watched her with a lump in his throat. He swallowed hard.
'A very beautiful slave,' he whispered.
'Thank you, Lucius Claudius.' I hoped he wouldn't offer to buy her, as so many of my wealthier clients do. I hoped in vain.
'I don't suppose you'd consider-' he began.
'Alas, no, Lucius Claudius.'
'But I was going to say-'
'I would sooner sell my extra rib.'
'Ah.' He nodded sagely, then wrinkled his fleshy brow. 'What did you say?'
'Oh, a nonsense expression I picked up from Bethesda. According to her ancestors on her father's side, the first woman was fashioned from a rib bone taken from the first man, by a god called Jehovah. That is why some men seem to have an extra rib, with no match on the other side.'
'Do they?' Lucius poked at his rib cage, but I think he was much too well padded to actually feel a rib.
I took a sip of wine and smiled. Bethesda had told me the Hebrew tale of the first man and woman many times; each time she tells it I clutch my side and pretend to bleat from pain, until she starts to pout and we both end up laughing. It seems to me a most peculiar tale, but no stranger than the stories her Egyptian mother told her about jackal-headed gods and crocodiles who walk upright. If it is true, this Hebrew god is worthy of respect. Not even Jupiter could claim to have created anything half as exquisite as Bethesda.
I had spent enough time putting my guest at ease. 'Tell me, Lucius Claudius, what is it that troubles you?'
'You will think me very foolish…' he began. 'No, I will not,' I assured him, thinking I probably would. 'Well, it was only the day before yesterday-or was it the day before that? It was the day after the Ides of Maius, of that I'm sure, whichever day that was-'
'I believe that was the day before yesterday,' I said. Bethesda reappeared and stood in the shadows of the portico, awaiting a nod from me. I shook my head, telling her to wait. Another cup of wine might serve to loosen Lucius's tongue, but he was befuddled enough already. 'And what transpired on the day before yesterday.?'
'I happened to be in this very neighborhood-well, not up here on the Esquiline Hill, but down in the valley, in the Subura-'
'The Subura is a fascinating neighborhood,' I said, trying to imagine what attraction its tawdry streets might hold for a man who probably lived in a mansion on the Palatine Hill.Gaming houses, brothels, taverns and criminals for hire-these came to mind.
'You see,' he sighed, 'my days are very idle. I've never had a head for politics or finance, like others in my family; I feel useless in the Forum. I've tried living in the country, but I'm not much of a farmer; cows bore me. I don't like entertaining, either-strangers coming to dinner, all of them twice as clever as I am, and me, obliged to think up some way to amuse them- such a bother. I get bored rather easily, you see. So very, very bored.'
'Yes?' I prompted, suppressing a yawn.
'So I go wandering about the city. Over to Tarentum to see the old people easing their joints in the hot springs. Out to the Field of Mars to watch the chariot racers train their horses. All up and down the Tiber, to the fish markets and the cattle markets and the markets with foreign goods. I like seeing other people at work; I relish the way they go about their business with such determination. I like watching women haggle with vendors, or listening to a builder argue with his masons, or noticing how the women who hang from brothel windows slam their shutters when a troupe of rowdy gladiators come brawling down the street. All these people seem so alive, so full of purpose, so-so very opposite of bored. Do you understand, Gordianus?'
'I think I do, Lucius Claudius.'
'Then you'll understand why I love the Subura. What a neighborhood! One can almost smell the passion, the vice! The crowded tenements, the strange odors, the spectacle of humanity! The winding, narrow little streets, the dark, dank alleys, the sounds that drift down from the upper-story windows of strangers arguing, laughing, making love-what a mysterious and vital place the Subura is!'
'There's nothing so very mysterious about squalor,' I suggested.
'Ah, but there is,' insisted Lucius; and to him, I suppose, there was.
'Tell me about your adventure two days ago, on the day after the Ides.'
'Certainly. But I thought you sent the girl for more wine?'
I clapped my hands. Bethesda stepped from the shadows. The sunlight glinted on her long, blue-black tresses. As she filled Lucius's cup he seemed unable to look up at her. He swallowed, smiled shyly and nodded vigorously at the quality of my best wine, which was probably not good enough to give to his slaves.
He continued.
'That morning, quite early, I happened to be strolling down one of the side streets off the main Subura Way, whistling a tune, noticing how spring had brought out all sorts of tiny flowers and shoots between the paving stones. Beauty asserts itself even here amid such squalor, I thought to myself, and I considered composing a poem, except that I'm not very good at poems-'
'And then something happened!' I prompted.
'Oh, yes. A man shouted down to me from a second-story window. He said, 'Please, citizen, come quick! A man is dying!' I hesitated. After all, he might have been trying to lure me into the building to rob me, or worse, and I didn't even have a slave with me for protection-I like going out alone, you see. Then another man appeared at the window beside the first, and said, 'Please, citizen, we need your help. The young man is dying and he's made out a will-he needs seven citizens to witness it ad we already have six. Won't you come up.?'
'Well, I did go up. It's not very often that anybody needs me for anything. How could I refuse? The apartment turned out to be a rather nicely furnished set of rooms, not at all shabby and certainly not menacing. In one of the rooms a man lay wrapped in a blanket upon a couch, moaning and shivering. An older man was attending to him, daubing his brow with a damp cloth. There were six others crowded into the room. No one seemed to know anyone else-it seemed we had each been summoned off the street, one by one.'
'To witness the will of the dying man?'
'Yes. His name was Asuvius, from the town of Larinum. He was visiting the city when he was struck by a terrible malady. He lay on the bed, wet with sweat and trembling with fever. The illness had aged him terribly- according to his friend he wasn't yet twenty, yet his face was haggard and lined. Doctors had been summoned but had been of no use. Young Asuvius feared that he would die at any moment. Never having made a will-such a young man, after all-he had sent his friend to procure a wax tablet and a stylus. I didn't read the document as it was passed among us, of course, but I saw that it had been written by two different hands. He must have written the first few lines himself, in a faltering, unsteady hand; I suppose his friend finished the document for him. Seven witnesses were required, so to expedite matters the older man had simply called for citizens to come up from the street. While we watched, the poor lad scrawled his name with the stylus and pressed his seal ring into the wax.'
'After which you signed and sealed it yourself?'
'Yes, along with the others. Then the older man thanked us and urged us to leave the room, so that young Asuvius could rest quietly before the end came. I don't mind telling you that I was weeping like a fountain as I stepped onto the street, and I wasn't the only one. I strolled about the Subura in a melancholy mood, thinking about that young man's fate, about his poor family back in Larinum and how they would take the news. I remember walking by a brothel situated at the end of the block, hardly a hundred paces from the dying man's room, and being struck by the contrast, the irony, that within those walls there lurked such pleasure and relief, while only a few doors down, the mouth of Pluto was opening to swallow a dying country lad. I remember thinking what a lovely poem such an irony might inspire-'
'No doubt it would, in the hands of a truly great poet,' I acknowledged quickly. 'So, did you ever learn what became of the youth?'
'A few hours later, after strolling about the city in a haze, I found myself back on that very street, as if the invisible hand of a god had guided me there. It was shortly after noon. The landlord told me that young Asuvius had died not long after I left. The older man-Oppianicus his name was, also of Larinum- had summoned the landlord to the room, weeping and lamenting, and had shown the landlord the body all wrapped up in a sheet. Later the landlord saw Oppianicus and another man from Larinum carry the body down the stairs and load it into a cart to take it to the embalmers outside the Esquiline Gate.' Lucius sighed. 'I tossed and turned all night, thinking about the
