Imperium - Харрис Роберт. Страница 80

We passed through various rooms stuffed with loot from the war until at last we reached the great chamber known as the Room of Apollo, where a group of six were talking beneath a mural of the deity shooting a fiery arrow from his golden bow. At the sound of our footsteps on the marble floor, the conversation ceased and there was a loud silence. Quintus Metellus was indeed among them-stouter, grayer, and more weather-beaten following his years of command in Crete, but still very much the same man who had attempted to intimidate the Sicilians into dropping their case against Verres. On one side of Metellus was his old courtroom ally Hortensius, whose bland and handsome face was expressionless, and on the other, Catulus, as thin and sharp as a blade. Isauricus, the grand old man of the Senate, was also present-seventy years old he must have been on that July evening, but he did not look it (he was one of those types who never look it: he was to live to be ninety, and would attend the funerals of almost everyone else in the room); I noticed he was holding the transcript I had delivered to Hortensius. The two Lucullus brothers completed the sextet. Marcus, the younger, I knew as a familiar figure from the Senate front bench. Lucius, the famous general, paradoxically I did not recognize at all, for he had been away fighting for eighteen out of the past twenty-three years. He was in his middle fifties, and I quickly saw why Pompey was so passionately jealous of him-why they had literally come to blows when they met in Galatia to effect the handover in the Eastern command-for Lucius had a chilly grandeur which made even Catulus seem slightly common.

It was Hortensius who ended the embarrassment, and who stepped forward to introduce Cicero to Lucius Lucullus. Cicero extended his hand, and for a moment I thought Lucullus might refuse to shake it, for he would only have known Cicero as a partisan of Pompey, and as one of those populist politicians who had helped engineer his dismissal. But finally he took it, very gingerly, as one might pick up a soiled sponge in a latrine. “Imperator,” said Cicero, bowing politely. He nodded to Metellus as well: “Imperator.”

“And who is that?” demanded Isauricus, pointing at me.

“That is my secretary, Tiro,” said Cicero, “who recorded the meeting at the house of Crassus.”

“Well, I for one do not believe a word of it,” replied Isauricus, brandishing the transcript at me. “No one could have written down all of this as it was uttered. It is beyond human capacity.”

“Tiro has developed his own system of stenography,” explained Cicero. “Let him show you the actual records he made last night.”

I pulled out the notebooks from my pocket and handed them around.

“Remarkable,” said Hortensius, examining my script intently. “So these symbols substitute for sounds, do they? Or for entire words?”

“Words mostly,” I replied, “and common phrases.”

“Prove it,” said Catulus belligerently. “Take down what I say.” And giving me barely a moment to open a fresh notebook and take up my stylus, he went on rapidly, “If what I have read here is true, the state is threatened with civil war as a result of a criminal conspiracy. If what I have read is false, it is the wickedest forgery in our history. For my own part, I do not believe it is true, because I do not believe such a record could have been produced by a living hand. That Catilina is a hothead, we all know well enough, but he is a true and noble Roman, not a devious and ambitious outsider, and I will take his word over that of a new man-always! What is it you want from us, Cicero? You cannot seriously believe, after all that has happened between us, that I could possibly support you for the consulship? So what is it?”

“Nothing,” replied Cicero pleasantly. “I came across some information which I thought might be of interest to you. I passed it along to Hortensius, that is all. You brought me out here, remember? I did not ask to come. I might more appropriately ask: What do you gentlemen want? Do you want to be trapped between Pompey and his armies in the East, and Crassus and Caesar and the urban mob in Italy, and gradually have the life squeezed out of you? Do you want to rely for your protection on the two men you are backing for consul-the one stupid, the other insane-who cannot even manage their own households, let alone the affairs of the nation? Is that what you want? Well, good then. I at least have an easy conscience. I have done my patriotic duty by alerting you to what is happening, even though you have never been any friends of mine. I also believe I have demonstrated by my courage in the Senate today my willingness to stand up to these criminals. No other candidate for consul has done it, or will in the future. I have made them my enemies and shown you what they are like. But from you, Catulus, and from all of you, I want nothing, and if all you wish to do is insult me, I bid you a good evening.”

He spun around and began walking toward the door, with me in tow, and I guess that must have felt to him like the longest walk he ever took, because we had almost reached the shadowy antechamber-and with it, surely, the black void of political oblivion-when a voice (it was that of Lucullus himself) shouted out, “Read it back!” Cicero halted, and we both turned around. “Read it back,” repeated Lucullus. “What Catulus said just now.”

Cicero nodded at me, and I fumbled for my notebook. “‘If what I have read here is true,’” I began, reciting in that flat, strange way of stenography being read back, “‘the state is threatened with civil war as a result of a criminal conspiracy if what I have read is false it is the wickedest forgery in our history for my own part I do not believe it is true because I do not believe such a record could have been produced by a living hand-’”

“He could have memorized that,” objected Catulus. “It is all just a cheap trick, of the sort you might see done by a conjurer in the Forum.”

“And the latter part,” persisted Lucullus. “Read out the last thing your master said.”

I ran my finger down my notation. “‘-never been any friends of mine I also believe I have demonstrated by my courage in the Senate today my willingness to stand up to these criminals no other candidate for consul has done it or will in the future I have made them my enemies and shown you what they are like but from you Catulus and from all of you I want nothing and if all you wish to do is insult me I bid you a good evening.’”

Isauricus whistled. Hortensius nodded and said something like, “I told you” or “I warned you”-I cannot remember exactly-to which Metellus responded, “Yes, well, I have to say, that is proof enough for me.” Catulus merely glared at me.

“Come back, Cicero,” said Lucullus, beckoning to him. “I am satisfied. The record is genuine. Let us put aside for the time being the question of who needs whom the most, and start from the premise that each of us needs the other.”

“I am still not convinced,” grumbled Catulus.

“Then let me convince you with a single word,” said Hortensius impatiently. “Caesar. Caesar-with Crassus’s gold, two consuls and ten tribunes behind him!”

“So really, we must talk with such people?” Catulus sighed. “Well, Cicero perhaps,” he conceded. “But we certainly do not need you,” he snapped, pointing at me, just as I was moving, as always, to follow my master. “I do not want that creature and his tricks within a mile of me, listening to what we say, and writing everything down in his damned untrustworthy way. If anything is to pass between us, it must never be divulged.”

Cicero hesitated. “All right,” he said reluctantly, and he gave me an apologetic look. “Wait outside, Tiro.”

I had no business to feel aggrieved. I was merely a slave, after all: an extra hand, a tool-a “creature,” as Catulus put it. But nevertheless I felt my humiliation keenly. I folded up my notebook and walked into the antechamber, and then kept on walking, through all those echoing, freshly stuccoed state rooms-Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter-as the slaves in their cushioned slippers moved silently with their glowing tapers among the gods, lighting the lamps and candelabra. I went out into the soft, warm dusk of the park, where the cicadas were singing, and for reasons which I cannot even now articulate I found that I was weeping, but I suppose I must have been very tired.