Читать книгу The Passion of Mary Magdalen - Elizabeth Cunningham - Страница 19

Joseph, whom my fellow whores called Uncle Joseph, was as good as his word. He came every day for an hour before we went to the baths to give me lessons in written Greek. The letters amazed me; they were so tiny and precise, moving in lines from left to right, each word so small compared to the amount of space it would take to write the same thing in ogham. But then Celts modeled ogham after the flight of birds—the whole sky for a scroll. Greek looked more like the scratch of small bird feet.

At my insistence, Joseph began to teach me the Hebrew alphabet, too, which went in the opposite direction. “Backwards!” he muttered. “A stubborn and stiff-necked people, our God calls us. We always have to be different.” The Hebrew letters were easier for me to remember, because they came from living things, like gimmel, or camel, shaped like the strange humped beasts my beloved had described for me. Though I was still wary of the written word, I looked forward to the distraction of my lessons with Joseph, the brusque impersonality with which he taught that covered, for the most part, the unnerving tenderness he had shown me on the first night we met. Nor did he ever go upstairs with me again. I knew he’d dined several times with Domitia Tertia, but he kept away from the whores’ parlor. I didn’t know what to make of his eschewing my bed, but I confess I was relieved. I did not want to ask myself why.

Then, one morning, Joseph didn’t show up for lessons. I noticed that I was mildly disconsolate, but I didn’t have much time to wonder about his absence. Just as I was heading back upstairs, Bonia came to summon me to Domitia Tertia’s private chamber, a place I had never been before, the secret center of The Vine and Fig Tree.

The domina received me reclining on a couch, which was where wealthy Romans generally were when they were not walking around the Forum or soaking in the baths. Behind her a mosaic depicted a scene I did not recognize. I did not know Greek or Roman stories. (Uncle Joseph had insisted we begin by reading Plato, as he found me utterly lacking in any rational philosophical foundation. The poets and playwrights could wait.) The mosaic featured a severe yet also seductive woman, not unlike Domitia Tertia—or one of my mothers. She stood on an island; stylized waves lapped the shore. She was surrounded by animals—lions, wolves, and a whole herd of pigs. The mosaic evoked a sense of wildness, remoteness. In fact, it made me homesick.

“You like the mosaic,” Domitia Tertia observed, not inviting me to sit. “Do you know who the woman is?”

“I think it might be you, domina.”

“You’re perceptive. I asked the artist to depict Circe on her island. An insolent but talented young man, he manages to hint that there is a likeness between us. Do you know the story of Circe?”

“No, domina.”

“Sit.” She indicated a low stool on the other side of the table from her couch. “Long, long ago, much longer ago than those philosophers Joseph wants you to read, in the time of the gods and heroes, Circe lived on Aeaea, an island off the coast of Italia. Some called her a goddess, some a sorceress. She was the daughter of Helio, the sun god, and Perse, an ocean nymph.”

Just the opposite of me, the daughter of the sea god and my mother Grainne of the golden hair, the sun herself, I mused, lulled by the storytelling, forgetting for a moment that god my father was a lie my mothers told because it made a better story than the truth.

“When a lover displeased her or rejected her, she turned him into an animal. All except Odysseus,” Domitia went on. “He cheated. Hermes gave him an herb called moly to protect him against Circe’s magic. She had turned his advance guard into swine. But she let Odysseus go unharmed, though he had been her lover for a year. She did more than that; she helped him, gave him directions to Hades, so that he could consult with the spirits of the dead. That is how the story goes. People are always telling stories of heroes outwitting witches. But I personally don’t think the moly affected Circe’s actions at all.”

I waited attentively. Whose story was she telling me?

“The name Circe means hawk. A predatory bird with keen sight. I think she saw it all. I think she knew exactly what she was doing.”

“Now then,” she shifted from story-telling mode to her more familiar business manner, “do you know why I called you here today, Red?”

Suddenly I had hope, wild desperate hope. Joseph had changed his mind; he was buying me from her. He was even now making preparations for departure. Like Circe, she would help him go home…with me, even though he had been her lover. Holy Moly!

“I would not presume to know your reasons, domina,” was all I said.

She gave me a sharp look. My imitation of a good, submissive slave must have seemed just that—an imitation, a subtly mocking one.

“Listen, Red, Rhuad, whatever Joseph calls you. You be straight with me and I’ll be straight with you. As you know, you’ve been on probation and under keener observation than you might imagine.”

I had no doubt of that, though it seemed rather absurd—obsessive-compulsive to use one of your terms—to expend so much effort monitoring a slave, a disposable commodity as I had been repeatedly reminded. I made no comment as I studied a chipped fingernail that one of the ornatrices would have to fix today. I knew my display of indifference bordered on insolence.

“Look at me when I speak to you.”

I raised my eyes and met hers. They were fierce and dark and distant, all at the same time. Hawk woman, sorceress, ruler of her own little walled island. Did she turn her discarded lovers into cats?

“You have a gift, Red. Like any gift, wealth, talent, beauty—you could squander yours.”

“What is my gift?” I asked after a moment.

“You are a talented whore.”

Fucking great, I thought. My eyes twitched, I wanted so badly to roll them.

“You don’t want to be here. Why else do you think I’ve kept a potential gold mine under house arrest for so long? You despise being a slave. You’re very bad at it. You despise me. You don’t hide it well. Yet when you are a whore, you are a whore. You don’t stint. It’s like a craftsman doing some minor job with care and precision, though no one else will notice. You can’t help yourself, can you?”

I didn’t despise her—that word implied contempt. But I hated her very much.

“Why did you call me here? Where is Joseph?”

She looked ruffled, angry for the first time. “Joseph’s whereabouts are no business of yours unless he requires you. Don’t get ideas. And no, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t put a stop to the lessons. He is perfectly right; an educated whore could be an asset. In fact, he left you a scroll to keep reading while he’s gone.”

“Gone? When will he come back?”

“Did I or did I not just tell you Joseph’s business is none of your business?”

“You did.” I said. If I shed a tear in front of Domitia Tertia, I will find a way to cut out my own heart, I vowed to myself. A soothing thought. There.

“As for why I have called you here, I swear I have almost changed my mind. I told you to look at me.”

I did with all the calm of renewed hopelessness.

“Flavius Anecius is giving a banquet for his son, who puts on the manly toga tomorrow. He is also hosting chariot races at Circus Maximus. He has reserved a block of seats for the Vine and Fig Tree, and he has asked that you be among the entertainers at the banquet. Such occasions can be lucrative. Joseph has told me about doing business with your people. I know you count wealth in cattle. I want to make sure you understand: if you save your coins and bank them with the House, you can buy your freedom within years. Mere years. Do you understand?”

I’m not stupid, bitch. I know what a coin is worth, but you have no idea what a year costs me. “Yes, domina.”

“You do know what happens to runaway slaves?”

“They are killed.” My shoulders wanted to shrug, but I caught them in time.

“Ha! If they had only death to fear, there would be far fewer slaves in Rome. Listen well, Red. Runaway slaves are publicly beaten; their flesh is branded, and they are sent to the salt mines to be worked to death.”

No answer seemed to be required.

“Joseph says you’re too smart to be stupid. I have my doubts about that. You decide who is right. Go now. Be dressed and ready to go with Bone to Circus Maximus at the third hour tomorrow morning.”

I stood up, looking again from Domitia Tertia to her likeness Circe—what Domitia might have been if she’d lived on a shining isle like my mothers, if she were wild instead of hardened, if she were a goddess, instead of a Roman brothel keeper.

“Wait. Here is the scroll.” She reached under the couch. “When you are not studying, Bonia will keep it locked in one of the chests. No,” she cautioned, “this scroll is inferior work not worth much money. Don’t even think about trying to sell it.”

I hadn’t in fact thought about it; I needed to learn to think like that.

“Thank you, domina.”

“Thank Joseph,” she sighed.

And for just a moment she looked merely human and very weary.

All right. I’ll admit it to you. I was excited to be going beyond the confines of the Vine and Fig Tree. My mind knew perfectly well I would be no freer outside the walls than in, but my body shouted, yes! And my imagination, some fertile mating of the two, whispered, anything might happen. There’s a chance now, there’s a chance. You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that we were being transported in curtained litters. I wanted to walk. I wanted to know the lay of the land with my feet. But Domitia Tertia conscientiously flouted any law enacted against whores. We had to ride in litters precisely because it was illegal for us to do so. Another reason oral law is better than written; if you have to hold a law library in your head you stick to the essentials.

Bone and his assistants, three male slaves on loan for the day from Flavius Anecius, escorted us on foot (well, it would have taken a dozen litter bearers to heft the eunuch). They kept an eye out for the aedile, and Bone repeatedly and futilely shouted at us to stop sticking our heads outside the curtains. He could hardly be heard over Succula and Berta’s tour guide patter as they called to me from their litters, “And here is the best place to buy pigeon pie, and look over there. That entire block of insulae belongs to Claudius Appius, and he owns all the shops, too. They say he is richer than Croesus.”

I didn’t catch all their words, and I didn’t pay much attention, because neither of them was saying things like, “and if you take that street there, it leads to the nearest gate out of the city.” So I just took in the bustle. Everyone was out and about trying to finish errands early. Some vendors were already closing up or packing their wares to sell to the crowds at Circus Maximus where all Rome, rich and poor, would soon be.

Our route became increasingly hilly and circuitous, whether to keep us disoriented or to find the least crowded approach to the Circus Maximus I wasn’t sure. We were winding down a hill on the other side of the Circus from Palatine Hill with its enormous temples, palaces, gardens, everything on a godlike scale. I was more interested in the sky; I had been starving for it after seeing only a small cut-out square of sky for months. Now here it was, a heaping bowl of blue, enough for everyone, with birds circling it—high up an eagle, lower down the flocking birds wheeling and turning, now invisible, now flashing as the light caught their wings at different angles. Then the sky narrowed as we wound down the hill towards the Murcia Valley.

“Red,” called Succula, “we’ll be coming to the Temple of Venus Obsequens soon.”

The compliant Venus, I translated to myself, the accommodating Venus. I had barely become acquainted with Roman deities; they struck me as petty and cruel, like the Romans themselves. You had to wonder about a people who worshipped their emperors as gods. Civic religion has always struck me as both dismal and dangerous to the health of the general population.

“She’s the protectress of whores and adulterers,” Succula went on.

I was not impressed. In Rome there was a Venus for everything, including Venus Cloacina, the goddess of the sewer—she helped the Romans maintain the illusion that their shit didn’t stink.

“What does she protect us from?” I quipped but not loud enough for Succula to hear. If Succula wanted to believe there was a goddess who cared about whores, let her. As for me—I stopped for a moment, not quite prepared for my next thought—I had no gods. I had left mine behind in the wells and groves of Tir na mBan and Mona. Or you could say they had abandoned me, cast me out. I was a slave and an exile in a place where I had no connection with the local gods and wanted none. As for my beloved’s god—the invisible one, the jealous one, the portable one who was any and everywhere—I thought that Joseph was quite right to take refuge in Greek philosophy. I was through with gods, I decided.

“It’s right down this alley,” called Succula.

With no warning, the dream I’d had my first night at the Vine and Fig Tree came back to me—only now it wasn’t a dream. I could hear the sound of the water moving through the reeds, the whispering rasp of snakes; I smelled the mud; then the drums started and the women’s voices singing, keening, wild as wind, high as birds. Before I knew it, I was running in my silly Roman sandals on the hard stones, in the narrow alley, running straight into the dark mouth of the Temple, the dark waters of the river.

You may argue that what I saw was a trick of the eye caused by going from bright morning light to cavernous dusk of what turned out to be a hole-in-the-wall shrine. But in that suspended moment I felt as though I had stepped into the cosmos, stars and comets blazing by me, the waters rushing past me. And then I saw her, shining horns above a face black and luminous as a clear night, her head crowned with a many-petaled star. Her breasts flooded the sky with milk; her wide wings were made of fire, of fine mist, of colors I did not know how to name. I had known her all my life, and I had never known her before now. But she had called me. She had found me in this terrible place far from home, and she called me to her.

“Bride,” I tried to whisper, for so she must be, “Bride.”

“Welcome, daughter, in the name of Isis.”

In a literal blink of an eye the goddess was gone. A plain middle-aged priestess in an unadorned white stola greeted me. A half-dozen other priestesses stood by, holding frame drums and sistrums. They made a semi-circle around a statue—a small unimpressive statue, garishly painted like all Roman statues and dressed in gold cloth. The figure held a sistrum in one hand and what I came to know as an ankh in the other. She had been garlanded with fresh flowers.

“Isis?” I repeated.

“Our goddess is called by many names: Demeter, Aphrodite, Dyktynna, Proserpina, Hekate, Bellona, a thousand other names. The Temple is known from the outside as The Temple of Venus. Within these walls we know the mother of all, mistress of the living and the dead, ruler of wind and water, builder of ships, guide of the planets, queen of the stars, star of the sea, giver of grain by her true name—Almighty Isis.”

“Red!”

The door darkened with Bone’s huge bulk. The priestess, who had been swaying as she chanted her goddess’s attributes, looked past me towards the eunuch, her eyes mild as a cow’s, utterly unperturbed. When I turned to face Bone, he hesitated in the doorway, not so much as a toe inside. There is something intimidating to a man about a phalanx of priestesses.

“Red?” He sounded confused, as if he wasn’t sure who I was, though he was looking straight at me. Was the light that dim?

“I’m coming, Bone.”

“If you are a fugitive, the goddess gives sanctuary,” the priestess said.

“She is a slave,” stated Bone, recovering himself.

“Our goddess makes no distinctions between slave and free.”

“Your goddess may not distinguish between slave and free, domina, but Roman law does. There is no sanctuary for runaway slaves.”

“Listen, Bone.” I went to him. I had to assure him that I hadn’t been trying to escape or I would never be allowed outside again. It was hard to persuade eunuchs of anything, because, in contrast to most men, their brains were actually between their ears. The usual methods didn’t work. “I wasn’t running away. I just got carried away. I heard the drums and the singing, and it reminded me of…of home.” I didn’t want to talk about my dream of the river. “I had to see what the music was. That’s all. I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

“You will come back,” the priestess called after me; it was neither a question nor a command; I recognized the tone: it was a prophecy. “You belong to her.”

I looked back at the priestess; her face was impassive, masked in the maddening way of priestesses.

“I don’t belong to…” anyone, I finished silently as Bone’s huge hand closed easily around my upper arm.

But it wasn’t Bone’s unspoken assertion of Domitia Tertia’s ownership that silenced me.

“No one belongs to himself or herself,” my beloved had once insisted, angry with me for my arrogance. I knew what he meant: he belonged to his god, Yahweh. A god I resented and mistrusted, whom I had nonetheless invoked in the end to save Esus’s life.

“Yeshua ben Miriam,” I had said. “In the name of the unnameable one, the god of your forefathers, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I command you to go.”

He didn’t want to, but when I called his god’s name, he had no choice. And so he left me on the shore with no god or goddess to protect me; or so it seemed then.

Now here I was, stepping out of some fusty little temple back into the streets of Rome, not sure of what had just happened. Who was Isis? What did she want with me? And what did she have to do with my dream of the river and the floating coffin?