the process.
It was with good cause that he recollected Seneca’s writings, and they were always a source of comfort to his solitary thoughts. As he lay in bed, he remembered a line about the transience of all things in the essay ‘On the Shortness of Life’. It came to him now: ‘Your speed in using time must compete with time’s own rapid pace.’
He slept apart from Julia, not only because he brought boys to his bed but out of a need to reflect in the quiet hours on his destiny. He remembered that at some time in the night Antony had visited him, just for the warmth and symmetry their bodies created. Their relationship was an easy one and free of all tensions. When his life was too crowded, turning to Antony was like jumping from a high building to land safely on warm sand.
He wasn’t in the mood for business with the Senate today. They disapproved of the temple he had built to his god in which he worshipped and sacrificed. They would rather the money had been spent on the military or a new office tower and challenged him over the funding. It would soon be procession time, and he intended to lead the rites in having his god conducted across the city from one temple to another. It was to be an extravaganza like no other and a ceremony in which Eastern rites were dubbed on to a Western aesthetic.
But, for the moment, his mind was occupied with thoughts of Hierocles. He was young, darkly attractive, considered, as a performer, déclassé and had undoubtedly at some time or other been somebody’s favourite. He had assured Heliogabalus that he was no longer kept – and whether it had been said to please him or not he felt sure he had found his match.
He called Antony to his room, although he knew it was still an unsociably early hour. He wanted to tell him about his meeting with Hierocles and ask him to assist with the ceremonies tomorrow. No matter the hour, he knew Antony never objected or lost his consistent sense of cool. The homeostasis of his mood seemed untouched by the irregularities that affected the majority of people.
When Antony came in, already dressed and carrying a bowl of grapes that seemed to have been polished to a shine, Heliogabalus felt free to abandon himself to camp. He lay across the bed in the exaggerated pose of a fallen angel, hamming it up as a diva whose tempers left him shredded by passion. He knew that Antony would soothe his head, massage his shoulders and generally play mother.
‘I met somebody in one of the baths yesterday,’ he announced, determined to keep Antony in suspense. ‘A real pretty boy but one with an edge. Could be dangerous. About my age, drives in the arena sometimes, big green eyes and a mischievous sense of humour. No education and a bit rough but…’
He caught himself out describing a particular type for the hundredth time and laughed. He knew he was incorrigible and Antony shared his laughter.
‘Sounds like the right
one for you and the wrong one for Caesar,’ Antony commented, the smile upgrading itself from his lips to his eyes.
‘I want him for always,’ Heliogabalus said, aware as he spoke that he was allowing his extreme youth to colour his feelings. He wanted Hierocles in the way his obsession wouldn’t rest until he had acted on his desire. It was always the same, his urgency made subordinate to every other consideration. And sometimes his mania got out of control when the object of his desire was the sun, the harbour, a particular street, the billions of gallons of air over a mountain or an idea that could find no external correlative.
‘I’ll have him here waiting for you when you return from business,’ Antony promised him in his usual reassuring way.
‘I’ve so much on my mind, and need your help with the preparations for tomorrow. The streets have to be cordoned off, the Praetorian Guards are needed for back-up to the procession, there have to be police out to suppress potential riots … The list is endless. Plus it’s also the time when an assassin could strike. Being emperor makes me the most wanted person alive.’
It was still early, and a burnt-orange sun was beginning to show through the mist. He didn’t want to wake Julia up at this hour with the news that their marriage was over, but he had decided that he could no longer continue with the pretence and that she should be sent back to her father with some sort of annuity. He would leave that up to his lawyers. He had it in mind that to make his own religion popular with the people he should marry Aquilia Severa, one of the Vestals who officiated over the Palladium in the temple. The marriage of Elagabal with the earth goddess Vesta would, on a symbolic level, bring about the ideal union of East and West.
He toyed with the idea, while Antony massaged his shoulders with juniper oil. Of course, a marriage as controversial as the one he intended with Aquilia might also explode in his face. Marriage with a Vestal Virgin would be considered, by anyone’s standards, a violation of taboo, but the mystic in him argued for a union in which the bond would be spiritual rather than physical. The knowledge that vestals found guilty of having sex were traditionally buried alive worked in his interest. If, as he hoped, Hierocles was about to become his lover, then Aquilia would prove the ideal mental partner.
His head was busy with the audit as Antony worked along his spine. What he secretly had planned was to remove the image of the goddess Vesta to his own temple. He was fascinated by the idea of the inextinguishable fire kept burning in honour of the goddess. Aquilia was part of the order devoted to never letting that fire go out and by appropriating the practice for his own cult he intended to take on that power and have his name become a metaphor for the city itself. Its commerce would be reflected in the activity of his neurons, its sex-drive in his hormones and its spirituality in the dance he performed inside his temple.
He amused himself with these thoughts as Antony, having finished on his back, wrapped him in a heated towel and left the room, coming back in again minutes later carrying a tray, on which there was bread and halva topped with yoghurt and honey. There were fresh figs and a selection of little cheeses that had been sun-dried on rush mats.
Now that he’d had a drink Heliogabalus felt better able to face the light meal prepared for him. The preparation of food interested him more than its taste, and he had himself the previous night prepared a dish of pumpkin with a seseli, asafoetida, dried mint, vinegar and liquamen dressing. He would never grow fat like the Circus Maximus gladiators of the vomitarium, the liverish commissationes who collapsed under repeat gourmand courses and who could tell at the first taste whether an oyster had been bred at Circeii or on the Lucrine rocks.
Equally he couldn’t help himself sexually. Despite his busy agenda, he was obsessed with only one thing, and that was going back to the same bath-house in the hope that Hierocles would show up again. The place where the action happened was the bath-house built by Titus beside the ancient Domus Aurea, with its external portico facing the Colosseum. The place was notorious for its gay clientele, and almost anything could be had in the recreation rooms. He liked the steamy hothouse effect of the place and the abundance of naked bodies from which he could take his pick. And when the sun beat through the rotunda at noon he had the feeling his body was being solarized by its rays.
Although he imagined it would be meaningless to him, Heliogabalus was anxious for Hierocles to witness the procession he would lead tomorrow. He was determined to leave the city stunned by his performance as part of the rites. The musicians had been instructed to lay down a beat that would translate itself into crowd frenzy.
Acting against his own best interests, he decided to go to the baths by the Colosseum. Preparations were going on all over town for the festivities the next day. Streets were already being cordoned off and people were starting to set up stalls. Rome was still dusted in haze, and he looked out at a cemetery used by prostitutes, its marble statuary defaced by graffiti and eroded by time. Seneca was right, he told himself; we must live in the knowledge of certain death.
Leaving his minders to mix freely with the other bathers he went into one of the dressing-rooms. The place was all black-and-white marble with mosaic inserts and statues of the gods commissioned by Titus. Even though he made light of his identity and adopted a series of disguises, word had got out that he was emperor. It was known that he had a liking for onobeli or big cocks. That he had used up the talent available at the baths of Plautianus was also common knowledge and explained why he had chosen to patronize this place.
A number of youths were in the process of getting undressed. Everyone swam naked, and the boys here were mostly rent or belonged to theatre. What he liked was the way in which his sexuality dissolved barriers. Even though he was emperor his predilections made him as much an outsider as the fraternity who came here to have open sex in the recreation rooms. Nobody seemed suspicious of his motives or grew inhibited by his presence. Rather, he was amused to hear, via Antony, that he had been given the nickname ‘Patron Saint of Rent Boys’.
He was in no hurry to pair off and disappear into one of the private cubicles. He had only one thought on his mind and that was finding Hierocles. He was nervous with apprehension. Elation and fear collided in his nerves. He kept seeing Hierocles’ face everywhere, as though hallucinating him into existence. He saw him in every face that looked in at the dressing-room. His own need was so great that it was being answered by multiple variants of his obsession. Several times he was about to call out ‘Hierocles’ when, at the last moment, he realized his mistake. He ended up engaged in a long kiss as a result of misidentifying a dark youth with the hots. The kiss seemed to go on for ever and tasted of the sulphur traces in the water. Normally he would have followed this through to sex, but realizing his error he backed off. He didn’t want Hierocles to find him going down on a possible rival.
Jealous without any reason, he imagined Hierocles involved in an orgy in one of the vaulted back rooms. He saw him engaged in a noodle dish of naked bodies glued to each other by positioning. He blanked the thought and went out to the pool with its turquoise floor shimmering through the rippling steam.
He dived in, searching for himself at the bottom. The water closed over him like a protective skin. For the moment his world seemed without boundaries. He gave himself up to weightlessness in an arc that took him effortlessly to the blue-tiled floor and up again in a fluent trajectory to the surface.
He surfaced, gasping, and looked around at the other swimmers lolling on the surface. The boy next to him had his curls collapsed like a bunch of black grapes over his face. People hung motionless in the water like bottles or made lazy circles with indolent breast-stroke. All around the pool naked youths sat displaying their bodies or paired off and disappeared into the recreation rooms. Those looking out and those looking in the pool had come here for the same purpose, and Heliogabalus felt safe in their company.
He made a slow round of the pool, scanning each cluster of faces. He was about to dive under again when he saw Hierocles coming out of o
ne of the dressing-rooms. He accidentally swallowed water and felt his heart turn over. He was so nervous that his first impulse was to dive under and come up on the opposite side of the pool. He wanted to dematerialize on the spot and pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened.
Instead he stayed dead centre of the pool, marginally obscured from view by a tangle of playful swimmers who were busy diving each other. He could see Hierocles looking around to acknowledge friends with a smile or a wave. He must have known he was being watched, for he went and stood by himself against a marble pillar and presented a moody profile to the pool.
Heliogabalus pretended not to notice and flipped over on his back so that he could stare up at the changing sky through the rotunda. The clouds had returned the grouping of a dense aerial forest. He lay there, lost in his reflection, hoping that by now Hierocles had joined a group or friends or had jumped into the pool. Without daring to look he began to create the lazy backstroke designed to get him back to the edge of the pool. He wished he’d never come here, and his only thought was to get out of the place fast.
He propelled himself back to the rim of the pool and was helped out by his minders. He looked across and saw that Hierocles had disappeared from view and was both relieved and terrified that he had gone off with someone else. He sat there, oblivious to the youths competing to catch his eye, his mind preoccupied with nothing but the thought of winning Hierocles. As the minutes passed, he grew more despondent at having missed his chance. He decided to punish Hierocles by slipping out through the back and leaving him to rot. Nobody in his world was going to play that hard to get.
With the intention of following his plan through, he stormed off towards the dressing-rooms. He brushed aside attendants and masseurs offering to dry him and, still wet, changed into his clothes. His mood had radically changed, and he could feel the blues driving out the optimism with which he had started the day. Suddenly nothing seemed important, not even the prospect of the festivities tomorrow.