by Mika Waltari
I walked over to the other side of the river to avoid the stench of the city center, past Emperor Gaius’ amphitheater to which he had at immense expense had an obelisk brought all the way from Egypt, and then on up the Vatican hill. There was an ancient Etruscan oracle temple with wooden walls there which Emperor Claudius had had protected with a layer of tiles. The old soothsayer raised his stave to attract my attention, but did not bother to call after me. I walked down the far side of the hill, right out of the city toward the market gardens. Several prosperous-looking farms lay within sight. From here and from farther away, every night an endless stream of ratding bumping carts brought in the city’s vegetables which were then unloaded and sold to the dealers in the market halls before dawn, when they all had to leave the city.
I felt no desire to inquire after Claudia from the sunburnt slaves who were working in the vegetable fields, but went on my way. I let my feet take me where they wished to go, but Claudia had said something about a spring and some old trees. So I looked around and my thoughts led me the right way as I followed a dried-up stream bed. Below some ancient trees stood a little hut, near a large farm. In the vegetable field beside it crouched Claudia, her hands and feet black with earth, wearing only a coarse shift and a wide pointed straw hat to keep off the sun. At first I scarcely recognized her. But I knew her so well, although several months had gone by since we had last met, that I recognized her by her hand movements and her way of bending down.
“Greetings, Claudia,” I called. I was filled with exultant joy as I crouched down on the ground in front of her and looked at her face under the brim of the straw hat.
Claudia started and stared at me with her eyes widening in fright and her face flushing scarlet. Suddenly she flung a bunch of muddy pea stalks in my face, stood up and ran away behind the hut. I was flabbergasted by such a reception and swore to myself as I rubbed the earth out of my eyes.
I followed her hesitantly and saw that she was splashing in some water and washing her face. She shouted angrily at me and told me to wait on the other side of the hut. Not until she had combed her hair and put on clean clothes would she come back.
“A well-brought-up man gives notice when he is coming,” she snapped angrily, “but how can one expect such good manners from the son of a Syrian money-lender. What do you want?”
She had insulted me. I flushed and turned away without a word. But when I had taken a few steps, she came after me and took my arm.
“Are you really so touchy, Minutus?” she cried. “Don’t go. Forgive my hasty tongue. I was angry because you took me by surprise, ugly and dirty from work.”
She took me into her modest little hut which smelled of smoke, herbs and clean linen clothes.
“You see, I too can spin and weave, as Romans of old should be able to,” she said. “Don’t forget that in the old days even the proudest Claudian steered his oxen behind the plow.”
In this way she was trying to excuse her poverty.
“I prefer you like this, Claudia,” I replied politely, “with your face fresh from spring water, to all the painted silk-clad women of the city.”
“Of course,” Claudia admitted honestly, “I’d rather my skin were as white as milk and my face beautifully painted and my hair set in lovely curls on my forehead and my clothes revealing more than they concealed and myself smelling of the balsam of the East. But my uncle’s wife, Aunt Paulina Plautia, who has let me live here since my mother died, does not approve of such things. She is always dressed in mourning, prefers silence to speaking, and keeps away from her equals. She has more than enough money but she gives her income to charity and to even more doubtful purposes rather than allowing me to buy rouge and eye shadow.”
I could not help laughing, for Claudia’s face was so fresh and clean and healthy that she really had no need for cosmetics. I wanted to take her hand, but she jerked it away and snapped that her hands had become as rough as a slave-girl’s during the summer. I asked if she had heard about my accident, but she replied evasively.
“Your Aunt Laelia would never have let me in to see you,” she said. “Anyhow, I’ve become humble and realize that nothing but harm would come to you from knowing me. I wish you well, Minutus.”
I replied roughly that I could make my own decisions about my own life and choose my own friends.
“Anyhow, you’ll soon be rid of me,” I remarked. “I have a promise of a letter of recommendation to go to war against the Germans under the famous Corbulo. My leg is better and only a fraction shorter than the other one.”
Claudia quickly said she had not even noticed that I limped at all. Then she thought for a moment.
“Actually you are safer in the field,” she said sadly, “than in Rome where some strange woman can take you away from me at any moment. I should grieve less if through some foolish ambition you lost your life in war, than if you fell in love with someone else. But why do you have to go and fight against the Germans? They are horribly large, and powerful warriors. If I ask Aunt Paulina nicely, she’d certainly give you a letter of recommendation to my uncle, Aulus Plautius, in Britain. He commands four legions there and has been very successful. Obviously the Britons are much weaker opponents than the Germans since Uncle Aulus is no military genius. Even Claudius managed to claim a triumph in Britain, so the Britons can’t be very fierce opponents.”
I did not know this and I asked her eagerly for more details. Claudia explained that her mother was a Plautius. When Aulus Plautius’ wife, Paulina, had taken her husband’s parentless niece under her wing, Aulus had good-naturedly regarded Claudia as a member of his family, especially as they had no children of their own.
“Uncle Aulus did not like my mother, Urgulanilla, at all,” Claudia told me, “but in any case, Mother was also a Plautia and my uncle was very offended when Claudius, for indefensible reasons, divorced my mother and sent me naked to be laid on her threshold. In fact Uncle Aulus was prepared to adopt me but I am too proud for that. Legally I am and shall remain the daughter of Emperor Claudius, however repulsive his habits are.”
To me her descent was a dull topic of conversation, but the thought of the war in Britain excited me.
“Your legal father Claudius by no means tamed the Britons, even if he did celebrate it as a triumph,” I said. “On the contrary, the war goes on there all the time. It is said that your Uncle Aulus can already claim over five thousand enemy dead from several years’ fighting and that he thus has also earned a triumph. They are obstinate and treacherous people. As soon as there is peace in one part of the country, war breaks out again in another. Let’s go and find your Aunt Paulina at once.”
“You’re in a great hurry to gain military honors,” said Claudia teas-ingly. “But Aunt Paulina has forbidden me to go alone into the city and to spit on the Imperial statues. So I’d be glad to come with you, for I haven’t seen her for several weeks.”
We walked back into the city together and I hurried home to change into more suitable clothes. Claudia did not want to come in for fear of Aunt Laelia, but waited at the gate and talked to Barbus. When we went on to the Plautia house on the Celius hill, Claudia’s eyes were glittering with rage.
“So,” she cried, “you’ve been making friends with Agrippina and her cursed son, have you? That shameless old hag is a dangerous woman. Anyhow, she’s old enough to be your mother.”
I protested in surprise that while Agrippina was certainly beautiful, she was reserved in her manner and her son was much too young and childish for me.
“I know more than enough about those depraved Claudians,” snapped Claudia. “Agrippina sleeps with anyone if she thinks he might be useful. The Emperor’s treasurer, Pallas, has been her lover for a long time. She is trying to find a new husband, but in vain. The men who are noble enough are much too cautious to get involved in her intrigues, but anyone as inexperienced as you could be easily seduced by any immoral widowed matron of Rome.”
Bickering together, we walked through the city, but
in fact Claudia was pleased when I told her that no one had seduced me yet and that I had remembered the promise I had made to her on the way home from the Moon temple the day I had received the man-toga.
In the Plautius courtyard there was a long row of busts of ancestors, death masks and war souvenirs. Paulina Plautia proved to be an old woman with large eyes which seemed to be looking straight through me. One could see from her eyes that she had been weeping. When she heard my name and errand, she was surprised and brushed my cheek with her thin hand.
“This is strange,” she said. “Like an unbelievable sign from the only God. Perhaps you don’t know, Minutus Manilianus, that your father and I became friends and exchanged a holy kiss when we had broken bread and drunk wine together at the love-feast. But something very evil has happened. Tullia had spies put on your father. When she had sufficient evidence she denounced me quite recently for having partaken in shameful Eastern mysteries.”
I realized at once from where Claudia had acquired her knowledge of the heresies of the Jews.
“By all the gods of Rome,” I cried in horror, “has my father really become involved in the conspiracies of the Christians as well? I thought he’d left all those fads behind in Antioch.”
The old woman looked at me with strangely brilliant eyes.
“Minutus,” she said. “It is not a fad but the only way to the truth and an eternal life. I’m not afraid to believe that the Jew and Nazarene Jesus was and is the son of God. He appeared to your father in Galilee and your father has more to tell about him than many a man here. He considers his marriage to the domineering Tullia to be God’s punishment for his sins. So he has said farewell to his former pride and received the holy Christian baptism, as I have. Neither of us is ashamed of it, even if there are not many rich or noble people among the Christians.”
This fearful news left me speechless. Claudia noticed my expression and said, “I’m not baptized into their faith, but on the other side of the Tiber, in the Jewish part of the city, I’ve listened to their teachings. Their mysteries and holy meals absolve them from all their sins.”
“Rowdies,” I said angrily, “eternal squabblers, troublemakers and rabble-rousers. I’ve seen it all in Antioch. The real Jews hate them worse than the plague.”
“One doesn’t have to be a Jew to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the son-of God,” said Paulina.
But I was not in the mood for theological discussion. In fact I saw red at the thought of my father sinking so low as to become a follower of the despicable Christians.
“My father must have been drunk again and hence full of compassion,” I said sternly. “So he will make any excuse to escape Tullia’s reign of terror. But he might have told his troubles to his own son.”
The woman with the large eyes shook her head when she heard me speaking disrespectfully of my father.
“Just before you came,” she said, “I heard that the Emperor, to save my husband’s reputation, will not agree to a public trial as a result of the denouncement. Aulus Plautius and I were married according to the longer form. So the Emperor is handing me over to be judged by my husband before the family court as soon as Aulus comes back from Britain. When you came here, I was wondering how I could get a message to my husband before he somehow happened to hear any exaggerated charges elsewhere and was shocked because of me. My conscience is clear, for I have done nothing shameful or wicked. Would you go to Britain immediately, Minutus, and bear a letter to my husband?”
I did not have the slightest desire to take this cheerless news to a famous soldier. All I could think of was that this was no way to win his favor. But the old woman’s mild eyes bewitched me. I did think that perhaps I owed her something, as she had got into difficulties because of my father. Otherwise Aulus Plautius might simply have had her killed, according to the old longer marriage form and family laws.
“This appears to be my fate,” I said. “I’m ready to go tomorrow, if you promise me that in your letter you do not involve me in your superstitions.”
She promised this and soon began to write the letter. Then I realized that if I took my own horse, Arminia, the journey would be a very long one, for she would have to rest now and then. So Paulina promised to get me a first-class courier’s plaque which gave me the right to use the Emperor’s own post-horses and wagons in the same way as a traveling senator. Paulina was, after all, the wife of the Commantler-in-Chief in Britain. But in return she demantled one thing more of me.
“On the slope of Aventine,” she said, “there lives a tentmaker called Aquila. Go to him after dark and tell him or his wife Prisca that I have been denounced. Then they’ll know to be on their guard. But if a stranger questions you, you can say I sent you to order tents for my husband in Britain. I daren’t send my own servants there, for my house is being watched because of the denouncement.”
I swore inwardly at being dragged into the Christians’ loathsome machinations in this way, but Paulina blessed me in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, touching my forehead and chest gently with the tips of her fingers, so I could say nothing. I promised to do as she asked and to return the next day, ready for the journey.
As we parted from her, Claudia sighed, but I was excited by this unexpected decision and the thought of the long journey which would solve all my problems. Despite Claudia’s hesitation, I wanted her to come into our house so that I could present her as my friend to Aunt Laelia.
“Now that my father has become a shameful Christian,” I said, “you have nothing to be ashamed of in our house. You are de jure the daughter of the Emperor and of noble birth.”
Aunt Laelia made the best of the situation. When she had collected herself after the first surprise, she took Claudia in her arms and looked at her carefully.
“You’ve grown into a lively, healthy young woman,” she said. “I used to see a great deal of you when you were a child and I remember well that dear Emperor Gaius always called you cousin. Your father behaved shamefully towards you, but how is Paulina Plautia? Do you really shear sheep with your own hands on her farm outside the walls, as I’ve been told?”
“Stay and talk together for a while,” I suggested. “I know women are never at a loss for anything to talk about. I must go and see my lawyer and my father, for early tomorrow morning I am going to Britain.”
Aunt Laelia burst into tears and wailed that Britain was a wet and misty island where the fearful climate permanently ruined the health of those who survived the fighting against the blue-painted Britons. At the time of Emperor Gaius’ triumph, she had been to the amphitheater and seen Britons cruelly fighting each other in the arena. On Mars field they had built, plundered and destroyed a whole British town, but in Britain itself there was presumably little chance of plunder, if the town in the victory performance had been like the home towns of the Britons themselves.
I left Claudia with her to console her, fetched money from my lawyer and then went to Tullia’s house to find my father. Tullia received me reluctantly.
“Your father,” she said, “has shut himself up in his room in his usual state of dejection and doesn’t want to see anyone. He hasn’t spoken to me for several days. He gives the servants orders by nods and gestures. Try to get him to speak before he turns quite dumb.”
I consoled Tullia and told her my father had had the same kind of attacks at home in Antioch. When she heard that I was going to Britain to fight in the army there, she nodded in approval.
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “I hope you will honor your father there. I have tried in vain to get him to interest himself in the affairs of the city. In his youth he studied law, although of course he has forgotten all that now. Your father is much too lazy and unenterprising to acquire a position which is worthy of him.”
I went in to see my father. He was sitting in his room with his head in his hands. He was drinking wine from his beloved wooden goblet and he stared at me with bloodshot eyes. I shut the door carefully behind me.
“Greeting
s from your friend Paulina Plautia,” I said. “Because of your holy kiss, she’s in trouble and has been denounced for superstition. I must go quickly to Britain with a message about the matter for her husband. I’ve come to ask you to wish me well on my journey in case I do not return. In Britain I shall probably join the army to complete my military service there.”
“I have never wanted you to be a soldier,” stammered my father, “but perhaps even that is better than living here in this Babylon of whores. I know my wife Tullia has brought unhappiness to Paulina by her jealousy, but it should have been I who was denounced. I have been baptized in their baptismal bath and they laid their hands on my head, but the spirit did not enter me. I shall never again speak to Tullia.”
“Father,” I asked, “what exactly does Tullia want from you?”
“That I become a senator,” my father replied. “That is what that monstrous woman has got into her head. I own enough land in Italy and am of sufficiently noble birth to be able to become a member of the Senate. And Tullia, by special dispensation, has obtained the rights of a mother of three children, although she has never bothered to have any. In my youth I loved her. She followed me to Alexandria and never forgave me for choosing your mother, Myrina. Now she talks on at me as one talks to an oxen, abuses me for my lack of ambition and will soon turn me into an incurable drunkard if I don’t do what she wants and become a senator. But Minutus, my son, there is no wolf blood in me, even though in all truth, many a worse man has sat in red boots on an ivory stool. Forgive me, my son. You understand now why under these circumstances I could do nothing else but declare myself a Christian.”
As I looked at my father’s swollen face and restless roving eyes, I was seized with great compassion. I realized that he had to find something worthwhile in his life to be able to bear living in Tullia’s house. Yet even being in the Senate would be better for his spiritual health than taking part in the secret meetings of the Christians.