– Coming to the law courts this morning? Calvus is defending.
– Coming to Ipsitilla’s? She’s having a party tonight.
– Coming to dinner?
– Coming with us?
– Coming, Catullus?
Yes, I was very Roman. I went everywhere and knew everyone. I knew all about Clodia’s past, but I didn’t believe it could affect ‘us’. The calendar began afresh on the day we met.
I can’t get Manlius’ villa out of my head. Its clean proportions and sober history, a piece of old, plain, heroic Rome in our modern city of palatial villas and roaring, rickety tenements. It’s gone, as it had to go. That hive crammed with dozens of tenants has replaced it.
I walk past there sometimes. In my head I see the villa, more real than any ghost. But the tall building looms above me. The apartment tenants eat, drink, make love, scrabble enough together for a fat bet on their favourite chariot team, argue and die without the slightest idea that you were once there, on that same piece of earth, gracefully sweeping your silk tunic over your head in one movement and then kicking it aside as you walked towards me, naked, for the very first time.
Two
Noon. The white hour, when ghosts walk. May, the month when Rome’s heat is still just about bearable, although the stink from the slums of the Subura grows richer every day.
There’s water in the villa’s fountain now. Manlius has given orders and the sluices have been opened. The janitor has brought in pots of lavender and marigolds.
‘Since you’re coming here so often,’ said Manlius, with a grin that transformed his dark, sober features, ‘let’s get the place into shape.’
But ‘so often’ is only a couple of hours one day, then a blank for a week. Catullus and Clodia have never spent a night together. She may be reckless, but she’s busy, too. She has friends to meet, books to read, poetry to write, bets to lay, massages and hair treatments to be fitted in, visits to her dressmaker and her chiropodist, travels to plan, new dishes to consider. Their chef is a true artist for whom her husband paid a hundred thousand sesterces. All the running of her great household takes up time – let alone the managing of her great husband –
Clodia’s life is like her jewel box, opening to reveal a dozen separate ivory-lined compartments. When he said this, she flashed with anger.
‘And what about you? What about all those poetry evenings with your friends? You’re up half the night with Cornelius or Calvus, you drink until dawn, and then you spend whole days lounging around the Forum and the bathhouses. Wherever there’s a crowd, you’re the centre of it. And don’t think I don’t know about all those girlies you visit in the afternoons. If that’s pining for me, then you’re an excellent actor, my dear poet.’
Her anger dissolved, and she laughed as if his deceptions pleased her, but he was stunned. Was that how he seemed to her? No, she was the one who was acting. She preferred not to admit his passion, and how it coloured every hour of his life.
‘You have your life, and I have mine,’ Clodia continued, snapping shut her hinged silver mirror. ‘Everyone’s like that. We’re together now, so why think about what goes on when we’re apart? It only spoils things.’
‘Not spoiling things’ is one of Clodia’s unspoken laws. She likes to live in the present; she’s at home there.
‘We are not everyone,’ he said, with equal anger.
The fountain in the courtyard chinks water into its basin, over and over, until even the sound of coolness becomes part of heat’s monotony. She has been with him for an hour. They lie together, wiped out, sealed to each other by sweat. He looks at her profile, a few inches from his eyes, but far away. Her eyes are half shut. He can see the shine of them, but not what she’s looking at. Nothing, maybe. Maybe she is thinking of nothing.
It’s too hot to speak or write or move. The bedroom is airless. Even her sparrow is still, in the corner of its cage. Clodia has got into the habit of bringing her sparrow to the villa. She carries its cage on her lap in the litter, and covers it with a cloth so that the bird doesn’t cheep.
It’s too hot to speak or write or move, but with sudden decision she gets up, swings her legs over the side of the bed and walks away naked through the thick warm air as if she’s wading through the sea.
Aemilia will have heated water to bathe her mistress. She’s set up the little room next door like a boudoir. She’ll be ready to stand behind Clodia, dressing her hair as she sits in the basketwork chair Manlius has produced from somewhere or other. And now for the make-up. It’s Aemilia’s job to return Clodia’s bruised, swollen lips to an even carmine, to smooth on foundation paste and massage it into her face, to wipe away the smudged cosmetics and replace them with subtle grey eyeshadow and kohl to create Clodia’s famous ‘Hera’ eyes.
He prefers her without make-up. When he says this, she laughs. That’s rubbish. The woman he fell in love with is the woman whom Aemilia helps to create. I’d be a poor draft of myself without my make-up. You’d want to rewrite me.
But he loves her naked face. It’s true though, that when women haven’t got their make-up on they’ll look sideways, or down, as if to hide themselves. They’re like soldiers, he thinks, building fortifications of mascara and kohl to defend the cities of themselves. He smiles. The sparrow is still watching him. Sometimes, disconcertingly, Catullus will glance up over Clodia’s body when they are making love, and catch the sparrow’s eye. Its keen darkness might mean nothing. A sparrow cannot think. It can only hop and chirp and take crumbs of cake off its mistress’s palm.
The sparrow is watching him with suspicion now, as if it knows what he’s capable of. After all, he’s only just finished groaning, thrashing and shuddering over the body of its mistress.
Sometimes she’s on top of him, fluid as a fish, her teeth bared. Sometimes she dives and clutches the bed linen as he straddles her and then her muffled, raucous cries make the sparrow hop nervously from one end of its perch to the other.
There’s not far to hop. The perch is narrow and the cage ungenerous. It doesn’t matter, because Clodia is always taking her sparrow out to play. She’s so familiar with the catch of the cage that she undoes it without looking, opens the little door and puts her hand inside. The sparrow hops on to her wrist and fastens his claws delicately on to the bone at the base of her thumb. He chirrups as she draws him out of the cage, transfers him from her wrist to the palm of her hand and brings him up to her face.
She brushes his body against her cheek. His wings are folded tight. He never attempts to open them, not at this moment. His body is slim and she passes him over the smooth warm flesh of her cheek in the direction of his flight feathers, so nothing ruffles. His beak touches the contour of her lips. His taut, sharp little beak, still closed, like his wings. It outlines her lips, pressing a little. She laughs. When she laughs it’s the signal. He nips the cushiony fullness of her lips, quite gently.
After a while she takes him away and holds him at arm’s length, her hand curved now, holding him inside her palm so that his body throbs there, hidden. Only the dark bubbles of his eyes show, and his closed beak. She laughs in her throat, and squeezes very gently, so that the sparrow feels the pressure of her hand. He doesn’t struggle.
Catullus loves to watch Clodia with her sparrow. She’s gentle, warm. She can hide those qualities, as she hides the sparrow in her hand, but they’re there. He believes in the real Clodia, revealed in tenderness. Or at least, he tells himself that he does…
But sometimes there’s something disconcerting about Clodia and the sparrow. His naked, eager girl, and the little bird. The way she moves the sparrow’s beak over her lips.
‘He’s my true friend,’ she says. ‘I believe every word he says. How many friends can you say that of?’ And she laughs.
The sparrow is probably laughing too. The man flings himself on to his back and lies with his head pillowed on his folded arms.
Sometimes, if you take up a position of relaxation, you trick yourself into
believing that you are relaxed. He plays the part of a man at his ease, enjoying a siesta after sex, on a day when the heat is so intense that it’s almost frightening. The streets will be empty. Dogs will lie in slices of shade as thin as crescent moons. No man of sense would do anything but lie on his bed, on his back, pillowing his arms, to dream and listen to the fountain.
What a lie it all is. He’s listening out for her, of course, trying to catch the tiniest laugh or chink of a glass bottle-stopper. She’s disappeared into her inner sanctum, and he can’t follow her there because he knows exactly the cold, hard, slightly scornful stare that will greet him if he does. Aemilia will be wiping Clodia’s temples with alcohol, or reducing the flush on her cheeks. Both women will be rapt, intent on their rites.
He knows exactly what goes on between them, because of course he’s watched through the doorway when Clodia’s left the door ajar. Only a few weeks ago she was still happy to let him watch, or even mess about with the precious little jars and bottles and their stoppers. But then she said that Aemilia couldn’t concentrate if he was there.
‘You’re putting her off, my dear poet. You have no idea how alarming you are when you stare like that. It’s worse than a cat watching a bird.’
Clodia still left the door open the next few times. He watched as if he were watching a play not from the auditorium but from a space of invisibility right on the stage, close enough to touch the actors. He watched as if he were to be cross-questioned in court on the techniques of make-up. He watched the way Aemilia dipped a tiny brush into grey powder, brushed a line above the lid and smudged it carefully with a minute sponge-tipped applicator, while Clodia lowered her eyes and kept perfectly still. He watched while Aemilia massaged her mistress’s gums with a special paste made of orris, mint and salt, and while Clodia rinsed her mouth and spat into the bronze basin.
But why not watch a woman, when you’ve only just finished anointing every crevice of her body with sweat, saliva and semen? What is left to be secret? Nevertheless, Aemilia closes the door on him now, with a prudish, triumphant look. It has to be on Clodia’s orders.
Aemilia pours perfume slowly, with a care that would seem exaggerated if you didn’t know the price of attar of roses, or the quick flare of Clodia’s temper. Clodia raises her hands and rubs the perfume into the loose, glossy thickness of her hair. But she only rubs it a little this time, perfunctorily, and then she gets bored and gestures to Aemilia to finish the job. Aemilia flushes with pleasure. She loves perfuming her mistress’s hair, and Clodia, from spite or contrariness, rarely allows it.
With her strong fingers Aemilia massages Clodia’s scalp, parting the hair and dividing it into sections so that every lock can be dealt with in order, in time. She massages first with her fingers, and then more strongly, with the heel of her palms. Finally, with butterfly fingertips, she strokes Clodia’s temples. Who would have thought Aemilia’s touch could be so delicate?
The room fills with the smell of Clodia’s hair, warm and damp after sex. Clodia’s eyes are shut. After she has massaged her mistress’s head for about a quarter of an hour, Aemilia takes an ivory comb and begins to comb, spreading the strands out across the air and then letting them fall against Clodia’s bare shoulders. When she finds a knot she teases it out gently, watching Clodia’s shoulders for the signs of tension that mean she is about to lash out with a sharp, stinging slap.
But today, there is no slap. He’d hear it if there were, even through the door. Clodia is no weakling, and has no inhibition to make her pull her punches. She’s like one of those pets or children of whom their carers say fondly that ‘she doesn’t know her own strength’. Those on the receiving end of the bite or the slap are quick to know it. Aemilia’s tactic is to burst into noisy tears and throw herself on the ground, sobbing, until Clodia says, ‘Here, Aemilia,’ and pops a square of quince paste into her slave’s mouth. It’s a game, and they both know it’s a game. After such a storm, Clodia will allow her body slave to perfume and massage her pubic hair.
‘One of these days you’ll kill me, you will,’ moans Aemilia. ‘You don’t know your own strength, my lady.’ He wonders if she’s right. Could his girl be capable of killing, and if she did kill, what expression would cross her face? He used to think that he knew all Clodia’s expressions, but now he’s not so sure.
Sparrow, sparrow. Beautiful little sparrow, dear little sparrow that my girl loves more than her two eyes. A shocking poem has been doing the rounds, which hints that his girl uses her sparrow to do more than caress her cheeks or her lips. After all, it’s completely tame. Clodia believes he wrote the poem. She has faith in his malice.
He rolls on to his side, in the ruck of sweaty bed linen, and stares at the bird. So smug in its cage, so sure that it’s wanted, treasured, possessed. Hop up and down, then, little bird, and believe whatever you want to believe. You can even believe your mistress is kind if you want.
Kind? She wouldn’t recognize the word if it came out of her own mouth. She’d kick it out of the way, as one kicks a broken twig off a raked gravel path.
That bitch Aemilia is still with her. A pity the door is so thick, too thick for him to listen to them giggling, whispering, moaning to each other. That shut door is a piece of business he can’t fail to understand. It says: You think I need you, but I don’t need you. I can climb straight off your prick back into my own world where what matters most is whether the perfume that my steward ordered from Turkey is of the same quality as last year’s from Syria. And my world is where I love my sparrow as much as I love you. Or more. A thousand kisses, and then a hundred more. Kiss kiss kiss kissy-kiss kiss kiss until the mind gets tired of counting.
But a man has to count every one of your kisses, Clodia, when they are given to someone else.
Yes, you may well look at me like that, little sparrow. Your mistress will be back soon. Even she won’t be able to drag out the ritual much longer – the slaps and the tears and the crushing scent of cosmetics, and the reek of Aemilia’s sweat because she never washes her armpits properly no matter how sharply you order her to do so. And perhaps she knows that you like it really, don’t you, Clodia, that rankness of Aemilia’s? You told me so once, when we were lying so close together I thought we were one body, one blood. You didn’t even seem to me like a woman any more. I held you as I would have held my son, handed to me washed and wrapped after birth. Yes, it’s comic, isn’t it?
I held you like that. You were so fragile, warm, tender, coupled to me by the sweat of sex as if you’d been joined to me by the blood of birth. I have never loved anyone as purely as I loved you then. Even your thoughts seemed as breakable as eggs, to be cupped in my two hands and cherished. Suddenly you stirred a little, and opened your lips. I even drew you closer, my Clodia, so I could taste your words as they formed like miracles out of breath and spit and whatever else it is that words are made from.
‘You know, that smell of Aemilia’s armpits,’ you murmured, ‘it’s sexy, isn’t it, in spite of the goatiness? Really, it’s quite a turn-on…’
And then you lapsed back into those thoughts I’d been cherishing, no doubt with a foolish smile on my face. A smile like that is a sign of weakness, and it has to be punished.
The sun went in, Clodia. It’s always like that with you, isn’t it? A beautiful morning, a stretch of mist over the rosy countryside – and then the gods wake up belching and farting and there’s a rain of hailstones like dirty eggs. Harvest’s ruined. Everybody runs for shelter, cursing.
He rolls on to his back again, and stares up at the ceiling. The best thing to do would be to get up, manage a calm, affectionate parting and go off to the Baths to sweat it all out of him. Meet friends, catch up on the gossip, get asked to dinner somewhere, drink too much, finish off the night in a blur where anything might happen and it doesn’t really matter if nothing does. Go and see another woman, Cynthia maybe, or Ipsitilla. The task is to be happy without Clodia. And if that’s not possible, he can at least seem happy without her, j
ust for one evening. He managed it for years and years before he knew she existed. It would be nice to see Ipsitilla… she has such a beautiful laugh, warm and dirty…
The door opens. Sometimes he’s sure Clodia can hear his thoughts. Just as the rope that holds him begins to slacken, she pulls it tight again.
‘Let’s go to Baiae,’ she says, smiling at him from the doorway.
‘Baiae?’ he repeats stupidly.
‘It’s time to get out of Rome. The heat is worse than ever this year. Everybody will be gone by the middle of next week. I want to have at least six weeks in Baiae before we go to the hills.’
‘Everybody? Even your husband?’ he asks unforgivingly. ‘Is he going to Baiae, too?’
‘Of course he isn’t going,’ she replies coolly. ‘He always makes a tour of the estates in late May and June. Besides, can you imagine him in Baiae? There’s so much to disapprove of, he wouldn’t know where to look first.’
‘But you would.’
‘I would look at you,’ she says. She crosses the room to him, kneels at the side of the bed and kisses him gently on the forehead. It’s impossible to believe that her soft, wide gaze could ever harden. ‘Let’s. Do let’s. Come to Baiae. We’ll have such fun. Of course we’ll have to be sensible – but you know how much more relaxed things are down there. I’m going to take a course of thermal treatments.’
‘Thermal treatments?’
‘Rheumatism in my shoulder,’ she explains. ‘It’s been troubling me more and more since about – when was it? – last September?’