Rome For Sale, page 22
His enemies said that he had slaves used as living sacrifices, that a Druad kidnapped specially from Gaul in a wooden box had read the future from the contortions of the limbs, and that Etruscans had been present to note the markings on the liver while it was still part of the pulsating body.
Lentulus sat in his study with Matthias, an Easterner of unknown race, who folded out a piece of parchment on the table before him.
“The Sun passes through the Crab,” he read. “The Moon in control. The Element Water.” He looked up. “I can’t be bothered with all these figures. You’re the expert, or supposed to be. What’s happening up aloft among the star-swarm? Can you hear them buzzing? I wish they were hornets stinging you awake.”
Matthias plucked at his square-cut beard and arranged his yellow gown with dignity. “I am but a window into eternal space. I am nothing. I seek to know that I am nothing. Then I shall be pure, and the eternal law can reflect itself in me, as the moon is reflected in the waters of her dominion.”
“Keep pure,” agreed Lentulus tolerantly. “I don’t object to purity in other people—that is, except in the women I happen to like. But I don’t care much for women. Hash served up from yesterday. Either too dry or too sloppy. So go on purifying yourself by all means.”
“If I fail to see the full facts of the future,” said Matthias, staring with large black eyes and gravely ignoring the remark, “it is because the window is not clear enough. It is fogged with the exhalations of my body.” His eyes rolled in their sockets. “I wrestle with my body. I beat it down. I see clearer daily. And all for you.” His voice sank caressingly.
“And all for my money,” laughed Lentulus. “You wouldn’t be so devoted if I was poor.”
“You speak untruly to try your servant,” replied Matthias, clasping his hands submissively before him. “I am devoted to your destiny. I would see that destiny shining through you, like the moon in those deep waters, whether you were rich or poor. I follow that light.”
“I admire your skill in avoiding unpleasant questions,” jeered Lentulus. “What does this moon-glow that you spy behind my brows betoken in actual fact? That is all that interests me.”
“I cannot say as yet.” Matthias bent over the paper and ran his blackened fingernail along the lines of calculations. “But I can say this. The project at which you are working will succeed. It will yet suffer one setback, but it will progress nevertheless, as the crab that turns sideways moves all the faster thereby. That project will succeed. I see the figure Three for ever appearing in your life. Three is the culmination, the key.”
“Trail down that Three.” Lentulus dropped his lids and spoke wearily. “Bring me Three on the palm of your hand, so that I may see it and touch it. What is Three apart from Things? I know three apples and three cats and three women, but three I have never yet handled or smelt.”
“A woman near the Capenian Gate gave birth to three children last night.”
Lentulus turned the parchment over and looked at its dirtied and creased back. “Do you mean to insinuate that I am the father? I assure you that you’re wrong. Are you in conspiracy with this accomplished woman to accuse me of paternity? If they’re your own brats, drown them in the Tiber. If they’re not yours, let someone else drown them. That’s my whole philosophy.”
“It is a portent,” said Matthias unruffled. “That three should have been born in one birth at the moment when I discovered the triad in your future, is a sign. I have ascertained the precise hour and find that it corresponds with my calculations.” He pointed to some figures. “It is not a fulfilment but a correspondence.”
“Was she a handsome woman?” asked Lentulus with a faint interest.
“The wife of a petty debt-collector.”
Lentulus showed his heavy teeth. “Then let the brats squall in peace. Never shall it be said that I roused a debt-collector, even a petty one. You can leave me those numbers, and go now.”
Lentulus continued staring at the parchment, which he did not understand. Matthias made no move. “What do you want?” asked Lentulus, knowing that the man wanted payment.
Matthias said nothing for a moment, then he burst out. “Were you poor, I would share a crust with you after what I have read in your stars and in the shape of your head that reveals the temple of the sky at your nativity. But since you are not poor, I expect to share in your bounty at least to the extent of that which will preserve my life for your service. I am part of your destiny now. You cannot throw me aside any more than you can shake the stars out of the sky.”
Lentulus looked at him with dislike, all passion was nonsensical, and this passion plucked unpleasantly at his internals. “Quietly, my good fellow, quietly.” These Orientals should really be discouraged; their eyes were too dark; that must be a sign of madness, that impenetrable glare. If one was to fall under their domination, one would also go mad. Yet there was something sincere about the wretch. Poor fool. “I object to being called rich. Probably I’m far poorer than you are, but your roguery deserves a reward.” He scribbled on a slip of paper. “Give that to the steward on the way out.”
Matthias bent down and kissed the hand that proffered the paper. Then he took the paper and went. Lentulus continued staring at the parchment on which were inscribed the figures that he did not understand. There was something fine about a total incomprehensibility; perhaps star-gazing, if not an interpretation of life, was at least a commentary upon it.
9
A great number of Catalina’s bills were coming due at the end of June, and it was necessary for him to obtain a further loan. He went carefully through a list of his possessions and those which Orestilla controlled in her own and daughter’s names, and found that together these properties more than covered the debts, if only a fair price was obtained. He had so long been abused as a criminal aiming only at private debt-repudiation that he had for some time neglected any exact book-keeping, and was surprised at the result. His own debts were not very great; they had been mostly cleared by the fees from his work in Africa; and his chief troubles were the bills of other persons that he had backed.
However, ready money was needed at once, to meet interest on the June-bills and to pay election-expenses. He thought first of asking Cæsar’s help and calling on Crassus; but he felt averse from that course for two reasons. He knew that Crassus was opposed to the extreme revolutionary programme, and he felt that to seek for a loan from him now would be a kind of blackmail on past associations. More deeply, he disliked asking Cæsar’s help on a financial issue; he wanted so badly to bring out Cæsar’s support for his ideas that to ask him to help with money was like bartering the moral side away. For if Crassus lent, it would only be through Cæsar.
The sole course therefore was a banker. Several of Catalina’s bills were drawn on Quintus Considius, a Sabine by birth. Catalina preferred to deal with him rather than with one of the many Jews or other Easterners who had now crowded into the money-areas at Rome. The Jews in chief were getting a firm hold; they had their quarters and synagogues; and their tenacious continuance in their ritual and manners of living tended to make the indigenous or more plastic populace distrust and fear them. Occasionally there was an outbreak and a few Jews were murdered, but the power of the colony was already too great to allow of any official persecution. Catalina was uncertain in his attitude. His desire to bring Rome back to her proper path made him wish to sweep the Jews away, though he could not deny that apart from their racial intolerance they were industrious and law-abiding citizens.
One of the basic principles of the revolutionaries was hatred of all usury, of all methods whereby money produced more money without actual labour. All loans that bore interest were denounced. That money should breed was a monstrosity of nature. It turned money from an emblem of value, a counter of exchange, into a menacing thing of excremental life; and every instinct of the popular party cried out against interest. Catalina had heard all the arguments that without interest there could be no credit and that without credit industry would die, and he could not see the way out of the impasse. But emotionally he stood entirely with the simple revolutionary thesis that interest should be abolished. He had not yet gone so far as to proclaim his agreement. Debt-abolition was the war-cry; but both his emotions and his sense of logic told him that debt-abolition was futile unless followed up by a suppression of usury. Surely Rullus and the theorists could find some way of credit-extension that would remove the matter from the hands of the most unscrupulous and in many ways most short-sighted citizens in the state?
Yes, when in power, he would abolish interest and see what happened.
Considius was a small grey-headed man with a sly cheery peasant-face. That was why Catalina could tolerate him better than the others. His offices were in the corner of the Forum near the Temple of Saturn; and he was sitting with hands clasped on the table and nothing of his trade visible in the room except a few papers clipped together. He had been very astonished to hear Catalina announced, but did not show his emotion as he rose to indicate a seat.
“Very nice weather we’ve been having,” he said affably. “The farmers will be thankful. They need it, poor fellows. I thought it was going to be too dry, but we’ve had a perfect balance. Nothing pleases me more than good weather for the farmers. It’s the one thing we cannot command. We can do much, but not everything.”
Catalina waited till Considius had no more to say and then announced that he wanted 300,000 sesterces. Considius hemmed and hedged, talking about his partner, till Catalina threw down the list of property-evaluations; then he could not resist snatching the list up in his eagerness to learn who else had loaned Catalina money.
“Very interesting. But do you think the properties would bring in all that money?”
Catalina shrugged. “How do I know? I know that’s their value.”
Considius raised his eyebrows and laid his head on one side. “What is value, my good sir? A merchant is meeting a demand; he sells his goods at a high price. He has losses elsewhere and must sell his entire stock at any price; once the other dealers know that, are they likely to give him the price he was getting before? I don’t think so. People say it’s the depravity of our nature. I hold they’re wrong. It’s a law. People don’t say that it proves the depravity of a pair of scales if they put such a heavy weight in them that the chain breaks. Such an act merely shows lack of calculation. If a man goes bankrupt and his property is sold at low prices, he’s breaking the weighing-machine; he must take the consequences of unloading stock without calculation. It’s a law. I didn’t make it, and neither did you. I’d certainly alter it if I could, and doubtless so would you.”
He looked with friendly questioning at Catalina, trying to draw him out. Catalina merely replied, “What I have put down there is a fair evaluation. Will you lend me the money? Speak frankly.”
Considius did not like the direct demand. After muttering about his partner, he summoned a smilingly open countenance once more and asked if Catalina hoped to enact a repudiation of debts.
“Yes,” said Catalina quietly.
“Yet you as a man of honour come here to borrow my hard-earned savings with the deliberate intention of repudiating the debt before it comes due. Is that even remotely honest, master Catalina? You will forgive my frankness. It was you that first suggested it.”
“You mis-state the problem. I come to borrow because that is the only course before me under the present system. If I fail in my efforts, I won’t moan because you foreclose and ruin me. Do I risk more than you?”
“No,” agreed Considius, speaking slowly. “But then we are tackling the issue on different grounds. You make your agreement with me in financial terms, yet you seek to meet it in political terms—by a legalised repudiation. On the contrary I go ahead on the terms with which we began. That seems to me more honest.”
“Put it in any terms you like. I offer you a gamble. Put it like that if you wish.”
They argued on, skirting round the issues till Catalina again demanded a plain answer.
Considius considered. It went against his grain to finance this enemy of his class. But perhaps the man’s talk of abolition was only claptrap for the masses; he naturally wouldn’t admit it now. When he gained office, he would probably start thinking only of a province like the others. He had been driven to extremes by the set against him in the Senate. Besides, it would be valuable to have a finger in the man’s schemes, whatever they were. Debt-abolition was old and stale talk; the Greek cities had tried it at times; it never had any real effect. Better lend the money, or someone else would.
“I’ll lend you the three hundred thousand,” he said.
Catalina inclined his head and rose. “I’ll send you a memorandum as to the form in which I require the money.” He felt immensely relieved; this squalid necessity had been weighing far more heavily on him than he had realised. He knew that by the profound sense of ease that now enclosed him. He smiled, and Considius, watching closely out of the corner of his eye, had a moment of misgiving. But he was a man of his word, in a world of graceless and lying debtors. Catalina should have his three hundred thousand.
10
Clodius was bored with the country but did not want to return to Rome. He spent his time browsing through the library of Hortensius, reading Greek treatises on politics and making sketches for the vast house he meant someday to build on the Palatine. First, however, his sister must become a widow, since he wanted her house as part of the scheme. Fulvius lounged about miserably, refusing to explain. He could not conceive why he had left Rome; he should have forced his way into Sempronia or somehow persuaded the moneylender to postpone going to his father. Sooner or later he would have to return.
At last he babbled out his trouble to Clodius. “What are you worrying about?” asked Clodius. “Doesn’t your father expect you to get into debt?”
“I don’t know if he expects it,” replied Fulvius, gulping feebly, “but he forbade it. You don’t know my father.”
Clodius was seized with an idea. He found that he loved the country after all; he would steal Flaviola away and give her a lovely little country-villa, all her own, with half a dozen girls-slaves and a wall all round. She would grow up perfectly cultured, everything that she wanted to be; and he would bless her from a paternal distance for her charm. Under the stimulus of rating Fulvius for cowardice he achieved the energy to take himself back to Rome. Fulvius was only able to go when Clodius promised to be present at the interview with his father.
Fulvius senior was an old fashioned Roman who exerted every shred of his legal authority; and when Fulvius appeared stuttering before him, he cursed and denounced him. Clodius tried to interfere.
“You can’t talk like that nowadays. Hasn’t the fellow any life of his own?”
“Not till I’m dead,” replied the old man, shooting up his thick grey jutting eyebrows, “and I’ll cheat his wishes awhile yet. But who are you, sir? Another creditor?”
“He’s my friend,” said Fulvius with a trace of pride.
“He’s come to tell you that it wasn’t my fault—”
“Your friend, is he? Then he can get out at once.” The old man raised his staff threateningly and ordered Clodius off the premises. Clodius, with a compassionate sneer at Fulvius, left. The old man then damned and blasted Fulvius, and demanded to know who Sempronia was.
“She’s a woman,” said Fulvius, pale and trembling. “She’s a—a—woman.”
The old man bade his son follow, and with two slaves set out for Sempronia’s house. Fulvius spluttered an occasional protest and was told to shut his mouth. The old man swung his staff in the air, and Fulvius shrank from the quizzical glances of the passers-by. He was shamed for life, so what did anything matter?
At last they reached the house. Father and son were admitted and the last hope of the latter was dashed. Sempronia was in one of her most modern moods; she was modishly dressed in a low-cut gown of white muslin figured with gold thread, her hair sleekly piled on her head. She had been expecting a visit, and relished the sight of the furious old man and his wretched son. After staring at them both hard for a while, she refused to admit any acquaintance with Fulvius.
“You tricked this idiot son of mine into putting his signature to a debt of yours,” cried the old man, banging his staff on the floor to emphasise his points. “By what right did you, a matron, extort the signature of a man not of your family? By what right did you even know him?”
“Dear me,” said Sempronia, tapping at her brow. “I remember him now. He forced his way into the house, insisting that he wouldn’t go unless I let him sign something. So I let him. Why shouldn’t he, after all? Why else did you have him taught to write?”
“Not to sign his patrimony away to harlots! I demand to see your husband.”
“But he’s far away. I forget where. Gades or Miletus or Antioch. Hundreds of miles away.”
“Give me his address then.”
“Certainly, if you’ll allow me time to look through my bureau. He wrote to me some weeks ago, but I haven’t had time to read the letter yet. Don’t you find the pace of modern life almost alarming? However, I’d better warn you that he’ll merely reply: Splendid, ask her how she did it so that I can get the youth to sign some papers for me.” Quite untrue. Decimus never could make a joke, not even an unintentional one; but she had to say something to this fine old fellow. Who would have expected Fulvius to own so lively a progenitor?
Old Fulvius ground his teeth. “I shan’t leave till you give me some satisfaction—”
“Make yourself at home,” she answered, and then turned to the youth. “I’m beginning to recall you better now. It was you that the girls threw the slops over when you tried to crawl past the janitor and find something else to sign.”
Fulvius cowered. “Don’t be so cruel, Sempronia.”
