XLIX.
–Calpurnia...
Never
before had my name been pronounced with such a harshness that woke me
from that sleep in which I had sunk, dirty and exhausted... I sat up
in distress, impulsively covering my naked body. Those eyes that were
me were not a husband’s anymore. I watched you while I felt my
tongue dry up.
–Calpurnia..
I’m off for the Senate... Afterwards, I’m staying with my troops
until we set off for Parthia...
Your
cold hard voice was blocking my breath.
–....No,
don’t worry about your position or economical situation. If you are
discreet, you can stay here until you can manage to settle down in my
domus
on the other side of the river...
You
finally got aware of my puzzlement.
–Calpurnia
....Calpurnia... how on earth...Oh, damned Lucius Calpurnius! I
always knew that I should only have a business rapport with him....
I
felt my eyes wilder and wilder, on the verge of suffocation. Gods...
what? Your sharpened eyes, grey like daggers, kept controlling me.
–In
any case, I don’t even blame you...He...Always he... His
intelligence exceeds human cunning, so it enables him to defeat all
of us. Why didn’t I feel it then, when, being a quaestor
in Gades, I knew he was still alive and had not missed any
information about me through the years? Yes...there’s no doubt. In
the same way as he once intended that I should owe him my own glory
thanks to that clemency he showed when he once spared my life...
Gods, clemency!
Some
sort of sardonic laughter invaded the cubiculum.
Ecastor,
the serfs! No, you did not care anymore...
– What
an irony, that he should dare boasting on such a virtue which, by the
way, he did not use up when he signed so many bloody proscriptions!
Yes, now, once again he seems to be determined to save my life and,
simultaneously, gain absolute ascendancy over the Pontifex
Maximus’
discreet, virtuous, most honest wife, my greatest pride as a man….
This would be his greatest legacy, according to himself. To deprive
Rome of the evolution that it must experience form now on…. No,
certainly, since he was not a Dictator
Perpetuus,
I should not have the right to it, either…Nor to be proclaimed rex…
Suddenly,
silence sprang up. You had eventually realized that your unusual
voice might be being listened to by those who ought not to. I saw you
deeply inhale more than once while I remained awaiting, unable to
proffer any words. My breathing seemed to
become
steady again.
– Calpurnia…
I was trying to convince Decimus Brutus of that foolish thing you had
forced me to promise. Maybe inspired by some wicked skills you may
have been taught…. Obviously, my kinsman considered them what they
really are, brainless tricks, proper of such a weak mind as yours.
But I was still blurred by that bewilderment and exhaustion you had
deliberately aroused on me. I could never have imagined that you
would even turn to forcing me to take pleasure on you in order to
find your purposes…. Perchance… have you been instructed on this,
too?
My
suffocation came back. I did not even have the strength to shed tears
or sob.
–….
I was beginning to wake up from that lethargy in which you had
induced when, suddenly, a serf came in to tell me that a noble Roman
wished an urgent private meeting. The slave’s strange, almost
scared look prompted me to leave Decimus Brutus and welcome the
newly-comer in the room on the other side of the atrium.
That man was apparently slightly older than I, dressed like an
aruspex,
with that look, blue and transparent, ravishing away all that I might
be thinking about, scrutinizing each corner of my inner self… I
recognized those eyes, as well as his strangely expressive, slender
translucent hands…. “Caesar,
listen to everything you wife may warn
you”…Why
should I have remained there, almost gelid, with no capacity to
respond for a few minutes? Perhaps because I thought he had died,
even though I had had the feeling that he might still be alive when I
decided to spare the temple of Venus Marina in Gades from any fine
after the battle of Munda. Besides, I would have never dared going to
meet him…but I could never think he might be in Rome. He told me
what he thought I ought to know, including that story of your shared
ancestry and that both of you come from the race of the sibyls, those
who were born from lineages dating back to the time of Etruscan
kings, when there were frequent couplings of simple human beings and
the so-called nymphs. Gods, Calpurnia! I hope all that mad nonsense
has not spread around Domus
Publica…..
I
saw you quiver ostensibly.
–
He
was making such a clear, cool-headed account that he even convinced
me. Lucius Cornelius’ own mother, who was thought to have been dead
since his childhood, had really got away from her husband’s cruelty
with Lucius’ twin brother… who accidentally met his sibling back
when this was working as a spy for Marius beyond Cisalpine Gaul and
trying to make believe he was Gallic…. Lucius Cornelius did not
clear up what had really happened .The fact is that he was somehow
blackmailed, according to his words. That is, his brother would
replace him, adopting his identity, which, in fact was that which
would correspond to him as a noble patrician of such an ancient
though impoverished lineage, as soon as Lucius Cornelius would set
off for the
Eastern
provinces at the time of Cinna’s consulship. That Lucius Cornelius
Sulla who returned to Rome and Pompeius met, worn-out,
bruised-skinned, deprived of that Apollonian brightness of his, was
his Gallic brother whereas the Lucius who I met as a small child was
already devoted to depurate his body and mind and instructing himself
on the arcane wisdom, as he calls it, on the other side of our sea.
Though
I felt unable to utter any sound, you noticed my avid look and, then,
went on.
–What
could he get in return? Supposing he was blackmailed,
death-threatened or maybe….menaced about something which could
destroy that dignitas
he was so obsessed to restore, it’s obvious he must have accepted
certain conditions. What’s more, being aware that someone else is
forging a place in history for you while you keep yourself hidden and
safe, training and taking care of your body and mind so that the
passing of years seems not to leave any traces on them, could be
tempting for such a unique person as he is, Unlike so many other
human beings.…. How did Lucius Cornelius manage to make his
substitute well-prepared enough to face all that task? To start with,
he discovered that his mother had made sure that his brother could
grant himself a suitable education for a Roman. It seems that an
eques
from Cisalpine Gaul took them to live with him. However, the twins’
reunion might not have been fortuitous. I think that not even Lucius
Cornelius himself is sure about it. The real thing is that he made
his brother pretend to be a slave so as to have him by his side and,
thus, make him learn about with political skills. … Which of them
was the real maker of Sulla’s proscriptions, I wonder?
You
shrugged, absent-looking.
–They
both kept in touch in the distance… How much did Cornelia know
about it while his father was still alive? The truth is that for many
years there was a rapport between the wise man from the temple of
Venus
Marina
in Gades and Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s daughter, intensified by
cunning Cornelia’s fruitful commercial exchanges, long before you
remained alone in Domus
Publica….
He also told me that he wouldn’t have come here to see me if he
hadn’t learnt that Decimus Brutus was making his way here so as
to convince me to go to the Senate today… Gods…Calpurnia… How
on earth have you let yourself be bewitched by this being who is
beyond time and what’s purely human…What could you have got in
return?
Your
voice had become chocked, but it was still cold, aloof, belonging to
that stranger who you had started to be for good. No, I could not
mention all that story about my need to have a place of my own and my
refusal to let myself be buried under the solitude of Domus
Publica.
Miraculously, I felt my voice alive again.
–Caesar…
I had to save you… Just remember I explained it to you
yesterday….The Egyptian….
–So
do you think I can trust someone who has let herself be infatuated by
that… character…? At least Cleopatra is much too intelligent not
to be deceived… and has dignity…
I
saw that the coldness in your eyes was growing into the previous
night’s fear. Yes, they had discovered that violent, mischievous
heavy force which, beyond my painful desire, was driving me to
generate some kind of life flowing beyond myself, addressed to
possess the Egyptian’s being, poisoning her fate… Almost sobbing,
I yearned that she could be despoiled of that child who was her main
pride and that her womb went barren…that her power could vanish and
she should be forced to search for a shelter in her madness and
emptiness. Yes, Cleopatra knew that, even against my own will, she
was already damned one way or another….You were aware of it, my
husband.
I
saw you hurry out, perhaps relieved as this unexpected circumstance
had allowed you to solve this situation, which had meant quite a
serious moral controversy for you for so many years, even since long
before going to Alexandria… I stayed there, sitting on my lectus,
petrified among those furs, unsuccessfully trying to melt that ice
which was making my body crackle inside my bones and head. Unable to
utter a single sound, to lie down…. Maybe it was that alien force,
which was poisoning me instead of heading for reborn Isis….
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