‘She been with the maister,’ mutters the slave, head down. He’s dressed in a rough brown tunic, and his face is weatherbeaten. A garden slave, who shouldn’t be in the house at all. Suddenly he raises his eyes boldly to Aemilia’s face. ‘They do say maister’s slipping fast,’ he says.
To Catullus’ surprise, Aemilia doesn’t flare with rage. The two slaves look at each other, a long look full of calculation. They are in this together, locked into the fortunes of the house.
‘So my lady’s left him now?’
The slave nods. ‘And such a scouring and cleaning of pots in the kitchens as you’ve never seen, all by my lady’s orders.’
Vaguely Catullus thinks this must be some women’s rite he’s never heard of, to cleanse the house as death approaches. Maybe Clodia hopes to appease the gods, and persuade them not to take her husband.
‘The smallest scrapings offen the floor, they’m to be burned. So they tellt me. Herbs is to be burned in every room, so I been a-chopping and a-gathering, along with all of us garden lads. But seeing as how I’m foreman, I’m the one a-bringing it all into the house.’
Aemilia considers this in silence. A door bangs in the distance, they hear more running feet, and a babble of scared voices.
‘I must see her,’ says Catullus.
‘Best you see him,’ says Aemilia slowly, ‘best you see my master.’
Both slaves nod judiciously. She’s right, of course. Catullus is here to express his grief at this sudden, terrible illness of a great man. Metellus Celer is his friend. He’s been a guest in this house many times – an intimate, almost. What other reason could he have to come here, if not to sympathize?
And now Catullus truly wants to see him. Wants to take the man’s hand. He didn’t will this sickness, let alone want it to end in death. The most he ever dreamed was that one day Clodia might be divorced.
‘Yes, I’ll go in to him, if it’s allowed.’
He has never been inside Metellus Celer’s bedchamber. As they go down the corridor towards it, he sees a knot of people at the door. Family: he recognizes a brother, and an uncle. They don’t even notice him. All their attention is focused on Dr Philoctetes, who has lost his smooth calm air for once, and seems to be arguing with them. His hands gesture vehemently, palms upward. He looks very Greek. Aemilia has slipped away, leaving him to fend for himself. She’s scared of drawing the family’s attention to herself, and no wonder. The house must be seething with rumours of conspiracy and counter-conspiracy. The Metelli would be within their rights to seize Aemilia and have her tortured for information.
He’ll go in alone, he decides, but at that moment Dr Philoctetes glances down the corridor and sees him. He makes a sign to Catullus to wait, while he carries on talking to the family. Catullus is close enough to hear the words.
‘The excessive salivation is a symptom which gives rise to considerable concern, but my energies must be chiefly directed to relieving the breathing problems that cause most perturbation to our patient.’
‘But can’t you do something? He’s suffocating.’
‘I am doing everything that can be done. May I suggest that this is a most propitious and proper point in time for the afflicted family to gather and make an offering? Perhaps some prayers for the intercession of the illustrious ancestors?’
He wants them out of the way. So Metellus Celer isn’t going to die just yet. A group of older women comes out to join the men: more family. They are marked as clearly by their Metelli features as by their grey, haggard faces. They must have been up all night, in and out of the sickroom. One of them catches hold of the doctor’s sleeve.
‘He’s in terrible pain, doctor, isn’t there anything you can do?’
‘I beg of you, dear ladies, to join your noble relatives in the tablinum. I assure you, it is the most fitting aid that you can offer to your dear one at this time. I must return to my patient immediately.’
‘But if things are taking a turn for the worse, then we’ve got to be present. You understand, doctor, the rites –’
‘I give you my word of honour, most esteemed lady, that you will be informed immediately if there is any question of that. But in my judgement the crisis is not absolutely immediate.’
The flock of relations turns uncertainly this way and that, and then steadies itself. They don’t know what to do, but the sight and sound of one another gives them strength. Whatever happens, they won’t panic. They are Metelli, and the determination to survive is cut into their faces as strongly as their sufferings. They’ll retreat, regroup, and ready themselves to advance again.
He can almost feel the slow thick pulse of the Metelli ancestors beating through the house. The clan is greater than any one of its members, and will outlive them all. Hope dies for a son or a brother, but the Metelli will never die.
‘We will invoke the gods,’ says one of the uncles, and a murmur of agreement sweeps over them. The flock turns and hurries away to the tablinum.
They haven’t noticed him; haven’t recognized him even. All they can see or think about is Metelli business. That’s their salvation, and it might be his, too. They’re in no state to question his presence, or call him to account. But Dr Philoctetes, of course, knows him, and has taken in the situation flawlessly.
‘My dear young friend, I must warn you that this is no ordinary sickroom. I must have your absolute assurance that you will remain calm, whatever your emotion, for the sake of my patient. Such a death is easy neither to suffer nor to watch.’
They are alone. Once again, in a crisis, Dr Philoctetes’ florid phrases and circumlocutions drop away. He is full of force.
‘He’s dying, then?’
‘Of course he is dying,’ answers Philoctetes, almost angrily. ‘He has no alternative. His vital signs are weak. His pulse, his breathing, his temperature, his reflexes’ – Dr Philoctetes numbers each sign angrily on his fingers – ‘all of these are failing. He cannot live, but he has some way to go before he can die. Now come if you are coming.’
Catullus follows the doctor through the anteroom and over the threshold. It is a large room, full of gloomy magnificence. The shutters are closed, and only one lamp burns at the bedside.
The smell is terrible. Vomit, blood, and a seeping smell of faeces. Metellus is lying propped up, with his face turned to the right, away from the door. An old woman is crouched over him, wiping his face.
‘It’s all right, my dearie, nanny’s here to look after you, you’ll feel as right as rain by tomorrow, nanny won’t let it go on like this.’ Her voice is feeble, gasping. Tears run down her beaten old face. She wipes away the saliva that pours from the sick man’s mouth. Such a stream of saliva! – Catullus has never seen anything like it.
Metellus looks unconscious, but suddenly a terrible groan of pain escapes him. He tries to draw up his knees.
‘I’ll put a hot stone on your tummy, my angel, that’ll help the pain,’ blathers the old nanny.
‘I’ll try the sedative again,’ says Philoctetes. He steps to the bedside, grasps a long-handled drinking cup and eases it into the half-open mouth. ‘Try to swallow, my friend. It will ease you.’
A gargling sound comes from Metellus Celer’s throat.
‘No swallowing reflex… paralysis of the windpipe, I suspect,’ Philoctetes murmurs to Catullus, as he comes away from the bedside.
‘Where’s that slave who was cleaning him?’ he asks aloud, sharply. ‘He ought to be here constantly. A man can’t lie in his own dirt.’
‘I’ll do it and glad to,’ says the nanny, ‘many’s the time I’ve cleaned his little backside for him,’ and she struggles to rise.
Philoctetes puts his hand out, stopping her. ‘Go and get that slave. He should be flogged for leaving his post. It needs a man’s strength to lift the patient without hurting him.’
The old nanny stumbles out, and Catullus steps round to her side of the bed. Why he wants to see Metellus Celer’s face, he doesn’t know. Perhaps because he thinks it will be
as it has always been: powerful, if a little unimaginative, the face of a soldier and a statesman of Rome.
But that face has gone. Metellus Celer is unrecognizable. Even to use the name ‘Celer’ seems like a bad joke. Swift! – he can’t move. His face seems to have caved in. His skin is grey and filmed with sweat. The only sound that comes out of him is a gargling moan, deep in his chest. The smell of shit grows stronger.
I shouldn’t be here, thinks Catullus. He wouldn’t want anyone to see him like this.
He steps back into the shadows. Philoctetes leans over his patient, taking his pulse and then lifting his eyelids. There is nothing to be done, that’s obvious now.
Cicero was lying. How could a man in this state speak of the affairs of Rome? It wasn’t the real Metellus Celer whom Cicero preached about on the steps of the Curia, but some ideal Roman of his own actorish imagination, dying nobly without vomit, piss or shit. Most likely Cicero never even came into this bedroom. He’d be careful to hold on to his illusions, because they were the foundation of his career.
This man is real. Catullus has never felt so close to him, as if he were a brother going out into a winter storm on the mountains, barefoot and without a cloak. But better to freeze to death than to die like this. If what they say is true, then this is the face of poison. It’s not quick or neat. It doesn’t resemble any of the stories he’s ever heard about it. How could a man do this to another man?
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, so quietly that even Philoctetes won’t hear. No one answers. The sick man gives out shuddering gasps, from his stomach. The nanny has come back, and is keening quietly to herself. He glances round and sees a tall, burly slave waiting. His hands hang at his sides, ready to wash the shit off Metellus Celer.
Perhaps Metellus would have wanted to be seen as Cicero saw him. He’d have wanted to die in the Roman style, stoic and unyielding, thinking only of the public good. Perhaps inside that suffering, destroyed body, he really was thinking only of the public good, and was glad that his throat was paralysed so that he could not speak the wrong words, or betray himself by crying out.
Metellus Celer is so entirely alone. All those clients and dependants might as well be in Egypt for all their noisy presence means to him. Even his family and the gathered shades of his ancestors can’t help him. Here, everything has stopped. Soon, the breathing will stop too.
‘I’m sorry,’ Catullus says again. Sorry for being alive when you’re dying, for putting thoughts into your head and words into your mouth. For triumphing over you, not by sleeping with your wife but by having the power to walk out of this room into the sunlight, and live another day.
‘The family will finish their prayers soon,’ says Philoctetes. Catullus should go now. The family won’t want to see him here.
Philoctetes walks with him through to the anteroom, and to the door. No one is about. They can hear the muffled clamour of Metellus’ clients and dependants, but the gladiators are doing their work well, and the corridors are quiet. From the tablinum there comes the sound of chanting.
‘Mushrooms, I think,’ Dr Philoctetes says quietly. ‘It is of course the characteristic excess of salivation that points to the culprit – here we are speaking of culprits in the vegetable kingdom, you understand. Of the type I am not precisely sure – it is not my field of expertise. But perhaps one of the amonitas. However, my dear young friend, believe that I say this only into your sympathetic ear, knowing that I can trust absolutely to your discretion. I have no wish to find myself suffering symptoms similar to those that our friend endures, one of these fine nights or days. And you, I trust, will be equally circumspect on your own account.’
He turns and looks into Philoctetes’ eyes. They are moist and gleaming – but with what emotion? A man is dying behind him and he speaks so coolly of culprits and symptoms. Does he not feel it?
‘Shouldn’t you be attending your patient?’ asks Catullus, rather coldly.
Philoctetes shrugs that Greek shrug of his, that says: Things are as they are, not as we wish them to be.
‘My attendance now is of no value, except to the family. They need to know that every conceivable course of beneficial action is being carried out. It is for this reason that they sent for me, knowing of my reputation. But the old woman – the nurse – she is of more use to my patient now than I. He is beyond amelioration, so he might as well hear words of love. Do you know, my dear young friend, that the sense of hearing is the last to fade? You must be very careful what you say at the bedside of a man who is dying.
‘So, quickly, my dear poet, leave these noxious, nay threatening miasmas of the sickroom and return to the health which you have tried so severely and so recently that you cannot risk it again.’ Philoctetes lowers his voice. His eyes glisten with a relish which even the darkness of the chamber can’t dim. ‘In Rome we need our poets, you understand, more than we need soldiers or politicians. We have plenty of the latter.’
Philoctetes vanishes back into the sickroom, while the chanting continues. Stability, that’s what the chant represents. The Metelli going on and on, whatever happens. Stability is what Cicero was after too, with his fictions about the torch of the Republic being lifted out of Metellus Celer’s dying hand.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter if something is true or not, Catullus thinks, if it’s seen as true. And it’s true that the Metelli are what they’ve made themselves. They uphold the standard, and the sufferings of one melt into the well-being of all. A great family, which has a right to believe in itself.
But I don’t believe in it. I believe in shit and blood and vomit. I believe in the darkness waiting for Metellus Celer. The rest is a lie.
Philoctetes will fetch the family soon. Metellus Celer can’t last long. As life slumps in him the family will surround his bed. If they follow the old ways, they will lower him to the floor, the closest he can get to the earth that bore him. He has no son to perform the rituals for him, and his daughter is only a child, safe on their estates with her nanny, far from the complications of her parents’ lives.
Metellus Celer’s brother will kneel to kiss him as he breathes out for the last time. And then the family will call out his name, so loudly that everyone waiting in the anteroom will know that Metellus Celer, the swift and strong, is dead.
He’s forgetting Clodia. She’ll have to be there, surely, weeping, tearing her clothes and pulling down her hair. But he can’t quite imagine it. He can’t see Clodia washing her husband’s body for burial. She is used to organizing great occasions. She’ll organize this one, all the way from the lying-in-state to the magnificent funeral that a man of his stature deserves. Perhaps she has already ordered the embalmer. Washed, anointed, embalmed, dressed again in splendour, his body will be ready for its journey, with a coin under his tongue to pay his passage to Charon for ferrying him across the Styx. Clodia will play her part. She won’t give way to grief in public.
No, he can’t imagine Clodia washing her husband’s body. He knows his girl. She’ll be frightened of the dead man, and she won’t want to touch him.
The family would think it shameful for Metellus Celer to be laid out by paid hands. Perhaps his aunts and sisters will ignore Clodia’s arrangements, and let no one but themselves lay him out. That old nanny would be the best one to take care of him. She loves him, and still sees her child in him. She wouldn’t leave him.
Death takes everybody to where they don’t want to be. Even Clodia will have to pay service to it, and sink herself into the tribe of the Metelli. She’ll be in mourning, with her path laid out for her.
He won’t be able to see her. But he’s got to see her. He’s got to grasp her, hold her, press her against him until all he can smell is her skin and her hair. And swallow her greedily, the touch and the taste of her, until there’s nothing else in him.
It felt right that she wasn’t keeping vigil at her husband’s side. At least she’s not a hypocrite. She doesn’t love him. He would know that. Besides, thinks Catullus with a cold, flat accura
cy he rarely achieves in his thoughts of Clodia, she’s not what her husband would want now. You have to be strong to cope with Clodia’s bewitching, disturbing, betraying presence. At the point of death, an old nurse might be better.
But I would want you, Clodia. I would never want anyone else. If you were dying I’d sit by you. I would wipe your face and if you pissed yourself I’d wash you very gently and I’d lift you up so that it didn’t hurt you. Nothing about your body could ever disgust me, don’t you know that? You could shit and vomit and I’d look after you. Whatever happens, I will always want you.
But he’s not going to see her. Not now, under this roof where Metellus Celer is dying horribly. Wherever she is, she’s keeping away for a reason. Aemilia’s bound to have told Clodia that he’s here.
The chanting rises, cold, stately and imploring. The gods won’t listen. Metellus Celer is already on his way down the shadowy path. Not very swiftly, poor man; not nearly as fast as he’d like. He crawls and stumbles and he longs for the journey to end and for the blessed dark to wash his eyes.
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? It sounded good while he was writing it.
Our sole short day is set
into enduring night.
And the little sparrow which pecked and tapped its way down the death path – that sounded good, too.
qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
ten-e-bri-cosum – as shadowy as a spider’s web in a dark corner, and as clinging. And what a brilliant contrast between his mimicry of the sparrow’s sound and movement –
sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
ad solam dominam usque pipiabat.
qui nunc it per iter –
– pip pip pip it it it – and the marvellous word that wipes it out for ever: tenebricosum.
The gladiators let him pass. It’s their duty to stop people getting in, not to prevent them from getting out. But one of them says to Catullus out of the side of his mouth, ‘Had enough, eh? Bet that poor bastard in there would like to walk out, too.’