Gore Vidal’s Caligula (24 page)

Proculus strained at the iron cuffs that held him pinned to the wall. “Divine Caesar, please . . . I beg you . . . why? Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why am I here?”

“Treason. Didn’t anybody tell you?” Caligula’s eyes were round with innocence.

“But I’ve always been loyal to you, Divine Caesar,” protested Proculus.

“I’ll explain.”

Caligula stood on tiptoe, trying to whisper into Proculus’ ear. But he wasn’t tall enough to reach it. The executioner fetched a small stool, and Caligula mounted it. He stared into Proculus’ eyes, his face a mirror of lust mingled with insane cruelty. Then he whispered, “Your hair.”

“My hair?” Proculus was totally bewildered.

Caligula nodded, a finger to his lips—it was to be their very own secret. Then, abruptly, he seized a lock of the young man’s thick, curly hair and tugged it hard. It came off in his hand. Proculus gasped.

Holding the lock of hair like a trophy of war, Caligula nodded to his executioner. The man approached, his knife held out before him, glinting.

“No . . . don’t! Please, Divine Caesar!” screamed Proculus.

Caligula remained on the stool, watching closely as the executioner made his first incision into Proculus’ chest. A bloodcurdling shriek came from Proculus’ lips, but Caligula cut it off with a long kiss.

The executioner was a master of his craft, and Caligula paid him well for his skill. He knew how to inflict agony and mutilation just short of death; if anybody could produce a lingering death, it was he. Now he carved deftly at Proculus’ hanging body, producing scream after tortured scream.

As always, Caligula found the approach of death fascinating. He looked deeply into the young man’s cloudy eyes and studied his contorted face.

“What does it feel like?” he asked urgently.

“I cannot bear it! Let me die!”

Caligula was enjoying every slice, every shudder, every writhe of the young body. He never felt quite so divine, quite so omnipotent, as when he had ordered torture and death and could see his order carried out.

“Make him feel that he’s dying,” he commanded.

“Yes, Divine Caesar.”

A crazed scream came from Proculus as the knife probed deeper into his vitals.

“What’s happening now?” Caligula asked breathlessly. He rubbed his thighs together as he watched his prisoner’s face.

“Let me die . . .” pleaded Proculus from the depths of his agony.

Caligula lifted a fold of his rich robe and wiped the sweat from Proculus’ brow. This was
their
experience; they were sharing it together! Lucky Proculus, to find death with god at his side! “Have you started to die yet?” he asked fondly.

“It’s like fire . . .” moaned Proculus.

“That must be hell,” Caligula mused. “I knew Tiberius was wrong. There
is
an afterlife . . .”

Suddenly, with a horrible gagging sound, Proculus went limp. He was dead.

Furious, Caligula jumped off the stool and turned on the terrified executioner.

“Damn you! I told you to take your time!”

The man babbled abjectly, fearing for his own life. “Divine Caesar, forgive me! He was twisting so . . . I touched the heart . . . by mistake . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Shut up,” said Caligula, annoyed.

He stared at Proculus’ bloody corpse, at the exposed chest cavity, the ribs and muscles and lungs all showing and now all dead.

“Now what is more like a god than this?” he asked the body softly. “A moment ago, you were a living man, with beautiful hair. And now, thanks to me, you are butcher’s meat. Well, be grateful. You’ve got away from me.”

He tore away the corpse’s underdrawers, exposing the heavy genitals. For a moment he cupped them lovingly in his hand, enjoying their weight. Then he turned to the executioner.

“Cut these off and send them to Chaerea. Tell him that Proculus wanted him to have them. As a souvenir of their great love.” Laughing, Caligula left the cell.

Caligula lay wide awake.

The moon is full tonight. The moon . . . the goddess Diana Luna . . . always sends me a little mad. That’s why they call them lunatics, you know . . . I can’t sleep . . . why can’t I ever sleep? All I can do is lie here and watch the golden eye of the full moon shining over the Capitoline. The lowest, poorest, most wretched crippled beggar in Rome can sleep tonight. But a god cannot. Diana is watching me. Come to me, holy Diana, goddess of the moon! Come to my bed . . . sister . . . sister. I hold my arms out to you . . . I am your brother, Moon. Come and love me as you loved Endymion. As Drusilla loved me. Diana . . . yes, she comes! It is she!

Caesonia walked silently into the bedroom. She carried a bow and arrow, and she wore a short hunting tunic that left one shoulder bare. Her hair was bound back from her face, tied with a silver fillet that held a crescent moon. She was Diana.

“Ah, sister . . . Diana . . . goddess . . .” Caligula called.

Caesonia lay down beside him and allowed him to drink his fill of moonlight, first from her breasts and then from the deep well between her thighs. Later, lying side by side, they let the moonlight bathe them in its mystery.

“I can’t sleep,” Caligula said.

“I have a drug.”

“No.”

“What are you thinking of?” asked Caesonia.

“How lonely it is to be a god.”

“Are you really a god?”

“I can end a life whenever I choose. Therefore I am Fate. Therefore I am God.”

“Any Caesar can do the same,” whispered Caesonia. “But do you
know
that you’re a god?”

“Are you awake now? Or are you dreaming?”

“Awake.”

“How do you know?” asked Caligula.

“I just know. I think . . .”

“You don’t know. You just think you know. So if this is a dream, then I am a god because I tell you so. And, when we awaken . . .” He drew a line like a knife across her lovely throat. “Never forget. I can have this beautiful throat cut whenever I choose.”

“If it would make you happy, make you sleep, then do it,” Caesonia said softly.

Caligula propped himself up on his elbow and regarded his wife with real interest, searching her features in the delicate light cast by the moon. She was sincere.

“I cannot think why you love me. Shall I put you on the rack? Force you to tell me?” He was only half-jesting.

“You know already,” replied Caesonia serenely.

“What will history say of me?” sighed Caligula.

“That you were the greatest of all Caesars.”

“Nonsense. I have done nothing. Except get rid of a few fools. Brought the goddess Isis back to Rome, though we’re still not on speaking terms.” He flopped over on his back again, pillowing his head on his arms. “You know, when I do sleep, I have such mad dreams. The sea . . . the sea
talks
to me. The waves revile me. And then I start to drown.” He heaved himself off the bed and began to pace the bedroom. Caesonia walked by his side.

“This is what I do every night now, while waiting for morning,” Caligula said.

He led his wife out the door and down the corridor. Guards stood on duty everywhere.

“I walk up and down . . . from one end of the palace to the other. I am a god, but I cannot make the sun rise when I want it to.”

“But the moon is lovely, too,” whispered Caesonia.

“Darkness is the best of all.”

“For sleep?”

“No. Sleep is dreams. And my dreams are bad. True darkness is death . . . lovely death . . .”

“But Isis promises everlasting life.”

“I wish it were true.” Caligula sighed wistfully. “But every time I look into the eyes of a dying man, I see nothing, nothing at all. Tiberius was right. In life there is nothing except Fate, and in death there is nothing at all.”

“So we live,” murmured Caesonia.

“I live,” agreed Caligula. “But I cannot sleep. And I dare not dream.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

No son of Germanicus, no grandson of Tiberius, no Emperor of Rome, not even a god, could spend many years without going to war. What was Rome without a conquest? And what was the greatest general of Rome without a triumph?

At long last, the plans for the invasion of Britain were completed, and the campaign got under way.

Dressed in the full regalia of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, his little boots tied around his neck as a lucky charm, Caligula set off at the head of his troops, determined to bring back every treasure that backward Britain had to offer a conqueror. The entire Senate and most of the people of Rome turned out to see him off and wish him success. They followed him as far as the twenty-fifth milestone, and stood there cheering as the army disappeared up the Appian Way.

Almost at once, Caligula retired to his litter. He did not open the curtains until they had marched through Gaul to the English Channel. There the army halted, and Caligula emerged from the litter.

“There’s Britain,” said Chaerea, pointing to the empty sea. “There, on the other side of the Channel.”

“Give the order to invade,” commanded Caligula.

There was an uncomfortable silence from his cadre of generals.

“Well?” he demanded.

“There are no ships, Divine Caesar,” Chaerea told him.

“But we ordered ships, didn’t we?” Caligula was plainly annoyed.

“No, Divine Caesar. There was some confusion and . . .”

“And so we are left standing here, like idiots, on the beach?” Caligula’s voice rose, dangerously shrill.

“We should pitch camp, Divine Caesar,” said another of the generals reasonably. “Then, in a few weeks—”

“Weeks? Oh, no! Rome cannot be without Caesar for another month!”

“But the troops . . .”

“The troops must be put to work.”

Chaerea nodded. “I will have them make camp, build living quarters—”

“No,” interrupted Caligula. “Shells.” He pointed to the beach.

“What, Divine Caesar?” Something must be wrong with my hearing, thought Chaerea. I’m getting old.

“You heard me,
shells! Sea
shells,” snarled Caligula angrily. “Have the soldiers collect them. We must have
something
to show for
your
strategy.”

It took two days and two legions to collect all the seashells that Caligula deemed sufficient. Then, having completed the British camp the army marched on to conquer Germany.

The conquest of Germany was like none of Germanicus’ campaigns. Those had taken years, for the Germans were very warlike. In one massacre alone they had captured and killed four of Varus’ legions and it had taken many battles more before Germanicus could bring the stolen eagles back to Rome.

Caligula’s campaign against the Germans was very different, and took only the better part of a week. It consisted of rounding up the tallest and tamest Gauls in the Roman army and dying their hair bright red to make them resemble the savage German chieftains of the old days. The Gauls were taught a few words of German, so they would be convincing when they were bundled into Rome as part of Caligula’s triumph. One of the Gauls, taller and rather better looking than the rest, Caligula took under his personal wing—which meant keeping the Gaul with him in his tent at night.

Caligula was determined to have a triumph such as Rome had never seen before, one that would make the triumphs awarded to Augustus, to Tiberius, to Germanicus—yes, even to Julius Caesar—look like mummers’ parades. And for this he needed captured slaves (the red-haired Gauls) and booty taken from a subdued people (the seashells). He had it all planned; he could see it in his mind’s eye—an Emperor god in a chariot, crowned by Victory herself, riding through the newly-built Arch of Caligula the God, a long procession of slaves marching ahead of him. In his tent on the Rhine, he would tell his Gaul about his vision during the nights when his own slender body was being triumphantly ridden by the hairy Gaul. There were advantages to defeat as well as to victory, Caligula would think, his face pressed deep into the mattress.

“You have come here to spy on me,” Caligula said coldly to his uncle Claudius. The half-wit was the leader of a delegation of Senators who had come to the Emperor’s camp on the bank of the Rhine.

“No, D . . . D . . . Divine Caesar,” stammered Claudius. “We’ve come in the name of the Senate to tell you that a plot against you has . . . uh . . . been revealed . . .”

“The Senators Lepidus and Gaetulus,” snorted Caligula.

“Yes, I know.”

“You do?” Claudius was surprised. “Well, Divine Caesar, they I mean . . . we put them to death. Treason, and all that.”

“Thus depriving
me
of the pleasure.”

“Well . . . it . . . seemed like the . . . uh . . . safe thing to do,” said Claudius. Actually, the two had opened their veins, but it was safer not to tell that to Caesar.

“And what about my triumph?” Caligula demanded hotly. “Why did the Senate deny me a triumph?”

Claudius and the other Senators in the delegation exchanged glances of bewilderment. “But . . . but . . . you said you didn’t
want
one. You sent express instructions to the Senate forbidding one . . .”

“Claudius, don’t lie to me!” Caligula gritted his teeth. The senile fools! Didn’t they know, weren’t they aware that they were supposed to
insist
on a triumph? To
force
one on Caligula? Would he never get the chance to prove to the world his humility? A god, and yet humble? Where was their adoration?