Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  Fresh from disembarking at Emporiae and on land for the first time in a week, Silenus had yet to accustom himself to the immobility of life on solid ground. His head swayed on his shoulders, still keeping the rhythm of the waves. Dried seawater crusted his face. He had formed the habit of absently drawing his fingers across his cheeks and down to the tip of his tongue, where he tasted the tang of salt. He was doing this when Diodorus finally appeared.

  Silenus had only met the magistrate once, and that was years ago in Syracuse—when Diodorus became engaged to his sister—but he recognized in an instant that he had put on weight, around the torso and in the thighs, as a woman might in her mature years. His mouth was as wide as Silenus remembered and his eyes, conversely, as close together. The least appealing aspect of his appearance was that he wore a garment resembling a toga, not quite the genuine article but close enough to betray his aspirations.

  “Silenus,” he said, “my brother, I did not believe my ears when they told me you were here. By the favor of the gods, you look in good health! If I did not know better I would think you a warrior.”

  The two men embraced, quickly, and then drew apart. “And if I did not know better I would think you a Roman,” Silenus said.

  “Oh, not yet, but who knows how the gods will order things in the future? Sit. Sit and drink with me.”

  Silenus did so, and for a few minutes the two shared pleasantries. Silenus asked after his sister. Diodorus admitted that she made an adequate wife. Although, he explained, he much preferred the pleasures to be had from virgins. It was unfortunate that they were so hard to come by and expensive to purchase. Such pleasures were a constant strain on his resources. Silenus nodded at this, smiling despite himself.

  Diodorus was also willing to speak at length of the tumultuous path of his political life. Through the luck of others' misfortunes—a few fevers, a tribal war, and a rapidly advancing dementia had cleared a path for his ascent—he had moved up from a petty official of the city to one of its leading magistrates in just a few years. Unfortunately, just as quickly he had seen his stature reduced by the machinations of his peers. The only difficulty was that he was never sure which god favored or despised him. To be safe he offered tribute to them all—a time-consuming task.

  Eventually, when Diodorus seemed to have talked himself out, Silenus addressed his true purpose directly, thinking to be most forceful thus. “I come with a message from Hannibal Barca,” he said, “the commander of the Carthaginian army of Iberia and Italy.”

  Diodorus nearly choked on his wine. He spat a portion of it back into his goblet, rose from the couch, and through his coughing managed to say, “You what? Hannibal, did you say?”

  Silenus fought a smile. “He bade me speak with you of a prisoner you hold here. You will know of whom I speak: his brother, Hanno Barca. Emporiae was not wise to let the Romans keep him here. Hannibal never called you an enemy and begs that you not name yourself as one.”

  “Wait one moment,” Diodorus said. “You come to me as a representative of Carthage? You, a Syracusan? When did you throw in with the Africans? And now you come here into my home to demand—”

  “Please,” Silenus said. “This is a serious business; speak calmly with me, as my kinsman.”

  Diodorus cast his eyes about the room, checking that nobody was lingering to hear. “The truth is I've no quarrel with Hannibal,” he said. “I want him neither as an enemy nor as a friend. This business of keeping his brother is no pleasure to me, but some things are unavoidable.”

  “Nothing is unavoidable except death, Diodorus. Is Hanno in good health?”

  One corner of the magistrate's lips twitched nervously at the question. “You could say that,” he said. “I mean . . . I believe so, but I've only seen him a few times.”

  “Have you considered your fate when Hannibal wins this war?”

  “When? Has it been ordained by the gods already?”

  Silenus did not dignify this with anything except a smirk. He leaned forward and set his hand on the other's hairy wrist for a moment. “Diodorus, I did not join Hannibal's campaign because I believed he would win, nor because I cared either way. It was a form of employment, an adventure, a tale I could spend the rest of my life telling. And it has been all of these things. But I cannot deny what my own eyes have witnessed. I've never seen a man better suited to command. Everything Hannibal wants, he achieves; everyone he opposes, he defeats. That is the simple truth. I pray you will not make an enemy of him.”

  Diodorus pulled his arm away. He sat back, somewhat smugly, and studied Silenus as if noticing him for the first time. “Has he so won you over? Tell me, does he share your bed as well? They say that Hasdrubal Barca has a stallion's shaft. Is the same true of the eldest?”

  Silenus did not dignify this with a response. He reached down into his traveling satchel, fished out a small leather pouch, and tilted it onto the table. Gold coins.

  “What?” Diodorus asked. “Do you think me poor? Perhaps you have not looked around . . .”

  “You are not poor, I know, but nor are you as rich as you would like. This gift is just a token. The riches he promises you for this favor will exceed your wildest dreams. This is why I know it is safe to show this to you. Accept it, and much more will come to you. Deny it, and you deny much more than you can imagine.”

  Diodorus, for the first time, forgot his look of haughty refusal. His eyes lingered on the coins. “But the reach of Rome . . .”

  “By next year, Rome's reach will be no longer than the space from your shoulder to your fingertips.”

  “Do you really believe that? That this African . . .”

  “If you knew him you would not doubt him,” Silenus said. “Think with all of your wisdom on this. When the war is concluded, Hannibal will control the Mediterranean. He will not forget those who aided him. How would you, Diodorus, like to rule Emporiae as your own domain? Hannibal will call you his governor; you, of course, may think yourself more like a king, with access to as many virgins as your penis can service, among other pleasures. This is what Hannibal offers you.”

  “But what you wish I cannot deliver. I am only one magistrate among many, and the Romans do not bow to our wishes, anyway. Their guards answer only to their leaders—”

  Silenus interrupted. “My mind is devious, brother. Say yes to this in principle and together we will think of a way to achieve it.”

  Diodorus thought for a long time. “How can it be,” he finally said, “that you sit before me speaking of these things? It's madness, and my answer is no. I cannot do what you ask.”

  Imco had hardly thought about the Saguntine girl for months before the dreams started, but once they began they were a constant torment. He saw her as she had been on the day Saguntum fell. He would relive the few moments after he had found her wedged up into a fireplace. Again and again he agonized over her fate, wishing he could turn away and flee but never able to do so. Before long, she began to appear in camp, in his tent, at his feet as he slept, becoming more solid with each encounter until she seemed to be flesh and blood and she began to speak to him. She had walked this far, she said, to ask him what right he had had. Was he a god? Who had given him dominion over her?

  He tried to explain that he had slit her throat not as a punishment, not out of cruelty or malice, but just the opposite. A gift, considering the circumstances in which he had found her. He had saved her from greater suffering. At this, the girl just rolled her eyes, rolled them and then set her gaze back on him again and pinned him. Then she would show him the scar and ask him whether it looked like a present she should be grateful for. She became bolder with the passage of time, grew to know him better and despise him more—which seemed a twisted progression to him, for surely the opposite should be true. He had killed her out of mercy, but the thanks he got was ghostly torment. Just his luck.

  Perhaps because of her presence, the respite by the coast passed almost unnoticed, certainly unappreciated. When the word came that the army would be
marching to intercept the new dictator, Imco groaned. He had just thrown down his burdens! Barely caught his breath. His vision had only recently returned to normal. His teeth had settled down in their gums once more, and his arms and belly were fleshed out a little better each day, but he was still a wisp of his former self and he told his squadron leader as much. He also noted that he still carried a chest full of phlegm, that his genital lice tortured him incessantly, and that his feet were tender with a rot from the marshes that had yet to heal. He also mentioned that his vision was impaired and that he was not sure he would be able to tell friend from foe on the battlefield—a small lie in the scheme of things. It might have been the one that saved him.

  Much to his surprise, his squadron leader waved him away, telling him to stay, then, and join the guards watching over the occupied town and the stores of booty. After he had watched the tail of the army disappear over the horizon a few days later, it occurred to Imco that he was actually one of a relatively small company, made up partly of camp followers and slaves, charged with protecting a rather large treasure, surrounded by countless unseen natives who were naturally disgruntled at having been ousted from their homes. The first few days passed in tense appraisal of every puff of dust in the distance and every vessel appearing on the sea. Throughout the day, Imco stewed beneath the unrelenting summer sun, nagged by the growing suspicion that he was not fortunate at all to have won this duty. He was expendable—that was more like it. He even spent an anxious evening turning over the idea that the army might never return. This new dictator might, in fact, defeat them. And if that happened it would be only a matter of time before the Romans found them out and made captives of them all.

  But the next morning dawned as quiet as the one that preceded it. Cavalry units came and went, scouring the neighboring countryside and depositing their gains at the camp. The soldiers kept watch through a rota system. One day passed into the next with little change and no news of a major battle. Sitting in the sparse shade of a stone pine on the shore side of camp, Imco found in the quiet sights a peace that he had not known for some time. The smell of the salt air, the thrum of waves collapsing on the shore, the view of fishing boats pulled up against the sand, the nimble movements of the shorebirds darting along the tide line: it was almost too tranquil to believe, in light of the more violent scenes he had been part of over the last few years. His situation verged on bliss, except that with fewer people around, the girl completed her emergence into the physical world. She escaped the confines of his dreams, visited him in the full light of day, and now felt free to pester him about a variety of topics.

  He first discovered this one afternoon. He had noticed a stray dog patrolling the camp in wary fits and starts. He moved around cottages and shacks as if he knew the place well, but his gaze suggested that nothing was as he remembered anymore. The dog had one ear chewed off. He was dusty, his hair rubbed down to the flesh in spots. His pink tongue lolled constantly from the left side of his jaws. Imco found something humorously endearing in the dog's nervous movements about the camp. He called after him and tried to wave him over with benign gestures. But when the dog would come nowhere near him, he had a change of heart and threw a stone at it instead. “Pathetic creature.”

  Just after he mumbled this, a voice beside him asked, “Who are you to call another being pathetic?”

  It was the girl, squatting beside him in the shade. She pointed out that he had chosen not to march with the others out of simple fear. Did not that make him more pitiable even than a dog? He went from moment to moment complaining about his fate in life, always fearing the next battle, the next injury or illness. If he hated war so much, why did he not take his own life as he had taken hers? She told him she would rather have been pierced by the lust of a warrior than spared by the trembling hand of a half-man. He had not allowed her that choice, had he? She had never known a man more hypocritical than he, she claimed. He could kill when the killing was easy, but really any act of valor he could claim was simply an act of cowardice turned on its head. Did they not call him the Hero of Arbocala?

  “What a farce,” she said.

  By the end of the first week she was even following him through the midday sun, accosting him in view of other soldiers, who ignored her out of respect for him and, perhaps, empathy with his situation. It was most disconcerting, listening to her. She seemed to know his innermost thoughts. She understood him, in fact, with a clarity that baffled him. How had she come to know so many details of his life? To act as if she had spoken with his sisters and mother back in Carthage? He shot these questions back at her, but she answered that the dead have ways unknown to the living. Cryptic nonsense, he thought.

  One afternoon the girl so harassed him that he lost his way while walking to the river he had grown accustomed to bathing in. Bathing was the only way to escape the stifling heat, and he preferred the fresh water to that of the sea. He cursed her for distracting him with a whole litany of questions about how various family members would view his cowardice throughout the campaign. The day was oppressively hot. The sun beat down like burning fingers massaging his flesh. He stripped off his tunic and walked naked with the garment flung over his shoulder. He spent some time struggling through the undergrowth before he finally reached the riverbank. But the point at which he reached it was all wrong. He was looking down upon a bend in the river from high above. He would have to walk a good distance upstream to find a route down. Resigned to this, telling himself that the sweat he would work up in the effort would make the swim that much more enjoyable, he turned to walk on. That was when he saw her.

  She squatted on the pebbles of the far bank, scrubbing garments in the water. At first Imco took her for an adolescent, maybe one of the displaced townspeople camped on the outskirts of their former home. A little distance away, a donkey munched quietly on the sparse grass. Imco found the sight of the donkey strangely disturbing, but he did not wish to address this at that moment. He turned his eyes back to the young woman. He could make out no more of her features, huddled and low as she was.

  He was about to move on when she rose and stood, stretching her neck, rolling her shoulders, and stretching out her arms to either side. Her tunic was thin and worn to begin with, but it had also been splashed with water so it clung to her chest and belly. The sight of this was like a divine revelation. Imco felt the air sucked out of his lungs, such was the impact of the contours of her body upon his. He had been weeks without sex, and he felt his penis stiffen. Imco patted it down and inched forward a little through the underbrush.

  She was no girl at all, but a young woman. And by the gods, she was beautiful! As if toying with him, she stripped off her tunic and waded into the stream. Imco pressed forward, feeling his way through the vegetation with quiet toes. The woman walked out into midstream and sank down into the water. This made her no less exciting however, as the water was perfectly clear, revealing her body through pale blue highlights. She rolled over, dunked her head, and came up with her curls pressed to her scalp, and then dove forward so that her backside broke the surface for a fleeting moment.

  It was all too much for Imco. His penis throbbed. Its scream for attention was not to be ignored. Imco obliged. Perhaps he should not have touched it, for in doing so he took his hand away from a grip among the bushes and took hold of a less useful anchorage. His attention was not on his footing, as it should have been. On the first stroke he gasped. On the second his eyes rolled back in his head. On the third his left foot slipped from beneath him. His body twisted just enough to dislodge his other foot. He reached out vaguely with his free hand, not yet realizing what was happening. His fingers touched only dry leaves and slender branches unable to hold him. He slid forward, grinding his bottom along the ground for a moment, fast reaching the edge of the embankment. He burst into midair amidst a rain of dust and debris.

  He landed on a small beach along the near shore. The impact on his backside was painful enough, but his erection smacked against the sand with t
he full force of his fall. He would have doubled over in agony, but the woman stood up. She did not flee from him. Instead she strode directly toward him, kicking up a spray of water before her. She halted just a few paces away and spouted a fount of verbal abuse. As she stood berating him in a language he could not understand, he realized that her beauty, from up close, was even more astonishing than he had imagined. It radiated from her very skin. It floated off her like a fragrant oil. It reached out toward him as if her spirit contained arms separate from the thrashing limbs that threatened him. Her beauty was not simply a collection of parts placed favorably beside each other, although he did not fail to notice these parts in great detail. Her hair fell over her face as if it had a mind of its own and meant to toy with her. Her breasts jiggled wildly with her harangue. The muscles of her torso stretched and flexed with each step. Her upper thighs were as firm and smooth as an adolescent boy's, and the triangle of hair at her midpoint was dripping wet. Even in that moment of pain and outright trepidation, despite the immediacy of the confrontation and his embarrassingly excited nudity: still the image came to him fully formed of his mouth against the woman's sex, drinking the moisture dripping there as if from a sacred spring.

  New images might have followed upon this one, but the woman closed her discourse by pointing at his own sex, spitting, and tossing her head with complete scorn. Then she turned, snatched up her clothes, and strode away. The image of her naked bottom would haunt him afterward. Somehow, the behind of the donkey following her only made his pain more acute. The creature fell into step a few paces after her, as if he were an ungrateful and unworthy husband, a four-legged barrier between her and a truly devoted suitor. They disappeared between a crease in the landscape, leaving him alone in the gurgling quiet of the afternoon.