starry skies!”
Now and then Vergil would not mind a short visit of an afternoon to discuss this work and that with her, and she was very far from minding, either; and now and then he would take a seat at the reading from Homer. Why only now and then in either matter? Why, that the matron was inclined to be just a bit, just the slightest bit, importunate; she did not exactly fish for compliments, rather did she slightly nudge for them; how well he knew the roll of those large eyes. . and how well he knew that, did he not at once bow a bit and smile a bit and look impressed a bit and murmur, “Yes, madame. It was very well done, madame,” rather (he had once thought) like a butler approving the catering arrangements — why, then see that fine and mobile mouth with its slightly downy upper lip draw out and draw down in discontent, see that still-supple body give a rather unpleasant hunch of annoyance. A twitch. A shrug.
Life contained enough of toil, of pain, and folly, and he felt that these echoes or simulacra of such, however faint and petty, were hardly worth. . well, experiencing. Often.
All this had passed across his mind like the faintest of shadows, and whither he now turned his eyes he saw a deeper shadow yet.
Averno lay beneath them, so near that they could identify individual houses, yet so far by reason of the wandering way through the craggy hills that it might be near sundown before they arrived. And some such thought evidently being in the mind of Iohan, he muttered, “Smell thee in the dark …” and broke off to break off a piece of his bread and scatter a crumble, and mumble, “Hither for this offering, ye genius loci.” He who has cautioned us that art is long and life is brief has also reminded us that airs, waters, and places have powers of their own.
The genius loci did not at once visibly smile, and it would have been difficult to say how such a sign of favor would be manifest in that region, but at least at no time as they wound round and round and sometimes, briefly, up, but mostly always down — at any rate, at no time did any rock fall upon them, nor any lip nor barm of a tight trail give way beneath them. For a while yet there stayed some trace in their nostrils of what the poet Andersius has called “the sweet salt air;” scarcely were they aware of this when the wind went tepid and dull, and then a warm sullen slap of stale breeze in their faces gave notice of what was to come. . and, fortunately, it came slowly and in stages. The heat and stench were Averno’s curse, yes, but they were the inevitable results of Averno’s blessing, too, for the hot places of the earth, elsewhere buried deeply, were here very near the surface. Here waters bubbled boiling up with no fuel placed beneath them, and here mounds rose anvil-high and anvil-iron-red and hot-white-hot without the need for charcoal, wood, or bellows -
Often.
To be sure there were places, manywhere, whither flame and fire came not and whither firewood or charcoal was brought, places where the bellows plied and puffed; if the city were one vast hot spring or fumarole or one immense blacksmith-fire, there would have been no place, no inch nor ell, for the foot of man or woman safely to tread. But it was the presence of the other places — there, below, in that smoky bowl below, the places where flames either broke the sullen surface of the soil or lay so close thereto that the soil itself steamed and smoked — this was the reason for the existence of Averno as a city. Endlessly, no doubt, before the appearance of man thereby, these phenomena had been displayed therein: uselessly, as it were; wastefully, as it seemed. But now in all this valley-bowl “the arts of fire and metal” might be practiced without much real need to bring much fuel for fire. The artisans of Averno were not better artisans than those elsewhere, indeed, often, they were not as good; few swords or shares or scythes or axes or other tools of iron were made there: but many and many were the such- shaped blanks of iron formed to be exported, elsewhere to be sharpened for keen use. And these were invariably cheaper than those exported from elsewhere. The dyed garments of Averno were not so brightly colored, so fastly, nor so subtly as those of Tyre; not even as well done as those of Naples. But, though coarser, they were cheaper. Coarse metal, coarse cloth, coarse leather, coarse wool, these were the products of Averno. Or, reading from the other end of the line: cheap wool, cheap leather, cheap cloth, cheap metal. Had there been birds in Averno — which, save here and there a one or two or few sickening in cages, there were not; the very hens and cocks and capons were slaughtered on arrival — but had there been birds in Averno, this might have been their song: cheap- cheap, cheap-cheap, cheap-cheap.
The slow destruction and retreat of the forests of the Empire (indeed, of the whole oeconomia), with the resultant slow rise in the prices of firewood and charcoal, might work ill with the commerce of the arts of fire and metal elsewhere, but in Averno where one, so to speak, lived ill anyway, this was a blessing, a blessing and not a curse. A blessing, that is, for the magnates of Averno. They needed no skill in sales, were obliged to transport their wares to no distant shores, nor offer discounts nor sell on credit nor break themselves on racks to deal with competitors. Where they worked, there they sold. Others came to them, or did not come at all.
The magnates of Averno did not care.
They were cheap, cheap, cheap.
And so of course they had become rich, rich, rich.
Averno took no toll on private bag and baggage coming in, and it had long ago secured (and maintained) an exemption from the Imperial Imposts usually, elsewhere, levied (and collected) at city gates. . another reason for its being Very Rich. As Vergil wore no sword, there was no discussion over that; as for knives, every man, everywhere, carried at least one knife: how else would he cut his food?
“Write the book,” directed the gateskeeper, with a bored belch. He had already sized up Vergil as one who could do his own writing and so the services of a scribe were not required and there would be no fee to split. Vergil signed for himself and servant. The titles, in their abbreviations, did not impress the custos, nor would they have if indited in full; the man did not read. “Where you go?” he asked. He did not really care, but he had his reasons for asking.
Two of them.
The deeper shadow of the Great Gate encompassed them; shadow always lay deep on part of Averno. Set so deep as it was, the sun coming late and departing early, it was more shadowy there in the Great Gate, and pho! how it stank. “The house of Haddadius the dye-master,” said Vergil. The keeper looked at him and looked past him and held up two fingers. A trace of a grimace lifted one corner of his great grim mouth; the ghost of a rictus; hardly even that, of a smile. And he clicked his mouth, twice.
“Two birdies,” he said. The tiny coins being produced, he stuffed one into the purse deep in his grimy bosom, sent another one spinning across the tunnel-mouth of the gateway. It rang against the dripping wall, fell on the wet ground where a number of figures crouched. Most of them raised their heads, but only one. . the nearest. . raised his body. He got to his feet, after he had picked up the miserable money-bit, came over in a shuffle and a shudder. The gatesman said,
Such was charity in Averno.
And welcome, as well.
Would Haddadius the dye-master be more welcoming? Vergil considered, as they passed through the filthy streets, as different from the cleanly thoroughfares of the small port town as the glowing sunsets there were from this filthy dusk, if it might not be better to seek an inn first. But some thought that Haddadius, having in effect sent for him by such devious ways, might have something else in mind for his accommodations, kept him from doing so. And so he followed after the lurching wreck of what had once been a fine large man; and when this one paused and leaned against a wall, though Vergil thought it was from weakness, on coming along up he saw there was a gate set into the wall. And on this the guide placed his hand. He did not even knock. He patted it once. He stroked it, once. Then he merely stayed there. And looked at Vergil from running, sunken eyes. Even when the man took the coin, and a bigger one it was than a “birdy,” Vergil was not sure if he was nodding thanks, or if it was merely the trembling movements of his diseased condition. By and by, he was gone.
If Haddadius had something at all in mind for Vergil’s accommodations it was not evident, nor was anything else that might have been on Haddadius’s mind. The magnate was hardly more welcoming than the gateskeeper, but he did not engage in open insult, possibly because this might have required him to rise from his bath, where Vergil found him after having been (dilatorily, sullenly) led thither by a slave with a cast in one eye. Massive, mute, and shaggy, Haddadius listened in silence to Vergil’s polite words. Though the words were polite, yet Vergil felt they
