by Jack Lindsay
Give me your greatness, Caesar.
The will ended. But the slave turned over the tablet-leaf and went on reading. There was a codicil. The nephew Gaius Octavius was adopted as a son.
Antonius set his teeth, and for one blinding moment knew the deepest disappointment he was ever to know. Yet he had hardly hoped. Only that taunt he had made to Cleopatra had surprised him with a revelation of how deeply something in him relied on those vague hints of Caesar’s hints intended to rouse him to better service, no doubt; or had Caesar really played for a while with the idea of adopting him?
Suddenly the thought came to Antonius. There was no hope for mankind, there was no loyalty in them. He had failed Caesar; and if he would fail such a man, he was worthless. Everyone had failed. A sense of great opportunity lost passed desolatingly over his flesh. If one man — if he, Marcus Antonius — had given Caesar absolute allegiance, it might have meant a new world; but Caesar had died lonely, amid half-friends, half-enemies. Perhaps the murderers had paid him the greatest tribute; their moment of envying hate had been absolute. Had Caesar understood it like that? Antonius prayed that he had; and for one pulse of enlightening misery he had a great fear of his own end, a great fear of facing the darkness with a life wasted wrongly and wrongly hoarded.
For that pulse of fear he stood under the statue in the Curia, not fighting at Caesar’s side as his heart longed to have fought but as Caesar himself, brutally betrayed, struggling for sanity. Then the mist cleared and he saw the roomful of mourners; Fulvia regarding him with contemptuous curiosity and solicitude; Piso closing his eyes with decorous gravity; the two nephews with the lesser shares trying not to show any jealousy of the absent Octavius; Calpurnia rigid with dread that everyone was looking at her; Lucius fingering the scar on his cheek.
And the world was vile and infinitely desirable.
*
The news of the will ran throughout Rome within an hour; and the people groaned and shouted as if they were themselves the beasts of love and rage that were devouring their hearts. But there was no outbreak; all attention was centred on the promised funeral rites. A day of heated preparations passed, and then came the day of farewell. The spring Vacation, the Quinquatrus, had arrived; but work had already ceased, and nobody thought of the holidays except the schoolboys, who felt cheated, since the schools would have been shut anyhow. Why couldn’t the riots happen in mid-term?
Not least glad was young Clodia, who had not the slightest interest in Caesar. For she had obtained permission to visit her aunt Clodia; and Bhebeo (whose name, before she became a wet-nurse, had been Phoebe) accompanied her, instructed not to let her out of sight and to bring her back before prandium.
Clodia, the aunt, was at her villa on the other side of the river. She sat in a sunny arbour, looking on the flowing waters and the boys who bathed from a projection of the bank. Happy children, glossy with wet sunlight. She let the roll slip from her lap, and forgot the contentment she had been finding in the simple, difficult Greek of Heracleitos. What was left for an aging woman of her intelligence but study? Her days of loving were past; and she had seen other women of her class who couldn’t realise the lesson of the years. They solaced themselves with their slaves, and very soon the slaves had a complete ascendency, bullying them before visitors, humiliating them endlessly. No, any escape was better than that; even the study of the Greek philosophy was better. But it was hard to forget on such a morning, with the spectacle of wet young bodies naked on the other side of the flowers, and so much gold and silver in the air — the coinage that had currency only among the young. Only the young could exchange the yellow flowers and claim the accounting kiss.
Clodia was old, in the late forties, irretrievably old for a woman who wanted to suck dry the wine-flagon, or not drink at all. She had almost succumbed to wine a year ago, after she lost her last lover, a youth who had flattered her foolishly and then gone off with a freedgirl who had soft golden hair and no chin.
Yes, she was old. She resented even the brittle intellectual renewal of life that Heracleitos still found after many generations in the roll that she had been cuddling on her lap. She was as intelligent as any philosopher, and yet she would leave nothing — only a madcap daughter who would have a bad end, caught like a fornicating fly in honey. Clodia looked back into the past of her own lovers, not the men who had carved no face upon her memory, but Catullus and Caelius, one whom she had despised and one whom she had hated, and both whom she had loved. She loved them now, sadly, for they were dead; and Catullus had left her his poems, worshipping and libellous, and Caelius had died with a sardonic gesture of despair — for he had found himself dwarfed in Caesar’s world and had defied it, alone, straightforwardly, dying in the South as he called on the slaves and the outcast shepherds to revolt; he hadn’t plotted murder in a corner.
Both these men were very close to Clodia as she lazed in the early spring sunlight, two men who had been good friends till she came between them. Then Catullus had been all claws, a cat of a poet, more of a woman than she was. He had always wanted her to kiss him, instead of being taken up by the pleasurable duty of bedding her within his caresses; and curiously, she remembered, she had always felt shy and frightened when she kissed, though kisses given by another never flurried her. Man to kiss, woman to be kissed. Yet Clodia had no kisses left, to give or to take; and the young boys splashed and dived in the tawny waters of the Tiber.
The moist smell of the earth was the smell of a grave.
She shuddered. It was the smell of decay about to break forth into blossom. She wanted the faith of Heracleitos, the acceptance of the endless flux, the breaking and the making, the loss and the renewal; and yet against that whirl and tangle of divine forms there stood the pitiable form of human individuality, unable to find solace in the contemplation of the universe and its beautifully impersonal patterns. What did that crying spectre desire? Could any lover stop the mouth of Clodia’s kiss? She was old; therefore there must be a meaning and a contentment in age, if she could only see deep enough.
She looked up to see Ticidas coming down the garden path lined with roses. That annoyed her. He was an affected young poet, the latest lover of Metella since her divorce; and Clodia was sure that he wanted Metella only because she was the daughter of the mistress of Catullus, for he imitated Catullus most patently. Indeed his only virtue was his avowal of the discipleship.
Looking now into the face of Ticidas, Clodia saw that he would try to kiss her, and she was inclined to surrender to him, to seek once more a contact with the engendering earth about her; but she knew she would be doing it chiefly out of pique against Metella and so would be sorry for it afterwards, and, marvelling at her self-control, she decided to snub Ticidas.
Yes, he settled down at her feet, and rested his folded arms on her knees, and rested his chin on his wrists, and stared up at her; but she took no notice. Then he raised himself and took her about the waist and kissed her; and again the spring burst within her in a clamour of wings, soft in the throat, warm in the nested loins; but, still marvelling at herself, she thrust him away and laughed at him.
“Why do you want to kiss me — an old woman?”
Ticidas was hurt at the suggestion that he could desire an old woman; more concerned to vindicate his own taste than to woo the woman he had embraced.
“After all,” he said, sucking at his lip, “it would be something to be able to say that one had had the Lesbia of Catullus.”
Clodia laughed again. “For being so rudely truthful you deserve to get me — but not quite. You can tell a lie instead and swear you had your Lesbia.”
“It’s not the same,” he insisted. “And really I think you’re a great woman.”
Clodia picked up her roll. “Go inside. Metella will be back soon. She’s choosing some new material.” Silky texture of the skin thrilling beneath a lover’s fingers. Let Metella have her day of softness; her skin also would sag and parch. Once more Clodia desired to take Ticidas; and if he had aga
in embraced her, she would not have resisted. But it was too late. He rose, kicked at a grass-tuft, asked her the name of a flower, and went inside.
Clodia resumed her roll, determined to contemplate undesirously the elements, their coming and going, their crumbling and reassembling; perhaps in time she would find more satisfaction in that contemplation than in any twining and untwining of lover’s touch. It was all part of the same thing.
For a moment that thought gave her real satisfaction; she understood Heracleitos, his faith, not merely his words. She must take her studying seriously, arrange for Greek professors to call and discuss the philological points ...
So she watched the boys bathing, and the sunlight dripping from their backs and arms and legs had a new poignancy of silver. Then she saw that she was to have no escape today from interruption. Down the path came young Clodia, flutteringly attended by the fat Bhebeo. Clodia liked her niece, but wasn’t sure if the presence of her young vitality wouldn’t be too disturbing on this silvery day; she preferred to watch youth at a distance, beyond a barrier of flowers.
“Good day, aunt,” said the girl, lifting her smooth oval face for a kiss. “O look at all those boys. I wish I could bathe with them; but I suppose they could tell I was a girl if I took my clothes off and joined them. They’d run away. Fancy that.”
“They don’t know you, my dear,” said Clodia, wondering if she had talked like that in her early teens. “I daresay they wouldn’t run from the little girls they know.”
“O yes they would,” said her niece, firmly. “But I’m not little any longer. I’m grown up. I asked Bhebeo to cut the hair under my armpits yesterday, and the soles of my feet itch in bed. Bhebeo says that means I’m going to have three husbands.”
Bhebeo became confused and jabbered. “Don’t repeat what I said when I didn’t say it, or I’ll tell your mother on you. I said the lines on your palm showed three husbands as plain as the ears on a donkey, but it’s no use blaming me for what the Fates have written. I was only using the eyes that were put in my head.”
Clodia was bored. What was she to do? She couldn’t tell the girl to run away and play; Ticidas would probably try to kiss her, the feeble fellow. Then she had an idea. She would go and call on someone — but on whom? Her women friends all talked as inanely as the young girl herself, and she had no men friends on whom she could call unexpectedly — and even if she still had such men friends, she couldn’t have taken her niece to them. Then she had a second idea, an astonishing idea. She would call on Cicero. He had been bothering for months now through Atticus about buying the end-piece of the garden; he wanted to raise a monument to his dear dead Tullia, that stupid little adoring piece — no, a shrine, not a tombstone, he insisted on calling it. Clodia and he were old enemies — ever since he and Clodius began to fight, and he had insulted her outrageously in his speech defending Caelius against her prosecution. But that was old stuff now; she had prosecuted Caelius only out of blind hatred and perhaps she deserved what she got. It was in the past, anyway, a pre-war affair. She couldn’t keep up antagonism on such a day, and Cicero would be so surprised to see her. He was wifeless now, so the visit was safe.
“We’ll go calling together.”
Young Clodia clapped her hands and jumped into the air. “O yes.” Bhebeo opened her mouth, but the girl went on. “Now you know you can’t object as long as I behave myself, and I will.” Then, while Bhebeo was mustering objections, she turned slyly to Clodia and said: “Wait a moment. I want to go inside for a few moments with Bhebeo. Come on, Bhebeo, I can’t wait.”
She ran up the path, and Bhebeo followed, puffing angrily and expostulating to herself.
Clodia drowsed. She wasn’t sure after all if it would be fun to see Cicero; he could be so pompous sometimes; he might take a lordly affronted attitude and turn her out. But she looked up to see young Clodia returning demurely down the path, and forgot about her misgivings.
“Where’s that nurse of yours?”
“O she doesn’t want to come along. She’s got a headache. She’s chatting with someone in the kitchen.”
Clodia raised no objections, and walked round the side of the house, holding the girl’s arm and denying herself any toilet preparations. She didn’t want to allure, she the student of Heracleitos; yesterday she might have been unable to put aside thoughts of her face so blithely; but today death and life had the same face for her, almost. Probably Cicero wouldn’t be at home anyway. Why bother?
*
Cicero’s heart pounded when he heard Clodia’s name announced. The picture that arose in his mind was Clodia of the flagrant eyes, the Medea of the Palatine, the savage shrew, the woman scorned and relentless: so she had looked when he denounced her in the law-court as the harlot of the seaside resorts, the trull of Rome’s drinking-parties, the hostess who kept open bed. That was ten years ago; he had made things up with the Claudians after the death of her brother; but he had never exchanged more than a few formal salutations since then with Clodia. Had she come to tear his eyes out?
When he saw her with an arm about a young girl, he was sure that he had villainously guessed his fear of Publilia and was taking her revenge by forcing an interview; then he saw he didn’t know the girl. Rousing himself from his lethargic meditation on the Republic, he advanced with strained politeness.
Clodia saw that she wasn’t going to find any amusement; she felt only sorry for him, and that made her sorry for herself.
“A meeting of the ancients. Let us dodder together. I came to talk about that piece of my garden you’ve been negotiating about.”
Cicero spread out his hands. “Of course I want it, but Atticus has been so slow in this matter. He keeps shifting between your ground and Scapula’s. Of course I know how tight money is. Particularly since Caesar’s death. Indeed since then it’s been unobtainable. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Dolabella hasn’t yet paid his January instalment of the dowry-returns. My son at the University in Athens wants money. I can’t let him go round like a beggar. He’s doing most brilliantly, I hear. And I owe Terentia money through the divorce. She’s being most unreasonable. And then—” he faltered. “Then there’s the other divorce money too. In fact everything’s at a deadlock.”
“Two divorces in two years!” laughed Clodia. “Yet I, the libertine lady, have neither divorced nor been divorced. My only husband died of a heart-attack.”
Cicero was silent, remembering how he had hinted at the trial of Caelius that Clodia poisoned her husband. Clodia also recalled his abuse and saw that she had blundered. She flushed deeply, and her eyes burned with their old vitriolic light. Her voice took on a throaty harshness. “So the doctors said — but people say anything if it pleases them, don’t they, Marcus?”
Once he would have warmed with pleasure at being called Marcus by her; now the sneer in her voice confounded him. He didn’t want personal enmities; why had she come out of the past? He mumbled.
“Let’s put the dead years behind us. I always respected you — more than that — I mean, I never forgot — I’ve always thought you an extraordinary woman — duty as an advocate — once ...” He stammered and made a hopeless gesture. “Once I thought all kinds of things. I thought I’d saved Rome. Then Caesar came.” But Caesar had fallen; the rhetoric of Cicero would conquer yet. The sadness of human dissension in the face of the great need, the common mystery, overwhelmed him. Yes, he would conquer; and as part of that conquering he felt it necessary to impress, to subdue this troublesome woman, still stained with the remnants of her beauty.
He struck his hand passionately on the table. “Perhaps I have saved Rome after all. Caesar is dead.”
Young Clodia was watching him admiringly. Baffled by Clodia’s silence, he looked round with hunted eyes and noticed the young girl, attracted by her pale fresh oval face, her eyebrows of virginal surprise. There was no resemblance to Tullia, but the girl was young, untouched by the miasma of age that was tainting all his aims and hopes. He indicated her with a query
.
“My niece. Fulvia’s girl.”
“Of course.”
Cicero opened his arms, and, taking young Clodia gently, kissed her on the forehead and on the mouth. He felt refreshed. Perhaps he had married to have a daughter again; a daughter’s love was the best love; but what use for an old man nearing seventy to beget daughters, even if he could? He would die while they were in the cradle.
Young Clodia nestled against him, and he felt sweep over him the horrifying memory of Publilia, the realisation that this girl also was alive, secretly, potently alive, warmly, hungrily. His flesh shrugged and winced with a reluctant stir of warmth: a distant warmth like music heard afar across waters, richly close in its echo in the blood.
He held the girl out at arm’s length, forced himself to smile into her eyes, and backed away. Publilia had stolen his innocence. He would die unsatisfied, the world and his private affairs equally in disorder. Everything had become slovenly, slowed down; Caesar’s murder had dissipated its heroism in argument; a taint was over all.
Clodia’s anger had faded. How could she hate this old man who lived in a world of words? After all, she had once or twice deliberated about poisoning Metellus; she had loathed him at times; and what was the difference between loathing and murder? No difference, except a fear of the risk involved in killing.
“So you don’t care to come to any conclusion apart from Atticus?”
“I’m afraid not. As I said, I’d be without any ready cash at all if it wasn’t for him. But I’ll speak to him and try to hurry things up. I’d like to have that shrine built soon.”
It would be something stable in a shaken world, a rose blossoming in the black winter. He was sure that in those months of tears and loneliness on the coast he had brought Tullia’s spirit near. He had felt wings folded about him when he woke in the night; and then at morning his grief had been worse. Strange that such comfort should bosom him, the gift of a frail small ghost. His dear had died in childbirth, and now his head rested between her motherly breasts. He prayed to her at night. Her ghost was his heaven. She must have no tomb but a shrine.