Last Act In Palmyra

Chapter XII

Of course we did go to Bostra. Helena knew she was doing me a favour by suggesting it. Having discovered the drowned man, I too was fascinated to have met up with his companions. I wanted to know much more about them – and him. Being nosy was my livelihood.

That first evening, Chremes took us to recover our own stabled ox, the sad beast I had taken on at Gaza, together with the shaky contraption that passed for our hired vehicle. The night was really too dark now to travel on further, but both our parties were keen to put distance between ourselves and Petra. For added security and confidence we drove on in convoy, sharing our torches. We all seemed to feel that in the desert chance encounters are important.

After we set up camp I approached the actor-manager curiously: 'Are you certain the man Helena and I discovered was your friend?'

'Everything fits from your description – same build, same colouring. Same drinking habits!' he added bitterly.

'Then why didn't you come forward and claim the body?' I sprang at him.

'We were already in enough trouble!' twinkled Chremes like a conspirator.

I could understand that. But the situation intrigued me all the same.

We had all made our tents by hanging black goat-hair covers on rough wooden frames and were sitting outside these shelters by firelight. Most of the theatricals were huddled together, subdued by Heliodorus' death. Chremes came to join Helena and me, while Musa sat slightly apart in a world of his own. Hugging my knees I took my first good look at the leader of the theatre troupe.

He was, like the dead man, broadly built and full of face. More striking, however, with a strong chin and a dramatic nose that would have looked good on a republican general. Even in normal conversation he had a powerful voice with a resonance that seemed almost overdone. He delivered his sentences crisply. I did not doubt there were reasons why he had come to talk this evening. He wanted to judge Helena and me; maybe he wanted more than that from us.

'Where are you from?' Helena enquired. She could draw out information as smoothly as a pickpocket slitting a purse-thong.

'Most of the group hail from southern Italy. I'm a Tusculum man.'

'You're a long way from home!'

'I've been a long way from Tusculum for twenty years.'

I chortled. 'What's that – the old "one wife too many and I was cut out of my inheritance" excuse?'

'There was nothing there for me. Tusculum's a dead-and-alive, ungrateful, uncivilised backwater.' The world is full of people slandering their birthplaces, as if they really believe that small-town life is different elsewhere.

Helena seemed to be enjoying herself; I let her carry on. 'So how did you end up here, Chremes?'

'After half a lifetime performing on rocky stages in thunderstorms to provincial thickheads who only want to talk among themselves about that day's market, it's like a drug. I do have a wife – one I hate, who hates me back – and I've no more sense than to carry on for ever dragging a gang of tattered strutters into any city we find on our road:'

Chremes talked almost too readily. I wondered how much was a pose. 'When did you actually leave Italy?' Helena asked.

'The first time, twenty years ago. Five years back we came east again with Nero's travelling sideshow, his famous Greek Tour. When he tired of receiving laurel chaplets from bribed judges and packed up for home, we kept on drifting until we floated into Antiochia. The real Greeks didn't want to see what the Romans have done to their stage heritage, but so-called Hellenic cities here, which haven't been Greek since Alexander, think we're presenting them with masterpiece theatre. We found we could scrape a living in Syria. They are drama-mad. Then I wondered what Nabataea was like.

Worked our way south – and now thanks to The Brother we're working north again.'

'I'm not with you?'

'Our offer of culture was about as welcome in Petra as a performance of The Trojan Women to a family of baboons.'

'So you were already departing even before Heliodorus was drowned?'

'Seen off by The Brother. Happens often in our profession. Sometimes we get driven out of town for no reason. At least at Petra they produced a passable excuse.'

'What was that?'

'We were planning a performance in their theatre – though the gods know the place was primitive. Aeschylus would have taken one glance and gone on strike. But we were going to give them The Pot of Goldseemed appropriate, given that everyone there has plenty. Congrio, our poster-writer, had chalked up details all round the city. Then we were solemnly informed that the theatre is only used ceremonially, for funeral rites. The implication was that if we desecrated their stage, the funeral rites might be our own: A strange people,' Chremes stated.

This sort of comment normally produces a silence. Adverse remarks about foreigners make people remember their own folk – temporarily convincing themselves that those they have left at home are sensible and sane. Nostalgia seeped into our circle gloomily.

'If you were all about to leave Petra,' Helena asked thoughtfully, 'why had Heliodorus gone for a walk?'

'Why? Because he was a constant menace!' Chremes exclaimed. 'Trust him to lose himself when we were set to leave.'

'I still think you should have identified him formally,' I told him.

'Oh it will be him,' Chremes insisted airily. 'He was the type to inflict himself on an accident, and at the worst possible moment. Just like him to die somewhere sacrilegious and get us all locked in an underground dungeon. Having dozy officials argue for years about who caused his death would have struck Heliodorus as a fine joke!'

'A comedian?'

'He thought so.' Chremes caught Helena smiling, so added instructively, 'Someone else had to write the jokes for him.'

'Not creative?'

'If I told you exactly what I thought of Heliodorus it would sound unkind. So let's confine it to, he was a shabby, shambling dissolute with no sense of language, tact or timing.'

'You're a measured critic!' she answered solemnly.

'I try to be fair!'

'So he won't be missed?' I enquired quietly.

'Oh, he'll be missed! He was employed to do a certain job, which nobody else can undertake -'

'Ah, you mean no one else wants it?' I was speaking from experience in my own career.

'What was it?' Helena asked, with the light, careless inflection of a girl whose close companion needs to earn a crust.

'He was our jobbing playwright.'

Even Helena sounded surprised by that. 'The man we found drowned had written plays?'

'Certainly not!' Chremes was shocked. 'We are a respectable troupe with a fine reputation; we only perform the established repertoire! Heliodorus adapted plays.'

'What did that entail?' Helena Justina always asked the direct question. 'Translations from Greek to Latin?'

'Anything and everything. Not full translations, but pepping up turgid ones so we could bear to speak the lines. Modifying the story if the cast did not suit our company. Adding better characters to liven up proceedings. He was supposed to add jokes, though as I told you, Heliodorus wouldn't recognise a funny line if it jumped up and poked him in the eye. We mainly put on New Comedy. It has two painful disadvantages: it's no longer new, and quite frankly, it's not comic'

Helena Justina was a shrewd, educated girl, and sensitive to atmosphere. She certainly knew what she was risking when she asked, 'What will you do about replacing Heliodorus now?'

At once Chremes grinned at me. 'Want a job?' He had an evil streak.

'What are the qualifications needed?'

'Able to read and write.'

I smiled diffidently, like a man who is too polite to say no to a friend. People never take the hint.

'Marcus can do that,' Helena put in. 'He does need a job.'

Some girls would be happy just to sit under the stars in the desert with the love of their heart, without trying to hire him out to any passing entrepreneur.

'What's your trade?' Chremes asked, perhaps warily.

'In Rome I am an informer.' It was best to be frank, but I knew better than to mention my imperial sponsorship.

'Oh! What are the qualifications for that?'

'Able to duck and dive.'

'Why Petra?'

'I came east to look for a missing person. Just a musician. For some unaccountable reason The Brother decided I must be a spy.'

'Oh don't worry about that!' Chremes reassured me heartily, in our profession it happens all the time.' Probably when it suited them, it could be true. Actors went everywhere. According to their reputation in Rome, they were not fussy who they spoke to when they got there and they often sold much more than tasteful Athenian hexameters. 'So, young Marcus, being whipped out of the mountain sanctuary leaves you a quadrans short of a denarius?' it does, but don't put me on the payroll before I've even heard your offer and its terms!'

'Marcus can do it,' Helena interrupted. I like my girlfriends to have faith in me – though not that much faith. 'He writes poetry in his spare time,' she revealed, without bothering to ask whether I wanted my private hobbies publicly exposed.

'The very man!'

I stood my ground, temporarily. 'Sorry, I'm just a scribbler of lousy satires and elegies. Besides, I hate Greek plays.'

'Don't we all? There's nothing to it,' Chremes assured me.

'You'll love it!' gurgled Helena.

The actor-manager patted my arm. 'Listen, Falco, if Heliodorus could do this job, anybody can!' Just the sort of career proposal I look for. It was too late for resistance, however. Chremes raised a fist in greeting and cried, 'Welcome to the company!'

I made one last attempt to extricate myself from this lunatic jape. 'I still have to look for my missing person. I doubt if you're going where I need to be – '

'We are going', pronounced Chremes elaborately, 'where the desert-dwelling populace barely recognise their sophisticated Greek heritage and are overdue for some permanent theatre-building, but where the founders of their paltry Hellenic cities have at least provided them with some auditoria that purveyors of the dramatic arts are allowed to use. We are going, my fine young informer – '

I knew it already. I broke in on the long-windedness: 'You are going to the Decapolis!'

Leaning against my knee and gazing up at the mysterious desert sky, Helena smiled contentedly. 'That's convenient, Chremes. Marcus and I already had plans to travel to the same area!'