Rome For Sale, page 26
There was a murmur of sulky agreement, but one of the farmers interposed, “You’ll be making things worse if you don’t take care. Things are bad, but if you throw law and order over—”
The savage-eyed man silenced him with a raucous laugh. “Listen. He talks like the consul Cicero.” He turned his cup upside down, looked under it hopefully, and then went on with a parody-emphasis. “Here now, you set of cabbage-faced scoundrels, why don’t you gnaw yourselves or starve in decent quiet like good citizens so that the capitalists can go on carrying the crushing burden of their wealth for the benefit of the state. Pah.”
“Law and order!” jeered the one-eyed man. “Law to squeeze my vitals out, and order to make me stay where I’m put. The more I see of law and order the better I like a dog-fight.”
Catalina drank. He would drown his mind, and this room and the men in it would drown. Did not every word show that they were all figments of his failure? Out of his heart would bleed oblivion over the world. He would give the world something better than money. He would put it to everlasting sleep. He would snap off the bough on which hung the hornets’ nest, and he would dip it deep under the hurrying waters of oblivion.
The farmer disagreed. “Wipe off the mortgages, yes. But when you once start more than that, where are you going to stop?”
The one-eyed man banged the table again. “Those that are naked can only lose their lice.”
Ah, that was the truth. Strip naked and then clear the flesh of its stinging parasites, the lice of the nerves.
“Yes, you have nothing. I’ve got a farm that would be doing well if I could pay my mortgage off.”
“Then slit the throat of him that’s screwing you and throw the mortgage into the fire before his dead eyes.”
“Didn’t I do my best when I went and voted for Catalina?”
Catalina was the failure. The votes had been cast into a bottomless pit; they were falling; the whole world was falling, clutching at a friend for support and driving the friend lower, wrestling with an enemy in terrible hope to climb upwards on his body, falling faster than the limbs could climb, falling.
“And didn’t the man with the mortgage go one better when he went and voted against Catalina?”
Always the same. Always a voice crying, rousing human hearts to hope, and deceiving them. Catalina was the liar. If he should unveil his face, the peoples of the earth would hunt him to his death. He was the rejected one, the scape-goat. What hope was there for him? Let him be drunken, trodden into the vat.
“Bad as things are, I was never one of those that hold with chopping off a man’s head to rid him of a headache. Cures can kill.”
The one-eyed man spat on the floor. “Then there’s a lot of people I’d like to cure. Let them that are milch-cows drop out their udders to be milked, but the man that fiddled with the bull got a horn where he didn’t expect it.”
The innkeeper, a swarthy man with a cast in his eye, entered from a side-room and stood with hands on hips. “What’s the call for these long faces, lads? Better luck round the corner.”
“That’s what I was saying,” said the one-eyed man. “Dead moneylenders breed worms instead of interest.”
The innkeeper squinted round the room. “No money-lenders present, I hope; so don’t look bashful. I was referring to drink. A man can drown six feet of cares in a cup not much deeper than his nose, and that’s the blessing of life.”
“What fills our guts,” said the savage-faced man, “fills your purse.”
Money that should be food, food that should be money, where was the flaw? The food rotted and the money ran short. There was a gap between, the bottomless pit, the river of death.
The innkeeper glanced round with a benevolent shrug. “Do you think I got vines growing in my cellar? I’d give you the wine free if I got it free. But it costs a man to spit nowadays.”
The farmer pointed at the one-eyed man. “When this fellow gets to work, you’ll have to give us free drinks.”
“There’ll be free drinks,” said the innkeeper, with assurance, “when the Lord God lets wine instead of water come dripping down through his sieve up in the sky, and that will be in the days when fish turn themselves over in the frying-pan. I’ve been in this trade all the hours of my life, and one thing’s certain. The wine’s getting better every day, and so who wouldn’t be drunk, even if he had to steal for it? and while I’m talking about it, don’t forget there’s more girls three doors up than know what to do with themselves. If you mention I recommended you, you get special care and no tricks. But I can’t have women brought here. It’s not that I object to women as women, but they make life too hard for a man that lets lodgings. The last one that crept in had two fellows saying words over her, and there was a howling murder in the house early in the morning that spoilt my sleep and cost me a deal in hush-money. So you’ll understand the rule I made.”
Catalina drank. The flagon was almost empty. He felt himself part of the hurrying river, warmly drowning. He was losing himself at last. But he must never wake; waking was his fear. He must no longer hear the world calling on his name.
A grizzled man who had been sitting hunched up in a corner tottered to his feet and pointed a finger scornfully at the host. “Shut your mouth,” he said, and took a drink.
The innkeeper was used to insults. “If you didn’t keep your own mouth open so much with a pot tipped up in front of it, I’d have you thrown out. But a good customer has his rights.”
“Clear the house,” said the man hopefully, appealing to the one-eyed man. Finding no support, he sat down and then jerked himself back upon his feet. “I served under Sulla,” he said ferociously. “Those were the days. Votes! If you’d asked for them, we’d have told you to put them where the pig keeps his acorns. But after he died the jobbers got their hearts back and turned everything to the wrong by coaxing folk to sign bits of paper. I don’t know and I don’t care, but I say that if I had my sword back I’d lose it this time inside somebody where I’d know where to find it. I remember Sulla. Clearer’n I see you all. He said to me outside Athens, he said, ‘Go over and fetch me a drink of water in your helmet, you ugly swab, for I’m thirsty.’ So I went, and by the time I came back, he’d found something else to do and gone off about it. That’s the kind he was. A proper general.”
The company stirred, and the innkeeper stopped the talker. “That’s enough of you now. We all know how things were better in the old days when women had tails and goats walked on their hind-legs. You got to get used to the change.”
“I won’t,” bellowed the man. “They took my land away and turned my wife out into a ditch only a few hours off bearing-time.”
“You’re lucky. At your age too. It took your mind off suspecting the young fellow next door.”
“You’re in their pay!” The man tugged at his waist and then shouted with rage at finding no weapon. “She died in a ditch, and may you be damned for it. It was years ago. But that doesn’t make it any better. I’ll smash your teeth in and see how they agree with your spoilt belly.” He rushed at the innkeeper. “They told me to eat stones. See how you like it.”
There was a melee. The one-eyed man, under pretence of helping to collar the drunkard, wrought as much damage as possible among the others. Only the innkeeper and Catalina did not move. The innkeeper stood aside, saying, “Don’t handle him rough, or he’ll spew on the floor. Leave the door clear and you’ll be able to heave him out with a good swing. I don’t mind what his politics are, but I won’t be insulted in my own house.”
The man was thrown out, and Catalina, draining the flagon, rose. He had been thrown out too, out of the world of men, rejected, a meaningless babbler. He walked out into the evening air and a sudden space of stars. The brawler lay with his head on the basalt-blocks of the pavement, moaning. Blood trickled from his forehead. Stepping over him, Catalina turned to the left. Out of the world.
16
Misery everywhere. Blood on the stones. A man moaning. Step over him and leave the past behind. A city of madmen, and a man who wanted to run along the streets of the future. There was no such thing as death; it would be too kindly an escape. Perhaps madness was the only release. The mad were happy, the only people who were utterly sure of their logic. Therefore the brief madness of wine was all, though it killed with briefness.
Catalina drank again, mixing with the people, but utterly unabsorbed. His head was burning. He did not dare to look anyone full in the face, for he felt that his eyes were slots of fire and that those who looked into them would scream with terror. He was a marked man, the sacrifice that takes on himself all the sins of the people and is driven out with sticks. There was no escape. The bustling uproar of the town was the noise of pursuit. He must hide. He pulled the hood over his head and bought more wine. He would fall drunk in the gutter, and in the spider web light of dawn someone would find him lying senseless and kill him. He would never awake. That was best.
Misery and madness. There was a woman sitting in a window-hole with a child nursed in her arms and two others clinging to her feet. She was whimpering. Catalina had promised her food and lied. There were men quarrelling in their despair, trying to throttle one another because they were beaten. There were men drinking, because drunk they were lords of the world and thought muck a better bed than the swan’s down in the mattress that bulged about a fat gilded trollop. There were men shouting, to drown the mocking voices that said they were beaten. There were men sitting silent, because no words were now worth saying. “Catalina, Catalina.” That was the sound everywhere in the shouts, in the mutterings, in the silences. “Catalina, Catalina.” That was the reproachful miserable sound everywhere, becoming a menace in the pad-pad of hurrying footsteps.
Catalina. What use was Catalina in a world of misery and madness that he had set out in vain glory to redeem? Nothing remained but the mad voices repeating “Catalina” for ever and ever till the brain burst. More wine!
Rome could not sleep. Gangs patrolled the streets. The armed bands had cleared the centre of the city. But in their houses the burgesses sat behind the strong shutters and listened to the cries made eerily bestial by distance; and in all the narrow twisting streets where the poor lived in propped-up hovels, in dark holes under stairs or in the frail partitioned rooms of the huge tenements, there was noise. There was despair. Men and women drank and danced for defeat as they would have drunk and danced for triumph. Cethegus and the other leaders were skulking, depressed, in their houses; but Manlius had found that Catalina was missing, and he was searching the streets almost as madly as Catalina sought to lose himself along them. He, too, was drunk and weeping among his men.
“Where is he?” he asked, peering into taverns, alleyways, every unlatched door. “I shan’t lose him. He’s the only man alive, and I love him. I’ll burn this stinking city down if he’s harmed. I’ll burn it down anyway. But I want to find him first.”
17
Curio and Marcus Antonius were enjoying themselves. They drank among the populace, encouraging the groups of veterans to arson and plunder. The men listened, a little afraid; perhaps these well-dressed young men were agents commissioned to lead them to their ruin. Clodius too had lost his head, but he was preaching insurrection because he meant it. Those to whom he preached had no doubts of his sincerity.
A tenement caught fire, and the mob stood round in the glare, apathetically daring the imminent collapse of its bricks. The dry wooden floors and lattice-work of its interior burned furiously, and some families had been trapped on the roof. They leaned over, staring at the crowd below, too suffocated now with the smoke and the uprush of hot air to cry out. Besides, there was no use in crying. No one could help. Someone had produced a ladder, but it was far too short. Stirred suddenly by the suffering of the child who sobbed at her knees, a mother on the roof snatched him up and threw him over the parapet. The spectators saw the body hurtling down, and crushed away. It fell with a thud on the cobbles. A girl’s face was lighted for a moment by a burst of flames from a window below, then she was seen no more.
Some of the onlookers were trying to steal the articles of furniture which had been thrown out of the lower storeys, and arguments were going on over the ownership. A demented bailiff was flogging at some slaves, hoping to force them into tearing down the next door building before the flames spread.
The night was stifling-hot, and the flames made it unbearable. Curio and Antonius had been watching. “Drink, drink, drink,” shouted Antonius, and, lifting Curio up, sat him on his shoulder. The nearest tavern was filled with veterans. In anger at the day’s defeat, they were quarrelling among themselves as to whether Marius or Sulla was the greater man.
“Why don’t you quarrel as to which of you is the greatest fool?” cried Curio in his girlish voice from the table on which Antonius had deposited him. “If you’re going to fight, fight somebody with a corpse worth robbing. You’ll get nothing out of one another but hard knocks.”
“Drink, drink, drink,” chanted Antonius. He flung a gold coin on the floor. “Wine for all my friends.”
The men crowded round him. He was on good terms with them at once, and began wrestling with a big fellow, showing him the professional grips. The others clapped, and Curio danced about on the table, acting as umpire.
18
Catalina was feeling wearier. There was a mercy in that. He chose a tavern less noisy than the others and sat drinking. Two youths entered. He recognised one of them, a lad named Cælius. Cælius was one of the young enthusiasts who, though belonging to the affluent classes, had flocked in callow but genuine idealism about Catalina.
The two youths were drunk and sat beside Catalina without noticing who he was. “Where does it all end?” asked Cælius.
“It never ends,” replied the other, a flat-chested lad named Alfenus Varus from Cremona, who had sold some inherited shops and now pinched himself to study law under Servius Sulpicius. “All this doesn’t matter.”
“But it does. I feel my heart broken.”
“You don’t understand. There’s nothing but the Law. Not the laws that are made in the Senate or the Assemblies. The Law in itself.”
“I can’t see things separate.”
“It isn’t separate. It’s Rome. It’s the pulse that keeps us all alive. It’s Justice I mean. You can’t understand. It grows by precedent and expediency. And yet that’s the last thing it is. It’s justice becoming human, or humanity becoming justice. It goes on and on. It can’t be stopped. I’m part of it. We all are. If I can add something to it before I die, I’ll die happy.”
“I don’t care for your law. I tell you I loved Catalina, and now they’ve broken him.”
“Catalina’s only part of it like you and me. The Law that I’m speaking of can’t be broken. It’s greater than any man.”
“Then I hate it. I wanted Catalina. He was the man for me. You don’t know how I felt about him.”
Catalina sat spelled. He felt for a moment that he must reveal himself, then he drew back and set down the untasted cup of wine. Who was he to draw the heart of loyalty out of a man and then surrender the task because he had met a check? He must go on. Was all that he had learned in Etruria in vain?
He loved this boy who had had faith in him. He must go home and set to work again. There was no question of failure. He could not fail.
Rising, he hurried out.
19
Orestilla was sitting pale-cheeked in the front-room. She recognised his step outside the door and hastened to meet him in the porch. “I was so afraid,” she said, and threw herself into his arms. “Where have you been?”
Catalina shook his head; he could not speak; he saw the stain of dried tears on her cheek.
“Poor one,” she murmured. “Did Manlius find you? He was nearly mad with worry that something had happened to you.”
Catalina tautened. He must not weep. The world was so good. He was surrounded with such loyalties, and he had run away because his vanity had been hurt. He felt the bond between him and the world tighten infinitely. This was faith, this knowledge of love. They all loved him, and he had almost failed their trust.
At the same moment he knew how weary he felt. With a weak gesture of the hand he moved on to the bedroom, followed by Orestilla, who was deeply perturbed by his silence.
Then, as she approached with tenderly questioning face, his weariness dropped off and he felt only desire for her. He could not wait. He took her in his arms and fell with her to the floor. As if he was falling from a great height, he felt her body, the earth, rushing upwards to receive him, to take him into oblivion.
VII - THE CONSPIRACY
I
Next morning Catalina woke with a feeling of enormous emptiness, as if the world and everything therein had become hollow and meaningless—eviscerated puppets pretending to life. He was weighted by this sense of ghastliness, of people acting with the best of motives, but unavoidably twisted into evil by an unseen hand; the smile upon the face of Venus was frozen into idiocy; it could not be scraped from the stone; it mocked.
Then, throwing aside the coverlet, he threw off the oppression. His movement roused Orestilla, and she sat up, lifting the hair from her slanted eyes of dark-blue flecked with green in the early light. She remembered the night, his return, his suffering face, his inarticulate passion. She had surrendered to it, frightened but roused to an agony of tenderness which his roughness had accentuated. She could see only his suffering face. Then the darkness of sleep had buried them both, as if the earth had given way and swallowed them into its hot bowels. She feared now to look at him, but she looked.
He was Catalina, the man whom she knew. That mask of indrawn suffering was gone. She was deeply relieved. What had she expected?
