"You can see right through it," murmured Bethesda.
"I happen to know that the fabric comes from Cos," I said, showing off.
"Something new from a famous silkmaker there."
"I thought you weren't her lover," growled Catullus. Was he teasing me again, or truly angry? Suddenly he let out a barking laugh, so loud that several heads turned to look. "Oh no, not Egnatius!" he whispered. "I thought she was done with him."
Clodia took her place at her couch. Joining her was a tall, muscular young man with a full black beard and a dazzling smile. I recognized his face from the Salacious Tavern.
"Very handsome," said Bethesda.
"If a stud horse could stand upright and grin he'd look like Egnatius, and women would call him handsome, I suppose." Catullus curled his upper lip. "The foul-mouthed Spaniard with the sparkling smile. But then, don't Spaniards always have the whitest teeth? You know how they get such white teeth, don't you?"
Bethesda inclined her head inquiringly.
"If Egnatius is the lord of the feast, all I can say is: check your wine cup before you take a swig."
"What do you mean?" asked Bethesda. Catullus cleared his throat and began:
"Egnatius is forever smiling to show off that dazzling grin.
Go to a trial-"
He started to laugh and covered his mouth until he could stop. The senator and his courtesan leaned closer to listen. "No, wait, let me start over. I'll change it up a bit, especially for tonight. Let me think… " He clapped his hands.
"Yes:
Egnatius is forever smiling to show off that dazzling grin.
In court tomorrow, Cicero will have everyone weeping:
'Pitiful poisoner, er, prisoner!'
— except for Egnatius, who'll grin.
And when Caelius is run out of town, his mother mourning,
'Only son! Good as dead!'-for her sake, Egnatius will grin.
It's a sickness, that grin: everywhere, everywhen.
Social grace? Social disease, I'd call it!
Look Egnatius, listen up: Had you been born Roman,
Or Sabine, or Tiburtine, obese Etruscan or Umbrian slob,
Or a swarthy Lanuvian with teeth just as perfect,
Or a Transpadane from my own dear, sweet Verona,
Or any man who cleans his teeth in the regular way,
Still I'd curse that grin. It's inane. It offends!
Ah, but you come from Spain-and Spaniards every morning, As we know, scrub their teeth white and rub their gums rosy With the stuff that squirts out of their bladders. Yellow cleanser! So flash that perfect grin-it only goes to show how much You've been guzzling from your own chamber-pot. I'd rather my own teeth should rot!"
The old senator clapped. His courtesan giggled. Bethesda grudged a crooked smile and whispered in my ear: "Are all his poems so vulgar?" "All the bits I've heard."
"Surely his love poems are different," she sighed, looking puzzled. Clodia's attraction to Marcus Caelius made perfect sense to her, but Catullus's appeal eluded her.
At that moment, Catullus's couch partner arrived. I should have known who it would be; his presence added the final measure of perverse imbalance to our little dining group. "Have I just arrived at the end of one of your poems?" quipped Trygonion, sliding onto the couch. "What fortunate timing."
Catullus scowled and snorted, but only to hide a deeper reaction. His jaw stiffened and quivered. He blinked uncontrollably. Not only had Clodia banished him back to Bithynia; she had seated him side by side with her emasculated pet. No one but me seemed to notice that Catullus was barely managing to fight back tears.
When everyone was seated, Clodia welcomed her guests with a very brief speech and the promise that she would strive to greet everyone more personally as the evening progressed; this evoked a low, suggestive whistle from a young man with a scraggly beard and a very bad haircut at a table nearby. His companions made a playful show of slapping him down for his presumptuousness. I saw Catullus wince.
The evening commenced with the arrival ofthe first course, a goose-liver paste fit for the gods of Olympus. An exquisite Falernian wine washed away all cares. Soon Bethesda was charming Senator Fufius with stories of her native Alexandria, while his neglected young courtesan played with her food and pouted. The senator seemed genuinely fascinated by everything Bethesda had to say. "I've never been to Egypt myself," he wheezed, "but of course with all this debate and controversy of late, one has to wonder what all the fuss is about." Even Trygonion and Catullus began to converse in fits and starts, if only because neither of them could keep his mouth shut for long. They traded barbs and competed at casting aspersions on various people in the room. They kept silent about those within earshot-the chief advantage of sitting next to them, I decided.
At length the dinner ended, or at least the first dinner of the evening; there would be more food and wine later. The time for entertainment had arrived. The guests moved to the garden, where folding chairs and couches had been placed in front of the little stage. I was happy to take my leave of Catullus and Trygonion, but the senator stayed close to Bethesda, with his courtesan following behind. Slaves continued to move among the guests, offering tidbits and delicacies to those with bottomless stomachs and making sure that no cup stayed empty for long.
The entertainment began with a mime show, one of those performances with a single unmasked actor speaking all the roles. The performer was new to Rome ("Just arrived in town," announced Clodia, "after spreading laughter from Cyprus to Sicily"), but the little playlets he performed were the old standards, raunchy skits about a slave talking back to his master, and a matchmaker trying to convince a husband he needs a second wife, and a doctor accidentally treating the wrong patient with a series of hilariously painful cures. The actor suggested costume changes in an instant with the barest theatrical devices-a scarf transformed him into a bashful young maiden, a hideously exaggerated bracelet made him a rich lady, a child's wooden play-sword turned him into a swaggering general.
The crowd tittered at every obscenity, groaned at the terrible puns, and roared with laughter at the climax of each skit. The actor was quite extraordinary; Clodia knew how to choose an entertainer. In the gaps between skits, Bethesda informed the old senator that mimes had originated in the streets and squares of Alexandria, where wandering actors would set down their boxes of props and put on impromptu shows for whatever coins the crowd might toss their way. That was still the only real way to see a mime, Bethesda insisted, though she supposed that the man Clodia had found was clever enough for a Roman audience.
The actor concluded his final skit to great applause. Clodia stepped onto the stage.
"And now, something very special," she said. "An old friend has returned from his wanderings in the East-"
"Like Odysseus?" said someone. I looked around and saw that it was the young man with the bad haircut.
"If Catullus is Odysseus, does that mean Clodia is Penelope?" said one of his friends.
"I hope not," said another. "You know what Odysseus did to Penelope's suitors-he crashed a party and killed them all!"
"As I was saying," said Clodia, raising her voice above the laughter, "an old friend is back. Wiser, one presumes; certainly older, if only by a year; and with new poems to share with us. I mean our dear friend from Verona, Gaius Valerius Catullus, whose words have touched us all."
"And wounded a few of us!" yelled someone.
"While he was in the East, Catullus tells me, he took a journey to look at the ruins of ancient Troy. He climbed pine-covered Mount Ida, where Jupiter sat to watch the Greeks and Trojans do battle on the plain below. He saw the place where his beloved brother is buried, and performed a funeral rite. And while he was there, he saw something that few men have ever seen. He was invited to witness the secret rites at the Temple of Cybele, including the ceremony by which a man becomes a gallus in the service of the Great Mother."
I expected to hear more lewd comments at this point, but instead a h
ush fell over the crowd.
"This experience, Catullus tells me, moved him to compose a poem in honor of Attis, the consort of Cybele, the lover who gave up his sex in her worship, the inspiration of all the galli since. On the eve of the Great Mother festival, what could be more appropriate than the first public recitation of this poem?"
She left the platform. Catullus took her place. His lids looked heavy, his eyes bleary and he seemed to barely avoid falling as he stepped onto the stage. I held my breath, wondering how he could possibly perform before an audience. He was too drunk, too bitter, too unsure of himself, too weak. He seemed to be thinking the same thing. For a long time he stood completely still, his shoulders slumped, staring first at his feet, then at something above the heads of the audience. Was he bemused by the giant Venus behind us, or simply gazing into space?
But when he finally opened his mouth to speak, the voice that emerged was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was light and airy yet strangely powerful, like a glittering net thrown over the audience, like a whisper in a dream.
I have heard countless orators in the Forum, listened to many actors on the stage. Their voices are their tools, skilled at shaping utterances suitable to the occasion; words emerge at their decree like slaves suited to a particular task. But with Catullus, everything seemed reversed. The words were in control; the poem ruled the poet, and used not just his voice but his whole body for its delivery, shaping his face, gesturing with his hands, causing his feet to pace the stage all to the poem's purpose. The poem would have existed with or without the poet. His presence was merely a convenience, since he happened to have a tongue which the poem could use to deliver itself to the ears of Clodia's guests on that warm spring night in her garden on the Palatine:
"Attis sailed his swift vessel through the deep waves
And set his eager feet upon the Phrygian shore.
He entered the sunless forest, where his mind became
As dark as the dense woods around him.
Moved by madness, he picked up a sharp stone.
He sliced off his manhood. He rose up transfigured:
A woman, the blood dripping from between her legs
Giving life to the dank, pungent earth.
Attis snatched up a drum and beat it, making music
To the Great Mother and her mysteries,
Singing rapturous falsetto to the servants of Cybele:
'Come galli, all together, to the groves on the mountain.
Sea salt stings the wound-turn away from the sea.
Turn away from Venus. Rid yourselves of manhood.
Leave that loathsome sort of love behind you,
Embrace the ecstasies of unsexed passion…' "
It was a long, strange poem. At times it became a chant, and the poet a dancer, moved to sway and stamp his feet by the poem that possessed him. The audience watched and listened, spellbound.
It was the story of Attis, and the madness of Attis, which moved him on a dark night, in a dense forest, far from home, to castrate himself and consecrate his existence to the Great Mother, Cybele. Still bleeding from his wound, he summoned the followers of the goddess and led them in a wild, ecstatic procession up the slopes of Mount Ida to her temple. They sang shrill chants, beat on drums, clanged cymbals, whirled about in frenzied, delirious dances with Attis leading them, until at last they fell exhausted into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When Attis woke, his madness had passed.
He saw what he had done.
He was horrified.
He ran to the seashore and gazed at the horizon,
sorry that he had ever left his homeland.
As a boy he had been a champion of the games,
a decorated athlete, a wrestler.
With his beard he became a man of the city,
known, respected, called upon.
What was he now?
A shipwrecked soul unable ever to return to his home,
neither man nor woman,
a fragment of his former self, sterile,
miserable, terribly alone.
His fanatic devotion had cut him off
from all that mattered to him, had cost him everything,
even his humanity.
Up on Mount Ida,
Cybele heard his wretched lament.
She looked down to see Attis weeping on the beach.
Did Cybele take mercy on Attis,
or was she only being practical
when she sent her lion down to the beach, not just to fetch Attis back, but to rend Attis's mind
and make him mad once and for all?
Attis in his sanity was too miserable for a life of worshiping Cybele, but in his unsexed state
what other life was he fit for?
So the roaring lion went crashing
down the mountainside and drove
Attis back into the forest, back into the
madness and raving ecstasy,
back into a life of loyal, unsexed
slavery to the Great Mother.
Catullus shivered, as if the poem were slowly releasing him from its grip. His voice began to fade, until the final lines were barely audible:
"Goddess, Great Mother Cybele,
guardian of Ida,
Madden other men-not me!
Give others your raving dream.
Avert your furies from my house.
Draw others into your scheme!"
Catullus was transformed. Mounting the stage, he had looked like a man stupefied by wine and self-pity, all soft and uncertain. Now his face was haggard and his eyes glowed, like a man emerging from a terrible ordeal, winnowed to his essential core. He stumbled a bit leaving the stage, not like a drunken man but like a man drained of all energy.
The garden was silent. Around me I saw raised eyebrows, uncertain frowns, thoughtful nods, grimaces of distaste. Sitting close by the stage Clodia stared unblinking at the spot Catullus had vacated. Her face was blank. Did she consider the poem a tribute to her, or the opposite, an insult? Or could she not see herself in a young man's poem about inescapable obsession, the obliteration of dignity and freedom by overwhelming passion, and the unequal, disastrous union of a mere mortal with an aloof, uncaring goddess?
Behind me I heard a stifled sob, like the sound of a woman weeping, so soft that except for the utter quiet I would never have noticed. I turned my head. Away from the other guests, on the steps leading down into the garden, a figure sat by the pedestal of the monstrous Venus, concealed in its shadow. He hugged his ankles as if to keep from shivering and hid his face against his knees, but by his dress I knew it was Trygonion.
Chapter Twenty Two
After Catullus's performance, the party never regained quite the same air of levity, despite the relentless parade of entertainments that followed. This included several other poets, better known than Catullus, who had been placed at the beginning of the evening as a sort of warm-up for those who followed. But no other poet who recited that evening left any lasting impression, at least not on my ears.
There were also dancers and jugglers and a concluding set of excruciatingly crude but very funny skits by the mime. During a break in all this entertainment our hostess found her way to our comer. She greeted Bethesda with outstretched arms and a kiss. "Did you receive the gift?"
"Yes, thank you. It arrived at the house while we were down at the Forum." Bethesda gave me a sidelong glance.
Clodia nodded. "Good. Now you're one of us. Yes, I saw you both at the trial. What do you think, Gordianus? How did it go for us today?"
"I suppose Bethesda said it best: 'Oratory is all very well when there are no facts to go on.' "
Clodia gave me a quizzical smile. "Was it Bethesda who said that? I thought it my ancestor Appius Claudius, the one who… well, never mind. May I talk to you privately? Senator, amuse this lady for a moment while I take her husband away on business."
She led me out of the garden, into a private chamber. The walls were painted a ri
ch red, decorated with rustic scenes of satyrs and nymphs.
"You're looking much better today," I said.
"Am I? I thought I looked rather horrible when I saw myself in the mirror this morning. I considered calling off the party, but it would have been the first time I ever missed giving a party on the eve of the Great Mother festival. Even when Quintus and I were up in Cisalpine Gaul — "
"Did you have Chrysis tortured today?"
She looked at me blankly for a moment. Even by the lamplight reflected off the red walls her face looked pale. "Actually, I took you aside to talk about more important matters. But since you ask, Gordianus-yes, Chrysis was tortured today. Not by me, of course. By officials of the court. Surely you know that a slave can't give a statement in a trial without being tortured? Otherwise she might simply say whatever her mistress told her to say."
"So the logic goes."
"The bitch was about to poison me. I caught her in the act."
"Did she confess?"
"Yes."
"Did she implicate Caelius?"
"Of course. You can hear her statement read tomorrow, just before my own testimony."
"The statement which she gave under torture."
"You seem to have an unwholesome fixation on torture tonight, Gordianus. I should think you'd had enough of torture listening to that awful poem of Catullus's! Really, when he told me that he had an ideal poem for the Great Mother festival… " She gave a little shudder, then brightened. "But I won't have to use torture to get you to testify tomorrow, I hope."
"Me?"
"Of course. Who else could Herennius have meant when he said the man Cicero called 'the most honest man in Rome' would be testifying against Caelius? You need only tell what you witnessed with your own eyes at the Senian baths, and here in my house yesterday, when you saw what was done to me."
"What if I decline to testify?"
She seemed surprised. "No one can compel you. But I thought you wanted to see Caelius punished."
"I wanted to discover Dio's killer."
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