The Last Stoic (23 page)

Marcus was pale and semi-conscious when they found him.
  A shard of wood protruded from
the soft flesh on the inside of his wrist and a trail of blackened blood
extended to his elbow.  He was taken to the infirmary.  Three days later he was
returned to his cell. 

“Forgive me,” he said to Sextus,
as soon as the soldiers departed.  “I was so careful.  But I read too much.  I
got tired.  I fell asleep with the book on my chest.  On my chest!  They made
me… destroy it.  I’m sorry.  If I had a good, sharp knife, I’d do the job
properly.”

Sextus was quiet.  His expression
didn’t change.   

“Sextus?  Are you not upset?”
Marcus gripped the bars and shook them feebly. 

“Marcus.  What have you done?”
the old man asked, eyeing the swollen, purple flesh at his wrists.

“Pluto’s ass!  Do you hear what I
say?  The book is lost. Destroyed!”

“How much did you read?”

“All of it.  Three times over.”

“Do you recall what Aurelius
wrote at the end of his sixth chapter?”

Marcus rubbed his temples and
shook his head.

“No man will hinder thee from
living according to the reason of thy own nature.  Nothing will happen to thee
contrary to the reason of the universal nature.”

Sextus continued when Marcus drew
his knees to his chest.

“These aren’t just pretty words. 
Use them to see the world as it really is.  Nothing can be done to you without
your consent.  How about the forty eighth paragraph of the fourth chapter?”

Marcus stared at his feet.

“Mark how fleeting and paltry is
the estate of man,—yesterday in embryo, to-morrow a mummy or ashes. So for the
hair’s-breadth of time assigned to thee live rationally, and part with life
cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the
tree that matured it.”

Sextus looked again at Marcus’
wounds.

“Life is an unexpected and
unexplained gift.  And it lasts only a hair’s-breadth of time.  You do honour
to the gift by not abusing it and by parting with it cheerfully.”

Marcus trapped a roach under his
sandal.

“Paragraph twenty-five of chapter
seven?  When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what
opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this,
thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry. For either thou
thyself thinkest the same thing to be good that he does or another thing of the
same kind. It is thy duty then to pardon him. But if thou dost not think such
things to be good or evil, thou wilt more readily be well disposed to him who
is in error.”

“Book ten, paragraph four?”

Marcus pivoted.

“Jupiter!  Do you have the whole
damn thing memorized?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?

“Of course,
”
Sextus looked
heavenward and he counted with his fingers, “and Seneca’s
De vita beata
,
the discourses of Dio Chrysostom and Epictetus, Zeno of Citium’s
Republic
,
a number of discourses by Chrysippus, though he wrote so many, some
forgettable.”

“You can recite the whole
journal, from start to finish?”

“In both directions.”

They gazed at each other.  No
longer did Marcus see an eccentric, toothless gnome.  He saw a tattered bundle
of parchment, filled with dozens, hundreds, of yellowed, creased pages.  He saw
an ancient, stone library packed with volumes.

“Would you recite it to me?”

Sextus cast about his cage like
he was looking for something.

“I’m not sure I can.  I’m a very
busy man.”

Marcus stared hard into the old
man’s clear, bright eyes.  They narrowed.  The slack skin surrounding them
wrinkled and his face broadened into a wide grin. 

“I’ll make some time,” he said,
laughing, and Marcus laughed too.

“Book One.  From my grandfather
Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.” 

Sextus looked through the bars at
him and smiled.  Marcus felt his face get warm at the now familiar first line. 
He wondered about Sextus’ own family.  Did he have a grandson?  Commodus had
executed his brothers, father and uncle.  Was he the last of his line?  Marcus
pressed his palms hard into his sore eyes, but still the tears spilled out.  He
wished he could walk through the hateful bars and hug the old man.

“From the reputation and
remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.”

Sextus swung the words out in a
gentle rocking cadence. 

“From my mother, piety and
beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil
thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the
habits of the rich.”

Marcus released his clutch of the
bars.  He curled up in the straw.

“From my great-grandfather, not
to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and
to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.”

He knew these words.  They draped
over him like an old blanket.

“From my governor, to be neither
of the Green nor of the Blue party at the games in the Circus, nor a partisan
either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him
too I learned endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work with my own
hands…”

Halfway through the first chapter
Marcus was asleep.  He slept for sixteen consecutive hours, waking only for a
draught of water or a bowl of cold porridge.  On the advice of the camp’s Greek
physician the magistrate left him undisturbed. 

Just before dawn the next day he
awoke refreshed.  Immediately he roused Sextus and asked him to continue his
recitation.  By mid-afternoon they had finished the twelfth and final chapter
of the journal.  At supper time, after Sextus had napped, Marcus exhorted him
to start again from the beginning.  They talked until well after sundown.

On the morning of the sixth day
after leaving the infirmary he was prodded awake and blindfolded.  They dragged
him through the portico, across the atrium, and out to the yard.  His mouth was
jammed with damp, bunched cloth, smelling of ammonia.  His arms were bound
behind his back and he was suspended by his ankles.  Blood rushed to his head. 
They pounded the soles of his feet with rods.  He passed out.  He came to.  He
clamped his jaws and howled primal noises into his gag. 

Later, when he was sitting, bound
and blindfolded, and the cloth had been removed, Marcus invented fabulous
stories for the magistrate.  Tales of shadowy, underground organizations
devoted to black magic arts, corrupted cousins of Mithraism, introduced from
the East, by the Scythians, by the Hindus, by the Parthians, by the peculiar
and suspicious-looking Nasir, cults rife with blood drinking ceremonies, and
human sacrifices, and bestial sex, ritual suicides, and feasts of dung, and
every other unimaginable horror.  He described nefarious doings, of secret
meetings, of amassing rebel armies, of assassination plots.  The magistrate would notice a contradiction and his face would redden.  The restraints would be
re-applied and Marcus would be hoisted once more. 

The magistrate interrogated. 
Marcus fabricated. 

He was hauled back to his pen.

“Tell me everything.”

“Everything?”

Marcus beseeched Sextus.  The old
man obliged.  He started with Seneca, Epictetus, Chrysippus, and Cleanthes. 
When these had been exhausted, they moved on to the chroniclers; Pliny the
Elder, Livius and Tacitus, Herodotus.  Sextus recited every bawdy poem he knew,
from Martial to Juvenal.  He recounted his own times, the people he’d known,
loved, and fought, what he’d witnessed, from the sublime to the ridiculous. 
For days they talked.  Marcus questioned.  Sextus told him what he knew.   

One afternoon, Sextus fell
silent.  He’d reached the extent of his memory.  He’d gone months at a time
without sharing one word.  Every waking hour of these last few days had been
spent speaking, remembering, and reciting.  He was spent, snoozing lightly in
the corner of his cage.  Marcus was also weary, digesting all that he had
heard.

“Sextus?” he called.

“Sextus?” he said, louder this
time. “What happened?”

“What happened when lad?”

He sounded far away.

“I don’t understand.  All of
those clever people, all of those clever ideas.  A sage for an emperor, who
writes this marvelous book…Why are we here?  It’s not what I expected when I
left Verulamium.  It’s not what my grandfather described.”

“How long has it been since your
grandfather traveled?”

“A long time.”

“Aurelius’ journal is an
epilogue.  A lament.”

Marcus leant in so he could hear
the old man.

“Two primary passions afflict us
Marcus, Romans no less than any others.  Appetite and fear.  They are excessive
impulses.  Disobedient to reason.  Ruled by these passions people become slaves
to pleasure or distress.  It’s the easiest thing to do; the passions are always
there, beckoning.  They can be held in check, but never can be eliminated.  It
takes a lifetime of study, training, and self-discipline to rule oneself. ”

Marcus traced a finger along a
welt above his ankle.

“All things must change Marcus. 
Change is the only constant.  The era of Rome is ending.  It is becoming
something else.  You, too, have changed.  Soon I must return from whence I
came.  And still, we can pass on memories and knowledge.”

The two men looked at each
other. 

“I’m very tired.  I must rest. 
Perhaps we can talk more tomorrow.”

Marcus nodded and they receded
into their respective cages.

A percussive, barking sound woke
Marcus seven hours later.  He thought it must be the mastiffs across the yard
catching sight of a hare.  His head began to clear.  He rubbed the grit from
his raw eyes and looked across the cage.  Sextus was hunched into a ball,
coughing ceaselessly, his body convulsing with every hack and wheeze.  The old
man reached out with a hand to brace himself against the bars.

“Sextus!  Are you ill?  Take some
of my water!”

Marcus thrust his hand through
the bars.  Sextus, still doubled over, reached and Marcus pulled him near. 
Sextus drew his free hand across his thin, quavering lips and it emerged
streaked with blood.

“Good Jupiter, Sextus!  What has
happened?”

Marcus passed his half-filled tin
water cup through the bars and Sextus held it to his lips with trembling
hands.  He swallowed a mouthful between convulsions and the coughing abated. 
An ill-timed sip caused him to sputter. 

“Guards!” Marcus cried, “A
prisoner is very ill!  Come quickly!”

“Hush.  It’s no use.  I don’t
want to spend my last hours with them.”

“Last hours?”

“Marcus, I became quite ill this
last time you were in isolation.  I had a brief respite as you returned,”
Sextus whispered.  “Now I’m dying.”

Marcus squeezed the old man’s
gnarled hand. 

“I’m sorry Sextus.  Why didn’t
you tell me?  I made you talk and talk.  You should have been resting.”

“No need for apology. What better
way of spending my final days.”

“You don’t know…”

“I do.  The other end of the
hair’s-breadth.  It’s been a good life.”

Marcus bowed his head.  Sextus
had spent the better part of his life in exile or in hiding.  Most of his
family had been murdered before his eyes.  He’d festered in prison camps for
seven years.

“Remember.  Part with life
cheerfully.”

Sextus looked up and gazed deeply
at Marcus.  A smile spread unevenly across his face and he tightened his grip. 
His breathing slowed. There was a rumbling in the hollow of his chest.

“It’s been my good fortune to
meet you Marcus.  I can’t imagine a better companion to have these last few
weeks.  I didn’t have a son in this life, but if I had, I’d have been delighted
if he were like you.  Thank you.”

Marcus looked away to the
cockroaches scurrying in the straw.

“Would you like to listen to the
emperor’s meditations again?”

“Sure.”

Sextus began.  “Book One. From my
grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.” 

He managed just two paragraphs
before another fit seized him.  Marcus turned back, thrust his left arm through
the bars and put it around the old man’s thin shoulders, pulling him close
against the bars, still clutching his other hand.  He held him there tightly,
swaying slightly, as his breathing grew weaker and less regular.  Marcus began
humming an old Caledonian lullaby his mother used to sing.

“What do I do without you?”

“Be good, Marcus.”

A day later, Sextus Condianus had
been removed from his pen.  The soldiers wouldn’t tell Marcus whether he had
been buried, burned, or left for the buzzards.  They interrogated him once
more.  They hoped the death of the old man had changed his attitude.  It had.