The Implacable Hunter (26 page)

Afranius wrote: ‘Diomed, what was there that I could do? Every faith has its god-bedazzled men who, in the moment of glory, turn and go naked into the wasteland, as if the Hope of the World lies somewhere in the dust. The yellow men’s god, Gotama, was a prince at the height of his glory when he exchanged robes with a beggar and went away. At the peak of his passion and on the verge of his ecstasy, Paulus turned on his heel. Why? Are we all – the gods forbid – Blind Nun? Must all the springs of Desire run over the edge of the world?

‘Thus, I came to Damascus.’ Here, Afranius’s letter ended.

I sat, thinking in a turgid, disturbed kind of way; and whatever I thought, it made me bruise my thigh with my clenched fist, and bite my lip. But then Soxias was announced, and he came in with very little ceremony.

‘Let’s not beat about the bush,’ he said. ‘What news did you get from Damascus?’ A professional habit of
impassiveness
calmed me: control your face, and the rest of you will come to heel.

‘Eh? Damascus?’ I said. ‘What about Damascus?’ I forced myself to sit back, but knew better than to risk a smile.

‘Concerning Paulus, damn it all!’

‘Oh, young Paulus, eh? What’s the matter with him? Have you had some news of him? If so, what? If not, why do you ask?’

Soxias was as calm as I, now. ‘Your boy has turned Nazarene,’ he said, and watched me to see the effect of this.

‘Indeed?’ I said. ‘Have some wine.’

‘Melanion says I mustn’t, before sunset. Only a little, well watered.’

‘Now, what’s all this? Paulus has turned Nazarene, you say? In Damascus?’

‘No, in the desert.’

‘Turned Nazarene in the desert, eh?’ I said. ‘And what do you want me to do about it? –’ I could safely smile, now, with care ‘– Well, in case it interests you, I knew he would.’ If you must lie, lie deeply; but be sure to keep your wits about you.

‘Are you telling me the truth?’ asked Soxias.

‘Not entirely. I did not know that Paulus would become a Nazarene in the
desert,
exactly. But turn Nazarene? Yes, I wanted him to do that.’

‘Do you really expect me to believe that?’

‘It is a matter of supreme indifference to me, Soxias, what you believe,’ I said.

‘He was your man,’ said Soxias, ‘you groomed him, you
broke him, you trained him. You had a use for that boy. Don’t deny it.

‘Why should I deny it?’

‘You wanted young Paulus for Rome.’

‘Oh? And how do you know that I haven’t got him?’ I asked.

‘Oh, what a merchant you’d make, Diomed! What a
barefaced
liar you are!’ cried Soxias in admiration.

‘How so?’ I asked, acknowledging the compliment with a bow.

‘I don’t know what game you’re playing, Diomed. But
1
wanted that pup. I wanted him for Judaea, and I could have got him, too. Tiberius is dying. Little Boots will be heir. I could have arranged the matter. A thousand, two thousand gold talents – damnation, I could have done it, and with Syria thrown in, all in good time! I –’

‘Bite your tongue, Soxias,’ I said, coldly. ‘I don’t know how many talents you can raise, but you’ve only got one neck.’

‘In the desert!’ growled Soxias. ‘Who baptised him?’

‘It is you who are bringing me the news, remember,’ I said. ‘For all you know, he may have been received as a Nazarene before, and made a profession of the fact –’

‘Nonsense! He ran through the Jerusalem Nazarenes like black cholera. He stoned Stephanas Diaconos. Anyway, what use is he to you as a Nazarene?’

‘Did I speak of myself? –’ I was trying to drill self-
consolation
into the position of an argument ‘– Who am I?’

‘You,’ said Soxias, ‘are perhaps the only man I couldn’t buy, but would if I could. Rome, then; what does Rome want with a Nazarene?’

I picked my points carefully, while I made a play of
selecting
grapes from a cluster in a bowl. ‘With a Nazarene? Nothing. What is Jesus to Rome? A nobody. A leader of a dissenting Jewish sect. The Jews have a score of dissenting sects: the more the merrier, says Rome. But the Nazarene
is the only sect with what I might describe as an extra-Jewish appeal; and it is a poor man’s sect, and a sinner’s sect, and a merciful sect. It has caught on. The Jews have been foolish enough to endow it with the attractiveness of the dangerous and the forbidden; they have had the Nazarene leader
publicly
crucified, and the man Stephanas stoned –’

‘You have had news of that, then?’

‘Certainly. You just told me about it. Don’t interrupt. The Nazarenes might cause a serious division in Judaea, given time and organisation. Organisation. Understand? The Nazarenes are fairly numerous, and growing steadily more so. But they have no Temple, no centre. Now, given a leader, young, a devil in energy, white-hot in ambition, a Jew and a Roman at once, cool headed, tricky and bold at the same time, a gentleman at ease with the great –’

‘A Paulus?’

‘For example, a Paulus if you like; a resolute man, a resourceful man, versed in Roman and Jewish Law, an agile opportunist…. Given such a leader, the Nazarenes would find a heart and a brain. There might rise a second Temple, perhaps, at Nazareth – who knows? – with an ever-
thickening
rind of ambient sympathy.’

Soxias said: ‘Do you mean to sit there and tell me that what young Paulus did to the Nazarenes in Jerusalem was all part of a preconceived scheme?’

I answered: ‘I do not mean to sit here and tell you
anything
. I am telling you nothing. I merely say, rhetorically,
why
not
?’

This kind of fantastically complex villainy was A, B, C to Soxias. A simple change of heart was not merely
incomprehensible
to his labyrinthine mind – it was alien, it was unbelievable. My windy and devious nonsense seemed to clarify matters for him. ‘Soxias,’ I said, ‘I am surprised, I really am surprised!’

And my surprise must have sounded genuine, for I was
honestly astonished – not at Soxias’s ingenuousness, but at my own ingenuity. I was never slow-witted, but I did not think I had in me such a knack of ready inventiveness. It almost cheered me.

‘But the Nazarenes,’ said Soxias, ‘are sworn to peace. They may not take up the sword. They are inert.’

‘Well?’ I said. ‘What? If you want to rest on a splintery bench, what do you do?’

‘Put down a cushion,’ said Soxias.

‘Right. And if you want to put out flaring oil from a broken lamp, what do you do?’

‘Smother it with sand, or a blanket.’

‘Right again. Judaea is a splintery bench. Judaea is a broken lamp. Well?’

‘Well … Rome cushions, or blankets, or damps a frontier. But will the Nazarenes always turn the other cheek, as they put it?’ Soxias said. ‘No. The Nazarene is a Jewish
superstition
. Where there’s a Jew, there’s a justification. Nazarene Law has yet to be written; they’ll make it up as they go along, the way the rabbis do. Ring ’em with spears, and somebody is sure to have a Revelation – and the Nazarene priests will bless the iron, while the lambs of Jesus go to war. Nothing more dangerous than a mad sheep, and a sheep is only a lamb grown up. Have you – I mean, has Rome – considered this?’

‘Why, of course,’ I said, ‘can’t you see that’s just the point?’ Soxias whistled softly. I went on, using the cant of bribery and corruption which he understood so well. ‘Rome scratches your back, Soxias; you scratch Rome’s. Give a little, take a little. Paulus is officially on his own, as from now. My jurisdiction doesn’t extend beyond Tarsus. You have your watchdogs everywhere – keep a kind eye on the boy.’

Soxias nodded. ‘I will do that. Ai-yah! I must be getting older than I thought. I ought to have known that a fellow of Paulus’s sort wouldn’t give up a future like his for a bit of bread, a cup of wine, and a blessing.’

… A
BIT
of bread, a cup of wine, and a blessing? Master of the World, this golden clown has less,’ I thought, struggling out of my heavy reverie and looking up at Caesar’s shallow, embossed face. Bulky as he was, as he turned his head, I almost expected him to appear in profile as a thin, flat edge, and, if he turned his head, I should not have been surprised to see the reverse of an ornate medal self-struck in his own honour.

He was coming to the end of his elegy, now, and his audience was murmuring, and uttering little choked cries meant to express hardly-suppressed emotion. But I caught the eye of an officer of the guard, and that eye looked daggers: he was bored to the verge of mutiny. And Nero’s Greek secretary, a willowy little yellow-headed pederast, looked at me with undisguised hatred. He was smitten with one of those womb-less hysterias that sometimes take
possession
of the homosexual; a meaningless hate, a barren spite. But I, locked in my own silence, had been thinking of dead friends.

The dreams and the shadows of youth and strength are the wistful lights of old age, in evocation. There was the noble Barbatus, in a column of sweet smoke; and there was good Afranius, choked in a fit of laughter at a drinking-bout; and sturdy Pugnax, struck dead in harness; and old Soxias, with a patina of quaintness over his wickedness, dying with a knowing look; and dour Melanion, gone with the cholera; and poor Tibullus, fetched away in his sleep; and even Little Lucius, his corruption something pathetic in perspective; and old Joseph, who put on his second-best coat before
rending
his garments, elegantly mourning with a pinch of ashes on his bald head, mourning the loss of his son, his
god-racked
son who was dragging the weight of his shadow over the moonstruck roads of the night.

And there was Dionë, gripping my finger like a child, and asking me: ‘Will it be cold, Diomed? And will it be dark? And will you be able to find me in the dark, Diomed?’ – ‘No, my sweet, it will not be dark but if it is, you will sing a little song and I shall hear you.’ And there was my strong son, Artavius, in Britain now and cut to ribbons by the scythes for all I knew…. ‘And will it be cold, Diomed? And will it be dark, Diomed? And oh Diomed, will you be able to find me in the dark?’ … ‘No – you will sing Dionë, and I shall find you, my dear, wherever you are….’

And there was I, old and cold, bone-weary and lonely, and my mare Daphne dead on the road.

There was a tingling splash of sound as Nero dashed his hand over the strings and threw down the lyre. The others stamped and cried out applause. Only I, suddenly dumb, sat silent.

Then Nero shouted: ‘Flatterers and lickspittles that you
are! False hearts and empty voices! Look here –’ he pointed to me; everyone looked ‘– I hear no flapping of hands and stamping of stinking feet in this quarter. But see; the man is weeping! One tear from this iron man, you sons of bitches, is worth all the blood in your bodies! Diomed, I embrace you! –’ and so he did, lingeringly ‘– I wrung your heart there, eh?’

I said: ‘Nero, my heart is wrung.’

He took off a necklace of precious stones, and clasped it about my throat. ‘I am going to weep, too, in a moment,’ he said, snivelling. ‘… I shall make you Master of Caesar’s Music.’

‘No, I am not worthy,’ I said.

‘What do you want? Name it! It is yours. Speak! I’ll make you Governor of Syria, I’ll –’

‘Oh Caesar,’ I said, ‘I am too old. I have heard Nero sing: I have lived! One small favour only.’

‘Anything! Anything!’

‘A man’s life.’

‘One man’s life? Take a hundred!’

‘Only one.’

‘Name him. Iaminus, Iaminus, prepare to write!’

‘It is only that he is my friend,’ I said, ‘and once he saved my life. Now he is confined in his own house in Rome. A harmless man, a Roman of Tarsus, a Jew of that same city, Caesar, who happens to be suspected of being something of a Nazarene. His name is Paul.’

The secretary Iaminus looked at me with concentrated malice, but he dared not speak. Nero said: ‘I spare Paul. Iaminus, write: I give Paul’s life to my best friend and my keenest critic, Diomed … and so forth … Oh Diomed, Diomed, if you have shed a true tear over this little thing I just dashed off, how you must weep when I sing you my Lament for Euridice! Or my Dirge for Patroclus! I have drunk too much to sing any more at this moment, my dear
Diomed. But soon … You there, Iaminus, you little whore, have you written?’

‘I have written,’ said Iaminus, handing him the parchment. He scrawled his name at the foot, and the secretary folded and waxed it. Nero punched severely at the wax with his great ring, and gave me the sealed document. ‘Oh, lucky, lucky Paul, to have such clever, clever friends!’ said the secretary, with a twisted smile.

‘Go now,’ said Nero, reeling, ‘but come again.’ So I went, weak as a child and sick with triumph.

Flaminius was waiting for me at his villa. ‘At least,’ he said, ‘you come back with a head on your shoulders. But what a head! Man, man, you must sleep or die!’

‘Lend me a couple of good horses, old friend,’ I said. ‘There will be no rest for me until I have finished what I came to do – I am off to Rome.’

‘What did Nero say, eh?’

‘He sang me a song.’

‘You applauded, of course?’

‘No, I didn’t; for which very reason, he gave me this
necklace
, and the bit of parchment I asked for, and offered to make me Governor of Syria and Master of Caesar’s Music, and what not. Now will you give me those horses?’

‘Of course. But … Ha! And I was trying to … Ho! A lucky day, upon my word, when Flaminius gives advice to Diomed, the old grey fox! One always underestimates your cunning.’

‘It is less than forty miles to Rome. Horses, friend, horses!’

‘That was a long song Nero sang. Will you ride all night again, Diomed?’

‘How else can I get to Rome by dawn?’

‘Well, take Hector, my stallion, and the gods go with you.’ And so I rode to Rome.

There was a silence in the neighbourhood of Paulus’s little house. I knocked at the door. The sound rolled away,
reverberating, and then died. I knocked again; nobody answered. Then I stopped a passing housewife.

‘Is this the house of Paul, the man from Tarsus?’ I asked.

She said: ‘Well, I don’t know, for sure, whose house it is. But if you mean Paul, the Nazarene, yes, he used to live here.

‘Used to? Is he gone from here?’

‘Eh? Gone? Oh yes, he’s gone all right.’

‘Where?’

‘Well, that’s more than I can say, sir. You see, they cut his head off yesterday morning.’