Saturnalia(42)
I didn’t think he stood a chance, which shows how much I knew about it.
“Decius, for the holiday I have full freedom to move around the city without my grandmother’s supervision.” Julia’s grandmother was the frightening Aurelia, mother of Caius and Lucius Julius Caesar. She was not above demanding my public flogging and execution for impropriety with her granddaughter, and had done so more than once in the past.
“Even so, I don’t see what you can … ?”
“What is there to do in this case except pick up rumors, gossip, and malicious innuendo? I can do that as well as you!”
“Well, yes, but …”
“Then it’s settled.” And so it was.
By this time we needed another refill, and as I handed Julia her cup, she noticed the bandage on my hand.
“What happened to your hand?” She set down her cup and took my wounded paw in her delicate, patrician fingers, as if she could heal it by contact.
“On the voyage here we were attacked by pirates,” I told her. “I received this wound when I drove them back to their ship and slew their captain.”
She dropped my hand. “You probably cut yourself shaving.”
For the remainder of the evening we wandered among the stalls, admired the many mountebanks performing their various arts, and generally got into the mood of the season. We saw performing animals, boys dancing on tight-stretched ropes, troupes of beautiful youths, and maidens performing the ancient dances of the Greek islands, Nubian fire-breathers, Egyptian magicians, and others too numerous to recall.
A Persian magus made a bouquet of white flowers appear from within Julia’s gown, and as she cried out in delight and tried to take them in her hands, the flowers became a white pigeon and flew away. We had our fortunes told by a benevolent-looking old peasant woman who gazed into our palms with rheumy eyes and predicted that we would enjoy long years of happy marriage with many children, prosperity, and distinction. She was predicting the same for everyone who came to her. Long lines stood outside the booths of the many more professional seers as people waited to hear their fortunes for the coming year. I looked for Furia’s booth but did not see it.
Everywhere, people were rolling dice at folding tables, monument bases, or just on the pavement. On Saturnalia, public gambling was allowed. The rest of the year, one could bet openly only at the circus. As the evening wound down, the torches began to burn low, smoke, and flicker. Then only the diehard gamblers remained at the tables, rolling their dice and knucklebones beneath the light of Saturnalian candles.
As midnight neared, people began to trail off toward their homes, to rest up for the even greater revelry of the following day. I took Julia to the door of Caesar’s great house on the Forum, the mansion of the pontifex maximus adjoining the Palace of the Vestals. There we were met at the door by the formidable Aurelia, who for once was constrained by custom from upbraiding me. We promised to meet the next day, but we did not dare to exchange so much as a kiss with her grandmother looking on. She was quite capable of setting her slaves on me with whips and staves.
As I walked home, I felt not the least fatigued despite all the wine I had drunk and the food I had stuffed down my gullet. As I crossed the fast-emptying Forum, thick with the smoke of burned-out braziers, I was struck by its eerie aspect at such a time. The few gamblers crouched over their candles were like underworld spirits tormenting some unfortunate mortal singled out by the gods for special punishment. The outlines of the majestic buildings were soft and muted, more like something willed into being by Jupiter than the work of human hands. This was the Forum as we see it in dreams.
Far up the slope of the Capitol, just below the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, I could make out the dark, forbidding crag of the Tarpeian Rock, where traitors and murderers are hurled to their deaths. From the frantic gaiety of the earlier evening, all was transformed to a sinister gloom.
It was with thoughts of this sort that I made my way through the narrow, winding streets to my home, acknowledging the greetings and good wishes of weaving drunks, stepping over the recumbent bodies of those who had partaken too lustily and hadn’t made it to their own doors, thoughts of gloom and demons wended their way, inevitably, to the witches. What were they doing that night, out on the Vatican field?
At my house I had to let myself in, since my slaves weren’t about to answer my knock at the door. I went to my sleeping room and finally unburdened myself of my toga, which had been making my arm sweat all evening. I began to undress for bed, then stopped, sat on the edge of the bed, and thought. I was wide awake. If I lay down, it would only be to stare at the ceiling until the sun came up.