CHAPTER XVII

XVII

The warmth of that embrace struck me. How on earth could it be that you were back? No, it wasn’t possible. You were meant to be busy with the campaigns in Greece, so close to what would happen to be a turning point in the development of the war nundina later. Why was I so certain that you wouldn’t be crushed down by Pompeius Magnus and the optimates? Might this be an enlightening blast through my thoughts again? No, this time I had not felt that painful prophetic female echo... Nevertheless, it was your own touch: hard, sweetly warm... The same slender hands, which, shaking were unravelling my hair, trembling like the first time....

–Calpurnia .... Calpurnia.....

Which voice was that?

–Calpurnia.... What will I.... will you make of yourself? My fragile Calpurnia, how will you manage to face what is yet to come?

I blinked. He was aware of my blushing.

–Do not worry, Calpurnia... I had to hold you and carry you in my arms to a place where you could lie down. Cornelia.... She knows what to do to make you feel stronger. If you intend to go on these experiences, you will need some kind of special physical protection to develop and strengthen that channel which is just on the middle of the top of your head, through which all the forces are filtered, the ones that drive you to vibrate as if foreseeing something.. Yes, Calpurnia; despite everything I told you a while ago, I truly doubt you are physically fit to undergo that initiation into supreme knowledge I spoke to you about.... Notwithstanding all this, Calpurnia, we must do something.

“We must do something!” Hadn’t I repeated that to myself day after day within my loneliness? Something that could make me avoid being repudiated. Who would dare marrying the Great Roman’s rejected wife, no matter how well-off my status could be? It is such a thing that no other childless Roman lady would ever suffer in her lifetime. I had grown too heavily tabooed by my own barrenness, something that was plain to see. Father... No, it would turn out to be no trifle for Lucius Calpurnius, the fact of losing his privileged position, so close to the Great Roman. Mother... What.... would you have said? Who knows...

“Calpurnia...... Calpurnia”

“Calpurnia....”

My belly shook, as if rising up to desperately protest in front of that shadow which seemed to hang over my skin pores... What to do? Could it be.... Perhaps was this idea which seemed to grow almost tangible before my startled eyes?

“ Just let this poor infertile mother be fruitful in wisdom... Let your womb and breasts get profit of that strength which is strange to any man so that it generates that deep primeval wisdom from which what is sacred and female comes....”

“Enlightening shadow... how?”.

–Every time you experience that life impulse to... satisfy that need to feel your lord, Calpurnia... even those days your body wants to be especially fertile... Do concentrate yourself on that primary power which springs out of you, stored inside your lower belly and breasts. Watch it, try to find out which colour it is on each track of your body...Feel it run... how it nourishes each of your limbs...all your inner being. Feel it flow there, at the top of yourself and how it shines through each particle that makes part of your body... Nourishing, enlightening it... Making the Wise woman, the Mother of wisdom flow... From that moment it is you who must see what is happening to you. It does not depend on me how to guide you.. Remember you are the mother of that force. Only you can decode and interpret what it might intend to let you know, Calpurnia, my beautiful loyal Calpurnia. I simply demand of you that you will follow the instructions that I’ll give to Cornelia. You know that, missing some essential things where I live, we must turn to other additional means. I cannot trigger that energeia , as Greeks call it, by exposing yourself to sunbeams through gems. If I may do it, on my next visit I’ll provide you with new means to make it all more effective.

During the days of my stay at Pompeii, Cornelia Sulla did not forget it. Initially twice, then three and later up to five times a day she would made me have a certain amount of wine in which she had boiled incense, myrrh, orange, clove , anis and fennel. She would alternate this brewing with another one mixing “lady’s mantle”, parsley, lavender, rosemary, geranium, orange and camomile. The wine would always be mixed with water from those wells which were linked to the caves that had sheltered sibyls long ago.

–I will help you to open up your body at daybreak and dust in waves of incense that you must burn with cinnamon, laurel, honeysuckle, calendula, sagebrush, rosebud ,absinth, thyme or acacia, clover, cypress, hazel, lily, fir, moss, rosemary and rowan. Do not worry: Cornelia will prepare it all, including the exact amount you must take with yourself when you come back to Rome...The Vestals!!! How could I have forgotten about them?

Perhaps this was the first time I saw Kornel really puzzled, alien to that magnet-like presence which seemed to emanate out of him naturally. I felt some kind of peculiar emotion. He must be more or less your age...or my father’s.

–You must be especially cautious about it, Kornel. The Great Roman’s wife....

I noticed some veiled ironical smile through his beard.

– ... Not only must she be virtuous...

I had a slight glimpse of his glossy teeth..

– ....Ointment vases... Yes, why not? That incense and the rest of the ingredients can be ground into some sort of ointment with which you will massage your body just immediately waking up in the morning and before going to sleep every day. Be careful: do not use it in your privates. Do smear it very slightly and gently on your armpits, groins and inner thighs.

Therefore I learnt how to slowly smash that huge amount of resinous grains, tiny leaves and flower petals that Cornelia would provide in the exact proportions that Kornel had prescribed , after having exposed me to those clouds which were spirally ascending from those recipients where incense, myrrh, flowers and herbs were being slowly consumed, filtering that sensuously sacred sweetness throughout my skin pores and body openings, fading all that old embarrassing modesty into a wave of careless pleasure which was getting hold of me, making me feel like being about to be possessed by you, my lord..... Luckily, that exposure was too short to make me lose consciousness. Just as it had been on the verge of happening to me while I was firmly handling that bronze masher inside that resinous dough within the huge, incredibly transparent crystal bowl that Cornelia had given me.

–It must all be prepared only right here. We mustn’t use any other recipients, according to Kornel’s instructions.

.... And the masher was going deeper and deeper into that whirlwind of grains which were still reluctant to be crushed...Crawling along that spiral tunnel that my hand had opened within that incense cloud... And I watched that translucent, almost bright, pale emerald-like flow which had sprung up at the pace of my heartbeat and was flying upwards to merge into that wave of sunbeams which were being filtered through sapphires, ascending through my throat and face and finally getting lost in that mauve twilight-like light in the centre of my head....

Could it be true, this thing I felt swallowing me, dragging this self of mine into that spiral stream my hands had just shaped???

–Calpurnia.... That’s enough for today.