The Roman (44 page)

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much to do with the naval dockyards, and Anicetus received considerable bribes from them. After boasting about his Creek education, his pictures and oh jets d�art, he became drunk and began to tell indecent stories, thus revealing his own depravity. �Everyone has his own special vice,� he said. �That�s quite natural and understandable, and nothing to be ashamed of. Chastity is sheer pretense. I planted that truth in Nero�s head long ago. I hate nothing more than people who pretend to be virtuous. What kind do you want? Fat or thin, dark or fair, or do you prefer boys? I can arrange little girls or old women, an acrobat or an untouched virgin. Would you like to watch some whipping or do you like being whipped yourself? Yes, we can arrange a Dionysian mystery according to the book, if you like. Just say the word, give me a sign and I�ll satisfy your secret craving, for our friendship�s sake. This is Misenum, you see, and it�s not far to Baiae, Puteoli and Naples, with all the Alexandrian vices. From Capri we have inherited the god Tiberius� ingenuity in these matters, and Pompeii has some fine brothels. Shall we row over there?� I pretended to be shy, but to show myself worthy of his confidence, I said, �I used to think it exciting to disguise myself and go out on night brawls in Subura with your gifted pupil Nero. I don�t think I�ve ever experienced such pleasure as that of the most wretched brothels used by slaves. You see, sometimes one tires of delicacies and gets more pleasure from coarse bread and rancid oil. So I am the exact opposite to you. Since I married, I have finished with that sort of thing, but now I feel an intense desire to make the acquaintance of the naval brothels, which I�ve heard you have excellently organized.� Anicetus grinned rakishly and nodded his understanding. �We have three closed houses,� he said, �the best for the officers, the second for the men and the third for the galley slaves. Believe it or not, I am sometimes visited by noble ladies from Baiae who are tired of everything and wish to serve a night in a brothel. The more debauched women especially like the galley slaves, and are better than our most experienced harlots in their willingness to serve. You see, for financial reasons newcomers must first serve the officers, then the men, and after three years the galley slaves. Some survive this strenuous profession for ten years,

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but I should say five is the average. Some hang themselves, of course, some become ill and useless, and some begin to drink to the extent that they are a disturbance. But we receive constant replenishments from Rome and other Italian cities. The navy�s brothels are penal institutions for women who have been charged with an indecent way of life, such as stealing from customers or hitting rough customers over the head with wine jars.� �What happens to those who survive their term of service?� I asked. �A woman has to be very far gone to be no use to the galley slaves,� said Anicetus. �Don�t worry. No one leaves my houses alive. There are always certain men who find their pleasure in occasionally killing a woman in some unpleasant way. They have to be kept in control. The aim of my houses, among other things, is to protect the decent women in the neighborhood from the sailors. On my rolls, for instance, I have a man who once a month has to suck blood from the jugular vein of a woman, and because of this, he is chained to the seat in the ship. The stupid thing is that every time he does it, he regrets it bitterly afterward and asks to be flogged to death.� I did not believe all Anicetus� stories. He was a braggart and was trying to frighten me with his depravity, because deep down he was a weak and unreliable man. I realized that he had exaggerated a great deal, in the way sailors always do. At first he took me to a graceful circular temple of Venus which had a wonderful view over the glittering sea, and which was connected by an underground tunnel to the naval barracks to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. The first two walled brothels were no different from their Rome counterparts and even had running water. But the house for the galley slaves was more like a prison and I could hardly endure the looks I received from the inmates, so bestially dulled were they. I could not find Claudia, however carefully I looked. But .1 found her next day in a naval fortress in Puteoli. I saw a woman aged beyond her years, whose hair and eyebrows had been shaved off because of lice. She was dressed in a ragged slave tunic, for she was busy working among the fortress� cooking vessels. Actually I recognized Claudia only by her eyes. She immediately recognized me, though at first she made no sign. It was a

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simple matter to exchange her for a bag of silver. I could have had her for nothing if I had wanted to, but to cover my tracks from the censors, I thought it safer to have an accomplice by bribery. When we arrived together at the city�s best guesthouse, Claudia spoke for the first time. �You must have looked for me very eagerly, dear Minutus,� she said harshly, �since you found me so soon. It is only seven years since we last met. What do you want of me?� She agreed to my request that she should put on some respectable clothes and a wig, as well as draw some kind of eyebrows in with eyeblack. Thanks to her kitchen duties she had put on weight, and there was nothing wrong with her health. But she would not say a word about her experiences in Misenum. Her hands were as hard as wood, the soles of her feet like leather, and the sun had burned her a dark brown. Despite the clothes and the wig, she could only be taken for a slave. The more I looked at her, the more alien she became. �Agrippina,� I said finally, in despair. �None other than Agrippina was responsible for your fate. In the foolishness of my youth, I tried to put in a word for you with her. She deceived me. �I�m not complaining,� said Claudia sharply. �Everything that happened to me was according to the will of God, to humble my proud body. Do you think I�d still be alive if Christ had not strengthened my heart?� If the Christians� superstition had helped her withstand the insults of slavery, I could say nothing. So I cautiously began to tell her about myself. To regain her confidence, I told her of my meeting with Paul and Cephas in Corinth and how my freedman Lausius Hierex had become an influential Christian. Claudia listened with her head resting on her hand, her dark eyes clearing as she became more animated. �Here in Puteoli,� she said, �we have several brothers among the seamen who have become converted after hearing how Jesus of Nazareth walked on the water. Otherwise I should never have got out of the closed house in Misenum.� �A seaman�s life is full of danger,� I said. �Puteoli and Naples are said to be the dumping grounds for the East in many respects.

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So it�s not surprising that the new faith has spread here with the Jews.� Claudia looked searchingly at me. �And you, Minutus,� she said. �Do you believe in anything?� I thought carefully and then shook my head. �No, Claudia,� I said. �I no longer believe in anything. I am hardened.� �In that case,� said Claudia decisively, pressing her hard palms together, �I must help you on to the right way. I�m sure it is meant that you have been led to find me and buy my freedom from slavery. After Misenum, slavery was the greatest gift God could send me.� �I was not led by anyone,� I said irritably. �I began to look for you of my own free will as soon as I heard from Agrippina�s own mouth how she had deceived me.� Claudia gave me a pitying look. �Minutus,� she said, �you have no will of your own and you have never had one or everything would be different. I don�t want to leave the Christian assembly in Puteoli, but I realize I must go with you to Rome and persuade you day and night until you humble yourself and become a subject of the secret kingdom of Christ. And don�t look so dismayed. In him lies the only true peace and joy in this soon-to-vanish world.� I thought Claudia�s hard life had disturbed her mind and did not dare argue with her. We traveled home together to Antium on a merchant ship loaded with wild animals, and from there went on to Ostia. Then I took her secretly to my house on Aventine, where she was given a servant�s position and Aunt Laelia took a liking to her. Aunt Laelia had returned to her childhood in her mind and was happiest when playing with dolls. But not a single day went by without Claudia nagging at me about Jesus of Nazareth. I fled from my house to the menagerie, but there Sabina made my life intolerable with her malice. She had become increasingly confident after a relative of hers had become one of the leading men in the State treasury and she was no longer so dependent on my money as before. In practice, it was she who supervised the menagerie, ordered everything and arranged the performances in the amphitheater. She even appeared publicly to demonstrate her skill as a lion-tamer.

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I think that Nero�s life began to become almost as intolerable as mine at this time. When he had banished his mother to Antium and openly taken Lollia Poppaea as his lover to Palatine, he had leaped from the frying pan into the fire. People did not like his brusque treatment of Octavia. Poppaea nagged and wept, demanding that he should legally separate from Octavia and frightening him with Agrippina�s secret intrigues, possibly with some justification. In any case, Nero was forced to banish Antonia�s husband, Faustus Sulla, to Massilia. Antonia naturally went with her husband and five years elapsed before I saw her again. Seneca was definitely opposed to an Imperial divorce, and old Burrus said publicly that if Nero separated from Octavia, then he must also relinquish his marriage portion or the Emperorship. And Lollia Poppaea had no particular desire to move to Rhodes and live there as the wife of a free artist. Agrippina perhaps caused her own fate by her lust for power and her jealousy. Behind her she had a fortune she had inherited from her second husband and from Claudius, and in spite of Pallas� banishment, her influence was still very great. Admittedly, she had no real friends left. But more than a political conspiracy, Nero feared that she would publish the memoirs she was writing herself in Antium, since she did not dare dictate them to even the most trustworthy slave. The knowledge of these memoirs she rashly allowed to spread all over Rome, so that many people who were in one way or another involved in her crimes sincerely wished her dead. In my thoughts, I accused Agrippina of destroying my life when I was still young and open and in love with Claudia, and I blamed all the evil things that had happened to me on to her. Once I visited old Locusta at her little country place. The old woman smiled at me, inasmuch as a death mask can smile, and told me quite openly that I was not the first person to visit her on the same errand. On principle, she had no objection to blending poisons for Agrippina too; it was simply a matter of price. But she shook her experienced old head and said she had already used up her ingredients. Agrippina was much too careful, cooking her own food and not even daring to pick fruit from her own trees, as it was

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so easy to poison. I came to the conclusion that Agrippina�s life was no pleasure to her, even if she was enjoying the revenge of writing her memoirs. Nero achieved peace of mind and reconciliation with Poppaea the moment he made the final decision to murder his mother. For political reasons, Agrippina�s death became as essential to him as Britannicus� had become. And Seneca was not heard to raise a murmur in opposition to this murder, although he himself naturally did not wish to be involved in it. Now it was only a question of how the murder could be arranged to appear to be an accident. Nero�s imagination began to work, demanding the maximum of drama, and he consulted eagerly with his closest friends. Tigellinus, who had certain personal reasons for hating Agrippina, promised to kill her by running her down with his team, if she could be persuaded out onto the open road in Antium. I suggested wild animals, but there was no way of getting them into Agrippina�s carefully guarded garden on her country estate. Nero thought that I was on his side out of sheer affection for him and Poppaea, and he did not know that I was driven by my own inflexible desire for revenge. Agrippina had earned her death a thousand times over by her crimes, and I thought it perfectly just that she should meet it at the hands of her own son. You too have wolf blood in your veins, Julius, my son, more genuine than mine. Try to keep it under better control than your father has been able to do. It was through my wife, Sabina, that we eventually found a possible method. A Greek engineer had shown her a small ship which could hold wild animals and which, with the help of an ingenious system of levers, one man could at any time cause to disintegrate, thus releasing the animals. Sabina had been very attracted by the idea of the newly built marine battle theatre, although finally, because of the cost, I had opposed all marine animals. But Sabina was victorious, and the new discovery aroused such curiosity beforehand that Anicetus came over from Misenum for the day of the performance in Rome. As a climax to the marine performance, the boat disintegrated into pieces as planned. The crowd was delighted to see bison and lions fighting with sea monsters in the water, or swimming ashore

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to fall victim to courageous huntsmen. Nero applauded vigorously. �Can you build me a boat like that,� he cried to Anicetus, �but larger and finer and ornamental enough for the Imperial mother to sail in?� I promised that Anicetus should see the Greek engineer�s secret drawings, but it occurred to me that such a theatrical arrangement demanded the cooperation of far too many people to be kept a secret. As a reward, Nero invited me to the feast at Baiae in March, where I would be able to see with my own eyes the special performance he had planned. In company, and in the Senate too, Nero had begun to act the part of the repentant son longing for reconciliation with his mother. Disputes and outbreaks of bad temper, he explained, could be overcome if there were sufficient good will o: both sides. Agrippina�s informers naturally immediately took this information back to Antium, so Agrippina was not noticeably surprised or suspicious when she received a beautifully composed letter from Nero containing an invitation to the feast of Minerva in Baiae. The feast was in itself an indication, for Minerva is the goddess of all schoolboys, and a reconciliation far from Rome and the quarrelsome Poppaea seemed quite natural. Minerva�s day is a day of peace and no blood may be shed and no weapons may be visible. Nero was at first going to send the new pleasure yacht, manned by sailors, to fetch Agrippina from Antium, to show that he intended to return her former rights to his mother. But with the help of a water clock, we calculated that in that case the boat would have to be sunk in daylight, and in addition, Agrippina was so known to be suspicious that she might well refuse the honor and travel overland. In the end she arrived at the naval base in Misenum in a trireme manned by her own trusted slaves. Nero went to meet her with the whole of his suite and had insisted on Seneca and Burrus being there as well, to emphasize the political significance of the reconciliation. I could only admire Nero�s extraordinary talent for acting as, moved to tears, he hurried to meet his mother, embraced her and greeted her as the most excellent of all mothers. Agrippina had also done her best to dress well and beautify herself, so that she