I said his young friend was about to get his nose pulled off. Anacrites and I resumed our usual hostility.
Gazing up, I fixed my eyes on a lamp. Burning with the clear, odorless flame of fine Baetican oil, it was in gleaming bronze and the shape of a flying phallus. Either this rude vessel was swinging more than it should, or the whole room had begun to maneuver in some swooning routine… I decided I had reached my full capacity for Barcino red wine. At the same moment, as so often happens, a slave poured more into my cup. I sighed and settled down for a long night.
I must have had yet more drink later, though I cannot provide a catalogue. As a result, nothing of interest happened-not to me, anyway. Others no doubt threw themselves into risk and intrigue. Someone presumably made an assignation with the dancer from Hispalis. It seemed the kind of party where traditional customs would be observed.
I left when the atmosphere was still humming. Nobody had noticeably fallen out, and certainly at that stage there was nobody dead. All I recall of my final hour are some tricky moments trying to shoulder my amphora; it was half as high as me and immovable to a man in my condition. The young fellow in the oatmeal tunic from the other row of couches was also collecting his cloak; he seemed relatively sober, and helpfully suggested I roust out some more slaves to lug the cumbersome container home for me on a carrying pole. I suddenly saw the logic of this. We exchanged a laugh.
I was too far gone to ask his name, but he seemed pleasant and intelligent. I was surprised he had been at the dinner all on his own.
Somehow my legs must have found their way from the Palatine to the Aventine. The apartment where I had lived for some years was six floors up in a dismal tenement; the slaves refused to come up. I left the amphora downstairs, tucked out of sight under a pile of dirty togas in Lenia's laundry on the ground floor. It was the kind of night where my left foot set off in one direction and met my right one coming back. I have no recollection of how I persuaded them to cooperate and find their way upstairs.
Eventually I awoke from troubled blackness to hear the distant cries of market stallholders and the occasional clonk of a harness bell. I realized the activity in the streets below had been disturbing me for some time. It was the first day of April and the outdoor street life was hectic. Watchdogs were barking at chickens. Cockerels were crowing for the fun of it. Day had dawned-quite a few hours ago. On the roof tiles outside a pigeon cooed annoyingly. Light, with a painful midday intensity, streamed in from the balcony.
The thought of breakfast marched into my brain automatically-then receded fast.
I felt terrible. When I squirmed upright on the saggy reading couch where I had flung myself last night, one look around the apartment made everything worse. There was no point calling out to Helena, not even to apologize. She was not here.
I was in the wrong place.
I could not believe I had done this-yet as my head throbbed it seemed all too plausible. This was our old apartment. We did not live here anymore.
Helena Justina would be in our new home, where she would have waited for me all last night. That's assuming she had not already left me on the grounds that I had stayed out partying. A fact which any reasonable woman would interpret as meaning I had stayed out with another girl.
There was a dark first-floor apartment on the shady side of Fountain Court. At first glance the shady side looked superior, but that was only because the sun failed to light the decay that encased all these buildings like a moldy crust. Shutters peeled. Doors sagged. People frequently lost heart and stopped paying their rent; before the landlords muscle-bound assistants beat them up as a penalty, they quite often died in misery of their own accord.
Everyone who lived here was trying to leave: the basket weaver with the street-level lock-up wanted to retire to the Campagna, the upstairs tenants came and went with a rapidity that said much about the facilities (that is, that there were none), while Helena and I, the weavers sub-tenants, dreamed of escaping to a plush villa with piped water, a boundary of pine trees, and airy colonnades where people could hold refined conversations on philosophical subjects… Anything, in fact, would be better than a three-room, small-dimensioned let, where the spitting and swearing totters who lived in the upper stories all had a right of way past our front door.
The front door had been stripped and planed down, ready for new paint. Inside, I squeezed down a corridor full of stored items. The first room off it had bare walls and no furniture. The second was the same, apart from an unbelievably obscene fresco painted straight opposite the entrance. Helena was spending much time doggedly scratching off the lewd copulating couples and the coarse satyrs in garish hyacinth wreaths and panpipes who lurked behind laurel bushes while they ogled the scene. Obliterating them was slow work and today all the wet sponges and scrapers lay abandoned in a corner. I could guess why.
I walked further down the corridor. Here its newly nailed floorboards were firm beneath my feet. I had spent hours getting them level. On the walls hung a series of small Greek plaques with Olympic scenes, Helena's choice. A niche seemed to be awaiting a pair of household gods. Outside the final room lay a red and white striped rug which I didn't recognize; on it slept a scruffy dog who got up and stalked off in disgust when I approached.
'Hello Nux.'
Nux farted quietly, then turned round to survey her rear with mild surprise.
I tapped the lintel gently, and opened the door. Part of me hoped the usual occupant had gone out for a stroll.
There was no reprieve. She was there. I should have known. If she went out without me I had ordered her to take the guard dog. She was not in the habit of obeying my instructions, but she had become fond of the hound.
'Hello, brown eyes. Is this where Falco lives?'
'Apparently not.'
'Don't tell me he's run off to become a gladiator? What a swine.'
'The man is grown up. He can do as he likes.' Not if he had any sense.
Routinely, Falco's new office had been furnished as a bedroom.
Informing is a sordid job and clients expect to be shocked by their surroundings. Besides, everyone knows that an informer spends half his time giving his accountant instructions how to cheat his clients, and any spare moments seducing his secretary.
Falco's secretary was lying against the pleasant scallopshell bedhead reading a Greek novel. She doubled as Falco's accountant, which might explain her disillusioned manner. I did not attempt to seduce her. A tall, talented young woman, her expression hit me like a sudden gulp of snow-chilled wine. She was draped in white, with fine dark hair, loosely pinned up with ivory side combs. On a small table beside her lay a manicure set, a bowl of figs, and a shorthand copy of yesterday's
'How are you?' I inquired, tenderly checking up on her condition.
'Angry.' She enjoyed being frank. 'That's bad for the baby.'
'Leave the baby out of this. I hope to shield the baby from knowing it has a father who is a degenerate stop- out whose respect for his home life is as minimal as his courtesy to me.'
'Nice talking, Demosthenes!-Helena, my heart, you
'Yes, and it's bad for you.'
'I do have an explanation.'
'Don't make me tired, Falco.'
'I've tried to produce something lucid and witty. Want to hear?'
'No. I'll be happy with your shrieks of grief as a posse of soldiers marches you away.'
'I made a stupid mistake, fruit. I had too much to drink and went home to the wrong house.'
'Lucid,' she smiled weakly. 'Though only witty in the sense that it's ludicrous… Whose house?' Suspicion dies slowly.
'Ours. Over the road. Whose did you think?' I jerked my head in the direction of my old apartment.
Helena had always taken the line that she hated half the things I did-yet chose to believe that I told her the
