And then his look. I had seen it before. It is not strange on so massive a face. It is a glance totally divorced of malice or fear. The muscles in the face are as unused as death. Neither smile nor grimace nor frown. The eyes do not blink and are open wide. There is a silence in the mind.
I had seen it only on the arena sand, when another gladiator saw me for the first time. And it was there across this table from me, the table where only eating was supposed to occur.
He looked away quickly, and then I realized, seeing that opponent-estimating stare, that I, out of training so early and so thoroughly, had returned it. Death eye for death eye.
Olava said Lewus had to leave for a few days but would be back.
That night I spent alone under the scrutiny of a slave called a nurse, who was of course not a slave. She was big and yellow-haired and smiled at me whenever I looked at her. I went to my room, and she went with me. I went to the sun porch, and she went there. I pointed to my mouth, and she ordered someone to bring water. I pointed again, and she ordered someone to bring food. Perhaps she did not know what was proper food, but there was a slab of almost raw meat dripping its blood.
I cringed. She ate if for me, like a wolf. The slab of meat was too big to come from a human unless it was a buttock. But Olava had assured me cannibalism had not been practised here for many centuries.
The woman sucked up the blood with great enjoyment, making slurping sounds with her red cosmeticized mouth. Every few mouthfuls she offered me a taste. I refused, shaking my head. She offered me some wine. I refused. She offered me vegetables. I took a leafy thing with the taste of good cabbage. She ate enough for three men. She was taller than Olava, who was taller than I. She had massive shoulders.
She shut the door. She giggled.
She pointed to my loins and giggled more. She pinched me playfully. But the raw, heavy meat odour from her breath made me raise my nose. She guzzled more wine. It helped the smell. She sat down on the high bed. I felt her wants. She was there. I was there. It was there. Why not? I embraced this large woman, leaning her back down on the high bed, when difficulties began.
Under her white tunic was a network of webbing to confound an engineer. Straps went from a loose mesh surrounding her legs to a cloth and wire cinch around her loins. So tight was this reinforced cloth around her vagina that it felt like the lining of a snug helmet. It did not go up but was caught about her heavy, pale legs. She helped by pulling it down, and her flesh stuffed in it flowed out, like a punctured winebag pressed with white suet.
I was not aroused now so much as challenged. She grunted as she pressed down the white and pink cloth barricade to her entrance. She got it to her massive knees, and, with a yank, I had it off her toes. She unfastened her tunic, and there was more defensive clothing, this time around her breasts.
Metal buckles and two tenting cloths, with straps as though each breast had to be contained from fleeing the body, hung from her neck and buckled around her back. She loosened this protection, and her white pink-nippled breasts were released to the air, full and already wanting. It was a rich flesh banquet of a body with strong thighs and moist entrance. She groaned as I worked her to a crescendo and then entered, ramming home a civilized thrust into a barbaric body. She moaned softly and pressed her lips to my forehead, and I started her passion at her breasts again, and then took it with my tongue to her navel, and then again brought her to crescendo, and then again, before I spent myself.
But there was a sadness in it as much as pleasure. It was not Miriamne. She made soothing sounds with her grunting language and embraced me. A small, thin gold chain hung around her neck and I played with it, rubbing the links between my fingers. I felt a talisman on the linen beneath her neck, attached to the chain. I felt its corners, and then a small figure in the middle of it.
I did not believe what I felt. Not even Domitian with blood lust roaring would wear something so ugly. When I brought it around from behind her neck, I saw it was what I felt. And gold no less. They would make it of gold in this world? What creatures! Perhaps the games were gruesome to some and were most certainly bloody. But no one back in the city wore a dying man in gold around his neck. Yet this sweating hulk of a woman had one made of gold, hanging on a cross.
She seemed confused when I moved away. She offered a hand to touch me. I slapped it away. Her wild blue eyes teared. I motioned her to stay. I took the little knife from the tray. She might be big, but I could whittle through the flesh.
The door opened, and the woman covered herself. Olava stood in the doorway. She said something in the barbaric tongue and then to me:
'Oh. Oh. Oh. I am sorry, Eugeni. I did not know. I am sorry. I guess this is natural. I'm sorry.'
I did not know why she was sorry, but I put the knife down next to the bloody plate the big woman had eaten from.
She was stunned there, as though struck. The big woman managed to throw on the complicated and intricate strapping quickly and cover herself, hiding all the things, including the abomination around her neck. She fled the room.
'Let us go to the sun porch,' said Olava.
'Good,' I said. 'You say things have changed and people are milder, but this is not so. Killings go on. Crucifixions are loved even.'
That is not so,' said Olava.
That woman wore a figure of a man being executed.
’
'I see,' said Olava. 'Yes. Of c
ourse. My God was crucified. In
remembrance of his death, people wear the re-creation of the
crucifixion around their necks. It is a way to honour Our Lord.
That is my cult, which I am not
at liberty to discuss with you
now.'
'No,' I said. 'No honour. There is no honour in that
’
'My God transcended death. He conquers death. I too wore one of those things, but took it off so as not to frighten you. I replaced it with an earlier sign, this fish, fisher of men.'
I was quiet. She said many years had passed since people were crucified.
That must be so, because if you had seen my slaves and friends, Plutarch and Demosthenes, die you never would have worn a remembrance of that death.'
'Not the death, the man.'
‘I
remember the deaths. Choose what you will.
’
The next day we discussed this on the sun porch with Semyonus but I was more interested in this land. I saw a hill in the distance, and Olava said we were just outside the city, on the edge of it
It was a great city of the north people. Nurse slaves brought us things to eat and drink, and I wanted none of it.
Olava told me she was telling Semyonus about the sexual encounter. A rigid woman normally, she became taut like an overstretched thong on a bow, smiling suddenly every once and a while,
'Oh, yes. There were two kinds. One good and the other not so good. Not so good were potions. They would mostly work. There was one best one, of course.
’
'Which was?'
'Celibacy,' I said, and at this they both laughed, so I added the ever-popular 'Underclothes.' And this time they didn't laugh.
'What was sex like in your home with your wife, with Miriamne?'
I tried to answer, but when I thought of Miriamne not even being remembered by anyone but me, not a kind word said of how she treated others, and all manner of things people say of those who are good, I wept. I wept for her and for Petronius, not only dead, both of them, but with no one to remember them but me.
Semyonus offered that if I so loved my wife and son, I should know they felt no pain at this time. And that was a kind thing to say, but my heart wanted something more. Olava spoke with Semyonus.
Their builders here were good. The glass was quite even, and the s
un
came through without distortions. Far off in the very air, the big metal air chariots like slow, shiny blots in the eye of the sky moved down towards where they gathered near here. The economy was such that the giant latifundia no longer existed where carpenters and ironsmiths produced things, rather there would be a whole latifundium which did nothing but produce things like air chariots or those that went on the ground, and other devices in which there was great commerce between these nations. One could buy shares in these latifundia, called corporations. In Semyonus's land, east of the middle of Germany which was not civilized, everyone owned everything. Unlike Olava, Semyonus took offence when I referred to eastern lands as barbaric.
'I have the permission of my friend and yours, Semyonus,' said Olava, 'to have my cult perform holy ceremonies for your wife and child, who I believe were early participants of my cult. At least I think your wife was.'
'Good,' I said. 'That feels so much better. Although Petronius did not believe in those things. He was a smart boy. There was much slander against that little Jewish cult. There were those who said they drank the blood and ate the body of their god in horrible symbolic ritual sacrifice, but there is no lack of bad things said about the unknown, hence the stories about death.'
A red flush galloped across the pale face of Olava. She adjusted her big body. The words came hard to her.
'Eugeni. You are describing the Mass, but it commemorates God offering up his son in sacrifice for all mankind. The wine and bread represent his body and blood.'
'Yellow-haired people adopted this religion, yes?'
'You don't understand, Eugeni. It is love, not cannibalism. What greater love can someone have than to die for someone?'
'Live for them. Any idiot can die. Would that I had lived for my Miriamne and Petronius. She would have had the comfort of my love, and Petronius my strength. I cast them adrift because of a moment's insanity.'
'Because of the patrician Publius ?'
'Because of me. Let us talk of sex. We, in our strange and now ancient manner, performed secret and unusual sexual acts.'
I waited for Olava to translate. Semyonus leaned forward, nervously eyeing Olava.
'There was this special way to do sex that drove women so mad with passion that they would voluntarily cast themselves into slavery just to have you touch them once again,' I said.
Olava concentrated on her book of papers with lines, in which she would write now and then. Semyonus said something, Olava did not translate.
'What did he say?' I asked.
'Nothing.'
'It was one word. What was it?
’
The word was "really," signifying great interest'
'I can only show these great sexual feats if I know I will be rewarded in some manner, because the act itself drains, not so much on the virility but on the fat, and I do not have the fat to spare. Now Semyonus would be left with glistening muscle from this act and look like a god.'
Olava translated, but I could tell she explained more, and I was fairly certain she told Semyonus this was a bit of a game I was playing.
'How much will this miracle be?' asked Olava. 'Did Semyonus ask that?'
‘
No,' she said. 'And stop selling sex stories to him. He is a good man, and his only crime is believing too much.'
'Only crime,' I asked in amazement. 'Good woman, you may not be punished for murd
er or for stealing, but gullibili
ty as certain as sunrise will get its price. It is always punished.'
'You don't want to talk about sex with Miriamne?' she said. She understood.
'Correct.'
Then we will talk of other things. You are free. What was your daily life like? I would like details this time. From the beginning.'
'I do not understand the question.'
'What was your daily life like? What was a typical day? How did it start? What was the absolute first thing you did?' 'I awoke.' 'And then?' 'I urinated.' 'And then?' 'I bathed.' 'Every day?
’
'Yes.'
'With what?'
'In the tears of a thousand Parthian virgins carried by runners bathed in the oil of the essence of roses.' 'Water, correct?'
'Yes, unless oils were on the body, and then they would be scraped off.'
'We know you had hot baths and cold baths, but what did the average Roman bathe in?' 'Average?' 'The typical.' 'I don't understand.'
'If you were to go out in the street and stop the first passer-by, who would it most likely be?'
'I don't know. I didn't go out in the street to stop people. I only went out for public occasions, and then surrounded by my retainers and armoured slaves.'