“I wouldn’t worry. A lot of people are drawn to the fringes of Judaism, but when they get closer they see the intrinsic absurdity of it—all those rules about what you can and cannot eat. At least Naomi’s not a Christian. Take comfort in that.”
I couldn’t, not entirely. Within the past year I had discovered a nest of Christians in my own house. All those I could identify as such, I had moved to my least favorite property, the villa at Misenum, to try to keep the contagion from spreading. With all the memories of Vesuvius associated with that place, I don’t like spending time there anymore and Mother absolutely refuses to set foot in the place.
We got out of the pool and were anointing ourselves with the oil when the man who was being massaged in the corner sat up. “Is that young master Pliny?” he asked.
I recognized the voice of the owner of the village’s cheese shop and turned toward him. “Good day, Saturninus.” I remembered thinking of him as old when I was a child. Now he had only a fringe of gray hair and his cheeks had sunk in as his teeth fell out. Plato once said that old men and women should not exercise naked with the young. Saturninus’ wrinkled skin and flabby muscles were testimony to the ancient philosopher’s wisdom.
“This is good fortune,” Saturninus said as he dismissed the masseur and, much to my relief, wrapped a towel around himself. “Been meanin’ to get in touch with you.”
“What can I do for you?”
“It’s what I can do for you, sir. I seen that fella you’re lookin’ for.”
Tacitus and I exchanged a glance. “Where did you see him?”I asked.
“He come into my shop about three day ago.”
“He didn’t suddenly drop dead, did he?” Tacitus asked.
The old man drew himself up with as much dignity as his age and his near nudity would allow. “Is that a slur agin the quality of my cheese, sir?”
“No. Sorry, it was a poor attempt at a joke.”
“Poor indeed,” I said. “I apologize for my friend. I’ll make sure we buy some cheese before we head home. After he tastes what you have to offer, he’ll make no more jokes.”
Saturninus nodded as though placated.
“Now, about this man ...” I wanted to get him back to the important topic.
“Yes, sir. He come into the shop with two women.”
“Did you know the women?”
Saturninus snorted. “Everybody knows them and their kind. These two are the sisters what rent the rooms behind my shop.”
“Oh, yes. I remember them. They were always friendly to me, but my mother didn’t want me to speak to them.”
“And right she was about that, sir.” The venom in his voice surprised me. “Them two don’t deserve to breathe the same air as a fine lady like your mother.”
“Few women do,” Tacitus said. “If you disapprove of these two so strongly, why do you rent the rooms to them?”
Saturninus hesitated, as though searching for an answer, then rubbed his thumb and two fingers together. “As long as men have the urge to eat and to fornicate, cheese-makers and whores will survive.”
“Blessed are the cheese-makers,” I heard Tacitus mutter. “And thank the gods for whores.”
“How was the man acting when he came into your shop?” I asked.
“Very quiet. Almost ... dignified, like he was some kind of royalty, or a god in human form, and it was his right to be waited on by them women. I don’t remember him sayin’ a word. Even odder, it was the women what paid for the cheese. And them two ain’t in the habit of givin’ money to men.”
“Was the man carrying anything—a bag, a staff?”
“No, sir. He warn’t even wearin’ shoes. A ratty tunic looked to be all he had in the world.”
“I’d like to talk to those two women,” I said.
“So would I,” Tacitus chimed in. “So would I.”
“Where are we likely to find them?” I asked Saturninus.
“They’ll be in their rooms or in the tavern across the way from my shop.”
“I hope we don’t disturb them,” I said. When I was twelve I barged in on my uncle and his mistress, an image that still haunted me and made me leery of opening any door behind which a couple might be ... engaged.
“You’ll know if they got customers,” Saturninus said with venom. “The older one’s a bit of a screamer.”
We thanked Saturninus, dressed quickly, and walked a block north. When we didn’t find the two women in the tavern—where I had earnestly hoped we would—we left our servants there with a bit of money and crossed over to the cheese shop. The small building consisted of two stories. Saturninus, whose wife was dead, lived in the rooms above the shop. Between it and the building next to it ran an alley so narrow that hardly any sunlight penetrated it. I could barely walk in the alley without turning sideways. In addition to allowing access to the back of the building, the alley seemed to serve as a latrine for anyone who was too lazy to walk down to the latrine attached to the bath house.
Tacitus nodded at a phallus drawn on the wall, pointing toward the back of the dreary passageway. “At least they’re not hard to find.”
Before we started down the alley, three men turned the corner from the rear of the building and walked toward us, single-file, adjusting their tunics and belts.
“Don’t worry, gents,” the one in front said with a smirk. “Plenty left for you.”
“Especially the redhead,” the other said over his companion’s shoulder. “She’s always got somethin’ for the next fella.”
We stood aside to let them cross the street to the tavern, then picked our way over and around the stinking puddles to the back of the building, emerging into a courtyard formed by Saturninus’ building and the ones around it. Much of the courtyard was taken up by the arches of the aqueduct bringing water to the bath. Even more than most aqueducts, it leaked so that the ground in the courtyard resembled a marsh. Someone had put stones down at the back of Saturninus’ building to create a patio that stayed dry.
Stepping out of the alley we turned to our right and immediately stopped, transfixed by the sight of a young redheaded woman, outside the rear door in the sunshine, bathing herself at a basin on a low stand. She was nude and stood facing us. Tacitus gasped audibly. I stopped breathing.
The woman, who was a few years older than me, seemed indifferent to our presence. “Good day, gentlemen,” she said as she scrubbed her thighs vigorously, as though trying to get out a difficult stain. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“No hurry,” Tacitus managed to mutter.
The woman picked up a brush and applied it to the insides of her thighs, leaving them glowing pink. “Do you like what you see?” she said, her voice hovering between teasing and sarcasm.
Tacitus and I could only nod. This had to be the younger sister, whom I remembered from my childhood as a quiet girl of about fifteen. At the moment I couldn’t remember her name. All I could think of was the statue of Venus by Praxiteles, in a temple on the island of Cnidus. My uncle, in his Natural History, called it “superior to anything in the whole world.” He admired the statue so much he had a copy of it in his villa at Misenum. I could imagine I was looking at the woman on whom Praxiteles based it, if the statue weren’t four hundred years old.
But, if a man from the pages of Herodotus could appear in Laurentum, what was there to prevent a statue of a goddess from coming to life? Or perhaps she offered proof of Ovid’s story of Pygmalion. As my eyes followed her hands up her body, I wondered if a woman so beautiful wasn’t, in herself, a violation of rationality. No creature should be so perfect.
The young woman kept her eyes down as she washed her stomach and her breasts, which I could only describe as perfect in their size and shape, with the nipples turning slightly upward. She cupped water in her hands and let it run down from her throat over her chest. With one hand she piled her copper-colored hair on top of her head while she washed her neck with the other hand.
As she picked up a towel, she
called to someone inside, “Myrrha, come on out. We’ve got company. Two of them.”
When the young woman wrapped the towel around her, Tacitus’ heavy breathing began to subside and I became aware that I had hardly drawn a breath since I came around the corner and saw her.
Another woman, with dark hair and dark eyes, emerged from the back door of Saturninus’ building. She was clearly older than the redhead. “My, we’re busy today,” she said, “and two gentlemen wearing a stripe. We don’t often get such quality.”
She had been touching up the layers of powder and paint with which she tried to hide her age. From ten years ago I remembered her as somewhat louder and brasher than her sister. Now time—and her occupation, I suppose—had taken their toll on her. More than just tired, she looked worn out, used up.
“What’s your pleasure, sirs?” she asked with a smile that revealed a missing tooth on the upper left side of her mouth. “With two of you and two of us, there’s lots of possibilities, aren’t there? And we’re open to all of ‘em.”
“We’d just like to ask you a couple of questions,” I said. Beside me, Tacitus groaned as if in pain.
“Questions? What sort of questions?” Myrrha’s air of forced conviviality was replaced by suspicion. “If you’re looking for an oracle, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“You don’t have to be an oracle to answer these questions. They’re about a man who was with you several days ago.”
Myrrha laughed derisively. “You’ll need an oracle unless you can be more specific than that, sir.”
“You bought him some cheese in Saturninus’ shop,” I said.
Myrrha and her sister exchanged a glance which I couldn’t read beyond sensing that they were now both on alert, like sentries in a legionary camp. I wasn’t going to be able to sneak past them to get any information. I would have to see if I could get them to open the gate.
“How did you meet the man?” I asked.
“Sir, pardon me for being so blunt, but we’re whores. That’s how we meet any man. Many of them don’t even tell us their names, as you haven’t.”
The sight of the redhead had rattled me. “This is Cornelius Tacitus, and I’m Gaius Pliny. I own a house a mile down the road.”
Myrrha nodded knowingly. “I’m sorry for the death of your uncle, sir, even at this late date. He was a kind man.”
“You knew him?”
“After his woman died he ... bought a lot of cheese. He said, when the time was right, he would bring you here to make a man of you.”
I looked at the red-haired Venus. This could have been the woman with whom I had my first coupling?
She smiled at me. “Even if I’m not your first, sir, I promise you I’ll be your best.”
Tacitus elbowed me, but I shook my head. I was surprised, to say the least, to learn that my uncle had taken the time to visit these women. He was so fanatical about not wasting time that he had a servant read to him while he was bathing, and he rode in a carriage or had himself carried everywhere in a litter so he could have a servant read to him while he was traveling. Whenever he heard an interesting passage, he would have the servant mark it to be copied later. For a number of years he lived with a slave woman, Monica, as though she were his wife. I wondered why he took the trouble to come up to Laurentum when he could have found female companionship among his servants, as many Roman men do.
The redheaded woman dropped her towel and took a few steps to where her gown was hanging on a hook beside the door. She did not hurry, and I realized I was looking at the best reason why my uncle might not have considered this trip a waste of time at all.
In the silence I had created Tacitus said, “You know our names, and we know you’re Myrrha. What’s your sister’s name?”
“She’s Chloris.”
The redhead looked straight at us as she slipped on her gown. Once her body was covered, I met her eyes for the first time. They were a clear blue and icy, like a frozen lake high in the Apennines. Whatever screaming she might do, those eyes told me, was a cover for her dislike of men and anything they did to her. I wondered if she knew Ovid’s advice that, if nature denies a woman the final pleasure in coupling, she should cry out and do her best to pretend. Or had she learned that technique on her own?
“You put up the notice about Aristeas, didn’t you?” Chloris asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“The one you read to me?” Myrrha said.
Chloris nodded to her sister and, with a slight lift of her chin, said to me, “My sister cannot read, but I can.”
“There was a reward offered, wasn’t there?” Myrrha asked, apparently realizing that I was a possible source of more income than her usual customers provided. And she could keep her clothes on while earning it.
“Yes, there is. Do you know where the man is?”
Chloris grew wary and held up her hand before her sister could speak. “Why do you want to find him?”
“He was on my land yesterday and he left ... without saying goodbye.”
“But he made a lasting impression,” Tacitus said.
“As he did on us,” Chloris said.
“How did you meet him?” I asked.
“We were in the tavern across the way. He came in and asked if he could sit with us.”
“The men around here are happy to lie with us,” Myrrha said, “but they won’t stoop so low as to share a table with us in public. Their wives’ll never let them hear the end of it. But Aristeas, he treated us real nice. He didn’t just slap his money on the table and tell us what he wanted.”
“That’s because he didn’t have any money,” Chloris said.
“Did he tell you where he was from? Where he was going?”
“He said he was from Alexandria and was on his way to Metapontum.”
“Metapontum?” Tacitus said in disbelief. “Why would anyone be going there? That place is little more than a fever-ridden swamp. It’s been dying since Hannibal’s day.”
“When was that?” Myrrha asked.
“About three hundred years ago,” Tacitus said.
“That’s a long, slow death indeed.”
The passage about Aristeas in Herodotus had mentioned Metapontum, but I couldn’t understand why this Aristeas would be going there. And Metapontum, or what’s left of it, is on the Gulf of Tarentum, at the southern end of Italy. Why would someone from Alexandria go so much farther north, where we were, to get there?
“Your announcement said you’d give a hundred denarii for information about Aristeas,” Chloris said. “We’ve given you information.”
“But I’m no closer to finding him.”
“Your announcement just said you wanted information about him. It didn’t say anything about finding him.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic, but I wanted a bit more for my money. “Did Aristeas tell you why he was in this part of Italy? If he’s going to Metapontum, this is a couple of hundred miles out of his way.”
“He said he had been to Rome, trying to find you.”
Now I was completely confused. “Why did he want to find me?”
“He didn’t say. He just said people in your house in Rome told him you were here. We showed him the direction to your villa.” Chloris waved her arm toward the south. Her pale skin glistened in the sun.
“That’s the last we seen of him,” Myrrha added.
“Did he mention his son?” I asked.
“Son? No sir, he didn’t say anything about a son.”
“Saturninus said you bought him something to eat,” Tacitus said. “Why did you do that?”
Myrrha bristled. “You think we can’t be kind to a man, just because we’re whores?”
“Why, no, I wasn’t suggesting—”
“He told us he’d been set on and robbed,” Chloris said. “Said he’d pay us back after he saw you. Since we knew your uncle, we figured you might be as kind as he was.”
“And he was such a nice man,” Myrrha added. “He just made you fee
l good and want to be nice right back.”
“Did he sing for you?” Tacitus asked.
“Why, yes,” Chloris said in surprise. “Lovely, haunting songs, like nothing I’ve ever heard. How did you know?”
“Just a guess.”
We heard men coming down the alley, their voices loud and slurred with drink. Rolling her eyes, Myrrha gave a heavy sigh. “That’ll be the Long and the Short of It.” She looked over her shoulder at Tacitus and me. “That’s our nicknames for them.”
“Do you have nicknames for all your customers?” Tacitus asked.
“Do you honestly want to know?” Chloris cut in. She held out her hand. “The hundred denarii?”
I reached under my tunic for my money bag and counted out four aurei, the equivalent in gold of one hundred denarii. Before Chloris could close her hand I added a fifth aureus. It alone would more than cover what they would make from the drunks in the alley. She looked at me with a question in her eyes.
“For what would have been my first time,” I said.
Tacitus and I met the two men—one skinny, the other fat, but both the same height—emerging from the alley and turned them around. To judge from the smell and the stains on his tunic, the fat one had fallen in the filth. “Sorry, gents,” I said. “The ladies are occupied for the rest of the day.”
“Ladies? What ladies?” the skinny one protested as we pushed him back up the alley.
“Come back tomorrow, boys,” Myrrha called behind us.
VI
We pointed the drunks in the direction of the bath and I gave them a bit of money to encourage them to stay there for a while. They mumbled thanks and, with the women already forgotten, staggered off.
“Perhaps the fat one can steal a clean tunic,” Tacitus said, rubbing his hands on the wall of Saturninus’ building to clean them a bit. “I don’t think the one he’s wearing can be salvaged. I wonder which one was the Long and which one the Short of it.”
As I watched the fat man sink to his knees and require his companion’s assistance to stand again, I shook my head. “While I am curious about most natural phenomena, there are some things I’m content not to know.”
The Corpus Conundrum Page 8