Caesar (54 page)

“No!” barked Cato loudly. “I will not accept honors for doing a duty clearly laid out in the terms of my command, so don't bother to table them, let alone vote on them. I ask only that the slave Nicias, who was Ptolemy the Cyprian's steward, be given his freedom and awarded the Roman citizenship. Without Nicias's help I could not have succeeded in my task.” Philippus, a very handsome, dark man, was moved to blink, though not to argue. He led Cato into his exquisitely appointed dining room, ensconced him in the locus consularis position of honor on his own couch, and introduced him to his sons, lying together on the lectus imus. Lucius Junior was twenty-six, as dark as his father and even handsomer; Quintus was twenty-three, less inspiring in coloring and looks. Two chairs were set on the far side of the lectus medius couch where Philippus and Cato reclined, the low table which would bear the food separating chairs from couch.“ You may not know,” drawled Philippus, “that I have remarried fairly recently.”

“Have you?” asked Cato, ill at ease; he hated these socially obligatory dinners, for they always seemed to comprise people he had nothing in common with, from political to philosophical leanings.“ Yes. Atia, the widow of my dear friend Gaius Octavius.”

“Atia ... Who's she?” Philippus laughed heartily; his two sons grinned. “If a woman is neither a Porcia nor a Domitia, Cato, you never know who she is! Atia is the daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus from Aricia, and the younger of Gaius Caesar's two sisters.” Feeling the skin of his jaw tighten, Cato produced a rictus of a smile. “Caesar's niece,” he said.“ That's right, Caesar's niece.” Cato strove to be polite. “Whose is the other chair?”

“My only daughter's. Marcia. My youngest chick.”

“Not old enough yet to be married, obviously.”

“As a matter of fact, she's fully eighteen. She was engaged to young Publius Cornelius Lentulus, but he died. I haven't yet decided on another husband.”

“Does Atia have children by Gaius Octavius?”

“Two, a girl and a boy. And a stepdaughter as well, Octavius's by an Ancharia,” said Philippus. At which moment the two women came in, a telling contrast in beauty. Atia was a typical Julian, golden-haired and blue-eyed, with a distinct look of Gaius Marius's wife about her and striking grace of movement; Marcia was black-haired and black-eyed, and very much resembled her older brother. Who never took his gaze away from his father's wife, had Cato noticed. Cato didn't notice because he couldn't take his gaze away from Philippus's daughter, seated opposite him on her stiff straight chair, her hands folded demurely in her lap. Her eyes were fixed with equal intensity upon Cato. They looked at each other and fell in love, something Cato had never believed could happen, nor Marcia believed would happen to her. Marcia recognized it for what it was; Cato did not. She smiled at him, revealing brilliantly white teeth. “What a wonderful thing you've done, Marcus Cato,” she said as the first course was brought in. Normally Cato would have despised the fare, upon which Marcia's father had expended considerable thought: sniffed baby cuttlefish, quail's eggs, gigantic olives imported from Further Spain, smoked baby eels, oysters brought live in a tank-cart from Baiae, crabs from the same source, little shrimps in a creamy garlic sauce, the finest virgin olive oil, crunchy bread hot from the oven.“ I haven't done anything except my duty,” said Cato in a voice he hadn't known he possessed, soft, almost caressing. “Rome deputed me to annex Cyprus, and I have done so.”

“But with such honesty, such care,” she said, eyes adoring. He blushed deeply, dipped his head and concentrated upon eating the oysters and crabs, which were, he was forced to admit, absolutely delicious.“ Do try the shrimps,” said Marcia, took his hand and guided it to the dish. Her touch enraptured him, the more so because he couldn't do what prudence screamed at him to do—snatch the hand away. Instead he prolonged the contact by pretending the dish was elsewhere, and actually smiled at her. How enormously attractive he was! thought Marcia. That noble nose! What beautiful grey eyes, so stern and yet so luminous. Such a mouth! And that neatly cropped head of softly waving red-gold hair... broad shoulders, long graceful neck, not an ounce of superfluous flesh, long and well-muscled legs. Thank all the Gods that the toga was too clumsy to dine in, that men reclined clad only in a tunic!Cato gobbled shrimps, dying to pop one between her gorgeous lips, letting her keep on guiding his hand to the dish. And while all this was going on, the rest of Marcia's family, startled and amused, exchanged glances and suppressed smiles. Not upon Marcia's account; about her virtue and obedience no one thought to wonder, for she was extremely sheltered and would always do as she was told. No, it was Cato fascinated them. Who would ever have dreamed Cato could speak softly, or relish a woman's touch? Only Philippus was old enough to remember the time not long before the war against Spartacus when Cato, a youth of twenty, had been so violently in love with Aemilia Lepida, Mamercus's daughter who had married Metellus Scipio. But that, all of Rome had long ago assumed, had killed something in Cato, who married an Attilia when he was twenty-two and proceeded to treat her with cold, harsh indifference. Then, because Caesar had seduced her, Cato had divorced her, cut her off from all contact with her daughter and son, whom he had reared in a house utterly devoid of women.“ Let me wash your hands,” said Marcia as the first course was removed and the second course came in: roast baby lamb, roast baby chicken, a myriad of vegetables cooked with pine nuts or shaved garlic or crumbled cheese, roast pork in a peppery sauce, pork sausages patiently coated with layers of watered honey as they broiled gently enough not to burn. To Philippus, constrained because he was aware that his guest ate plainly, a pedestrian meal; to Cato, an indigestibly rich one. But for Marcia's sake he ate of that and nibbled at this.“ I hear,” said Cato, “that you have two stepsisters and one stepbrother.” Her face lit up. “Yes, aren't I lucky?”

“You like them, then.”

“Who could not?” she asked innocently.“ Which one is your favorite?”

“Oh, that's easy,” she said warmly. “Little Gaius Octavius.”

“And how old is he?”

“Six, going on sixty.” And Cato actually laughed, not his habitual neigh but quite an attractive chuckle. “A delightful child, then.” She frowned, considering that. “No, not at all delightful, Marcus Cato. I'd call him fascinating. At least, that's the adjective my father uses. He's very cool and composed, and he never stops thinking. Everything is picked apart, analyzed, weighed in his balance.” She paused, then added, “He's very beautiful.”

“Then he takes after his great-uncle Gaius Caesar,” said Cato, harshness creeping into his voice for the first time. She noticed it. “In some ways, yes. The intellect is very formidable. But he isn't universally gifted, and he's lazy when it comes to learning. He hates Greek, and won't try at it.”

“Meaning Gaius Caesar is universally gifted.”

“Well, I think that's generally conceded,” she said pacifically.“ Where are young Gaius Octavius's gifts, then?”

“In his rationality,” she said. “In his lack of fear. In his self-confidence. In his willingness to take risks.”

“Then he is like his great-uncle.” Marcia giggled. “No,” she said. “He is more like himself.” The main course departed, and Philippus grew gastronomically animated. “Marcus Cato,” he said, “I have a brand-new dessert for you to try!” He eyed the salads, raisin-filled pastries, honey-soaked cakes, huge variety of cheeses, and shook his head. “Ah!” he cried then; the brand-new dessert appeared, a pale yellow chunk of what might have passed for cheese, save that it was borne upon a platter tucked inside another big plate loaded with—snow?“ It's made on the Mons Fiscellus, and in another month you wouldn't have been able to taste it. Honey, eggs and the cream off milk from two-year-old ewes, churned inside a barrel inside a bigger barrel lined with salted snow, then galloped all the way to Rome packed in more snow. I call it Mons Fiscellus ambrosia.” Perhaps discussing Caesar's great-nephew had left a sour taste in Cato's mouth; he declined it, and not even Marcia could persuade him to taste it. Soon after that the two women retired. Cato's pleasure in this visit to a den of Epicureans dimmed immediately; he began to feel nauseated, and in the end was obliged to seek the latrine to vomit discreetly. How could people live so sybaritically? Why, even the Philippus latrine was luxurious! Though, he admitted, it was very nice to be able to avail himself of a little jet of cool water to rinse out his mouth and wash his hands afterward. On the way back down the colonnade in the direction of the dining room he passed an open door.“ Marcus Cato!”

He stopped, peered inside to see her waiting.“ Come in for a moment, please.” That was absolutely forbidden by every social rule Rome owned. But Cato went in.“ I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your company,” said Marcia, limpid gaze fixed not on his eyes but on his mouth. Oh, unbearable! Intolerable! Watch my eyes, Marcia, not my mouth, or I'll have to kiss you! Don't do this to me!The next moment, how he didn't know, she was in his arms and the kiss was real—more real than any kiss he had ever experienced, but that wasn't saying much beyond indicating the depth of his self-inflicted starvation. Cato had kissed only two women, Aemilia Lepida and Attilia, and Attilia only rarely, and never with genuine feeling. Now he found a pair of soft yet muscular lips clinging to his own with a sensuous pleasure made manifest in the way she melted against him, sighed, coiled her tongue around his, pulled his hand up to her breast. Gasping, Cato wrenched himself away from her and fled. He went home so confused that he couldn't remember which door on that narrow Palatine alley of a hundred doors was his, his empty stomach churning, her kiss invading his mind until he could think of nothing except the fabulous feel of her in his arms. Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus were waiting for him in the atrium, agog to discover what dinner at the house of Philippus had been like, the food, the company, the conversation.“ Go away!” he shouted, and bolted for his study. Where he walked the floor until morning dawned without one gulp of wine. He didn't want to care. He didn't want to love. Love was an entrapment, a torment, a disaster, an endless horror. All those years of loving Aemilia Lepida, and what had happened? She preferred an over-bred moron like Metellus Scipio. But Aemilia Lepida and that adolescent love founded in the senses were nothing. Nothing compared to the love he had borne for his brother Caepio, who died alone and waiting for Cato to come, who died without a hand to hold or a friend to comfort him. The agony of living on without Caepio there—the ghastly spiritual amputation—the tears—the desolation which never went away, even now, eleven long years later. An all-pervasive love of any kind was a betrayal of mind, of control, of the ability to deny weakness, to live a selfless life. And it led to a grief he knew himself too old now to bear again, for he was thirty-seven, not twenty, not twenty-seven. Yet as soon as the sun was high enough he donned a fresh, chalk-whitened toga and returned to the house of Lucius Marcius Philippus, there to request the hand of Philippus's daughter in marriage. Hoping against hope that Philippus would say no. Philippus said yes.“ It gives me a foot in both camps,” the unashamed voluptuary said cheerfully, wringing Cato's hand. “Married to Caesar's niece and guardian of his great-nephew, yet father-in-law to Cato. What a perfect state of affairs! Perfect!”

The marriage had been perfect too, except that the sheer joy of it gnawed at Cato perpetually. He didn't deserve it; it could not possibly be a right act to wallow in something so intensely intimate. He had received absolute proof that Philippus's daughter was a virgin on her wedding night, but where did she get that power and passion from, that knowledge? For Cato knew nothing of women, had no idea how much or how little girls learned from conversation, erotic murals, Priapic objects scattered around their homes, noises and glimpses through doors, sophisticated older brothers. Nor did it edify him to know that he was helpless against her wiles, that the violence of his feelings for her ruled him completely. Marcia was a bride straight from the hands of Venus, but Cato came from the iron claws of Dis. So when, two years after the marriage, senile old Hortensius had come around begging to espouse Cato's daughter or one of Cato's nieces, he hadn't taken umbrage at Hortensius's incredible final demand: that he be permitted to marry Cato's wife. Suddenly Cato saw the only way out of his torment, the only way he could prove to himself that he did own himself. He would give Marcia to Quintus Hortensius, a disgusting old lecher who would insult her flesh in unspeakable ways, who would fart and dribble in the throes of his addiction to ecstatics and priceless vintage wines, who would compel her to fellate his limpness into some sort of rigidity, whose toothlessness, hairlessness and inelastic body would revolt her, his darling Marcia whom he couldn't bear to see hurt or made unhappy. How could he sentence her to that fate? Yet he had to, or go mad. He did it. He actually did it. The gossip was wrong; Cato took not one sestertius from Hortensius, though of course Philippus had accepted millions.“ I am divorcing you,” he said to her in his loudest, brassiest voice, “and then I'm going to marry you to Quintus Hortensius. I expect you to be a good wife to him. Your father has agreed.” She had stood absolutely erect, wide eyes full of unshed tears, then reached out and touched his cheek very gently, with so much love.“ I understand, Marcus,” she said. “I do understand. I love you. I will love you beyond death.”

“I don't want you to love me!” he howled, fists clenched. “I want peace, I want to be left alone, I don't want anyone loving me, I don't want to be loved beyond death! Go to Hortensius and learn to hate me!”

But all she did was smile.

And that had been almost four years ago. Four years during which the pain had never left him, never lessened by one iota. He still missed her as acutely as he had on her wedding night in Hortensius's bed, still endured the visions of what Hortensius did to her or asked her to do to him. Still could hear her saying that she understood, that she would love him beyond death. That alone said she knew him down to his very marrow, and that she loved him enough to consent to a punishment she didn't deserve, could not deserve. All so he could prove to himself that he could live without her. That he was capable of denying himself ecstasy. Why was he thinking of her on a day when he ought to be thinking of Curio, of Caesar's despicable victory? Why did he long to have her there, to bury his face in her breasts, make love to her for half of what was going to be an unendurably sleepless night? Why was he avoiding Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus? He poured himself a huge goblet of unwatered wine and drank it down at one gulp; but the worst of it was that he drank so much these Marcia-less days that the wine never had enough effect in a short enough time to dull the ache. Someone began banging on the front door. Cato hunched his head into his shoulders and tried to ignore it, willing Athenodorus Cordylion or Statyllus to answer it, or one of the three servants. But the servants were probably down in the kitchen area at the back of the peristyle, and obviously his two philosophers were sulking because he had gone straight to his study and bolted its door. The wine went down on the desk; Cato got to his feet and went to answer that insistent tattoo.“ Oh, Brutus,” he said, and held the door wide. “I suppose you want to come in.”