‘You look as if you could do with another drink,’ said Furius to Catullus, signalling to the slave. Furius sat down, obviously wanting to be tactful while longing to talk about the whole business. What a tasty dish of gossip they all made. Catullus drank and said nothing. He wasn’t going to give Furius an opening. Without looking at Rufus, he could feel exactly where he was in the room. Why couldn’t Furius stop looking at him like that?
You and Clodia – Why won’t you listen to your friends? She’s not worth it. The things I could tell you about her –
I know you could, Furius. Do you really think I’m that stupid? Let me tell you something. Keep on behaving as if something isn’t real, even when it is, and after a while – quite a long while, I have to admit – very slowly, it becomes less dangerous. It won’t work with a lion or an elephant, obviously, but for the more subtle terrors of life it is very effective.
Catullus drank down his wine, aware that Rufus’ eyes were on him from across the room, sharp and measuring. He could hear Rufus’ voice, but not what he was saying. People were talking to Rufus, laughing, treating him as a friend. Catullus felt as if his head was on fire. He had to get out of there.
That was when Rufus came across.
‘I have your elegy by heart,’ he said quietly. ‘A great poem.’
‘I’m leaving,’ Catullus said, too loudly. He stumbled as he stood up. People were watching and he thought Rufus was looking at him with something close to pity. He shut his mind.
Why go over and over an evening that tastes of acid? It’s not going to get him anywhere. He should be tough. He should make up his mind and stick to it. Months and months have gone by since Clodia said those golden words that so far have meant nothing:
‘If I married anyone it would be you.’
And why shouldn’t she marry? There’s nothing to hold her back. It’s more than a year since Metellus Celer’s death.
Lesbia says she would rather marry me than anyone…
He’s still going to believe in her. He’s going to trust that she means what she says. Or rather, you’re going to take what you’re given, says a cold, unhappy voice in his head.
There’s been plenty of evidence this past year, if he’s needed it, of just how ruthless that family can be. Pretty Boy enjoyed his dish of revenge against Cicero at last, no matter that it was served cold. With a certain amount of bribery, corruption and general leaning on the body politic, he finally succeeded in getting old Chickpea banished on the grounds that Roman citizens had been put to death illegally under his consulship. As soon as Cicero was on his way, Pretty Boy’s thugs had worked over his property with the expertise of a demolition gang. No one dared stop them. Even that big house on the Palatine, that piece of pretension that had been Chickpea’s pride and joy, the symbol of his arrival at the very summit of Roman society – Pretty Boy had it knocked down. He went even further and started to build a temple on the site, so that once it was consecrated Chickpea would never be able to rebuild there. Pretty Boy’s vengeance was as neat as it was ugly.
It doesn’t make you feel so good about yourself, to know that a power-crazy psychopath like Pretty Boy has got a soft spot for you, not just on account of his sister but because, apparently, ‘He really likes your style.’ Pretty Boy intimidates the Senate, bribes juries, beats his enemies to death in the streets or sets fire to their houses, and Clodia just smiles and says, ‘He won’t bother you, darling, he’s incredibly sweet and loyal to the people he likes.’
She’s even let him know, to his horror and astonishment, that her brother was ‘rather hoping you might write something about him, darling’. But she must have picked up his lack of enthusiasm, and so far no more has been said.
Clodia has settled down to being a widow. Perhaps ‘settled down’ is not quite the correct expression –
He gets up, and begins to pace across the courtyard and back, as if he’s trying to get away from himself.
With a woman like Clodia, you have to accept certain things. She is never going to live according to the conventions –
– No, you stupid bastard, and you’re never going to stop thinking in clichés and circumlocutions.
How his head hurts. Lucius is right, he ought to take more water with it. But it’s around the fifth or sixth cup that everything seems to lighten, and he feels himself again. The trouble is that he doesn’t stop, he goes on drinking past six cups, and then seven. Darkness settles around the corners of his mind, and creeps slowly inward.
He is never going to stop Clodia sleeping with other men. The best he can hope for is that she’ll be discreet enough not to shove it in his face. And if he’s lucky, she’ll stop that trick of staring at him wide-eyed and saying: ‘But, darling, why do you take it so seriously? It’s got nothing to do with how I feel about you.’
The best he’s got to look forward to is that she’ll let him pretend. What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you; or, at least, there are subtle shades of knowing. You can put up defences. You can stop knowledge getting into the fibre of your being, where it hurts most. Rufus was never a real friend: dismiss him, cut him off, and then he’ll have no further power. It is only through Clodia that Rufus has power, because she seems to delight in forcing ‘her dear poet’ to know everything.
He feels like a town with its walls battered by siege engines. He can hold out, though. He can continue to believe in her, because he’s got no choice. Once his walls are down and the invaders have swarmed all through the streets, then he’s dead anyway. He’ll have nothing.
It’s beautiful here in the courtyard, with the morning sun just strong enough to warm and not yet fierce enough to burn. Clusters of new leaves are spreading out on the vines that cover the pergola above his head. A pair of blackbirds nests there every year. Lucius has ordered the slaves not to disturb the nest, on pain of punishment. They’d have the eggs out in five minutes otherwise, and suck them dry.
Even the low box hedges are bright with new growth. His favourite tree is the mulberry, over there in the corner where its fruits won’t drop on anyone’s clothes. Mulberry stains don’t come out. The planting is simple and traditional. Dark, slender cypress; broad mulberry; precise rows of box around ornamental beds. No ostentatious topiary, no specially commissioned statues. He likes everything to look as if it’s been there for ever, and has just happened to grow this way.
The air smells of thyme, rosemary and marigolds. Once, back in Sirmio, Lucius discovered a rosemary bush with the darkest flowers they had ever seen. Their blue was so rich and deep that it was almost purple. Lucius took cuttings, and now they have bushes all around the courtyard, thick with bees all summer long.
There are four wall fountains, and a simple marble bowl in the centre of the courtyard, where water bubbles to the brim and spills over in skeins to the larger bowl below. A toad usually squats between the stone columns that support the bowl and the falling water. Lucius talks about replacing this fountain with a larger, more ambitious piece of engineering – he fancies a statue of Juturna – but the sound of water falling is all Catullus wants.
He closes his eyes. The air smells of bruised thyme, of stone, of water and of the rosemary he has just rubbed between his fingers. He should be happy. He will be happy, and plan his future as other men do, confident that what he wants will happen.
‘I would rather marry you than anyone.’
(Night is sleep. Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,/nox est perpetua una dormienda. Our sole short day is set/into enduring night. A long, forever sleep, a night that never ends. Unless you’re a fool, you must seize the day.)
He smells rosemary and the lost lines come back to him, a light touch on the mind at first and then suddenly they’re sharp, insistent, already forming themselves into shape.
You mean, my life, that this love of ours
this bliss between us can live unchanging?
Great gods, let her mean what she says,
let this be the truth her soul speaks,
&nb
sp; and let us go through our whole lives
never breaking the blessing.
Clodia is here with him now. She is the Clodia that only he knows. She carries the torch of herself as she brought it out of the darkness of non-being before her birth, and will carry it away into the blackness of her death. Lucius is wrong. The gods listen to us with indifference, because to feel like human beings is not what they were made for. The minds that made the world are not warm and soft and fertile, like a woman’s body, but hard.
He must give that money to Cynthia. He had forgotten her. She will think it was just talk. He must get Lucius to arrange it –
And just at that moment, as if Lucius has heard his boy’s thoughts, he comes into the courtyard. He stares round as if he doesn’t recognize the place. His eyes light on Catullus. Lucius is pale, with staring eyes.
‘Lucius!’
He comes closer. Catullus sees that his chin is trembling. In his left hand he holds out a scroll. A letter, still sealed. Catullus recoils.
My father is dead, he thinks. Nothing else would make Lucius look like that.
‘From Sirmio? Something’s happened to my father?’ he asks, holding out his own hand and noticing that it’s steady.
But Lucius shakes his head. ‘The letter’s from your father,’ he says. ‘Demetrius is in the house, he rode down from Sirmio by relay.’
‘It’s not my father.’ The words take a moment to settle into his mind and begin to make meaning. Suddenly his heart thumps twice, heavily. His skin prickles as if fire were running over it.
‘Who is it? What’s happened, Lucius?’
Lucius knows already, that’s why he’s so pale and why his face is working like that. Demetrius has told him.
‘Marcus?’
And Lucius nods.
Catullus takes the letter, and breaks the seal. The formal greeting is in his father’s writing. ‘… to his son Gaius Valerius Catullus, greetings’. Words jump about in the text as he tries to read it. He smoothes the scroll carefully, but the words remain the same.
Marcus had been ill for several days with a cold and a chest cough, but it didn’t appear serious. He seemed much better, and he was tired of being stuck in the house. The day was warm. He insisted on riding out with the surveyor to inspect a possible site for the new bridge. The weather changed suddenly, and they were caught in a violent storm. That night Marcus developed a high fever, and three days later, in spite of everything that could be done for him, he died. The doctor said that it was pneumonia.
Very faintly, Catullus hears Julia’s living voice through his father’s letter. ‘He was tired of being stuck in the house… he insisted on riding out…’
He can see them both. Julia, standing by the mounting block, wrapped in her cloak in spite of the sun. She’s reaching up to make sure Marcus has fastened his shoulder brooch securely. ‘You must keep warm.’ She pats his boot. ‘Don’t wear yourself out. Remember, you’ve been ill. Just take a quick look at this wonderful bridge site and then come straight home.’ He smiles down at her, at the untidy brown hair which is being blown out of its knot, and at her soft, round, upturned face. The horse shifts, and whickers impatiently. ‘I’ll be back long before nightfall,’ his brother says. Julia smiles. She’s thinking of the hot spiced wine she’ll order when Marcus returns.
Catullus smiles too, looking at them, and then a jolt tears through his chest. It’s over. Marcus has gone.
He gropes forward, as if reaching for his brother, but it’s Lucius who is there. Lucius doesn’t open his arms to embrace his boy, to offer the comfort and support he’s always given. He feels hard, like old, brittle wood. Catullus holds him tight.
‘Lucius,’ he says, ‘Lucius.’
‘He’s gone,’ says Lucius, his voice muffled. ‘Our boy’s gone from us. We’ll never see him no more.’
Catullus has never heard Lucius speak in such a voice. It’s as if the death has shocked him back into his child self, and he’s the little slave boy who first came to Verona forty-five years ago. How old was Lucius then – six, seven? He would have talked like that. He would have wanted his mother. ‘I’ll never see her no more.’
It happens again. Marcus dies, the shock hits him, then ebbs away, and leaves him trembling. He lets go of Lucius, and moves back.
‘Marcus had pneumonia,’ he says aloud. ‘Julia’s letter to my father came by sea. It took six weeks to get there.’
Lucius nods, collecting himself. ‘The funeral’s done, then,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
But when did it happen? When he was drinking, or when he was writing, when he was in the Forum, or when he was with Clodia –
When he was with Clodia, perhaps his brother’s body was burning on the fire. I’ll never see him again, he realizes. He won’t see Marcus’ body, he won’t call his name for the last time, he won’t open his brother’s eyes for the last time, before his body is released to the fire. All that was over before they knew that Marcus was dead. He tries to imagine Julia negotiating with undertakers and hired mourners, while he and Lucius thought of Marcus as alive, and waited for his next letter.
‘My father wants me to go out there.’
‘To bring my lady Julia home?’
‘No, she’ll have taken ship already, with the Governor’s wife. That’s what my father writes. Here, Lucius, you must read it. And later, I’ll go. There are things that have to be attended to.’
The words sound strange in his mouth. This isn’t his language. He feels as if he has been catapulted into another world.
‘He acted for your father in everything,’ says Lucius quietly, as if to himself, as if beginning to measure what had been lost to the family.
‘Lucius! If Marcus had had Dr Philoctetes, he might not have died.’
‘My lady Julia would have made sure he had the best doctor.’
‘I never went to see him. He kept asking me to go out there.’
Lucius says nothing. He’s an old man, shoulders bowed, big hands hanging down. He holds the letter without looking at it. His eyes are red. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I can’t read it. Thank the gods your mother never lived to read it. Let me think of him as he was,’ and he hands back the letter.
Suddenly he grasps Catullus by the shoulders, as if making sure that he’s still there, solid, alive.
‘Your father’s alone. We’ll go to Sirmio first, to let him know that he still has a son.’
‘Yes, I’ll go to Sirmio first.’
‘When you go to Bithynia, I’ll go with you.’
‘No, Lucius. Come with me to Sirmio. I need you to stay there, and take care of my father. You know what you were saying about growing older? You were right. I can’t risk losing you.’
Late in the day, he leaves Lucius packing his things, and goes to Clodia. He sends in his name, and a brief note he has written, telling her that Marcus has died, and that he is leaving at dawn, first for Sirmio and then, in time, for Bithynia. He will be gone for months, perhaps a year or more.
He knows exactly why he wrote that note. He wanted her alone, entirely his, thinking of no one and nothing else. He knows that she can do that for him, for a few hours at least. He looks at his note before he hands it to the slave doorman. Is it a betrayal of Marcus? he asks himself. Perhaps it is. Perhaps he is exploiting his own sorrow. He’s made sure that she knows of his brother’s death before she sees him, so that he will get his Clodia, alone, warm, tender. He has got to have her. He’s got to touch her and taste her and then he can carry her away with him in his heart. His Clodia: that one.
They are in the pool room. It’s growing dark and through the window he can see the stars coming out, one at a time at first and then so thickly that he can’t count them. He turns back to Clodia. He can hear her breathing, but it’s too dark to make out her face. She didn’t want to light a lamp.
‘Aemilia will pretend she thinks I need something if she knows I’m out here.’
‘Where does she think you are?’
Clodia shrugs.
Quickly, he turns his mind aside.
‘Lie down again,’ says Clodia.
She wraps her warm, slender arms around him. He smells her body, feels her breath against his cheek. She rocks him gently.
‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ she asks. She sounds uncertain. Not the sure, confident Clodia everyone else sees, but his Clodia.
‘Yes.’
‘You make me feel so different,’ she says. She catches her breath in a laugh. ‘If anyone who knew me came in, they wouldn’t recognize me.’
He strokes her hair. He doesn’t want her to think about other people.
‘My Clodia,’ he says, ‘my life. My girl.’
‘I shouldn’t have asked if you were happy. Of course you can’t be happy. You loved your brother. It’s terrible, when you love someone and they die.’
‘Who are you thinking of?’
‘Livia. My friend. I told you about her.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
He keeps on stroking her hair. As long as he does this, Marcus is not dead. He is somewhere in the darkness, warm and amused but saying nothing because there’s no need to talk. Marcus would understand about the note. He would not be angry.
Twenty-one
His father had been so determined to send him out to Bithynia ‘on a proper footing’. He’d pulled strings, and got Catullus a plum posting as aide to Governor Memmius.
‘Extremely valuable experience for a young man.’
The prospect of sending another son out to Bithynia seemed to lift his father’s spirits. His difficult second son would be transformed into a mature representative of the family, who would look after its interests, advance its cause, and incidentally enrich himself while forming a close relationship with a man in an influential and powerful position –