Chapter IX

All my anxiety, my lord, suddenly vanished.... Unexpectedly, I felt some feeble footsteps within the gloom of that small room in which I used to spend my time when there were no visits. Though only a good number of nundina had gone by, my thoughts and pulse still kept me awaiting like that evening among that mist of incense, myrrh, ritually-burnt leaves and that emerald, sapphire purple-like glow .It was not just gem twinkling but some kind of weird energy which could change according to each colour shade.

I knew -I could not tell how – that there was some energizing force which was making different kinds of life flow throughout my solid body. Some kind of fluid, mild, ravishing force melting with that other, acquamarine-hued, rich, coming from that abyss-like widely stretching look which surged up from the golden--woven braided tide....Which made me blush and grow pale at the same time when the vision of your harmonious imposing presence let itself in within the dark. I do not know if there were any words... Your thin hair sprang up among my startled fingers while your full lips and aquiline nose were getting hold of my belly and chest.... Later on, I still felt that force pervading all over my wet, fulfilled wide-opened body. I was quite aware of those pines which had been carefully laid under the mattress, noticing your deep but restless breathing between my breasts. Might you have also felt it, that immense look like some kind of bright blue-grey fog which had gone through myself while your solid virility was mercilessly devouring my belly, fecundating it? You had probably noticed how my heartbeat sped up....

-My lord ….

Why did I feel hurried to ask you?

– You once told me that.... Long ago you travelled to a sanctuary on the Western end of the Roman Sea… didn’t you?

In the gloom your transparent eyes – why on earth should they remind me of those I remembered having seen only a few days before?- watched me as they used to in front of any of your subordinated ones. Then some shade of perplexity pervaded them among those wrinkles which had turned deeper. You smiled.

–....Yes, my little Calpurnia, yes... Just arrived in Hispania….

Yes, I remembered that you had just lost Cornelia, your long-missed wife

–.. I made an offering to divine Alexandros...

I watched you in amazement: despite your position – first as “Flamen Dialis” then as a Pontifex – I knew well that, privately, you did not worship anything beyond your ambition or self–confidence

– ....my deepest, most tearing teardrops, the same I shed when my former wife died without leaving any heir for Gens Iulia as I had been despoiled of the first tenderness any man could feel for a woman or my mother who, also deprived of a partner a long time before, had accepted the loss of her right to love her son tenderly in order to take on the role which would have corresponded to a paterfamilias

Even in the dark I could perceive that the sparkle in your eyes was shivering. You kissed the hand that had touched that wet parchment-like cheek. I could feel you swallow and then your slow, heavy breath. For the first time after that non-confarreatio wedding, I felt driven to cradle you into comfort, caress that scarce ashy hair on your head, kiss those tracks on your beautiful wide forehead… My lord, the hero, the god who had paraded in cheering roaring along Via Sacra …A vulnerable man, grown tender, searching for being consoled within my body. Yes, though neither Marcia nor Portia nor Cornelia had told me openly, I well knew that all those nights before returning to Domus Publica you had slept in another house on Palatine Hill, something of which even the small vestals had been aware. Despite all that, the deep humiliation which I had sometimes experienced for not being able to keep you loyal to my bed by means of a higher capacity of seduction or a son who would perpetuate your family, I could still feel that caress through my womb, possessed by all your being….

–I offered him my pride, Calpurnia. Can you understand it? No, you didn’t know me as a young man… This Gaius you’ve got in front, ageing and humanized, is so distant from that one Cornelia Cinna saw, Aurelia bred up and faced Lucio Cornelio Sulla himself… Sulla…. Thanks to him and his supposed ….clemency?

I saw some twinkling irony in your smile

–He was there, in the temple which had been first devoted to Carthaginian Solar God and later on to Herakles, trying to vent my hopelessness for not being able to match this idea that I had of myself with the meaning of that divinized young Macedonian, perhaps of the same age as I was at that time of my arrival there. …. Sulla…. After all, I had to… Who knows if I still have to owe him all that I have achieved so far. A great Roman, whether we may like it or not. He didn’t have an Aurelia who could have shaped him as a man since childhood. Only his shattered dignitas, that of a patrician who was deprived of his heritage, thanks to a sick, mentally-ill ferocious father who, rumour has it, was abandoned by his wife and a child, a bit younger than Lucius Cornelius, though, according to the official version, she died. Notwithstanding all, I envy his cunning, military cleverness, that hidden sensitivity few know about. Yes, I have come to know all that through my mother, you can imagine. …. ……

There came a big silence: those acquamarine-coloured pupils were burning

–Very near the location of Herakles’ temple, in Gades, a short time later I heard a strange story, told by an elderly man who was a relative of that other Lucius Cornelius, our good old friend Balbus, and had lived in Rome for many years. He revealed me that Sulla and his dictatorship were thought to have been turned to ashes a long , long time before. At least that was what Aurelia told me. And I am entrusting this to you as you have proved yourself to be a faithful virtuous wife and I know that I may have begotten a child inside you tonight. I can see it in your swollen breasts, full of fertility…. That good old man told me about it while we were sailing along the big sea channel between both islands: on one of them Balbus is having his Neapolis built, the new city with which all these long-time rich, Romanized Carthaginians want to compete with Romans. All those beautiful domi , built with that variety of local stone: porous, plucked away from the sea, shell-decked… That golden-reddish ochre, sunbathed by that dazzling light, purely white and bluish, surpasses any comparison to our Palatinus. It’s something beyond tangible real things. I’d really love to take you there , my Calpurnia… Even any insula like the one where I used to live and grew up here in Subura looks like transfigured, as if it did not shelter the sordidness their Roman sisters contain. Something that, in fact, is a real thing. There are neither insulae nor vici like ours, overcrowded and insecure. All the new city enjoys such cleanness, security and prosperity that Rome itself would envy them. Although, frankly speaking, I missed that deep pine perfume which seems to merge within sea breeze from Ostia, so different from Gades’ piercing salty air, melted with dazzling sunlight…Ah, excuse me, Calpurnia, for this digression…. Are you sleeping?

I sat up, watching you with curiosity. Nevertheless, my eyes are dark, so they don’ t sparkle like yours in the dark.

–…. As I was telling you, on the opposite side of the channel there’s the island where Phoenician Gadeira used to stand, nowadays full of rundown buildings, brimming with mould and flocks of seagulls flying for vermin carcasses among the ruins … There are also huge vineyards with which it is said that many locals trade and even exchange varieties with vine-growers from Campania or any other Italic or even Greek region. It’s a heavy wine, they say. As you can imagine, I have never tasted it. On the shore of this island you can find the temples which, initially devoted to Phoenician deities, were later conveniently Romanized, being dedicated to gods who could remind us of those who preceded them. For instance, that one which first was consecrated to Baal and then to Kronos and … here is the point I wanted to reach: there was another one which had been erected to worship Great Mother Goddess Astarte or only Ishtar, goddess of the moon, sexuality and fertility. Nowadays it is devoted to Venus Marina. I still have it before my eyes, standing on the shore, a twin image of any great temple here in Rome, except for the stone with which it was built, that bright ochre rock. That good old man whispered in my ears. It seems that I can still be watching him now, growing pale through his intensely sun-browned skin…. In Rome he had had the chance of getting contacts who even introduced him into the exclusive circle of the Caecili Metelli, something that made it easy for him to have an outgoing relationship with Sulla which led to a long-lasting friendship. Something startling, you may think, for someone like our Sulla. That rapport continued when this gentleman went back to Gades and, as far as I know, even succeeded in having some fruitful vine trading with Lucius Cornelius, related to the vines which surrounded his villa in Cumae….Something that his own daughter seems to have continued with incredible cleverness. Well, this good old man told me that, about fifteen years before, Lucius Cornelius himself, after getting away from Rome, had begged this good man that he could lodge him in his Gades house. He was alone except for a slave who kept the moustache and hair in the arvernus fashion- long, thick, whitened….and whose face was abnormally flushed – perhaps due to some kind of skin disease or drinking habits. In it you could make out his eyes, as pale and exceptional as his master’s. Obviously, Sulla had left his family in a safe place away from Rome but had considered it more secure to stay away from them. What startled his friend was that his hospitality wouldn’t last long as Lucius Cornelius ‘ plan was to be led to Venus Marina temple a few days later and remain there for a long time, perhaps the rest of his life. No wonder. She was the goddess to whom he had dedicated Pompeii.

Why should silence and darkness be so heavy around us?

–You can imagine this man’s reaction. And also mine. Sulla, devoted to Venus’ priesthood, serfdom or whatever name you may call that! He had not even been initiated to perform that task, cloistered there inside for a lifetime. The Sulla we know so well emerged back, menacing, demanding him to keep silent: if anyone should wish any more information about his identity, his host would restrict himself to inform that this stranger was just a common Roman, this man who, days later, would get across the channel without any intention of returning to civilized Roman world so as to devote his life to living on fish, vines, and those bread loaves that are baked by the priests who live there, besides the fruits of the orchards around the temples. Anyway, nobody would recognize him before leaving the new town. That huge straw hat hid his golden crimson hair and pale, burning-iced eyes which made him outstand alongside with his whitest skin, concealed by the toga or mantle ....Calpurnia! You’re trembling!

I feared that fever might get hold of me, like that day, driving me to unveil certain things which I would have never brought out into light. I covered myself with the furs that you had just brought from Gaul. They felt hairy, mellow, smooth....

–No, my lord.... Just go on....

–You are burning, my child.... Maybe I should have left you alone tonight…. But I want you that much, my wife....

A fugacious desire-tinged outburst of pride triggered my heartbeat. I hungered for driving your beautiful wide hand to my hardened breasts and riding you among wailing and yelling pants, shamelessly.... However, I knew that I wanted to go on listening, so I restrained myself, feeling my muscles loosened.

–Go on. Perhaps tomorrow you may have no time. It is so scarce, the time which we can share this way, together....

However, your silence still remained. I was alarmed. No, I had no reason to feel uneasy.

–Calpurnia.... Even if it’s you...it puzzles me, to reveal this to you here... You know I trust you. You understand the importance of this issue. If Sulla had decided to shut himself there forever... why should he have returned to Rome later? As no doubt it was Sulla who saved my life. Nevertheless, my mother was shocked when he saw him again. The only thing that still remained about him was the look in his eyes... and his pride. As for the rest, he had nothing in common with those Apollo-like busts that you may have seen at Cornelia’s .

That stealing manly beauty whose portraits I had seen at Cumae sprung within my thoughts.

– Except for his cleverness and ruthlessness. It is easy to imagine that I had no intention to disclose anything, not even to my nearest collaborators. You know that I have no close friends and this is an advantage in this point. As for my cousin, I thought that the best thing for him was to continue believing in what all of us had traditionally held as a truth....

–What about Cornelia? Do you think that…?

–-Who knows! Anyway, she didn’t have a close tender rapport to her father as to share such a secret. Maybe she does not even know anything about it. However, I am well informed about her trade affairs in Gades, when she gets sprouts and wines from the vineyards growing in the old island in exchange for those sent from Cumae. What on earth might Cornelia’s wines have? She is said to have made an immense sum of money. I’m deeply pleased for her: her father wasn’t generous to her at least in the early times. But… how would someone like Sulla bear living secluded there, within that cave hidden by Venus temple?…Yes, old Astarte temple was subterranean, according to ancient patterns. You should consider that non-Roman peoples thought that goddesses of fertility ought to be worshipped within the womb of the earth, which they used to symbolize.

–Don’t you think that it might be an initial measure of caution so that he could later secretly flee and meet his troops far from Rome, as he certainly did?

–True, that was what my good friend from Gades thought when, a long time later, he knew that Sulla had arrived in Italy in order to join Pompeius and help him fight Marius. After his amazement, there came his painful disappointment at Sulla’s subsequent proscriptions and all that bloodshed during his dictatorship and, later on, his perplexity at the fact that Lucius Cornelius himself would decide to give up power and be a privatus again. His friend form Gades was one of those who were shocked by the way Sulla ended his life in Cumae at such an early age. It is obvious that he never happened to find out how much the Dictator’s physical appearance had changed. But all his previous ideas were reversed a few days before I arrived from Herakles’ temple. In the atrium of his domus .An upright figure, masked with a large sun-outworn straw hat and a reddish, fair and grey-streaked beard that happened to be shoulder-length, like his long braided hair… and those pale piercing eyes which were no longer cold or pitiless. He told him that he knew of my stay there and agreed that his amicus gaditanus should share that long-kept secret with me as I was “the heir to the one who has most deeply touched my heart, more than any of my wives….” Deeply influenced by retirement, loneliness, meditation and all that makes these men different from those who lead a social life, he did not react at his friend’s exultant happiness after his initial puzzled, even paralysing panic…. In spite of his friend’s attempt to embrace him warmly and offer his hospitality, he silently left the domus, perhaps in order to return to the other island, alien to civilization… Calpurnia…. Calpurnia!!! Why should I have consented on telling you all this? No, this can’t have been fitting for my seed to root inside you…You badly need serenity. … No appalling stories….

This time you did really frighten me. I felt icy within my bones in spite of that thick fur cover… Your arms had held me closely, cradling me onto your chest… No, never before had I had you this way: it was a brand new man, this which you were offering me, my lord. So far from that one who once married the daughter of Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a well-off man, in order to strengthen your alliance to one of the most influential men in Rome. This that I had in front was just a tender husband. Sincere, his wife’s confidante…. Like so many other couples in which initial love had counted as much as other reasons to sign a marriage deal .I then even thought that all those ladies who had enjoyed your manhood were no more than fictitious blurred shadows begotten by envy and my own lack of self-confidence. Even Servilia herself….

–Was he as misshaped as when you first met him?

–That was what I wondered, seeing him covered with his hat and beard. However , he looked as straight as usual and the skin which could be seen though his braids and beard still remained extremely white. His hair was still vigorous though his natural reddish-golden was growing grey-streaked. Who knows… maybe he … whoever might be…still alive. But , as you can imagine, incredibly elderly. Nevertheless, I never had the idea of venturing into the old town to meet him. When he decided to go and visit his friend , it was due to the fact that he was really sure that I would keep his secret and never make any attempt to contact him. And, should he be still alive, I would not betray his trust. He was…or is…a patrician, like us, you know…. Calpurnia… In the name of all the Gods!!! …. What’s this…???

Some sticky, hot thick flux was running down my thighs, invading your hand whereas I felt myself falling into some kind of fainting, too weak to get scared of that unexpected violent menses, triggered by my sexual excitement and by what had just been disclosed by you, aborting that which had been carefully arranged for months, rendering me to that initial state of abashment, frustration, sterility and self-hatred. Those who I had thought to be generated by slander and psychical unbalance again looked like clear-cut realities hovering above me. Yet we still did not know anything about that female ruler from the East…