Dialogues of the Dead

42

the seventh dialogue

Do you recall how at the beginning I said my heart fainted at the distance I saw stretching between my setting out and my destination?

Yes, that’s exactly how I felt. Oh me of little faith, wherefore did I doubt? How far have I come and how quickly, a quarter of my way now in the blink of an eye, striding out with braggart step, measuring my path not in miles, but in leagues!

No plan is needed when you are part of a plan, and when I beheld him who was equally a part of the plan, though his time seemed some way still removed, descending like one who hurries to a longed-for assignation, without thought I followed-happy word!

In the darkness I lost him for a while, then suddenly the torches flickered to life, the sounds swelled, the odours drifted across my flaring nostrils, and I found myself deep in the past of the Roman market. Two figures moved towards each other between the stalls, one clad in a courtier’s purple and gold tunic with jewelled clasps, clutching in his hand a leather bag from which he took coins as if to make a purchase, the other in the plain dignified toga which denotes a senator.

“Ho, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus tonight?” cried the first.

“I know not,” said the senator. “What a fearful night is this! There’s two or three of us have seen strange sights.”

“And shall see stranger still. Will you walk with me into the bathhouse where we may hear ourselves talk above this fearful babble?”

“Gladly, for the stink of this place rubs my nostrils raw!”

Side by side they moved into the calidarium.

Through the viewing port I watched them, still not knowing what I was called to do or indeed, with the middle step still not clear, not certain I was called to do anything.

Then as the tunic was unclasped and the toga slid to the ground, I felt time, already by artifice here displaced, begin to slow like cooling lava running down Vesuvius’s side which in its last embrace grips fragile flesh and makes it live forever.

They step into the water, the courtier first, his long gold hair catching the light from the images of naked bathers projected on the wall, his trembling limbs slender and white; the senator behind, his black ponytail jutting out jauntily, the muscles of his sturdier browner body taut with desire. There is no pause for foreplay. The strong brown arms go round the slim white body as, like a full-acorned boar, a German one, the senator cries “O!” and mounts the courtier.

Unnoticed, because lava itself bursting through the walls would in this condition go unnoticed, I open the door and step inside.

Like a surgeon who need not look for his instrument because he knows it will always be there to hand, or in this case to foot, I feel no surprise as my toe catches on a cable and sends an electric soldering iron snaking across the floor to plop into the pool like a questing vole. Nor does thought play a part in sending my hand along the cable to its source where my fingers find and press a switch.

They twist and tauten in one last orgasmic spasm and then go still. From the courtier’s discarded tunic I take the dagger and make the necessary mark on his white flesh, while from his bag I take the necessary coin and place it in the senator’s open mouth.

Now it is done. I step back into Roman time and without haste mount the stairway to my own.

I feel a deep peace. I know now that I can proclaim myself from the mountaintops, yet none will hear and understand and lay traps to prevent me. Never has the way ahead seemed so clear.