by Jeremy Reed
He panned in and out of consciousness, as Masako stood up and ran her hands in a flattening motion over her denimed buttocks. He was struck again by how lucky he was to have her with him in Rome. Her fine-tuning to his needs was something he hadn’t experienced before with anyone. Her sensitivity was rare, and it shone translucently in her features.
Jim got up, and together he and Masako followed Antonio down the stairs and out into the alley. Rome was under clouds and the streets seemed altered. The whole city had shifted mood in response to the change.
‘I’ve decided, on second thoughts, that we’ll go somewhere more special than my local,’ Antonio said. ‘What about my taking you to II Guru on the Via Cimarra? We can catch a bus there if you look out for a number 75.’
Antonio led the way through a complex of alleys towards the avenue. Jim still felt he was daydreaming, as the late afternoon graduated on a soft pink curve towards evening. A young man met him eye to eye with busy sexual signals, his slim figure tubed into white jeans. He smelled of Acqua di Parma, sex and something else that Jim preferred to call mystery. All of his same-sex longings hit into his cells as his over-the-shoulder look was fielded by the stranger’s simultaneously thrown head.
When a bus came into view they ran for it. Jim stood on the packed aisle between Antonio and Masako. He knew he could have gone off with either. His life was like that, it pointed east and west, north and south. He held on to the overhead strap as the street got eaten up. There was a girl outside the station running to meet her lover. He watched her place a restraining hand on her floating hair as the bus came level with her before accelerating away.
11
He knew he had made an error of judgement, but he couldn’t help himself. He had ordered the defacement of all the statues raised to Alexander in public places. They were to be smeared in mud and excrement and slashed with graffiti.
Alexander Severus, his cousin and heir, was straight and dangerous, and Heliogabalus had reason to fear an uprising. There had been previous insurrections, he reminded himself, the first as early as 218, when the Third Legion, ‘Gallica’, stationed in Syria, had defected in the interests of making Verus, their commander, emperor. Subsequent to that there had been attempts by the Fourth Legion, the fleet and a pretender called Seleucus, all of which had been suppressed by Heliogabalus’ guard. In a self-critical mood he thought back to the beginnings of his antagonistic policy towards the Army and how much of it stemmed from his appointment of a gay lover, Publius Valerius Comazon, to the position of commander of the Praetorian Guard. This ill-considered move in his first year as emperor had lost him the support of the military for good.
But in Alexander, even though the boy was only thirteen years old, and in his inveterately dominating mother, Julia Mamea, he had made powerful enemies. He had grown to hold both in contempt, more for the undercurrent of their ambition than for any direct plot to remove him from office. There was something about Alexander and his refusal to drop a predominantly passive guard that Heliogabalus not only disliked but mistrusted. The boy was too anxious to please, and the lack of conviction apparent in his ideas suggested he could be easily manipulated. Alexander reminded him of still water: no impulsive ripple entered his behaviour; no oscillating current rocked his mood. He was to be found reading politics, law and equity or discussing with the Senate ways of keeping the empire stable by using Rome as the baseline for a civilized community.
It was winter. Heliogabalus was finding it hard to cope with Annia Faustina’s demands as a woman. Contrary to his expectations, she expected him to perform in bed and on his refusal had stonewalled him with an angry silence whenever they found themselves together in private. The relationship was becoming a mess, like so much of his personal life, and part of him wished he could take off with Hierocles to one of the islands, maybe to Capri. He had begun to dream of blue spaces and of setting up an exclusive gay community on one of the outposts. He had talked about it with his closest friends, most of whom had encouraged him to pursue his aims. He was tired of the admin expected of him, and he longed to be free of the Senate’s conniving spin.
He sat eating a light meal of olives, goat’s cheese and a variety of vegetables and was glad of having Antony there to prepare his clothes for the day. He felt on edge, knowing there would be reprisals for the ugly method he had chosen to assassinate Alexander’s character. His message was clear: if there wasn’t a turnaround in public feeling then he would abandon Rome and set up his island community. And if they came after him and burned the island, then he couldn’t care. He would at least die amongst his own.
He had arranged today to take beauty tips from Laura, the exceedingly beautiful prostitute he had bought outright for a hundred thousand and kept untouched in his own wing of the palace. She was his platonic distraction, and her presence at dinner annoyed Annia in the same way as she was unable to accept the importance of Vesuvius in his life. The more he thought of it the more he recognized the need for a separation. He hadn’t the time to cope with domestic conflict, particularly with Hierocles demanding constant support as he slammed from one drunken state to another on a self-debasing trail of excess.
Laura came into the room, wearing a black piled-up Indian wig, and took a place beside him on the couch. The heating in the palace was never sufficient for him, and he shivered. He envied Laura her body. No matter how much he imagined what it was like to be a woman, he was acutely aware of his separation from the actuality. Laura was his compensation, the woman he would like to have been if things had been different. As it was, he remained fascinated by her looks, his only demand on her being that she saved herself for him while at the same time accepting that the nature of the relationship ruled out any possibility of sex. She had put on her day-face and wore a purple silk dress, an item likely to offend Annia with its imperial connotations. He liked to give her presents as a consolation for the tedium of her life. She was his doll, and it was her job to blink her big green eyes at him from behind a defensive screen of mascara. Laura had come from a good family but had been disowned by them after an early sexual scandal. She had never confided the details, but he knew enough of her sketchy background to guess that her social defiance was aimed at her family. Penalized for sex, she had come to identify totally with it, compelled to make this aspect the cause of her ruin. He had given her books, including Ovid’s racy celebration of love, but he suspected she never read them. She shared a flat in the palace with his personal beautician, an Egyptian called Leila, and appeared to have settled into a life of uneventful luxury. It wasn’t something he had the intention of indefinitely extending, but for the time it gave him a perverse satisfaction to know that he was denying other men access to her body. She was the feminine ideal he could look at but never touch.
He performed his usual little acts of homage, giving her rings that sparkled like frozen waterfalls or blocked facets of ice windowed on a high peak. What he liked was her genuine fascination with the beauty of stones, irrespective of their worth. He watched her eyes bump up at sight of a brimming emerald, as she turned the ring over in her palm before giving it the attention of her finger.
Together they looked at the jewels he had chosen on impulse from the thousands he hoarded in chests in his room. Stones that had been fetched from all parts of the empire and cut and set by Rome’s best jewellers. They were the cold currency rainbow that he turned over in his hands whenever he felt insecure. He liked the way Laura would study a ring by widening her left eye, while correspondingly narrowing the focus of her right.
Laura’s surprise on closing her eyes and reopening them to a colour-impacted hexagonal stone was decommissioned by Antony hurrying into the room to ask for his urgent attention. He could see from the anxiety in his face that it was an emergency. He knew intuitively and without having to be told that his plot against Alexander had misfired. He had felt uneasy all night, hoping against hope that his method of vilification would be endorsed by the people but at the same time knowing he had ma
de a big error of judgement.
According to Antony, there was no time to lose. A contingent of soldiers was on its way to the palace, demanding either his resignation or his life. A splinter-group in the Army were adamant that Alexander should be appointed emperor in his place.
Unwilling to desert his side for a moment, Antony suggested they go into hiding in the Spes Vetus Gardens until the soldiers had come and gone. They would have to count on the fact that the rebellious faction were still under an oath of allegiance and that the majority of the Army had chosen to remain at their barracks under the leadership of the tribune Aristomachus.
Heliogabalus left Laura with brief instructions to take the rings and return to her rooms. He said he was needed elsewhere and that there wasn’t a moment to waste. He followed Antony and a group of his close supporters through a series of underground corridors beneath the palace and out into the wooded parkland. The air was foggy-blue November. A mob of crows were policing the area like mafia. He felt suddenly exposed, believing that by running away he had forfeited his office. The short distance he had placed between himself and the palace was like the separation between the living and the dead. He was starting to panic and feared that if the soldiers were denied killing him then they would turn their vengeance on his mother and Hierocles.
He felt helpless as he stood there in the cold fog, before being hurried on by Antony and a group of armed guards towards a pavilion that overlooked the mashed circuit used for chariot races. He had put out a contract on his cousin’s life, and now he feared the plot had been uncovered. He regretted having acted without consultation. He should have had him poisoned or drowned in the baths or hit by falling masonry on some public occasion.
He scrambled through woods in the direction of the royal pavilion. He was just coming in sight of the building when a bodyguard in front brought him to an abrupt halt by stopping him with a powerfully opposing arm. Directly in front of them a body bound by ropes had been pinned to the tree by a knife going clean through the heart and out the other side. When the guard held the head up he recognized it as Marco. The chunky diamond he was wearing at the time had been left on his finger as a warning. He knew the sign was intended for him, and he froze in his tracks, his throat furred, his heart pounding. He stood there paralysed, hardly able to believe what he was seeing, before his group forced him on. They hurried across the clearing and, after his minders had searched the place, he went on in. The pavilion, although it was stamped with his inimitable style, had been left unused because of his lack of interest in chariot racing. It had the musty air of a place thrown in on itself and shocked by their arrival.
He sat down and watched a gold chink of light make it through the closed shutters and tried to distract himself from thinking about Marco’s mutilated body and the suffering he would have undergone before the blade was punched home. He sat there dejected, knowing he would never have it easy again as long as Alexander lived. Part of him looked for a political loophole and to making some sort of compromise with the Army, while the other part wanted out and conditions of peaceful exile.
He sat there stalling for time. The seconds seemed to slow to manageable chunks of time, identifiable components in which he evaluated the major events of his life. Each moment he reviewed presented a time frame and accompanying visual. He stared at the irreversible contents of a film played in slow motion, each of the experiences coded with his individual signature.
Whatever interlude he had been granted was dramatically shattered by one of the guards running into the room to announce that a group of soldiers under the leadership of Antiochianus were drawn up outside and were threatening entry. Antiochianus was apparently the mediator, intent on negotiating terms, while the soldiers were for liquidating the entire company. The guard remained armed, ready to die defending Caesar, his whole body wired for efficiency of purpose.
Before anyone could act, it was Antony who tore out of the room insisting he would negotiate terms. Three or four of his guards hurried in pursuit to offer protection to a man who was unarmed.
Heliogabalus couldn’t find it in himself to respond. He hated confrontation and tried desperately to convince himself that none of this was happening. He was terrified and tried to take refuge by dreaming of the imaginary island he would colonize with gay youth, its white beaches overrun with their naked bodies. The waiting seemed interminable, and he expected at every moment to be confronted by his assassins. He listened for angry shouts or gestures, but there were no sounds of an offensive, only the querulous holler of a rook signalling from the wood. After what seemed hours, Antony came back into the room and told him in a faltering voice of the conditions. The demands were that he expelled his gay entourage from the palace and, in particular, that he removed Hierocles, Gordius and Myrismus from office and from his personal company. He was also required to designate Alexander a joint consul and to respect his voice in government. If he agreed to the conditions stipulated by the Army, he would be allowed to return to the palace and continue in office. If he failed to compromise, then he could expect a military coup. The terms dictated were nothing less than a charged threat: change or die.
He listened with horror to the Army’s attempts to strip him of all that was meaningful in his life. Their demands shaved him to basics, but he knew he had to accept for his mother’s sake and for the nagging sense that he would otherwise be deserting his destiny. He agreed to the terms outright. He had no idea until then how much he feared death on any other terms than his own. He was too shocked to speak but managed to signal his agreement by the violent nodding of his head.
He sat and stared at the gold chinks of November sunlight atomized across the floor as Antony went back outside to accept terms. Again the wait seemed interminable as he paced the room in the attempt to keep track with his thoughts. He had no means of redressing Marco’s death, and the image of the boy with his chest slashed open cut him up deep. The atrocity reminded him of his own precarious mortality and, when Antony came back in to tell him that the soldiers had gone, he felt an overwhelming sense of dejection. All the way back through the parkland he couldn’t free himself of his preoccupation with Marco and the way his friend had died. Rooks mobbed their progress, spilling a black calligraphy on the autumn sky.
When they got back Heliogabalus was met by a drunk Hierocles, his eyes black from the makeup he had slept in and his body draped in a woman’s négligé. He came towards him on an oscillating pivot before collapsing back on to a sofa. The man he loved and whose emotional support he needed was little more than a wreck.
Heliogabalus went over, shook him to no effect and stormed out. Inwardly he blamed Hierocles for his trouble with the military and his loss of political clout. By devoting all of his time to his lover he had lost sight of the main issues and allowed himself to become sidelined. He had somehow to pull things around if he was to continue as emperor, and this also meant cleaning up his life in accordance with the Army’s wishes. But it was a resolve he knew he would never keep. The rot in his relations with the state had gone too far. It was like a pernicious virus that had come to affect the entire organism.
He went in search of his mother, knowing that only she could calm his nerves. He found her in bed with a boy half her age, her stripped-off gown shredded like Vesuvius had slashed the transparent silk. She was sitting up in bed, her full, conical breasts on view, picking at a fruit bowl. She caught his eye simultaneous with shredding a grape and patted the bed beside her as a signal for him to sit down.
He hung back, conflicting emotions of anger and jealousy tuning his temper. The boy asleep in the bed was younger than himself, and he took it as a personal affront that his mother should turn to a toy-boy rather than himself for pleasure. But, looking at her now, a sensual ribbon of juice escaping down her chin and her eyes puffy from drink, he felt nothing but contempt for her ways. His thoughts were still aimed at the reform necessary to change his skin. His mother, like Hierocles, was a liability. Her unpopularity with the peo
ple made it impossible for him to delegate power and take a brief period away from Rome. He knew the payback would be disastrous and that such a move would play directly into Antony’s cause.
He pushed his mother’s hand aside, as she tried to direct it to her breasts, and stripped the sheet off the bed. His anger blown, he calmed down, recognizing in her a bond that stitched them together along a crooked seam.
‘Things are bad,’ he said, sitting down beside her with his head in his hands. ‘The Army have given me an ultimatum. I either acknowledge Antony as a joint ruler or I’m as good as dead. I’ve also been told to clean up my household and get rid of the people closest to me, like Hierocles. I’ve been given no options. It’s do or die, that simple. They’ve threatened to kill us all.’
He watched his mother sober up instantly. Her mind came on with all the instincts of survival. She stood up naked, shocked into awareness, and he could see the plum-coloured love-bites blotched in clusters on her body. Her life without power and the wealth it brought would be nothing, and he dreaded proposing to her his scheme of exile and their ruling jointly over the island community he intended to establish. She had, for all her faults, been the first woman to impose laws in the Senate and, no matter how controversial her platform, her influence had carried.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked him, turning on him with panic in her eyes. She held on unsteadily to a marble bust of herself that faced a luxuriously decorated room. He had never seen her this scared or, in a dissolute way, this beautiful. Her hennaed hair was brushed out straight, the curve of her buttocks heart-shaped and full. She stood with her back to him like an artist’s model, hands slung indignantly on her hips, her thoughts fixed in some obsessive frame.