I Am Livia

by Phyllis T. Smith

  “If I’d written the play, that prayer would have been the centerpiece,” Caesar said. “And I wanted to actually shroud the stage in fog and darkness. Ajax would speak his prayer for light, and then all of a sudden sunlight would flood the stage. I’m sure a really good theater director could figure out a way to do that.”

  “It would be wonderful,” Nepia said.

  But let us perish in the face of day.

  At that moment, I thought of my father and mother. As soon as I did, the sight of Caesar, happy and at ease at my table, seemed more than I could bear. The desire I felt for him revolted me.

  “But what would you do about the end of the story?” I asked.

  “The end?” Caesar said.

  “When Ajax runs amok and kills the Greek leaders who have slighted him?”

  “I’d just show him covered with blood,” Caesar said. “And he doesn’t actually kill anyone.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “He only kills sheep, doesn’t he? He thinks they’re the Greek leaders, because he’s insane. So your play would be about a man who prays for light, but ends up raving and covered with blood?”

  “It would be a tragedy, remember,” Caesar said.

  “You can’t have a tragedy without blood and insanity,” Fannius said.

  “It sounds as if it could be very good,” Valeria said. She looked at Caesar. “You should go ahead and write it.”

  “I don’t have the time,” Caesar said. “And the truth is I probably don’t have the talent either.”

  My eyes met Caesar’s. “I think you could write a very good tragedy.” I spoke gravely, even gently.

  Caesar shrugged, expressionless. “Maybe I’ll write it one of these days. As I said, right now I haven’t the time.”

  Fannius laughed. “Yes, I could see how you might be too busy.”

  The atmosphere at the table had changed. Tiberius Nero, with a trace of anxiety in his voice, led Rullus and Fannius into a discussion of recent boxing matches they had seen. Valeria and Nepia listened, looking bored. I lay toying with my food. Caesar lay toying with his food too, every once in a while contributing a succinct assessment of one boxer or another.

  When I glanced up from my plate, I found him gazing in my direction. He looked like someone who was wounded but prepared to forgive the wound. For a while, I tried avoiding his eyes. Then, because I did not want to be a coward, I met his gaze. He gave me a small, rueful smile.

  Suddenly, Nepia said in a high, bright voice, “Caesar, are you planning on keeping your beard? I hope you’re not about to shave it off.”

  “I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “You should keep it,” Valeria said. “I think all Roman men should start wearing beards again, as they did in olden times.”

  “Yes, beards are very manly,” Nepia said. “A man with a beard really looks like a man.”

  “You could set a new fashion,” Valeria said.

  “If you keep your beard, every man in Rome will eventually grow one,” Nepia said. “Oh, please say you won’t shave off your beard.”

  Caesar looked at me. “Livia Drusilla, don’t you have an opinion?”

  I heard a slight barb in his voice, as if he were daring me to say something disagreeable. “Since you’ve asked me, I feel obliged to be honest,” I said. “My opinion is that you should shave it off. I think it makes you look like a savage.”

  Beside me, I heard Tiberius Nero sharply inhale.

  Caesar rubbed his chin. “Really? Is it as bad as that?”

  I nodded.

  He smiled, a little stiffly. “My sister said exactly the same thing, the last time I saw her.”

  There was a silence. Valeria hastened to fill it. “Oh, well, if your sister doesn’t think you should have a beard—”

  It felt unbearably hot and close in the dining room. “Excuse me,” I murmured. I got up, exited, and walked through the atrium, past Caesar’s lictors and guards, out to the garden.

  I can’t stand any more. It all crowded in on me. Caesar’s presence, having to treat him as an honored guest. Memories of my father and mother, stab after stab of grief. The knowledge that I ought to wish to destroy Caesar, that I should feel a rage at him as pure as flame. And the realization that there was no purity in me. I was sinking in the muck. Because I could not look at him without desiring him.

  A pregnant woman, full of lust for her husband’s guest. An undignified spectacle in any circumstances. In the present circumstances, utterly repellent.

  What am I?

  The sun had begun to set, casting long shadows across the garden. It was late summer; the marigolds were in full bloom, and the air was perfumed. I told myself I should go back inside. Go and act like a good hostess and a proper wife. But I could not make myself do it, not immediately. A woman, visibly with child, can leave her guests at the dinner table, even for an extended period, and people will imagine reasonable excuses. No one will think too badly of her. That was what I told myself as I lingered in the garden. I would take a little time, calm myself, then return to my guests.

  Finally, I let out a long breath and reminded myself that after all, the evening was almost over, and I must see it through. I steeled myself to go back inside. Then, a shadow moved at the edge of my field of vision, and I turned, expecting to see Tiberius Nero, coming to fetch me back to the dining room. But the man standing at the perimeter of the garden was Caesar Octavianus.

  He came closer. “Why are you hiding out here?”

  “I’m not hiding,” I said. “I just wanted to breathe some cooler air.”

  “If you find it so unpleasant to be around me, you shouldn’t have invited me.”

  He spoke as if I were some unreasonable child who had fled from him. I felt a rush of deep anger. I wanted to shatter his complacency so much that I did not guard my tongue. “I didn’t invite you—my husband did. Everyone in the Senate has to invite you, because you might take it personally if they don’t. And then they don’t feel too safe. You must know that.”

  “When somebody invites me to dinner, I don’t generally analyze the reasons.”

  “You just assume you’re loved wherever you go.”

  “No, I’m not that much of an idiot.” He frowned. “When I was a boy, there was an elephant they used to bring out every time there was a fair. And the elephant had one trick. You could go up to it and put a coin in its trunk, and the elephant would put the coin in its master’s purse. What I remember is how everyone approached that elephant. Like this.” He mimed going forward on tiptoe, tentatively holding out a shaking hand with an imaginary coin. “Everyone was scared to death of being trampled. Most people approach me now like I’m that elephant.”

  “And that surprises you?”

  “Not in the least,” he said. “I’m only saying, if I avoided socializing with people who were afraid of me, I would have a remarkably narrow social circle.”

  Yes, you would, I thought. But what struck me was that I was not afraid of him. Perhaps I should be, but I wasn’t. Of all the feelings he drew from me, fear was absent. And all things considered, that was strange.

  He glanced up at the sky. “It’s very clear out.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s very clear.” The sky was violet, and there were no clouds. A few stars had emerged.

  “You know, I’d like to have an ordinary conversation with you, just ordinary as if I was a human being and not some mammoth beast. But that’s not going to work so well, is it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Let’s try anyway. Say something ordinary.”

  I would humor him for a moment, I thought, and then extricate myself and go inside. “I was a little surprised your wife didn’t come with you this evening,” I said. “But I’ve heard she’s about to have a child.”

  “Yes, she is, but the reason she didn’t co
me is that the marriage has never been more than a political arrangement, and we don’t like each other. It’s more convenient for her to stay with me until the baby comes, however, so we’re both being patient about the divorce. The moment that baby is born—that day—I’m divorcing her.”

  I stared at him.

  “It’s by mutual agreement,” he said. “Really. We’ll probably be much better friends when we don’t have to live in the same house.”

  I noticed fireflies in the bushes, near the garden’s south wall. Their lights flickered.

  We were silent. It was palpable—this thing between us that did not fit with recent history or with the fact that we were relative strangers. And I knew he felt it too, and that was why he had come out into the garden after me.

  “For us to be out here together is not at all appropriate,” I said.

  I was six months pregnant. My husband was in the dining room not thirty feet away. It was the kind of situation you would not find even in the most vulgar kind of farce. But I didn’t move to go back inside.

  “I’m sorry that there has been so much…disruption in your life. The disorders we have been through should not touch the lives of women. The fact that we men can’t resolve our differences in some decent way shouldn’t create havoc in the…domestic sphere.”

  “Wouldn’t it be pretty if that were so,” I said.

  He seemed to be deep in thought, his expression troubled. Then he asked, “Do you blame me for your father’s death?”

  “I blame you, among others. For his death and for the death of my mother.”

  “I had nothing against your father. Still less your mother. I’m not by nature a violent or a brutish man.”

  I thought of the merciless actions I knew he had committed. I said nothing.

  “So you regard me as an enemy?”

  “I regard myself as being at your mercy,” I said. “I’m a woman with a little child and another on the way, and a husband who lives by your sufferance. I must swallow the drink the gods have put in my mouth. You have nothing to fear from me and mine. Isn’t that obvious?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course it is. And you have nothing to fear from me. The difficulty, as I see it, is that you think you’re supposed to hate me. And you don’t.” He paused, studying my face. “You don’t, do you?”

  “I thought I did.”

  “But you don’t.” There was a trace of triumph in his voice.

  I do not hate you. Of all the emotions I could feel, fear and hatred are the ones that make sense. And those are the ones I feel no trace of.

  “What do you feel?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “If I were to go to kiss you, you wouldn’t back away, would you? You wouldn’t do that.”

  I took a sharp breath. My heart hammered. A part of me wanted to feel his lips on mine. A part of me wanted to run. “Don’t,” I said.

  “Well, you’re right, this isn’t the place or the time. But strangely enough, I still feel like doing it.”

  I made myself say, “There is no place and no time. There can never be a place or a time.”

  “Livia, if I had had the opportunity after Philippi, I swear to you I would have let your father live. I would have done it for your sake.”

  I said nothing.

  He must have thought he saw disbelief in my face, because he said, “If you think I’m lying, then consider this: Do you know how many of Brutus’s supporters I conducted a funeral service for? Exactly one. I did it for you.”

  “I’ve believed all along that you did it in return for what I told you about Cicero,” I said.

  But it was one thing to honor a dead enemy, something else to leave him alive and dangerous. Would Caesar truly have done that? There was no way of knowing. “If you want thanks for granting my father a funeral, then thank you.”

  “What kind of man would want thanks for that?”

  A monster, I thought. A monster would want thanks.

  “It wasn’t in return for what you told me about Cicero,” he said. “It was because of what I feel for you. What I felt from the first time I met you.”

  The question was on the tip of my tongue: What do you feel for me? I would not ask it. Instead I said, “Let’s go back inside.”

  “If you want to.”

  I walked back into the house, and Caesar followed me. Returning to the dining room, I registered the guests’ attempts to keep from staring at the two of us. Nepia’s look was knowing and, I thought, jealous. On Tiberius Nero’s face I saw amazement and dismay.

  I tried to say something, but no words came. Caesar rescued me. As if nothing unusual had happened, he asked if anyone had seen the statues of a sculptor named Massilus. “I think his work is overrated, personally. But perhaps I’m missing something. Rullus, you know more than I do about art. What do you think?”

  Rullus began criticizing Massilus’s work. “Most of his statues look unfinished. You feel that with a little more effort, he might produce something truly beautiful. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

  I motioned to a slave to serve dessert. An array of dates, plums, peaches, and grapes was placed on the table.

  The dinner party continued for a while longer and ended pleasantly. Caesar thanked Tiberius Nero and me for our hospitality in the friendliest possible way before he left.

  When we were alone, Tiberius Nero turned on me, his voice shaking with anger. “What were you doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You came very near to insulting Caesar. And then what—were the two of you off somewhere talking?”

  “Yes, we were talking. Tiberius, forgive me. I was upset, thinking about all that’s happened, all we’ve been through. And he—Caesar was very understanding.”

  “Understanding,” Tiberius Nero repeated. “Well, how did you leave it with him?”

  “Leave it?” I stared at him.

  “You seemed to part on good terms. I’m asking if you really did. Or did you make that man our enemy?”

  “He’s not our enemy. I swear he’s not. Yes—we parted on good terms.”

  “Then that’s all right, I suppose,” Tiberius Nero said.

  “Are you sleeping with Caesar Octavianus?” my sister, Secunda, asked me, three days later. She had come to visit me, and we were in my sitting room, just chatting, or so I had thought.

  “Am I what?”

  She averted her eyes. “Sleeping with him.”

  “Why are you asking me such a question?”

  “I’ve heard talk.”

  “From whom?”

  “From the women at the market.” Secunda reached across the space between us and pressed my hand. “Livia, please—you can admit it to me.”

  I had been away from the city so long I had forgotten how gossip attached to the great in Rome, and how quickly it spread. I had not considered the obvious: that everything Caesar did was liable to be discussed and twisted and picked apart by everyone, and that any hint of impropriety relating to him would be seized upon with lip-smacking relish. “What exactly are people saying?”

  “That as soon as you came back to Rome, you seduced him. Oh, I’m sure that’s not true, I’m sure he seduced you—or forced you, even. Livia, did he force you?”

  I shook my head. I did not elaborate. I was too stunned.

  “People are saying that because of you he has told his wife he wishes to divorce her. And that the baby you are carrying is his child. And—I’ve heard that he’s shaving off his beard just to please you.”

  “And you, my sister, believe this?”

  “I didn’t say I believed it,” Secunda said. But then she pressed her lips tightly together in a reproving frown. She looked at that moment very much like our mother.

  I ran my hands over the bulge in my abdomen. “Oh, yes, certainly, it’s hi
s child. Have you forgotten that I’m six months along, and six months ago I was in Greece and Caesar was in Italy?”

  “I know it’s not his baby,” Secunda said.

  “How clever of you to deduce that,” I said coldly.

  “I was just speaking out of sisterly concern,” Secunda said. “And—well, he is all of a sudden planning to hold a great festival, to celebrate when he shaves off his beard.”

  In our strata of society, young men sacrificed at the Temple of Jupiter after they shaved for the first time, and their families celebrated the occasion. Caesar had pledged at age nineteen not to shave until his adoptive father was avenged. Before that, he had never celebrated his first shave. Now he had announced publicly that he would shave off his beard on his upcoming twenty-fourth birthday. Rather than just holding a private party, he had decided to invite all of Rome to the festivities—to hire street musicians and distribute food and drink throughout the city. It was an intelligent thing for a young politician to do, a way to curry favor with the people.

  “What does Caesar shaving off his beard have to do with me?”

  “People say that you told him at a dinner party that you hated his beard, so he is shaving it off to please you,” Secunda said. “Are you telling me that’s not true?”

  My behavior with Caesar when he dined at my home had given rise to gossip. I knew the other guests had been talking. “I just gave him my opinion when he asked for it. For heaven’s sake, that doesn’t mean I’m having a love affair with him.”

  My sister peered at my face, then nodded. “I’m glad,” she said. “Of all the men you could have a love affair with—not that you should have one with anybody, of course—he would be by far the worst choice. Why, he’s a tyrant, isn’t he, as bad as his great-uncle? Oh, Livia, what would Father and Mother say?”

  It was not uncommon for married women to have love affairs, but I had always been chaste. Some men tolerated unfaithful wives; some divorced them for adultery. I believed if I strayed, Tiberius Nero would be extremely upset and angry. I wondered if any of the talk Secunda referred to had come to my husband’s ears. After she left, I had the impulse to broach the subject with him, but in the end I could not bring myself to. Ever since the dinner party that Caesar had attended, he had been cool to me. I had thought that he blamed me for not being pleasant enough to Caesar. Now I asked myself if he suspected me of being altogether too pleasant to him.