The Confessions of X

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  I glanced at Augustine. He looked startled then uneasy. We had only been in Milan a short while and already he had come to the attention of the highest-ranking officials. It was what he had always wanted, and I was puzzled why he did not seem more pleased. I opened my mouth to say something and then caught Nebridius’s eye across the room. He shook his head slightly so I left my words unsaid.

  As if rousing himself with great effort from his thoughts, Ambrose got to his feet.

  “Come cousin, we must go and let these good people have their rest. Thank you,” he said, taking my hand and bowing over it. “I have seldom had a pleasanter evening. The food was delightful, the company even more so.” He briefly touched Adeodatus’s head. “Gift from God,” he murmured.

  I carefully peeled his cloak off Adeodatus and gave it back to him. “Thank you,” I said, “for being so kind to my son.”

  Symmachus got unsteadily to his feet. He was a little drunk. “Charmed,” he said to me, bowing, and headed for the door. Augustine glanced at me and shrugged.

  Perhaps feeling chilled without the cloak, Adeodatus stirred so Augustine said his good-byes and picked him up in his arms and carried him to bed. Nebridius also said his farewells.

  As the hostess, I saw our guests out.

  I stood on the step and watched as Ambrose and Symmachus walked down to the end of the street where Symmachus’s litter bearers had been waiting for their master all night. Earlier I had sent Marta out to them with food and drink. Ambrose had walked, he told us on his arrival at the house when Augustine had expressed surprise he was alone. Something he seldom got the chance to do anymore, he said, without being trailed by a train of servants. He loved the peace and freedom of walking at night.

  “A brilliant man, Augustine,” I heard Symmachus say, his slightly slurred voice carrying clear on the still night air. “Shame about his unfortunate liaison with that woman, though I can see the attraction, believe me. She’s a beauty and no mistake. He’d go far if he could only make a suitable marriage to someone of his own class. The proconsul’s already expressed his concern. Apparently the emperor frowns on such relationships.”

  “Be silent, man!” I heard Ambrose say angrily. “She will hear you.”

  As I turned to go in, I saw Nebridius standing in the atrium behind me, his face in shadow. I shut and bolted the door slowly so that I could erase the effect of Symmachus’s words from my face. I felt sick to my stomach, the joy of the evening, the foundation of my whole life, changed in an instant. Then I turned to face him.

  “You heard,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I moved past him into the dining room and began to dowse the lamps. When only one remained lit, the flickering shadows providing a kind of refuge, I sat down on the couch where only a short while before I had reclined with Augustine and my son. Nebridius sat down next to me.

  “Is it true what Symmachus said? That the emperor is against unions such as ours?”

  Nebridius looked down a moment and then turned to face me. “It is true,” he said.

  “And Augustine knows this.” Now I understood the look on Augustine’s face when Symmachus had mentioned the proconsul’s interest in him.

  “He does. It was communicated to him in no uncertain terms when he arrived in Milan. He was told that if he wanted to rise at court he would have to . . .”

  “Put me away,” I finished for him.

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  I surveyed the room. On the low tables between the dining couches was the detritus of our meal: wine cups not quite empty, a half-eaten round of cheese, the bare stalks of a bunch of grapes. The cushion where my son’s head had lain, once warm, was now cold. The brazier had burned low and gave off little heat so the room was growing cold. The house lay silent.

  I looked back at Nebridius and asked the question I dreaded to ask. “Is that what Augustine plans to do?” I said. “Put me away?”

  “No!” Nebridius’s voice was loud and seemed to echo through the sleeping house. Lowering it he said: “No. He has never said such a thing, not even hinted at it.” He took my hand and pressed it. “He loves you, Naiad. You know that.”

  “Yes,” I said sadly. “But like Aeneas, his love for Dido and her love for him made no difference in the end. They were still parted.”

  We sat in silence for what seemed like a long time. Symmachus’s words rang in my head: “unfortunate liaison . . . suitable marriage.” I had forgotten what Monica—what even my aunt—had tried to tell me all those years ago. Seduced by time, I had thought as the years wore on, as our love matured and grew stronger day by day, as together we watched our son grow from infancy to boyhood and thence to manhood that Augustine and I would always be thus. I had imagined us in old age, grandparents, Augustine famed throughout the world for the wit and passion and eloquence of his words. But however famous he became he would always, always be my Augustine, my only love, still that shy seventeen-year-old standing on my aunt’s doorstep with the shell, that perfect gift, concealed in his hand.

  In our youth, we had set out on the same road but now, in our maturity, the road had forked and we must take a different path, one to the right, one to the left. And it seemed to me that all along we had possessed a map that had foretold this but in the passion of our first love we had ignored it. I did not ask Nebridius what could be done. I knew the answer: either Augustine would be forever stalled in his career or he would have to marry and I would return to Africa.

  “I have a farm outside of Carthage.” Nebridius’s voice was low, almost a whisper.

  I looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then slowly I understood. “You mean a place where I could live?”

  He had not let go of my hand from before and now he squeezed it hard. “It is only so you know you will not be friendless and alone if . . .”

  Again, he paused.

  “If I return to Africa.” I could not say “leave” Augustine or my son nor even think it.

  I got up and, bending down, kissed Nebridius good night.

  “Take the lamp,” he said.

  When I left the room he was still sitting in the dark. The house was silent, the only sound a faint splashing from the fountain in our tiny atrium and the lone trill of a night bird far off. I looked into Adeodatus’s room and listened a moment to his quiet breathing.

  Augustine was sleeping. He had left a lamp lit for me beside the bed. My eyes filled with tears when I saw its tiny flame burning bravely in the darkness, making shadows dance on his face, his closed eyes, a lock of hair fallen untidily across his brow.

  He needs a haircut, I thought and smiled a little at my wifely concern. Then all at once I was weeping, tears running silently down my face.

  CHAPTER 24

  Weeks passed. Monica remained with us, as the shipping lanes had closed for the winter. I found myself watching Augustine for some sign that he had decided to send me away, interpreting each word he spoke, each gesture he made to mean the worst. I became withdrawn, easily startled, more impatient with Adeodatus, whose hurt look when I snapped at him increased my misery. Everyone noticed this change in me, not least Augustine, but when he asked me what was wrong, I said I was fine. Only Nebridius knew what ailed me and he kept his peace.

  It was no comfort to me at all that Augustine had never lied to me, had never falsely promised what he could not give. It was I who had lied to myself, told myself that he would not be thwarted by our union. Never in all our years together had he shown me that he regretted his decision to take me to him though many another man would have done so. But I knew that he felt trapped and while my heart pitied him, I also felt an anger borne of helplessness.

/>   Symmachus’s words lay lodged in my heart, an arrowhead breaking off when the surgeon tries to remove it, festering there, making me sleepless. At night I demanded Augustine’s caresses like a wild animal that gorges itself while it can before the starvation of the winter. I grew so thin and pale he fretted I had taken a secret malady like a lump that sometimes grows in women’s breasts until it kills them. He told Monica of his fears, and she questioned me closely about my health, insisting I allow her to examine me.

  “I can feel nothing untoward,” she said as I was getting dressed again. “As far as I can tell, your body is healthy.” She looked closely at my face. “But your heart is sick. What is troubling you?”

  Perhaps it was the kindness of her words that broke my silence, perhaps the memory of when she reached inside to turn my child so he could be born. The time had come to do what I knew I must do but could not bring myself to do, like a soldier who must tell the surgeon to amputate his sword arm if his life is to be saved.

  And so I told her of Symmachus’s words and the sorrow I had been harboring burst out and I laid my head on her breast and wept.

  Augustine must have heard me for he came running. “What have you found?” he said. “Tell me. What is it?”

  I felt his arms about me but I would not look at him. Monica released her hold on me and sat up straighter. I raised my head and looked at her. She nodded.

  And so I told Augustine what I had overheard after the dinner and of what Nebridius had said.

  He sat down heavily on the bed. “I did not tell you because I knew it would only have caused you grief.”

  “Hearing it from that man’s lips has caused me more,” I replied. Then when he did not answer, I said in a calmer voice: “What are we going to do?”

  “I will resign my post and resume teaching.” As he spoke his shoulders slumped forward, his arms dangling loosely between his legs. I had seen him look that way in Carthage and Rome after a day of teaching. It reminded me how elated he was when we heard he was to become Orator of Milan, ending the teaching work he had grown to loathe.

  When he turned to me he was smiling but in his eyes I saw a kind of hunted look, a despair that reminded me of how he had likened a man to a mule forced to carry a heavy burden against his will.

  That he would give up all he had striven to attain and return to the teaching he hated, I had no doubt. But I was equally determined that he should not cripple himself for my sake. His own gift for language—his powers of eloquence and expression—had remained pent up too long. I knew he also hated using his eloquence for the purpose of flattering those in power, but it seemed to me that if he had no outlet for his passion he would go mad.

  And so we reached a kind of impasse, Augustine determined to resign his post and I equally determined to prevent him though I dreaded what would follow if I prevailed.

  In my memory, that last winter in Milan passed like night when dawn seems impossibly far off. Only once did the clouds part and a shaft of pure moonlight illuminate the darkness.

  One morning in deepest winter, we awoke to a strange and eerie light, the morning muffled as if our house lay linen-wrapped like some rare and delicate glass. When we looked outside we saw the world had overnight become a thing of white, soft-swaddled with all its edges gentled by an endless feathered falling from the sky. It was my first snowfall.

  Adeodatus was instantly transformed into a four-year-old boy again and went whooping and sliding barefoot in the courtyard until I called him in and bade him dress and put on sandals and warm socks. Then Augustine and I and Nebridius, arms linked to steady us, followed him outside where children played, their faces ruddy with the cold, eyelashes filigreed with white, as if it were a holiday. Monica watched us from the front steps, calling that she would heat wine, for we would be freezing when we returned. All the unsightliness of mud and refuse, the broken ruts that carts had scored in the spongy ground, the charcoal-streaked roofs, was smoothed away as if a kindly god had expunged the ugliness of the world to start afresh. The trees’ stark bones, even the smallest twig, each bore a perfectly heaped molding of itself as if its opposite, a tree of snow, had grown there overnight. In the still and frozen air, the smoke from braziers hung motionless. And lettered on the snowy ground a crazy rune of birds’ feet soon smoothed, then renewed, then smoothed again as still the snow fell.

  That morning of all mornings remains imprinted on the landscape of my mind—my son running, his breath pluming in the frosty air, the warmth of Augustine’s arm, his solid bulk on which I leant.

  None of us had ever touched snow before though we had seen it on high mountaintops. Lifting my face to the sky, I felt it settle on my skin like duck down loosed from a pillow. Bending, I scooped it in my hands and offered it to Augustine who licked it from my palms. Adeodatus threw a snowball at Nebridius and Nebridius chased him down the street. We were laughing, Augustine and I, and for a brief moment, I forgot the sorrow lodged deep inside my heart. Augustine kissed me and his lips were cold but his breath was warm in my mouth.

  Then a hail of snowballs rained down on us and we spied Adeodatus and Nebridius crouching behind a nearby wall. Ducking behind the columns of the porch, we fought back, Augustine yelling mock imprecations, I shrieking when snow slithered down the neck of my cloak, my hair and dress now completely soaked, all four of us helpless with laughter. Monica was smiling in the doorway. At last I gave up and sat down on the ground, breathless, freezing in my wet shoes and clothes. Yet I knew this moment, this day, would remain with me forever, perfect as new fallen snow is perfect, as pure as the sound of my son’s and lover’s and friend’s laughter on a snowy day in deepest winter in Milan.

  CHAPTER 25

  When early spring arrived, I knew the shipping lanes between Italy and Africa would soon reopen. Augustine had recently been given an important speech to write for the emperor and was told by Symmachus that if it found favor, Augustine would be strongly considered for the post of imperial orator, a position that would effectively make him the mouthpiece of the emperor himself. As a woman with child knows her time approaches by the heaviness of the baby within, its stillness where before it was all restlessness, I knew Augustine and I could delay a decision no further.

  Nebridius, Monica, and Adeodatus had left the house at dawn, gone for the day to visit an aged kinsman of Nebridius’s who was ailing. Several days before, Monica had overheard Nebridius telling Augustine and had volunteered to accompany him.

  “I will make him some strengthening broths and herbal remedies,” she said. “And Adeodatus can come too.”

  She glanced at me and I knew she was clearing a path for me to be alone with Augustine.

  As they were leaving, Nebridius drew me aside. “Do you mean to talk with Augustine?”

  I nodded, my heart too full to speak.

  “Then remember what I told you. The farm is yours if you should need it. I have only to draw up the papers. Augustine knows of it.”

  Before I could reply, he was walking to the door. “We will be home by dusk,” he said.

  When the house was empty I sought out Augustine in his study, a tiny windowless room, formerly a storeroom at the back of the house. Standing silently at the door I watched him writing the speech for the emperor. He had his back to me, bent over his desk, papers and books strewn about the floor, for there was nowhere else to put them. I could hear the rhythmic scratching of his pen and feel his concentration like a vibration in the air.

  “Augustine.”

  He finished writing a sentence and then twisted round to look at me, the remnant of a thought still shadowing his face.

  “I need to speak with you.”

  He saw at once that what I had to say was serious
, for I would never interrupt him for a trivial household matter when he was working. Immediately he laid down his pen and getting up, stretched his arms above his head, bending from side to side. I knew his back had been giving him pain since he began working in this cramped and cluttered space.

  “What is it, love?” he asked, taking my hand as we walked into the small living area off the atrium. It was still too cold to sit outside and I had asked one of the servants to bring a brazier in earlier so the room would be warm.

  “Sit down,” I said, handing him a cup of wine and honey I had set to warm near the brazier. There was a cup for me but I did not touch it.

  He sat back and crossed his legs, relaxed, looking up at me for I was standing. He patted the couch beside him but I shook my head. I needed to say what I had brought him here to hear before I sat near him. If I felt his closeness, the heat from his body, I would not have the courage.

  He was frowning now, tense. He put his cup down on a table and uncrossed his legs. “If you are pregnant, Little Bird, you have no need to fear telling me. I am delighted. I have always wanted a daughter, if you recall.” He smiled but his voice was brittle underneath the lightness.

  “I am not with child,” I said. If only I had been, I thought, with a sudden stab of longing. A child I could carry away with me to Africa, a piece of him, a daughter, a piece of my son, a sister, that I could hold warm and tiny and alive in my arms like a newborn kitten.

  “We can delay a decision no longer,” I said.

  He frowned. “I thought we had settled that,” he said.

  “Nothing has been settled.” I began to pace. “You are even now writing a speech for the emperor.”

  “What is it you think I should do?” His voice had risen, not so much in anger as in frustration. “I must make a living.”