Threshold of Fire Read online

  “Who’s in charge here, you or me?” Pylades asked coldly.

  I could still only guess at the nature of their intentions toward me. They certainly found it worth their while not to let me out of their sight. It had been going on too long: I was as sober again as I had been in the morning, and I was annoyed with this unwanted company.

  2.

  Like a ghost surrounded by malignant spectres in a borderland of death, I wandered through the Imperial heart of the City which had for years seemed more unreal to me each time I came here. It was still broad daylight, but the sun was in the west; the columns threw elongated shadows across the porticos. That is the hour when the new Rome — or the non-Rome; I don’t know what to call it — takes on a dangerous formlessness; the crowd consists no longer of separate individuals with recognizable faces and gestures, but becomes a buzzing stream of spilled colors moving between the buildings which seem, in the honeyed light, to be made of eggshells, about to crack. One has the feeling that with a wave of the hand, one could sweep away the image of reality like a glossy film, behind which lies chaos, darkness.

  Some choose to believe that it was the Gothic occupation which irrevocably changed the character of Rome within a generation. I myself often tried to explain away my feeling of alienation by attributing it to my advancing age, and to the complete reversal of my fate ten years ago. But I know that none of this is true: the Goths are not responsible for this metamorphosis; the natural deterioration of age has nothing to do with my condition, nor do the events which so radically transformed my life. These things are the culmination of a process which began twenty years ago when I left Alexandria to come to Rome.

  I could have recognized the signs if I had chosen to. The Rome that I loved, that I venerated, no longer existed, had not existed for a long time … if indeed it had ever existed at all. Perhaps it existed only in the dreams of an Egyptian with a Greek education who had, under the colonnades and in the study halls of Alexandria, formed an idealized image of the civilization of his time. It seemed to me that this lustre was reflected in people like Ammanianus Marcellinus, Praetextatus Symmachus, Rutilius Namatianus, Serena. But they too lived in a different world from that whose demeanor and style they adopted. When I think of them, I remember uncertainties, contradictions, which had not struck me at the time, or which I may well have noticed but refused to accept. In the course of those years, I had become increasingly aware of the uneasiness that clouded Stilicho’s life and aspirations, despite his resolute commitment to Rome.

  He knew that what he wanted to accomplish was justified, and he knew too that he would never be able to attain those goals — not because he was deficient in any way, nor because others worked against his projects (although this was certainly the case, more even than he ever suspected), but because his strength of purpose and abilities and those of his partisans were no match for the indefinable but clearly perceptible pressure from without as well as within: a torrent of change. Stilicho had the courage to combat the incomprehensible with untiring tenacity and he was an excellent strategist who knew how to change his tactics as often as he thought necessary. But he must have known that his enemies would take advantage of that very fact, because it could make him seem unpredictable, or even untrustworthy. The consequent erosion affected us all.

  I see images from that former life as though they appear on a mural partially obliterated by age: a face, a gesture, the outline of a figure, a group, in faded colors, suggesting what it was when it was fresh, but now eaten by decay, cracked, slowly peeling. Yesterday, as I wandered through the crowded streets between the government buildings with those three at my heels like warders, I was assaulted anew — as I had been so often in the past — by the realization that my old friends were dead and gone. I could touch the railings, the columns where their hands had rested; I recognized at every step a place which I had passed in my walks with them.

  Despite some open spaces left here and there by fires, the overall picture of this sea of houses remains roughly unchanged, and I recognized the spot where, strolling and chatting, dazzled each time anew by the splendor of the spectacle, I used to point out to my companions the play of light and shadow over the aqueduct. Pylades’ mantle fluttering before my eyes; the dwarf — that strange gnome — now in front of me, then again behind me; the fat man’s fist planted annoyingly in my back… all of it, even the most concrete — walls and trees, the people I brushed against and whose breath touched me as I passed them — all seemed unreal to me. Sometimes in earlier days I had seen columns of white or ochre dust rising here and, squinting against the glare, I had imagined that this was a procession of spectres filing through the living crowd. Now I myself was one of those ghosts.

  On all sides of us were tall, white shapes; we were in the Forum of Trajan, a place which for years I had avoided like the plague. There they were: the twice dead, with their bloated marble faces, in their marble togas, petrified in an oratorical pose, heroically brandishing the staff of command or the book scroll. I was seized by rage against this grotesque and impotent pack of immortals. Many of these, since the invasion of the Goths, were headless, armless. Some of them had been knocked off their pedestals and lay awaiting restoration. I can find my way among those heroes and masters. A sudden desire to torment myself impelled me to hurry to a pedestal to look at a face that no longer resembled anyone, to read an inscription that I knew by heart.

  “The Goths forgot you,” I told the statue, surprising myself because I did not speak only to make my role as a drunkard more credible.

  I noticed that some pieces of the pedestal were missing. Before long, no one will be able to read respectfully how, fifteen years ago, the august, blessed and deeply learned Emperors Hadrian and Arcadius had ordered the erection of this white marble doll.

  “Not even life-sized; no gold or bronze set in,” said the dwarf, appraising it with contempt. “No inlaid eyes either — the barbarians must have stolen them…”

  I pointed to the head with the laurel wreath. “Ah no, you were already blind… Smaller than a real man… Everything tasteful and elegant, but on a reduced scale… Little poet, little orator, little eulogist….”

  Pylades, who had been waiting peevishly, turned and snapped at us, “How long is this going to go on? I’m not going to stay here forever!”

  “He’s talking rubbish to that statue.”

  “Balcho, grab him under the arms, carry him for all I care, but let’s go!”

  “Where to?” The ex-fighter did not dare to contradict Pylades, but he had had enough; for some time he had been silently steaming with rage.

  The dwarf saw a chance to get rid of me. “Leave him here. He doesn’t do you any good.”

  Pylades’ face became taut with anger.

  I clung for security to the marble folds full of dust and dead insects and went on with my monologue — primarily out of a desire for self-preservation, but also for the sheer pleasure of thinking out loud.

  “Tribune and notary… jewel of letters… inspired by the spirit of Homer and the muse of Vergil… It can be nothing less.”

  “He’s dead drunk!” cried the dwarf, immediately assuming the role of agitator, leering at Pylades.

  The fat man, who had been standing behind me for some time, irresolute and exasperated, now stooped down, jerked loose a chunk of a cracked paving stone and hurled it with full force at the marble face, smashing it to pieces. “Now you won the argument,” he said to me. “He won’t irritate you any more.”

  The crowd appeared to have been waiting for a signal of this kind: all sorts of trash — clumps of mud, half-eaten fruit — came flying through the air. People were running toward us from all sides, eager to see what was going on. There were those, too, who began to shout for the vigiles. A swirl of excitement from the vicinity of the arcades announced the approach of the guardians of public order. However, when Pylades, with the dwarf on his back, bolted through a path in the mob cleared by the ex-fighter, not one of the shouters a
nd pointers made any attempt to stop them. I was just able to catch a glimpse of the dwarf’s triumphant face bobbing above the crowd, before the trio disappeared from sight.

  I had no time to rejoice over that: the next thing I knew, someone had seized me, crying, “He was there! He was part of it!” I was pushed and jostled toward the vigiles. At this point, a diversion occurred around the palanquin. Its occupant pushed the curtain aside and leaned out. “Stop! It’s a mistake! Let that man go!”

  Now that the palanquin had emerged from the crush, I recognized the signs of a grand style: bearers and attendants soberly clad in the old manner — no finery, no colors, the man in the palanquin sitting erect, one hand motionless on the white folds at his shoulder.

  “A flagrant case of vandalism,” began one of the guards.

  “That’s certainly not true. He belongs to my retinue; he’s one of my clients.”

  “There are witnesses. We bear the responsibility. By order of the Prefect, anyone who does damage like this-”

  A hand swept sideways in a short, choppy movement. “The witnesses were mistaken. I will personally vouch for him. I know the Prefect. I am Marcus Anicius Rufus.”

  Reluctantly, the vigiles let me go.

  3.

  In the house of Marcus Anicius Rufus, the lamps were already lighted. At the direction of a slave, I went to sit on a bench in one of the rooms bordering the atrium. In the distance was a garden. I could smell damp plants and earth; I heard the murmur of water streaming into the basin of an invisible fountain. Unlike so many others at present, Marcus Anicius Rufus had had the courage and good taste to refrain from having the murals — solely mythological scenes—covered with whitewash. I was absorbed in contemplation of the rape of Persephone (the center panel, which depicted the abduction of the girl by the dark god, was in the room where I sat) when he entered. I rose and thanked him for his help.

  “The honor and the pleasure are entirely mine. I could see what was happening from my palanquin. It wasn’t you who smashed that statue.”

  “I could have done it. I’ve often been inclined to do it. That statue is a failure in every way.”

  A slave brought wine. My host filled the goblets and offered one to me.

  When we were alone again, he said suddenly, over the rim of his lifted cup, “I know who you are.”

  Resolved to say neither yes nor no, I held his gaze while we drank. He had changed somewhat in the twenty years since I had seen him last, in the house of his relatives who were my employers at the time. Sharp eyes he had, and a good memory. He smiled as he set down his goblet. “It’s wise of you to say nothing. You can trust me.”

  “There’s nothing between us. I didn’t ask you for that favor which you so kindly bestowed on me. Under no circumstances do I want to take up your valuable time. Please have your slave show me out.”

  It was very quiet in the house for that time of day. I understood that he deliberately kept his family and servants at a distance. Someone had closed the wooden shutters which separated the atrium from the other rooms. When I had stepped over the threshold of the reception room, I was surrounded by Persephone’s playmates, reddish and ocher-colored, fleeing in panic across the walls. Now I noticed the household altar in a corner.

  “Do stay a while,” he said from behind me. “Won’t you make an offering to the memory of my nephews Olybrius and Probinus?”

  “I don’t practice that form of pietas.” As I spoke, I realized how dim the memory of those dead men had become.

  He walked past me and placed his hand on the stone dwelling of the lares. “Surely, like me, you honor the old gods?”

  “I don’t honor the gods.”

  For the first time he looked at me with a glimmer of suspicion. “But you’re not a Christian?”

  “I’m not a Christian.”

  “Stilicho was a Christian. I’ve asked myself how it was possible that you, with your views —”

  “You don’t know my views.”

  “I’ve read and reread your poems,” he said sharply.

  I moved away from him. As he stood there next to his domestic altar, a white-robed, dignified figure in the starkly simple room, I thought that twenty years ago he would have seemed to me a paragon of all manly Roman virtues, pillar of the state, pater familias and protector of the shades of his ancestors who crowded, invisible, behind him.

  “I’m someone else,” I said, less coldly now, because I pitied him. We stood facing each other; only the shallow basin of the impluvium was between us. It might just as well have been an abyss, or the impassable Styx. “I’m someone else. I don’t write poems. I shouldn’t want to.”

  Doubtful and perplexed, he threw up his hands. “Then what do you want? What’s happened to you? What are you doing, what do you believe in?”

  “I must go.”

  He blocked my way with a violent movement that reminded me suddenly of Olybrius; the thin flames trembled in the lamps. A long time ago, in rooms like these, with the same golden light glowing on painted columns hung with garlands, I had jested and drunk with those two youths who had been named consuls at an age when the less fortunate had to wear themselves out just to obtain a place as client in a “great” house.

  Olybrius, dancing, adorned after the antique custom, and Probinus, who held his wine better than his brother, used to open sliding doors like these for me so that they could take me to their dinner guests. That large villa, which was later pillaged and burned by the Goths, was one of the most beautiful in Rome: a series of halls and galleries where a silence hung — never wholly dispelled even by the brothers’ exuberance — that seemed to emanate from the unseen rooms of their mother Proba, the Christian. The odor of her piety seeped through every crack; while flute-players performed in the tablinum, she received priests in her own chambers. Every morning her confessor and her devout women friends had to work their way — small, unworldly processions — through the crowds of clients waiting for her sons.

  “You’re in trouble.”

  “No, not if you let go of my cloak.”

  “I can’t believe my eyes and ears. Disgraced before Rome, before the people who used to be your friends… Condemned to be a living dead man, banished to the underworld …”

  Was it the glow of the lamps, the ambience — for the first time in ten years an environment unlike the stinking tenement holes — was it the reminder of Olybrius and Probinus, was it the painted figures on the walls, which caused me to abandon my reserve, to yield to the temptation of being once more, for an instant, the man I once was? Through the open door, I could see, directly before me in the reception room, the dark form of Pluto, lord of the realm of shadows. I spoke aloud the proud, consoling words which long ago, in a poem, I had put into the mouth of the god — words addressed to the victim in his arms, who turns her face away from him:

  Don’t believe that only darkness reigns.

  Another star is shining, another light,

  On another world, on other beings.

  Marcus Anicius embraced me as if I were a long-lost relative.

  “Allow me to help you. In my house you’re completely safe.”

  “Nothing could be a greater threat to your safety than the presence of someone who, by judgment, has been denied fire and water.”

  I saw in his eyes and in the stubborn lines around his mouth that no words of mine could dissuade him. Blunt rejection, flight — no other course was open to me now. I cursed my momentary weakness. I told him once more that he was mistaken, that in contrast to those who were exiled to Hades, I was quite satisfied with my life. I did not have to beg or steal; I was able to make myself useful. I couldn’t think of a greater freedom than mine.

  He chose to ignore these arguments and continued to stare at me in baffled irritation. “You are accepting a life without human dignity.”

  “‘Truly belonging to the human species means refusing to bow to the caprices of fate in essential matters.’”

  “You’re quoting Seneca.
You know better than I that he rejects retirement, that he advises every man to serve the public interest to the best of his ability — how does he put it? — ‘Render service to friends, family, fellow citizens …’ For a man of your calibre to neglect his remarkable gifts — that seems to me to be the same as misusing them. Especially now, when it’s more necessary than ever to defend the values and principles of our fathers. You’re not deaf and blind! Surely you must have noticed that there are forces at work to transform radically the spirit of Rome! There are still enough people who are ready to do their utmost to prevent that and to keep alive the ideal of a balance between commonsense, a sense of duty and a great vision. We need you!”

  A familiar theme. The young client of Olybrius and Probinus, fresh from Alexandria, trembled with emotion and eagerness when one of the powerful Anicii came up to him, gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder and, in the name of the patricians of Rome, commissioned him to write a panegyric celebrating the consulship of the two Anicii nephews.

  He wanted nothing more, this freshly minted Roman, Claudius Claudianus; even before the other had finished speaking, verses began to buzz in the poet’s head, a stream of words broke loose, uncontrollable as the Nile when it overflows its banks.

  I did not stint on compliments in my address to these two newly appointed young consuls, my pupils, to whom I imparted the principles of rhetoric and a smattering of literary knowledge; nor did I disappoint the entire Roman aristocracy sitting behind them, who thought to ensure their future by paying this Imperial homage to the class of Senators. I praised their virtues to the skies; I supported their claim to the Emperor’s favor with a torrent of arguments drawn from history and mythology. But the real object of my love and honor was Rome, City and Empire, legend and reality, a dazzling and sublime world of thoughts and actions which inspired my pen and later strengthened my voice at the ceremonial reading before the Senate. Rome, Goddess and Benefactress, Mother of laws whose reign gives us Heaven on Earth….