VI

Blodwynn... why? Flower-woman.. Eerie, seductive, female. Dark, ominous...shadow? The maid who was not born from the pleasure shared by man and woman but only in order to provide it to the one who had the same non-human nature as she. .Flora...Blodwynn... A mild voice of honey and hot, resinous Greek wine was delivering each word .

–Blodwynn ...

It was some kind of warm, rhythmic modulation. Grave, even virile. Between my heavy lashes a face started to take shape, iron-like, totally pale though gifted with the same kind of stranger inner brightness which let itself show through the wrinkles on both sides of his mouth, which could have well the trace of a cruel grin from his younger years. His hair, too long for a Roman, golden, crimson and grey, was braided in the same fashion as Blodwynn’s. That transparent bluish-grey twinkle made my thoughts quiver. Were those eyes yours, my lord? He could be your age, more or less. Or even older, like Cornelia, of whom he reminded me more and more. I tried not to be rude, avoiding sitting up off my lectus in a rush and start vomiting questions about what had just happened to me. I only knew that I had to wait, keeping an eye on whatever thing that I should be told.

–My lady Calpurnia ...

That lost transparent look kept on hovering over my prostration, which was starting to vanish. Among that thin net of wrinkles, I perceived some kind of stream flowing from an existence beyond time, He had noticed my eyes wandering around the folds of his tunic, woven with the same kind of linen, whose colour was that of moss, entwined with  the shade of dried leaves. Nothing to do with that crimson, purple, ochre, blue or jade-like green that you see in everyday’s clothes. His slender marble-like hands, so similar to yours, slightly pressed mine with fatherly tenderness, aware of that frozen shiver within them, of that wet beating that he had discovered in my eyelashes. Why? His intuition led him to drive his hand to my belly for a second.

–Is it your belly that afflicts you, my little Calpurnia? What will you do, my child?

I read it all in that timeless, deep grey look: those months of loneliness inside Domus Publica , that sterile desolation which I had never wanted to speak about since I had never wanted to be aware of it. Not even did Portia or Marcia know about that. Had I told anything to them, I would have felt humiliated. How on earth could I admit that the Great Man’s own wife saw herself so dry, lonely and aloof deep within herself? Yes, true, my father is your close collaborator but he lives devoted to his political career and businesses. He has not even taken a new wife – at least at an official level. My mother... My mother... Why should this character have to make me remember her?

—My lady.... your mother.... My lady Calpurnia...

What did he mean? He did not look self-unconfident or insecure at all and seemed to come from that arcane field of wisdom of which I had occasionally any glimpse throughout my lifetime. Somehow I had come to have the feeling that all the knowledge which had been treasured through history could be kept somewhere beyond our senses. My skin started trembling. Why had this idea struck my mind? That frozen glow within the deep of his timeless grey-blue eyes. …What do you know about my mother, wise man? My frightened look began asking questions to that arcane mask, veiled by those copper-like braids within that ashy-streaked beard. Those braids seemed to have a life of their own, as if drenched with rare living force. Was it the effect of that spiced wine which had made me faint? Eventually, the man seemed to smile, lighting up the mask and looking incredibly younger than the appearance which this timelessness of his would allow him to look, beyond those wrinkles and transparent eyelashes veiling that alabaster-like face which may have been extraordinarily beautiful in his earthly youth. Why was there that Cornelia-like sparkle about him?

—Lady Calpurnia….Let me do it, Don`t worry. I might be some sort of ageing father for you

His slender  alabaster-like hands, covered with ashy-blue and grey streaks lay on my dry, flat twenty-four-year-old belly

-Your mother, my lady, and mine: both of them went away when we were both still children .Both of them merged into that Great Fruit-bearer – you may call her Vesta, Diana or Venus. The Eternal Mother of all of them, either Romans or Gallic people. Britons. People beyond the Roman Sea. The Dark-skinned mother, who makes the Earth vibrate in order to propitiate Fecundity…..You are also part of HER….You are SHE….

That clear blue, almost silvery look, profound, intensely lit up, carrying me into a silvery-blue blast waving like a sunny, calm sea…. Was it that of Cumae ..or maybe Herculaneum? Or perhaps Pompeii? That full female shape, inside an amethyst –like a wave, springing up from the swinging foam on the shore. A sort of Venus Marina…Venus from Pompeii…But, instead of gripping up a steer in her right hand ,she seemed to point at a ship . Those golden emerald-like sparkles in her look that seemed to cover  her in jade and dawn, merging with that pearl-like shining force, fruitful like a crescent which is changing to full moon , merging into a wavy mass of gold crimson hair …. Like those braids. Tiny, numberless, transfigured by time , which now touched my hands, in a silent farewell, alien to all those questions which overflowed my being, anxious to calm that that wet  restlessness within that belly whose uselessness I had never  been willing to accept so far.