The Last Stoic (22 page)

“Ah!” Vincent exclaimed. 
“Marvellous.  I tell you, that book has a way of summing it all up and wrapping
it in a bow.  It’s funny how it always seems so pertinent.”

Patrick closed the book again and
sat staring at the old man a few feet away in the confined sitting room of his
tiny living space.  Vincent looked frail and weathered, but there was
resilience underneath, like heartwood behind the bark.  The man has lost his
grandson, who obviously means a good deal to him, and yet he is still able to
be friendly and generous to someone he has never met.  And he might be family.

“I suppose I should go,” Vincent
said suddenly, rising from his chair.  “Please, borrow it until Mark returns. 
I think you will find it most useful. ”

“Don’t go,” Patrick said
suddenly, surprising both himself and his guest.  Vincent, already halfway to
the door, stopped and turned.

“I’m sorry son,” he said, “I need
to rejoin my daughter-in-law, she is probably worried by my absence and, given
everything, she is already beside herself.  We need to continue the search. 
Perhaps we’ll meet again soon.”

Vincent moved toward the door.

“Stop,” Patrick said, this time
with more force.  “I know something about Mark’s disappearance.”

Vincent dropped his hand from the
door knob.

“Come back in,” Patrick said,
“stay a while.  Tell me more about your uncle in New Ravenna.  My great-uncle. 
I could make you some lunch.”

“Please Patrick,” he said, “tell
me what you know.”

The two men stared hard at each
other. 

“He was taken away,” Patrick said
at last, “by some men.  CIA.”

Vincent’s face darkened. 
“Where?”

“From the rally, the president’s
public address.  They arrested Mark and one of his friends.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Vincent was motionless.  He held
Patrick’s gaze.

“I think they suspected an
assassination attempt,” Patrick continued, “at least that’s what I thought I
heard one of them say.  I happened to be nearby.”

Vincent swiveled and strode
toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Patrick
asked.

“I need to make some phone
calls.”

“Stop!” 

Vincent looked back to see
Patrick standing in the kitchen holding a pistol at his side. 

“Stay,” he said, waving the gun.

Vincent smiled. 

“He who fears death either fears
to lose all sensation,” he said, pleasantly, “or fears new sensations.  In
reality, you will either feel nothing at all and therefore nothing evil, or
else, if you can feel any new sensations, you will be a new creature, and so
will not have ceased to have life.”

There was no hint of anger or
exasperation in his face. 

“I’d prefer if you didn’t shoot
me Patrick.  I have many things to do.  But I’m not afraid and I must leave
now.”

Mark’s mother and his grandfather
left the safe haven of their homes to travel two thousand miles in search of
their kin.  As soon as they knew he was missing.  Patrick left New Ravenna
under cover of darkness.  A refugee from home for more than two years.  He was
unaware of any attempt to find him in all that time.  He had left hints. 
Unsigned postcards suggesting his general location.  Phone calls to the house
in which he, masking his voice, asked about his own whereabouts.  He’d reported
seeing himself here and there.  He’d checked police missing persons lists.  He
wasn’t on any.  For the last year he had been listed under his full name in the
phone book.  No-one had searched.  They weren’t coming for him.

Patrick raised the gun. 

“Stay,” he said.

Vincent turned the knob and
opened the door.

The report from the pistol echoed
throughout the dormitory halls of the Super Shepherd Ministries.  

“Do you love the emperor?”
asked the magistrate.

“Yes!”

“How deep is your love?”

“Without limit!”

“Is it unconditional?”

“Yes!”

“Is it absolute?”

“Yes!”

The magistrate patted Marcus’
buttocks.

“Good boy.  Tell me more about
Paul Cornelius.  How close were you?”

“Not very.”

“We’ve heard rumours that he held
parties for one of the Emperor’s rivals.  Do you know anything about that?”

“No sir.”

“Don’t you?”

“No sir.”

Marcus was plunged back into the
water tank, held there until stark panic seized his struggling limbs and he
bucked violently against the restraints.  He was lifted out, as usual,
spluttering, seconds from death. 

One time, very soon, he thought,
I will not struggle. 

The interrogation proceeded in
much the same way as the first, with the same questions, same answers.  The magistrate remained unmoved.

“Your friend the Parthian had
some interesting things to say.  He told us everything about the plot.  He sang
like a drunken minstrel.  He had a lot to say about you.  Save yourself, and
me, a lot of time and grief.  Confess.”

Marcus panicked.
What did
Nasir say?  He hardly knew me.

“You’d better think of something
boy,” the magistrate whispered fiercely. “Getting dunked in this cesspool will
be a day at the baths compared to the other tools at our disposal.  Make
yourself useful.”

“Sextus Condianus!”

“What?”

“Sextus Condianus!  He’s in the
cage next to me.  Surely he knows more about plots against the emperor than I
do.”

The guardsmen laughed.  “He’s
mocking you again, magistrate.  Sextus Condianus! What next, the ghost of
Aurelius?  The king of Atlantis?”

“Silence!”

“Is that the best you can do?”
the magistrate whispered, out of earshot of the soldiers muffling their
laughter.  “Don’t you think I know we have Sextus Condianus?  You’d better
remember something else.”

The magistrate stood up.

“Prepare the smoker again.  The
prisoner still has some thinking to do.”

Marcus was returned to his cage. 
“Don’t get too comfortable,” the soldiers said, “we’ll be back for you soon.”

He stared bitterly into the next
pen.  The old man was still there, snoozing.  Sextus Condianus?  The guards
certainly didn’t seem to think so.  It doesn’t really matter.  Even if it was
Sextus, he is nothing but a harmless old man now. 

“Don’t they interrogate
you
?”
Marcus asked loudly.

The man woke and gazed back with
sleepy eyes.

“Hello again.”

“I asked if they ever interrogate
you.”

“Oh, I see.  You were with the magistrate?”

“Yes.”

“Occasionally, but not too often
now.  I’m a barren field to them.”

“So am I, but they don’t seem to
realize it.”

“I suppose you need to impress it
upon them.”

Marcus stared sullenly into the
corner of his cage where the roach colony bustled.  He pondered the old man. 
Here is a scion from one of the leading noble families of Rome, with roots
stretching well back to the Republic.  Look at him now.  Rotting and forgotten
in his mouldy cell, the last of his line.  And yet he looks less of a tattered
convict bent into a cage.  Reading discreetly from his small scroll he
resembled someone reclining pleasantly on a couch in their private library. 

“What’s the book?” Marcus asked
morosely.

Sextus smiled a tolerant smile. 
He passed the diminutive parchment roll through the bars.  “Take a look.”

Marcus accepted the book from
Sextus.  He opened it to the first small page.  It read:

To
Myself

Marcus
Annius Verus Aurelius

The Meditations
.  It was the emperor’s journal. 
He held it in his hands, weighing it, measuring it, like it was an ingot, not a
compact bundle of parchments.

The clanging of keys and the
clattering of greaves announced the approaching legionaries.  Marcus nearly
wept.  All he wanted to do was to read the book which had come suddenly into
his hands.  It meant more to him than a square meal of roast boar and potatoes,
more than an extra large tankard of cool, tawny ale, more even than freedom
itself.  He pressed his face against the bars.

“Please, I beg of you, may I
borrow your book?  They are going to return me to the smoker.  I think I should
die if I don’t bring it with me.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you,” Marcus said,
stuffing the book within his tunic, under his belt.  The old man winked. 

Before Marcus could apologize for
his earlier rudeness, the magistrate, flanked by two soldiers, appeared at the
cage door.  It was his first look at his interrogator.  He was of medium build,
with slightly thinning and greying hair, the hint of a paunch in the midriff of
his tunic, neither muscular nor scrawny.  Not at all how Marcus imagined him. 

“You’ll have another stay in the
smoker to mull things over,” the magistrate said. “If you’re still useless,
we’re going to crack you open.”

“Savagery is the resort of simple
minds, Martinus.”  Sextus spoke with an even voice from the adjacent cage.

“Silence, grandpa.”

“You know better than anyone that
the strong will resist your torture and the weak will say anything to end the
pain.”

Marcus shrank at the old man’s
words.  He wondered if Sextus heard him blubbering over the water tank, naming
names and spilling every mundane detail.  The magistrate ignored Sextus.  He
motioned toward Marcus, the legionaries extricated him from his cage, and
marched him the across the compound. 

He was now glad to return to the
smoker.  He had the book and privacy and time.  There was enough light slanting
in from top of the smoker by which Marcus could discern the fine script. 
Immediately after the door was locked Marcus took a deep breath.  He wiggled
and shifted until he’d found a modicum of comfort, and began to read.  He got
no further than the first line:

Avi Veri exemplo operam me dare
oportet, ut suavibus sim moribus neque irae indulgeam.

From my grandfather Verus I
learned good morals and the government of my temper.

Marcus remembered the brisk day
years ago when he was preparing to leave home.  Vincentius was gruff and
formal, his expression so full of pride and expectation, presenting him with a
rare, signed copy of Aurelius’ writings to take with him on his journey. 
Marcus recalled his own response, his lack of gratitude and attention, his
intemperate dash to the toilet, the look of confusion on his grandfather’s
earnest face.  Hot tears now breached any remaining measure of self-control,
tumbling down his face to the dirt below.  His agitated honking filled the
prison yard until the reservoir of his misery was drained.  He pitched lightly
back and forth holding the tightly rolled parchment against his cheek.  Before
long, he was asleep, and the book tumbled from his hands into the corner of the
smoker.  Marcus was roused again at twilight when a soldier opened the hatch to
deliver his porridge. 

“Where is it!?”

The guard was shocked by the
outburst.  “What?” he asked.

Marcus regretted his imprudence. 
He snatched his dinner from the guard’s hands.  The guard shook his head and
closed the hatch.  Marcus threw the dish down, scrambled through the straw and
was relieved to find the book wedged in the corner of the smoker.  To Marcus
the journal represented far more than just the musings of a long dead
philosopher king.  It embodied the last touchstone to a world outside of the
dim limbo he found himself in.  He was determined never to let it out of his
sight and was pleased when a soldier woke him up at daybreak.  As soon as he
received his ration of water and flatbread and they closed the hatch, he
returned to his reading.  Through the rest of the morning and the following
days, he read the book cover to cover, forwards and backwards.  Every day he
spent immersed in the journal left him feeling stronger and more complete. 

When it was confiscated it was
like losing a vital organ.

Mark awoke to shouting.
  He opened his eyes to the hovering crimson face
of the tribunal magistrate.  The small paperback, the pocket edition of Marcus
Aurelius’
The Meditations,
lay conspicuously on his chest.  The magistrate snatched it.  Two soldiers pinned Mark before he could bring his arm forward.  They
dragged him from the smoker into the full light of the prison yard.  The magistrate stood and leafed through his catch.

“The Meditations?  Marcus
Aurelius.  No Penthouse?  No Grisham?”

Mark’s bloodshot eyes strained
after the slim paperback roughly handled in the man’s doughy fingers, its pages
coarsely ruffled through, its spine doubled over and cracked.  Mark wailed,
begging for the book.  The magistrate smacked him hard across the face with
it. 

“Just what the fuck do you think
this place is?” he asked.  “A resort?  A spa?  It’s a god-damned prison!  In
the wasteland.  No-one knows you’re here.  You are nothing.  Nowhere.”

“So…,” the magistrate continued, striking him with the book by way of emphasizing each word, “what… you…
want…doesn’t…fucking…matter!”

The magistrate ripped the slender
volume down the brittle spine and chucked the two halves across the yard.  Mark
lost his breath like he’d been kicked in the stomach.  The magistrate paced the yard, looking at the torn book, looking at Mark.  His expression changed
from one of consternation to one of settled satisfaction.

“The latrine needs shit tickets,”
he said, finally. “Pick up the book and bring it with us to the latrine.”

Mark stood up and hobbled to the
two halves of the book, the shackles at his ankles preventing a normal gait. 
He knelt down and picked up the tattered pages.

“To the latrine.”

They escorted Mark to the stout
concrete building on the edge of the prison yard, fifty feet from the smoker,
where the inmates were permitted twice daily to urinate and defecate.  The man
ordered Mark to place the journal next to the nearly empty roll of toilet paper
held in place by a steel rod.

“It’s a bit a rough, but it will
do.  I hope our guests don’t mind.” 

Another prisoner in a standard
grey jumpsuit, dark-skinned, tall and gaunt, approached the latrine,
accompanied by a pair of soldiers.  He, and his guards, looked perplexed when
he saw the magistrate, Mark, and the others waiting.

 “Just in time.  Shit?” the magistrate asked as they approached.

The prisoner nodded warily.

“Excellent!”  The magistrate clapped his hands.  “Go ahead.”

The magistrate wouldn’t allow the
door to be closed.  The confused prisoner had an audience of six.  At first, he
had difficulty, unused to emptying his bowels in public.  But the nature of the
camp food soon prevailed and the prisoner was finished.  Sheepishly, he leaned
over to grab the last remaining scraps of toilet paper.  The magistrate cut him short.

“Hold it!  Today is your lucky
day.  Today, sultan, you get your ass wiped by one of the subjects.”

The magistrate glowered at Mark.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Use your
favourite pages.”

“You want me to…”

“Yes.  Bend over sultan.”

The prisoner remained frozen, his
confusion and fear growing.

“It’s simple English!” the magistrate.  “Restrain him,” he said, motioning to his subordinates.

The guards twisted the prisoner’s
arms up behind his back and bent him slightly at the waist.  One of the others
shouted and poked Mark with his baton.  Mark shuffled into the latrine.  He
pulled a leaf of paper from the second-half of the paperback.  He glanced at
the first line at the top of the page:

Everything material soon
disappears in the substance of the whole…

Tears began to stream from his
eyes, stinging them, and he stopped reading.

“Go ahead!”

Mark could see his hand raising
the sheet of printed paper up to the soiled buttocks of the other man.  The
hand drew the paper along the cleft of the buttocks, and out the other side,
where it emerged smeared and stinking.  The hand then cast the feculent leaf
into the black hole of the toilet.

“Another.”

Again, the hand stripped another
piece of paper from the shard of the book and followed through with the wiping
motion.  Another crumpled leaf fluttered from the hand down into the darkness
of the bowl.  The other prisoner, looked away as he held out his buttocks like
a toddler, hoping the procedure would soon be over.

“Ok, that’s enough.  You,” the magistrate barked at the prisoner, “finish up.  Get him out of here.”

Mark was led back to the smoker
and was wordlessly folded back in.  The magistrate leaned through the hatch and
studied him.

“No more books.”

The hatch closed, it was bolted,
and darkness descended again. 

Mark put off requesting a trip to
the latrine until it was almost midnight and he could no longer wait.  When he
arrived, the halves of the book were gone, and a fresh roll of toilet paper was
in place on the steel rod.  He lasted another two days in the smoker.  On the
night of the second day he pulled a large splinter of wood from the inside of
the structure and jabbed it into each wrist until the blood began to flow.