Roma - Saylor Steven - Страница 103
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“What did you say?” asked Plautus, as the ovation began to die down.
“Nothing,” said Kaeso. “Nothing at all.”
The play was a rollicking success.
After it was over, Kaeso declined an invitation to celebrate at Plautus’s house. Limping slightly, he set off alone. The day’s official festivities were over, but there were still a great many people out and about. Kaeso was jostled by the crowd. More than once he had to sidestep a pool of vomit left by someone who had celebrated too much. He only vaguely noticed these irritations; as always after seeing Scipio, he was restless and unsettled, preoccupied by thoughts of how his life might have turned out had he been a different man with a different destiny, a man like Scipio, or else a man who could have been Scipio’s comrade-in-arms, worthy to share his adventures, his glory, his tent…
As he drew nearer to his destination, a house on the Aventine Hill, the crowds thinned. The streets were almost empty. He sighed with relief, glad to be out of the crush and knowing that the place where he was headed would offer relief from all his earthly cares.
On a respectable street in a respectable neighborhood, he came to a house where all the windows were shuttered. He rapped at the door. The peephole slid open. For a moment, he forgot the pass phrase, but then it came back to him: “Upon Mount Falernus in Campania grow the grapes from which Falernian wine is made.” The phrase was changed often, but always had something to do with wine, because wine was Bacchus’s gift to mankind, and essential to his worship.
The door opened, then was quickly shut after Kaeso stepped inside. The garden at the center of the house had been closed off, and all the windows had been shuttered, with heavy hangings pulled across them to keep sounds from reaching the neighbors. As a result, the interior was quite dark except for the soft illumination cast by lamps, and the sounds from within were strangely muffled.
Those sounds included exotic music played upon tambourines and pipes. The tune was by turns languorous and dreamy, then fast and frenzied. Familiar faces, male and female, emerged from the shadows. They smiled and bowed their heads in deference to him. “Welcome, high priest,” they said in unison.
One of them whispered in his ear, “A new acolyte is within, awaiting initiation.”
Kaeso raised his arms from his sides until they were parallel with the floor. The men and women undressed him, then anointed his naked body from head to foot with sweet-smelling oil. A cup filled with wine was pressed to his lips. He threw back his head and swallowed. Wine overflowed his mouth and trickled down onto his chest, where greedy tongues lapped it up. Hands glided over his shoulders and chest and hips and buttocks, caressing him, fondling him, exciting him.
He was taken by both hands and guided into a room that smelled of sweat and incense. Here the music was louder, and he could now discern the murmur of a low, insistent chant in which the name of Bacchus was invoked. The room was hazy with incense, and crowded with warm, naked bodies pressed close together. Presiding above the crowd, upon a high pedestal, was a statue of the god—Bacchus, deity of wine and euphoria, with grape leaves in his air and a smile of bliss upon his bearded face.
Kaeso gazed up at the god with reverence and gratitude. The coming of the cult to Roma had marked the beginning of a new epoch in his life. In the warm, secret embrace of the god, Kaeso had at last found a purpose to his existence.
Kaeso abruptly experienced a fluttering in his head, of the sort that sometimes preceded one of his falling spells, but he felt no anxiety. The priests and priestesses of Bacchus had explained to him that his affliction was not a curse but a mark of special favor from the god. Just as Scipio had always enjoyed a special relationship with Jupiter, so Kaeso had at last discovered his own special link to the god Bacchus.
The fluttering in his head subsided. On this occasion, the god had seen fit merely to pass through him without striking him senseless.
Someone whispered in his ear, “High priest, the initiate is ready for the ritual.”
His rigid sex was firmly grasped, and in his other ear a voice whispered, “And you appear to be ready for the initiate!”
Kaeso touched the fascinum that lay upon his bare breast. He tightly closed his eyes. Step by step, the acolytes guided him forward until his sex was met by a circle of resistance, then swallowed by a convulsive embrace. He heard the muffled cry of the initiate, followed by a whimper and a groan. Kaeso surrendered to a state of bliss.
Who was the initiate before him? Male or female, young or old? He did not know. Behind his closed eyes it was Scipio he envisioned, Scipio when his hair was still long and not a single battle scar had yet marred his perfect beauty. It was Scipio into whom he thrust all the love and longing inside him.
Even in the throes of ecstasy, he knew that his vision of Scipio was only a fantasy. But the bliss he felt was genuine. When all was said and done, only these brief moments of release were real. All else was illusion. Earthly glory was meaningless; Scipio himself had admitted as much. Scipio had reached a pinnacle of so-called greatness unknown to other men, but had Scipio ever attained the unspeakable delights that Kaeso had experienced since he joined the Cult of Bacchus?
183 B.C.
Kaeso ran his fingers through the mop of graying hair on his head and closed his eyes to rest them for a moment. How weak his vision had grown in recent years! When he was younger, even well into his forties, he had been able to read without effort all those poems by Ennius and plays by Plautus, no matter how tiny the letters. Now, squint as he might, it was almost impossible for him to read any of the documents spread before him. Reading was his secretary’s job, of course, but Kaeso wanted to make sure that no mistakes were made.
He had decided to liquidate all his assets. A group of buyers had been found to purchase his theatrical troupe, and his staff of scribes was being sold piecemeal. He was going over his will, as well, though the terms were simple enough; his entire estate would be left in trust to his granddaughter, Menenia.
Kaeso opened his eyes and gazed about his study, at all the pigeonhole bookcases stuffed with scrolls. Over the years he had accumulated a considerable library, anticipating long years of retirement in which he would require many books to keep him company.
Amid the bookcases, there was a small shrine, a little stone altar upon which stood a miniature statue of Bacchus. Kaeso gazed into the god’s smiling eyes for a long moment, then looked away.
“I think our work is done. You may go now,” he said to the secretary. “Send in Cletus.”
The secretary withdrew. A few moments later a handsome young slave with broad shoulders and long hair stepped into the room.
“Cletus, I wish to go for a walk today.”
“Of course, master. The weather is quite fine.” The slave offered a thickly muscled forearm for Kaeso to lean upon. Kaeso did not really need the support, but he enjoyed clinging to Cletus’s arm anyway.
Together, they took a long stroll around the city.
First, Kaeso visited the arch which had been built to commemorate Scipio’s victories, conspicuously located on the the path that led to the top of the Capitoline. The relief carvings depicting the triumphs of Africanus were as magnificent as he remembered. It was a worthy monument to his friend.
Next, he ventured to the necropolis outside the Esquiline Gate, where he placed flowers upon the humble funeral monument of Plautus. This day was the first anniversary of the playwright’s death. How Kaeso missed him—his keen insights, his piercing wit, his unflagging loyalty to his friends. At least the scores of plays that Plautus had written would live on; Kaeso had kept copies of them all.
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