The Emperor Waltz

by Philip Hensher

  ‘You don’t talk about your religion,’ she said to her slave. The house had retreated, and was asleep or resting on their couches. Only she and the slave were awake, talking in low voices as the merchant’s daughter steadily took and ate plums from the red-and-black ceramic dish. She sat on the couch; the slave knelt on the floor.

  ‘I have talked too much about my religion,’ the slave said.

  ‘Oh, I won’t tell anyone,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘But is it a secret sort of religion? In caves, in the desert, sacrificing babies to their gods, and it is death to speak of the mysteries?’

  ‘My religion is not like that,’ the slave said. ‘One day, it will live openly and everyone will see everything about it. It is not a religion made for darkness.’

  ‘Why do you not live openly now?’ the merchant’s daughter said, but the slave had nothing but a gesture of the hands in response to that. ‘I can see, you would be killed if you did. But you don’t seem to mind being killed in the name of your religion. Those people, they were demanding to be put to death. If they don’t fear death, why are they living secretly?’

  ‘Some of us are not as strong as that,’ the slave said. ‘I fear death. I try not to fear death, but I fear death. I have hidden my light under a desert rock, and not one person has seen my light.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not true,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘And even if it were, you have followed the commands of your religion, I’m sure. Would anyone see your light in the desert, in the noonday sun? Are you a sort of temple virgin?’

  The slave hissed, and warded off the comparison with a bold movement of the arm, like a wounded dog touched on his sore limb. ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘Not like any of that. We are told not to hide our lights under a bushel, and that is what I have done. We are told to bring the good news to others. But I sit in silence and darkness and fear only death.’

  The merchant’s daughter tossed away the stone of the plum, sucked clean. ‘It was brave of you,’ she said slowly, ‘to tell me anything. What was your Christ?’

  ‘As a man, I would say that he lived and died in Judaea seven or eight generations ago.’

  ‘And what sort of god is he?’

  ‘He is the only God, he and his Father and the Holy Spirit.’

  ‘That is three gods. I don’t understand.’

  ‘There is one God in three.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It is not important to understand.’

  ‘Oh,’ the girl said, put off by the self-regarding formality of the maid’s responses. She had not said it before: she had merely rehearsed this exchange, the first example of an exchange she had always wanted to have. ‘But what sort of god is he? Does he punish, or control the weather, or pass judgement over your fortunes? He can’t be that – the Christians never seem rich around here. Excuse me if I say the wrong thing.’

  ‘He stands for love,’ the slave said. ‘And I am to bring that message of love to everyone, even at the cost of my own death. But I am so afraid, so terribly afraid.’

  ‘Those people who were killed,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘They can’t bring a message of any sort to anyone any more. You could be being useful in any number of ways. They’re dead. I heard they were beheaded in the amphitheatre.’

  ‘That was their message,’ the slave said. ‘People will never forget their message. I am going to tell other people, as we are commanded to. And if it leads to my death, it leads to my death. It is so hard to die well, alone, but it makes no difference whether I die with terrible fear, or calmly and bravely. Listen.’

  7.

  Two years passed.

  The merchant’s daughter was married to a man. He was the younger son of the governor. It was a better marriage than the sisters’ of the merchant’s daughter. Afterwards, a magnificent mosaic was installed in the house of the merchant and his wife. Such a marriage made clear what the family’s standing had become.

  The daughter took her slave with her, and there were other slaves devoted to her appearance and her pleasure.

  Her husband was a man of thirty-three. He had been married before to a girl who had proved to be barren. He had travelled a good deal, even to great Rome with his father, and liked to tell of what he had seen, in the evening, to their guests. The house they lived in was the house he had lived in for fifteen years, since his first marriage. She fitted into it, her red hair much commented on by the slaves, who had grown comfortable and confident; they listened to her suggestions about the food, and about other small matters, and sometimes took notice, and sometimes not. Her husband’s first wife lived in a small villa on the outskirts of the town, well walled, surrounded by nine steady old slaves, as if in widowhood. She had grown aged in appearance, it was said.

  Six months after they married, she discovered that she was to have a child. The governor and his six sons rejoiced. It was born whole and healthy, a son. In its face she could see the governor’s cross and satisfied features, and her husband, a little, but herself not at all, and the sacred soul not one bit. It looked up at her and sucked angrily; the next time, she said to herself, it would be better and the child more agreeable.

  Around this time, she asked her husband about the Christians. He explained to her that it was a cult of human sacrifice, like the cult of Baal Hammon. Somewhere in this continent, people still killed children to their gods, not goats and sheep. The Christians had taken it one step further, and presented themselves for sacrifice, like their god. The arena of the amphitheatre and the courtroom were as the sacrificial altar to them. And if we did not choose to sacrifice them? A town of two thousand people, not so far from here, had woken to discover that sixty citizens had self-slaughtered themselves in the night, and all of them Christians. The governor’s son laughed heavily, briefly, in the courtyard of their house. His wife sat listening on the rim of the fountain, in the morning sun.

  ‘These cults come and these cults go,’ he said. He passed his hand over his forehead, wiping the sweat away. ‘Why do you ask about them?’

  ‘I heard about them somewhere,’ she said. ‘They sound so very strange.’

  ‘People are drawn by the unfamiliar and the strange,’ her husband said. ‘There is no need to reintroduce human sacrifice. That was one of the reasons why we fought and razed Carthage.’

  ‘I see,’ the merchant’s daughter said. She did not believe that her husband knew anything whatsoever about the matter.

  At the end of the week, her husband came to her in her rooms. As he was washing himself afterwards, he said, ‘You were speaking about the cult of Christianity. Does it interest you?’

  ‘No, not especially,’ the merchant’s daughter said. It was cold tonight: a wind from the desert brought a chill into the room, as well as the ordinary grit and sand that floated there. She reached for a blanket that lay on the floor where her husband had pushed it aside. Her wrist hurt where it had been twisted and pressed. The sensitivity of the flesh was something she remembered before, and she felt that she must be pregnant again. She would not mention it for a month or two. ‘It was something I heard about. I forget why I raised it with you.’

  ‘There is a spread of it in the town, my father said. There were some executions a year or two ago. It doesn’t seem to have put them off. If it came into the house?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the merchant’s daughter said truthfully. ‘You make it sound like the sand the wind brings in. I don’t know what we should do if it did. Sweep it out, but sand always comes in again.’

  ‘I don’t know that it has come into the house,’ he said. He looked at her oddly, like a dog with its ears pricked, waiting for a command. In the first days of their marriage, when she made comparisons, such as saying Christianity was like the sand of the desert, he would take the trouble to laugh at her and say that she talked nonsense. ‘It may not be true, what Copreus told me.’

  That was his way, to sound matters out without revealing what he knew, and when she had stat
ed her opinion, to explain that Copreus had informed him of some state of affairs. She thought back with alarm; but she had not committed herself to there being Christianity in the house.

  Her husband went on talking. There was a lot to follow about duty and standing. At the end of it, he did what he had come to do, for the second time. She submitted to it. He was a bull of a man, even at his age, even in a second marriage, his chest and shoulders like a cupboard, his bodily hair and his blood both thick and surging. She felt like a translucent piece of fish on a slab beside him. She felt that he must be able to see the child, tiny, within her translucent belly as he pushed up into her. Her pale arm under his grip was like the limb of a separate species.

  She spoke to her slave about Copreus. Neither liked her husband’s manservant. He had been found on a dungheap and named for it, but now was a man of pained dignity and careful pronunciation. He looked dull in the face: his eyes did not go from side to side as he walked, carefully, through the villa with his burden of clothes or food. He barely greeted anyone, except his mistress: her he greeted with a deep, even reverential salutation, his eyes on her feet. His comments were servile and elaborate and verged, no more, on the impertinent. He was very clean, pale and shining in the face, wringing his hands as he walked, face downwards. He murmured his servilities and he murmured his impertinences. She had sometimes to ask him to repeat what he said, though her husband never. He had been used to Copreus since childhood. She would not speak to her husband about Copreus as he spoke to her, derisively, humorously, about her slave. When she had been married a month, it occurred to her that Copreus’s curious, mincing, precise, mangled way of talking had originated in an attempt to sound like the women of her husband’s family, their clipped words, the open sounds of their voices when heard across a fountain-centred courtyard.

  ‘He watches me,’ her slave said simply. ‘I think he watches you too.’

  That was not an aspect that the merchant’s daughter had considered.

  ‘But he is a soul, as well,’ her slave said. ‘I should speak to him.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘He would not hear what you had to say.’

  ‘He would not listen,’ the slave said. ‘But he would hear what I said, the words, and they would stay with him after my death.’

  The merchant’s daughter did not pay any attention to this. Her slave, dressing the bruises on her arm with an almond paste late that night, was often full of what she should do for her beliefs. The merchant’s daughter believed that she found solace in the statement of what her Christ would have expected of her, and also in the flagellation she subjected herself to for not doing any such thing. The merchant’s daughter listened patiently, but she found this tiresome, as she found any situation on this earth that would never change.

  At the end of the next week, she lost the child she had been bearing. There was no obvious cause. There was nothing she had eaten and no exercise she had been taking. She had not gazed upon a nomad, or upon a virgin. She had had the child only for a time and then it was gone in a flush of blood.

  But she was saddened by the death of this child. She did not know why. She found herself saying to her slave that she did not know why her God allowed such things to happen. It would be better to think and feel nothing about it, like a dog that loses a puppy and then quickly forgets.

  ‘We do not know that they forget, of course,’ she said.

  ‘We are not animals,’ her slave said. ‘We know that the child had a soul that is now gone to another place.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ the merchant’s daughter said, then quickly forbade her to answer. She knew what the slave said to all questions of that sort. ‘How does your God permit us to feel such pain and anguish when there is nothing to be gained from it?’

  ‘Because we are not animals, and we are not the wild men in the desert, beyond feeling and beyond sympathy,’ the slave said. ‘Because we mean something to each other, whoever we are. We want to speak to each other, and when we cannot, what we are made of – it fails. Even Copreus is not like that. Even the wild men of the desert. They have a spark that flies upwards, too.’

  The merchant’s daughter did not understand, quite, but she pressed on. ‘And why does your God allow such people as the wild men of the desert? Why does he not speak to them? And why the death of my child? Is it to allow myself to be strong and silent and not to speak of it?’

  ‘One day my God will speak to the wild men of the desert,’ the slave said.

  The merchant’s daughter had been running a comb through her red hair. Now, with a single gesture, she smoothed it back behind her shoulders and prepared to sit while it was pinned up. She ran her palms over it again: it was quite smooth. The slave began to show her how her God permitted suffering in the world.

  8.

  In the dreadful wastes of the desert, far away, the camels formed a ridge. The nomads in their blue cloaks sheltered behind them out of habit, though the night was windless and cool. There was the noise of groaning and creaking somewhere far off. It was the sound of the sands, singing. The men sat in a circle and listened. Their faces were lined and blank, their eyes bright in the dusk. One of them began, without invitation or preamble, to tell the story.

  ‘Once there was an evil king,’ the storyteller said. ‘And the evil king ruled over an evil kingdom and the men were slaves and they lived inside and were never permitted to see the sky. The king kept every horse in the kingdom for himself, and every camel. One day She-of-They came to the city, and she saw the great walls and the great gates, and she dismounted and beat on the gates and the gates were opened to her. The gatekeeper had never himself seen a horse like the horse She-of-They rode upon, or a camel like the camels that bore her goods and her household. She-of-They said that she would come inside and she would meet with the three sons of the evil king. And the evil king heard of this and said, “She is our enemy that would meet with my sons,” and he sent word that his eldest son would meet with her in a room, in the palace. And She-of-They went to the palace, and she entered into a room full of spun gold …’

  ‘Ah,’ his audience said, and muttered, remembering the room full of spun gold. It made the story for them.

  ‘… and she waited, and in a moment a man came in and was announced as the eldest son of the evil king. But it was not the eldest son of the evil king. It was only a servant, and when She-of-They was still suspecting, he brought out his sword and he smote her head from her shoulders. But a strange thing happened. She-of-They reached down and she picked up her head, and she placed it back on her shoulders, and it was as if nothing had ever happened. The head laughed, and then it opened its mouth, and said,

  ‘“You can take of me my life,

  You can make of me your wife,

  But I cannot be harmed by a liar.”

  ‘And then the executioner fell down dead, because of what She-of-They had said. And the next day, She-of-They demanded to see the evil king’s second son, and she was shown into a room full of beaten silver, and in came a man. But it was not the evil king’s second son. It was another executioner. And he swung his axe, and he separated the head of She-of-They from her shoulders, and it fell to the floor, and he believed that she was dead. But the body reached its arms down, and it picked up the head, and she placed it on her shoulders, and it spoke. It said,

  ‘“You can take of me my life,

  You can make of me your wife,

  But I cannot be harmed by a liar.”

  ‘And the second executioner fell down dead, as he was a liar and had attempted the life of She-of-They.

  ‘So the three brothers spoke with their father, the evil king, and they decided that though the eldest brother would not speak to She-of-They and the middle brother would not speak to She-of-They, the youngest brother could be spared, and he would speak to her. And the next day She-of-They, when she came to the palace, she was shown into a room made of rock, and she waited. And through the door came the
evil king’s youngest son. And though he had a dagger in his hand to kill She-of-They he did not want to kill her. She came to him and she bared her throat, and she said,

  ‘“You may take of me my life,

  You can make of me your wife,

  Because you, alone in the kingdom, are not a liar.”

  ‘And he dropped the dagger on the floor, because he had no need of it, and because She-of-They had sacrificed herself for him, he took her and placed her in the locked rooms in the palace, and she never left again, and nobody ever saw her again, and her horses and camels were given to the youngest son. And in time the evil king died, and the eldest son and the middle son were defeated by the youngest son, who was brave and no liar, and he became a good king to his people because of the sacrifice that She-of-They had made in coming to the people who were her enemies.’

  The sun had fallen below the horizon as the storyteller spoke. As he reached the end, the listeners could no longer see him in the complete darkness. They rolled away, binding themselves in their cloaks, the material about their faces. They shuffled to make a hollow in the sand below their camel’s flank. Soon there was the noise of sleeping in the black desert. They dreamt of horses.