Ode to a Banker

XXV

The stupid bastards were still working their way one at a time in order down the visitors' list. The epic poet had his turn with me next.

I rather liked him. Euschemon had called him dull. Maybe his work was, but luckily I was not obliged to read it. One of life's odd quirks: authors you warm to as people somehow cannot see where their strength lies, but will insist on pouring out scroll after lifeless scroll of tedium.

It was early evening. Rome shimmering after a long hot day. People coming alive after feeling utterly drained. Smoke from the bathhouse furnaces creating a haze that mingled with scented oven fumes. Flautists practising. Men in shop doorways greeting each other with a grin that meant they had been up to no good – or were planning it for later. Women shrieking at children in upper rooms. Really old women, who no longer had children to keep in order, now standing at their windows to spy on the men who were up to no good.

I had reached the dogleg of the Clivus Publicius alone. Helena had gone to Maia's house to fetch Julia. We had been close for long enough not to want to part. But work had called.

Now I was in a quiet mood. After loving the same woman for a period of years I had gone past both the panic that she might reject me and the crass exultancy of conquest. Helena Justina was the woman whose love could still move me. Afterwards, I bathed at an establishment where I was not known, unwilling to engage in conversation. Communicating with the Chrysippus writing circle held no real charm for me either. Still, it had to be done.

It was a welcome surprise, therefore, to discover that the next of the hacks bothered to turn up for an interview, and that I took to him.

Constrictus was older than the previous group, in his late fifties at least. Still, he looked spry and bright-eyed – more so than I expected since he had been accused by Scrutator of draining too many amphorae.

Of course the flamboyant Scrutator, with his fund of off-colour stories, had carried his own traces of debauchery.

'Come in.' I decided not to complain that he should have turned up this morning. 'I'm Falco, as I'm sure you know.' If Turius and the other two had warned Constrictus that I was a bastard to deal with, he hid his terror bravely. 'You're the epic poet?'

'Oh not only epic. I'll try anything.'

'Promiscuous, eh?'

'To earn a living by writing you have to sell whatever you can.'

'What happened to write from your own experience?'

'Pure self-indulgence.'

'Well, I was told that the big historical pageant is your natural genre.'

'Too hackneyed. No untapped source material left,' he groaned. I had already observed this as a problem with Rutilius Gallicus and his heroic banalities. 'And, frankly,' confided Constrictus, 'throw up when I'm constantly trumpeting that our ancestors were perfect pigs in an immaculate sty. They were idle shits like us.' He looked earnest. I really want to produce love poetry.'

'Source of contention with Chrysippus?'

'Not really. He would have loved to discover the new Catullus. The problem is, Falco, finding a suitable woman to address. It's either a prostitute – and who wants to be afflicted with helpless infatuation for any of those these days? Prostitutes are not what they were. You'll never find a modern version of sweet Ipsiphyle.'

'The whores have deteriorated just like the heroes?' I sympathised. 'Sounds a good lament!'

'Or the alternative is to fall obsessively for a highly-placed, beautiful amoral bitch who attracts scandal and has dangerous, powerful relatives.'

'Clodia's long gone.' Catullus' famous high-born hag with the dead pet sparrow was another generation's scandal. 'For the best, some would say. With special thanks that Rome is free of her brother, that rich gangster thug. Are today's senatorial families too refined to produce such a bad girl?'

'Jupiter, yes!' the poet lamented. 'Even good-time girls are not what they were And if you do strike it lucky, the bloody women won't co-operate. I found a playmate, Melpomene by name, lovely creature; I could have devoted my all to her. We were magic in bed. Then, when I explained that she needed to dump me or it was no good for my work, she burst out wailing. What does she come out with – listen to this, Falco! She said she really loved me, and couldn't bear to lose me, and why was I being so cruel to her?'

I nodded, more or less with sympathy, though I assumed he was being humorous. 'Hard to work up a metaphorical sweat over honest loyalty.'

Constrictus exploded with actual disgust. 'Jove, imagine it: an eclogue to a nymph who wants you, an ode about sharing your life.'

For a moment, I found myself thinking about Helena. It took me far from this hard-edged, unhappy lyricist.

'You could turn it into satire,' I suggested, trying to cheer him up 'How's this for an epigram – Melpomene, astonishing joy of my heart, I want to say "Don't go", but if I do, you'll die from lack of nourishment and the landlord's heavies will carve me up in the gutter for my unpaid rent. Poetry relies on misery. Leave me, please, and be quick about it – or my work won't sell.'

He looked impressed. 'Was that extempore? You have a gift.'

'At this rate,' I said frankly, 'I'll be using my creative powers to invent a prosecution case. Would you mind giving me a motive so I can arrest you for battering your publisher? A full confession would be helpful, if you can run to it. I get a bonus fee for that.'

Constrictus became glum again. 'I did not do it. I wish I had thought of it. I freely admit that. Then I could have written a series of tragic dialogues, full of autobiographical sleaze – it always sells. Urban Georgics. Not a lament for those dispossessed of country land, but for those struggling against city indifference and brutality.'

He was off in the kind of speculative dream that could take all afternoon. When authors start imagining what they could have written, it is time to make a break for it.

'Look,' I said, knowing I had sounded too friendly earlier. 'I have to ask you the rubric. You came to see Chrysippus yesterday. I presume he was alive when you arrived here; can you assure me the same applied when you left?'

'If you regard being a parasitic bloodsucker as "life". If that is accepted terminology in your trade, Falco.'

I grinned. 'Informers are famous for loose definitions. Half my "clients" are walking ghosts. My "fees" tend to be insubstantial by most people's standards too. Cough up. Would a physician have diagnosed health in the man?'

'Unfortunately yes.'

'Thanks. From this I deduce you did not kill him. Mine, you see, is a simplistic art. Now! Personnel details at the scene, please: did you see anyone else here?'

'No.' He could be sensible. A pity. I really had liked him before that. If he had been a complete maniac, we might even have become friends.

'This is boring, Constrictus. So all you have to report is an amicable meeting, after which you quietly returned home?' He nodded. 'And you were subsequently shocked and amazed to learn what had transpired here?'

'Cheered,' he admitted breezily. 'Enormously encouraged to discover that someone had broken free of the chains and taken action. It was so unexpected. I saw it as revenge for all of us.'

'You are refreshingly honest,' I told him. 'So now be honest about the conditions in which you were a client of this patron, please.'

'Unendurable duress,' Constrictus boasted. 'Survival makes all of us heroes.'

'I am happy to hearyou can use your suffering as research material.'

'He paid us too little; he worked us too hard,' Constrictus went on. 'The work was demeaning – it involved flattering him. I had a rule: get his name into the first line with at least three commendatory adjectives, then hope he would not bother to read on. Want more? I despised my colleagues. I hated the scriptorium staff. I was sick of waiting year after year for my so-called patron to give me the proverbial Sabine farm where I could eat lettuce, screw the farmer's wife, and write.'

I looked him straight in the eye. 'And you drink.'

There was a short silence. He was not intending to answer.

'I always find,' I said, trying not to sound unpleasantly pious, 'the stuff that I have written with a beaker beside me reads like rubbish once I sober up.'

'There's a simple cure for that,' Constrictus replied hoarsely. 'Never sober up!'

I said nothing. At thirty-three, I had long ago learned not to remonstrate with men who like to have their elbows always leaning on a bar. This was a very angry poet. Perhaps they all were, but Constrictus showed it. He was the oldest I had met so far; that might have something to do with it. Did he feel time was running out on him? Was he desperate to put substance into an otherwise wasted life? But often drink is an acknowledgement that nothing will ever change. A man in that mood probably would not kill – though anybody can be pushed too far by unexpected extra indignities.

I changed the subject. 'You told me you despise your colleagues. Elaborate.'

'Upstarts and mediocrities.'

'Yes, this is all confidential.' I smiled retrospectively.

'Who cares? They all know what I think.'

'I must say, the ones I have met all have potential to be dropped as no-hopers.'

'There you're wrong, Falco. Being a no-hoper is the essential criterion for getting your work copied and sold.'

'You are very bitter. Maybe you should have been the satirist.'

'Maybe I should,' Constrictus agreed shortly. 'But in this scriptorium, that bilious prick Scrutator holds sway -' He broke off.

'Oh, do go on,' I encouraged him genially. 'It's your turn now. Each man I interview betrays the previous suspect. You get to spear the satirist. What's the dirt on Scrutator?'

Constrictus could not bear to waste a good suspenseful moment: 'He had a blazing row with our dear patron – surely the old bore mentioned that?'

'He was too busy confiding that Turius is not as insipid as he looks, but has insulted Chrysippus rather notably.'

'Turius had nothing to lose,' moaned Constrictus. 'He wasn't going anywhere in any case.'

'If Turius said everything Pacuvius alleges, Chrysippus had good reason to attack him, not the other way round. But what about Scrutator's personal beef?'

'Chrysippus had made arrangements to send him to Praeneste.'

'Punishment? What's there – a grand Oracle of Fortune and the ghastly priests who tend it?'

'Snobs' summer villas. Chrysippus was ingratiating himself with a friend by offering to lend out the talker and his endless droll stories as a house poet for the holiday period. We were all thrilled to be rid of him – but dear bloody Scrutator came over all sensitive about being passed around like a slave. He refused to go.'

'Chrysippus, having promised him, was then furious?'

'It made him look a fool. A fool who could not control his own clients.'

'Who was the friend he wanted to impress?'

'Someone in shipping.'

'From the old country? A Greek tycoon?'

'I think so. Ask Lucrio.'

'The connection is through the bank?'

'You are getting the hang of this,' Constrictus said. Now he was being cheeky to me; well, I could handle that.

'I can follow a plot. I wonder which of the others I shall have to prod to be told the dirt on you? Or would you rather give me your own version?'

'It's no secret.' Once again, the poet's voice had a raw note. Despite having previously claimed that their meeting had been amicable, he now told me the truth: 'I was too old. Chrysippus wants new blood, he told me yesterday. Unless I came up with something special very quickly, he was intending to cease supporting me.'

'That's hard.'

'Fate, Falco. It was bound to happen one day. Successful poets gather together a pension, leave Rome, and retire to be famous men in their hometowns where – touched by the Golden City's magic – they will shine out among the rural dross. They go while they can still enjoy it; by my age, a successful man has left. An unsuccessful one can only hope to offend the Emperor by some sexual scandal, then be exiled to prison on the edge of the Empire where they keep him alive with daily porridge just so his whimpering letters home will demonstrate the triumph of morality… Vespasian's womenfolk have yet to start having rampant affairs with poets.' He flexed an arthritic knuckle. 'I'll be beyond servicing the bitches if they hang about much longer.'

'I'll put the word out at the Golden House that here's a love poet who wants to be part of a salon scandal…' To be left without funding at his age could be no joke. 'How will your finances stand up?' I asked.

He knew why I was asking. A man plunged into sudden abject poverty could well have turned violent when the unsympathetic patron sat in his elegant Greek library telling him the news. Constrictus enjoyed informing me he was reprieved from that suspicion: 'I have a small legacy from my grandmother to live on, actually.'

'Nice.'

'Such a relief!'

'Absolves you from suspicion too.'

'And it's so convenient!' he agreed.

Too convenient?

When I pressed him about timings, he was the first person to tell me that when he left the library yesterday, he saw the lunch tray waiting for Chrysippus, in the Latin room's lobby. It seemed he might well have been the last to visit before the murderer. Honest of him to admit it. Honest – or just blatant?

I made him look at the side table with the Phrygian Purple upstands. 'When did you last taste nettle flan?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Did you go up to that buffet table, Constrictus? Did you help yourself from the tray?'

'No, I did not!' He laughed. 'I would have been afraid somebody sensible had poisoned his food. Anyway, there's a decent popina in the Clivus outside. I went out for air, and had a bite there.'

'See any of the others?'

'Not the morning he died.' He stared at me, much more daring than the rest. 'Naturally most of us met up in the afternoon, after we heard what had happened, and discussed what we would say to you!'

'Yes; I had already worked out that you did that,' I answered quietly.

I let him go. He wanted to be too clever. I had liked him, which was more than I could say for the historian, the ideal republican, or the satirist – yet I trusted none of them.

There was now only one remaining on my list of visitors, Urbanus, the dramatist. Time was running out; I couldn't wait on his convenience. I took the address Passus had obtained for me and went to his apartment. He was not in. At the theatre probably, or in some drinking-house full of actors and understudies. I could not be bothered to try searching, or to wait for him to wander home.