CHAPTER XIII

XIII

Unlike what would be predictable, I did not have such a downhearted day as that other night some time before. . However, the weakness caused by so many days of partial fasting made me stay lying on that lectus which still remained impregnated with my own hopeful expectation, the same as so many years ago... Perhaps because in those days I had already started thinking of you as someone different from that uncle-like figure, whose visits home were becoming more and more frequent... Could it be that we used to have you here at Pompeii? My lord... Whose lectus would you have chosen then? Maybe the ivory one...Or that one which had been carved in turtle-shell and agate and was so dear to....

Despite the previous nights’ nourishing sleep, that caressing, reverberating voice still sounded through my thoughts. It might have been tingeing my dreams all those hours since the moment I had finally recovered my hard, limited physical being while blackbirds were resuming their customary early dawning dialogue. At late noon, there came a female voice – not evoking at all, just painful – or maybe virile, free from time, within grey blue sparkles... beyond lulling me, savouring my own name....

–Calpurnia, my Capurnia....

Was it your voice, filtered through that air from far away? Perhaps it could be invading my cubiculum, melting in those sunbeams coming from the peristylium?....Calpurnia, lady Calpurnia... No, you don’t belong here yet... Not yet...