Caesar is Dead

by Jack Lindsay

  So he went; and looking back from the doorway, he beheld her standing in the hall, a beam of gold from the skylight falling on her hair; but he could not see her face, for the light dazzled, though her hands moved in farewell; and then, dazzled and swaying, he stood on the pavement, and the door shut behind him.

  *

  The first thought of Brutus on coming down from the Capitol was to reach Porcia. He never admitted to himself the existence of a sensual need, and therefore refused to admit wherein lay the suffering of the need he felt; but for the last fortnight he had not entered her bed because of the wounded thigh, and in the anxious burning of the blood as he gathered purpose towards the murder he had suffered from this abstinence and yet welcomed it. But now in the recoil from the deed he felt desire as he had never felt it before — desire only for Porcia, for her blessed calm, for the spiritual assurance of bodily contact with her.

  Yet none of this he admitted to himself as he took her in his arms. After the three days’ separation she looked strange to him, somehow not the person he had expected to see; and for the first time he noticed the profound distance of the blue flame in her eyes. He wanted to ask her if she was ill, but felt too ill himself, too full of a need of her care. But she seemed oblivious of that need in him, though she had been attending to him for the last few weeks as if he were a sick child.

  “Were you worried?”

  “No, no,” she said. “I knew everything would be all right. I knew you would kill the tyrant, and then I heard that you’d killed him. And then I heard that you were on the Capitol, and I knew you’d come to me soon.”

  Brutus felt self-conscious at the naïve way she called Caesar the tyrant, though that was exactly the kind of reference he would himself make publicly. Also, he was aggrieved at the easy acceptance of his sufferings; he wasn’t the iron-limbed hero that she was making of him; he was a sick-hearted man straddling nobly his divided soul, and he wanted her to know it.

  “I’ve had a terrible time,” he began; then changed the subject. “How’s your wound?”

  “Perfectly all right.” She spoke in a distrait voice, having no thought for herself.

  He knew that her statement was incorrect, but wanted to salve his conscience by believing. “I’m so glad.” He drew her towards the couch, feeling awkward and despicable, as if she was someone else’s wife.

  *

  The streets were crowded enough now. Gallus, used as he was to a Roman crowd, had to shove his way along. He had a fairly long walk to the Aventine; and gaining the Vicus Tuscus by an alley where some children were playing with a dead cat on a string and washing was stretched across the street from upper windows, he set off for the shop of Fabullus and Ezra. There were other fulleries nearer, but he wanted to see how Rome was taking the death of Caesar, and also to have a few words with Amos, who had been the cause of his first going to the shop. He had been carrying a portfolio and a gust of wind had blown some papers out. It was near the Shrine of Hercules, and Amos, loitering among the merchants on the look-out for a chance encounter, had rescued the sheets and started a conversation. Gallus had liked the fervent lad. Amos at his request had told him tales of Jewish folklore and quoted passages from the Septuagint, the Greek version of his national Holy Book; then he had unashamedly asked Gallus for his custom: anything in the line of dyeing, cleaning, washing, or mending. They met occasionally and had a few drinks at a quiet tavern.

  Now Gallus, fresh from the balm of the peaceful sickbed in the house of Cytheris, seemed to be walking the streets of an unknown city; he felt he had never seen men and women before, never perceived the queer changes of emotion in their faces, the unchanging scrutiny of fear in their eyes, the weight and roundness of their bodies, the animal-note of their voices. He and Cytheris belonged to a different breed; and his separateness in love made him see the others as they actually were. The spectacle was fascinating, disquieting. If they could read his thoughts, they would turn on him and rend him, as wild birds peck to death a bird escaped from captivity.

  The provision-shops were open; but all the others were still barred and shuttered. No magistrates were sitting. The Salian Priests had ceased their spring-rites; yesterday they had been unable to make their procession to the Tiber, and they were a little uneasy, though they did not believe in Father Mars. For they were patricians, honorary priests. But while scepticism had grown usual among the upper classes, who held all the chief offices of the State religion, the populace were becoming yearly more affected by magicians claiming power over the stars and prophets with apocalyptic threats and promises.

  Since Caesar’s murder all police supervision had lapsed, and there were parties drinking, brawling, dancing, in the main streets. Food-stalls had sprung up in spots where they were not allowed at ordinary times, and with them a host of wine-vendors. Wine was being sold from casks, barrows, or tables. Many tumblers, contortionists, fortune-tellers, balladists, patent-medicine salesmen, conjurers, exorcists, and religious fanatics had taken advantage of the large floating audiences. Harlots, disregarding the bye-laws, and dressed in yellow chemises, darted out of the lanes.

  The streets were full of cries, and Gallus sorted them out as he passed along. The various phrases wove together somehow a congruous impression in his head, and he felt no contradiction in their differing appeals. They were all part of the merging madness of the world; and while he despised the world for being outside the circle of his love, he could feel the divergent passions and lunacies as awfully united in some surging impulse.

  The pattern of the cries became in the blood of Gallus the urgent, oppressive enigma of life itself.

  “Have your fortune told by your palm. Find out if Venus was your mother. Spare a copper for a man that had his foot trodden on by an elephant in Africa. Guaranteed to cure bellyache, menstrual pains, and the evil eye. Repent and be saved. Pass me the dice. Kill all the usurers. Put an end to usury. Make room, citizens. Two more coins, and the famous Alcestis will do what you’ve never seen a woman do, she’ll cross her feet over her shoulders under her chin and then stand on her head. For those that die without seeing God shall visit the bottomless pit of stench and flame. Shut up and have a drink. Caesar died for us, I tell you.”

  The crowd was jolly, but very serious. Never had Gallus seen such a crowd. He sought to emerge from the loneliness of his surrender to love. He wanted to lose himself in the people, to discover the pervading emotion, to enter into the dark satisfying life of men grasped by a single great incomprehensible emotion — the unutterable life of faith. He failed; and yet he touched on something definite, the sense of a huge figure hovering over Rome, a comforting contact with power. No longer was he homeless or uncared for while that emotion persisted; no wonder the people found it a dole more sustaining than corn itself.

  Here was the world-soul of the Stoics, he smiled to himself — though how would the Stoics reconcile this dark satisfaction with a belief in the absolute rationality of life? Here was a religion of the people, of the mud perhaps; it had nothing to do with a Communion of the Elect, the few who imagined that they peeled the layers off the flesh and got ultimately to a small round white kernel of transparent soul, an understandable God. The God of the people was not understandable, and yet he expressed himself in simple phrases — “Come and be saved. Be good or you will burn. Love me as you love yourself. Love all men as your brothers, except those who withstand me, and those you shall destroy.”

  Ah, the simple folk, they were tormented by no cleavage between the ideas of love and justice. God’s love merely made them happy, and God’s wrath merely made them afraid, and neither happiness nor fear did they question.

  *

  At last he reached the Aventine and the fullery of Fabullus and Ezra. Work was going on within, though the doors were closed. Gallus knocked and was admitted by Ezra, who bowed, touching his brow and heart. Ezra, the father of Amos, was a Jew of liberal tendencies, though strict enough in his notion of what filial piety implied. Among intimates he
would admit that the Law of Moses was not necessarily interpreted in a literal sense, and that even circumcision was less important than the offering of a pure heart to Yahwe; but such doctrines he did not avow in the Synagogue, where he quieted the tongue of scandal by punctilious worship and large-sized donations. He and his father and his father’s father had been Greek-speaking Jews, and he had come from Alexandria; and though he knew Arimaic and spoke it with his fellow-religionists, he had forgotten the older Hebrew and read his Holy Book in the Greek.

  He ushered Gallus in and took the tunic from the satchel, endeavouring not to sniff at its draggled state.

  “I had an accident.”

  “Since all clothes become dirty in time,” said Ezra, sagely, “God has made fulleries; and since there are fulleries, he has made it that all clothes become dirty in time; and those that say otherwise kick against the pricks.”

  Gallus wasn’t sure if Ezra was laughing at him, but the man’s face was solemn. Gallus looked about the fullery. In an alcove stood tubs in which boys were busy treading soiled clothes, and a broad vat in which two men were also jumping and then turning over the clothes with their toes. Other boys were soaking clothes in the alkali, plant-ash, which was sprinkled in the water. Beside the tubs stood bowls of urine for the same purpose. Nearby, washed clothes were hanging out on cords, and workmen were rubbing them with brushes, to restore the nap. At the further end of the hall men were sprinkling clothes and placing them on frames. Here the clothes were stretched, while from beneath there rose sulphur fumes out of pipes attached to a small portable oven. Near to the stretching-frame there stood the big iron press with two screws, in which finishing touches were given. Against the wall was thrown a heap of whitish clay, used to clarify the colour of the wool. The process of washing was strenuous, and togas did not long survive the rubbing and trampling; a dandy would wear only the unwashed article, and after three or four treatments a garment was of small value.

  “Treat it as gently as possible,” said Gallus, eyeing his tunic with sudden fondness.

  “Like a mother her first-born,” replied Ezra, stroking his beard. “Well, master Gallus, my trade should be a flourishing one, for the world has befouled itself. Truly was it said, a man cannot take fire into his bosom and keep his clothes unsinged.”

  “Where’s Amos?” asked Gallus; but he was interrupted by a man who lurched in through the half-opened door. Gallus did not know the man, but saw the brows of Ezra contracting with annoyance. The man was drunk. Hanging limply to the door, he looked round with a drunkard’s mock-ferocity, his hair falling over his protruding eyes.

  “Where’s Ezra?” he called, though he was staring at the proprietor. “I’ve come to have it out with him at last. Where’s the dirty Iudaean dog? Where’s the circumcised grandson of a sow?”

  “Here I stand,” said Ezra, without indignation. “Say what you have to say, and depart. For not till April comes will you get another coin.”

  “It’s not money I want, but justice,” shouted the man. Then, dropping the pretence that he didn’t see Ezra, he pointed at him. “Is this my works, or is it not?” He backed and pointed again, this time at the sign. “Fabullus it says, doesn’t it? Insult me now by saying that I can’t spell my own name. O the world’s in a shameful way when a Roman’s robbed in his own house and then insulted because of it.” He pointed again, this time down the road. “They’re all talking about their rights. I blush when I hear it. I can bear it no longer.”

  “Say what you have to say,” replied Ezra, calmly, “and then depart.”

  “You’re a cheating hog. Pay me something now, or I’ll expose you. I’ll bring the soldiers along and have you trodden on in your own vat. It’s got to stop.”

  He tried to beat his fist into the palm of his other hand, missed, and swayed towards Gallus. Drawing back, he surveyed the stranger. “You’re a Roman, aren’t you? Anyway, you’re not a Jew. You don’t smell like one to me. Even when I can’t smell cheese I can smell a Jew.”

  Stumbling across, he began to weep on the shoulder of Gallus. “I can’t bear you witnessing my shame. I don’t mind being cheated, but I can’t bear the shame of it. Wherever I go, I hear people saying: There goes Fabullus that lent his name to a maggoty Jew — why can’t he go on the dole like a decent man instead of having a Jew keep him?”

  Ezra seized Fabullus, and suddenly assumed an expression of tempestuous rage. “Out you go! How dare you come molesting my clients?”

  “O don’t say that, Ezra,” whined Fabullus, twisting in his grip. “Say our clients. It’s our shop, isn’t it?”

  “You shall have no more money till it’s due to you,” answered Ezra, “because you’d only drink it if I gave it to you — as you’ll drink it when I give it to you later. But later it will be due to you, and so then you shall have it, but not a day before. Out you go.”

  He flung Fabullus out into the road and then closed the door. Fabullus could be heard a few moments whimpering and scratching outside; then he went off, muttering.

  “It was his workshop once,” said Ezra, feeling some explanation was needed. “But he drank and gambled, and borrowed money from me, until he had borrowed more than the shop was worth. So I took the shop, as I had the right, for it was named as the security. Then I could have sent him away; but because he was known here, I let his name stay over the door, and I pay him so much every month — for which I earn curses from him and black looks at the Synagogue, men calling me a partner of the uncircumcised and saying that I break the Law. And many chachmamim have argued on that point, and not a small sum has it cost me one way or another to keep that name over the door, even now when it is of small use to me. But I am a man of my word, for he that breaks his word breaks the navel-string of the spirit. In Jerusalem there are merchants and dealers proud to place over the door the name of a priest or professor of the Law as their partner, and to him they give a portion of their earnings although in the shop he does no work at all. For such a payment is a ransom to the Lord. Likewise do I pay a ransom, not to the Lord, but to the city in which I live; and while I am satisfied, all is well, for satisfied is no one else.”

  Amos was out. He roamed about much nowadays, said Ezra, pleased only when delivering parcels and taking a great time about it; but he could have his head for a short while yet, and then he must settle down to the trade. A good lad. No one could raise the nap on a lady’s cloak better.

  As Gallus reached the lower end of the street, he met Amos, but Amos with a surprising redness on his swarthy cheeks. Suggesting a drink at the nearest tavern, he found Amos full of obscurely joyous hints and self-congratulations, and finally got the straightforward fact. Amos had met a marvellous girl in an ironmonger’s shop, or rather in the room upstairs, a most superior girl; and he owned a fine cloak, but had it wrapped up in the parcel that he didn’t like to undo so near home, and it was a bit damp on account of being washed last night after everyone went to bed; and though the exhaust-pipe from the furnace and the clattering on the anvil made the room a trifle hot and noisy, the marvellous girl was so marvellous that she hadn’t objected — the proof of which was that she was to meet him at the same place again tomorrow afternoon; and she had black hair and a straight nose and spikenard in her navel.

  Amos had many other images with which to convey the girl’s incredible nature; and Gallus grew interested. Had Amos himself invented the phrases? Amos wasn’t quite sure; perhaps not all were original; after some pressure he admitted that he might have been quoting the words of a book of his people called The Song of Songs, of which there were many interpretations but only one entirely satisfactory application; but, of course, as Gallus hadn’t seen Karni with his own eyes, he’d have to take the words of Amos as to that.

  Gallus asked more about the ancient literature of the Jews, and Amos promised to learn some more passages; but he couldn’t remember anything but The Song of Songs for the moment, and the Commandments and the Prohibitions and so on, but these latter sections weren’t
equally relevant; still he’d read some more and have it ready for the next meeting.

  They parted, Amos agreeing to call at the rooms of Gallus; and Gallus walked on. But as he turned the corner, he was aware of someone following close behind. Turning quickly, he found that the man was Fabullus.

  Fabullus shuffled under his gaze, shut his eyes tightly, and blinked. Then he said, “I wasn’t following you. Doesn’t the street belong to me as much as you? But since we’ve met before, I think you ought to give me something to make up for the way my feelings were trampled on under your eyes. If you hadn’t been there, I’d have cut that Jew’s heart out and given it to the pigs. I let him throw me out through respect of a fellow-citizen who mightn’t like to see a brawl. Can’t you make me a loan? You go putting money in that Jew’s hand by giving him clothes to wash, and I get nothing, and it’s my place, I tell you, as it was my father’s before me. By Dis, don’t you think the shades of my family haunt me? If I need a drink or two, it’s only because I can’t sleep otherwise. I don’t mind the loss; it’s the disgrace that’s killing me — having to take money from a Jew as if it was charity when he owes me everything he’s got. You ought to see the way people look at me in the streets. People I don’t know, too. Aren’t you going to give me something?”

  Gallus pushed a few coins into the man’s hand and told him to stop talking; then he went on, leaving Fabullus to count the coins with a dribbling leer on his face. He thought that he’d rid himself of the man, and forgot all about him; but as he turned into Figtree Yard, where lay the entrance to his attic’s stairs, he was aware again of a slouching presence at his back, and turned in time to see Fabullus retreating round the wall.

  The sight gave him an unpleasant feeling of insecurity, of a world callously filled with foes and madmen; and he tried in vain to drive away the gloom that settled on his blood, a sense of darkness thronged with vampire-mouths. On the dark stairs he seemed fighting his way up through dim bat-presences of evil; and it was with relief that he saw the line of light under the familiar door and knew that his slave Leonidas would be within, disconsolately preparing a dish of peas and pulse.