The landlord hastened up to drive away the singer and he poured us out some wine with his own hands.
“Clarissima,” he pleaded. “Your presence is an honor, but the boy is a minor. I beg you to drink up and go. Otherwise I’ll have the magistrates here.”
It was late already and I did not know what to think of the girl’s unrestrained conduct. Perhaps she was in fact a depraved little she-wolf whom the landlord only jokingly addressed as honorable. To my relief she agreed to leave without any fuss, but when we were outside, she seized my arm again firmly.
“Come with me as far as to the bridge over the Tiber,” she begged.
As we came down to the riverbank we saw uneasy clouds appearing low in the sky, reddened by the flares from the city. The rough autumn waters sighed invisibly below us and we smelled the mud and decaying reeds. The girl led me to the bridge which went over to the island of Tiber. In the temple of Aesculapius on the island, heartless masters left their mortally sick and dying slaves for whom they had no further use, and from the other side of the island a bridge went on over to the I4th department of the city, the Jewish Transtiberium. The bridge was not a very pleasant place at night. In the gaps between the clouds there glittered a few autumn stars, the river shone darkly, and the moaning of the sick and dying was carried toward us from the island on the wind like a dirge from the underworld.
The girl leaned over the bridge and spat into the Tiber as a sign of her contempt.
“You spit too,” she said, “or are you afraid of the River God?”
I had no desire to dishonor the Tiber, but after she had teased me for a while I spat too, childish as I was. Simultaneously a shooting star flew over the Tiber in a flashing arc. I think I shall remember until my dying day the swirl of the waters, the uneasy shimmering red clouds, the wine fumes in my head and the crystal star curving across the glossy black Tiber.
The girl pressed herself against me so that I could feel how supple her body was, although she was a head shorter than I.
‹cYour shooting star went from east to west,” she whispered. “I am superstitious. You have lines of happiness on your hands, I’ve noticed. Perhaps you will bring happiness to me too.”
“At least tell me now what your name is,” I said irritably. “I’ve told you mine and I’ve told you about my father. I’m bound to get into trouble at home for staying out so late.”
“Yes, yes, you are but a child,” sighed the girl, taking off her shoes. “I’ll go now, and barefoot too. My shoes have already rubbed my feet so much that I had to lean on you as we walked. Now I no longer need your support. You go home so that you don’t get into trouble because of me.”
But I insisted stubbornly that she should tell me her name. Finally she sighed deeply.
“Do you promise to kiss me on the mouth with your innocent boy’s lips,” she said, “and not be frightened when I tell you my name?”
I said I was neither able nor allowed to touch any girl until I had fulfilled the promise given to the oracle in Daphne, so she was curious.
“We might at least try,” she suggested. “My name is Claudia Plautia Urgulanilla.”
“Claudia,” I repeated, “Are you a Claudian, then?”
She was surprised that I had not recognized her name.
“Do you seriously mean to say that you know nothing about me?” she said. “I can well believe you were born in Syria. My father separated from my mother and I was born five months after the divorce. My father did not take me in his arms but sent me naked to my mother’s threshold. It would have been better if he’d thrown me in the sewers. I have a legal right to bear the name of Claudia, but no honest man either can or will marry me because my father, by his action, illegally declared me to have been born out of wedlock. Do you see why I read his books to find out how mad he really is and why I spit on his image?”
“By all the gods, both known and unknown,” I cried in astonishment, “are you trying to tell me that you are the daughter of Emperor Claudius, you silly girl?”
“Everyone in Rome knows it,” she snapped. “That’s why the senators and knights daren’t greet me in the streets. That’s why I’m hidden away in the country behind Vatican. But fulfill your promise now, I’ve told you my name, although of course I oughtn’t to have done so.”
She dropped her shoes and put her arms around me, although I resisted her. But then both she and the whole affair began to annoy me. I pressed her hard against me and kissed her warm lips in the darkness. And nothing happened to me, although I had broken my promise. Or perhaps the goddess was not offended as I did not even begin to tremble when I kissed the girl. Or perhaps it was because of the promise that I could not tremble when I kissed a girl. I do not know.
Claudia let her hands rest on my shoulders and breathed warmly on my face.
“Promise me, Minutus,” she said, “that you’ll come and see me when you’ve received the man-toga.”
I mumbled that even then I should have to obey my father. But Claudia persisted.
“Now you’ve kissed me,” she said decisively, “you’re bound to me in some way.”
She bent down and hunted for her shoes in the darkness. Then she patted my cold cheek and hurried away. I called after her that I felt in no way bound to her as she had forced her kisses on me, but Claudia had vanished into the night. The wind carried the groans of the sick from the island, the water swirled ominously and I hurried home as quickly as I could. Barbus had searched for me at the library and the forum in vain and was furious with me, but he had not dared tell Aunt Laelia that I had disappeared. Fortunately my father was late as usual.
The following day I asked Aunt Laelia in a roundabout way about Claudia. I told her I had met Claudia Plautia at the library and given her a quill. Aunt Laelia was appalled.
“Don’t you ever get mixed up with that shameless girl,” she said. “Better to run away if you see her again. Emperor Claudius has many times regretted not drowning her, but at the time he didn’t yet dare do such things. The girl’s mother was a big fierce woman. Claudius was afraid of the consequences if he had got rid of the girl. To annoy Claudius, Emperor Gaius would always call Claudia his cousin and I think he dragged her into his immoral life too. Poor Gaius even slept with his own sisters because he thought he was a god. Claudia isn’t received in any of the respectable houses. Anyhow, her mother was killed by a famous gladiator and he wasn’t even prosecuted because he could prove that he was only defending his virtue. Urgulanilla became more and more violent in her love affairs as the years went by.”
I soon forgot Claudia, for my father took me with him to Caere and we stayed there for a month in the winter while he saw to his property. The huge burial mounds of former Etruscan kings and nobles in their countless numbers on each side of the sacred road made a deep impression on me. When the Romans had captured Caere hundreds of years before, they had plundered the old tombs, but there were some large, more recent mounds untouched beside the road. I began to feel respect for my own ancestors. Despite everything my father had told me, I had not imagined that the Etruscans had been such a great people. From Emperor Claudius’ book one could not imagine the melancholy exaltation of these royal tombs. One has to see them with one’s own eyes.
The inhabitants of this now poverty-stricken city avoided going to the burial ground at night and maintained that it was haunted. But in the daytime, travelers walked here to look at the ancient mounds and relief carvings in the plundered tombs. My father took the opportunity to make a collection of old bronze miniatures and holy black clay bowls which the local people found when plowing and digging wells. Collectors had of course already taken away the best bronzes in the time of Augustus, when it was fashionable to collect Etruscan objects. Most of the statuettes had been broken off from the lids of the urns.
I was not interested in farming. Bored, I accompanied my father while he inspected the fields, the olive groves and the vineyards. The poets usually praise the simple life of the country, but I myself felt no more longing to settle there than they had. Around Caere one could hunt only foxes, hares and birds, and I was not very enthusiastic about this kind of hunting which required nothing but traps, snares and lime twigs, and no courage.
From my father’s attitude to his slaves and freedmen who looked after his property, I realized that farming is an expensive pleasure for a city man and that it costs more than it brings in. Only huge estates worked with slave labor can possibly pay, but my father was reluctant to farm in this way.
“I’d rather my subordinates lived happily and had healthy children,” he said. “I’m glad they can be a little better off at my expense. It’s good to know one has a place one can retreat to if one’s fortunes go awry.”
I noticed that the farmers were never satisfied and always complaining. Either it rained too much or it was too dry or the insects destroyed the vines or the olive harvest was so good the price of oil fell. And my father’s underlings did not seem to respect him, but behaved unscrupulously when they saw how good-natured he was.
