Besides (one voice said within him now, calm as a sage in the stoa), you have your duties to those who have engaged them. Besides (one voice said, cold, and with a touch of contemptuous surprise), it would be madness even to think of an intrigue with the wife of a magnate of Averno.
Would it?
— what voice was that? And yet another voice said but one word. And said it often.
Poppaea. Poppaea. Poppaea …
And there was, at last as at first, another voice yet, which had a more simple and a more accessible message, and in the end it was to this one that he hearkened.
The play concluded to Helen’s ringing screams as she watched, Homeric canonical text or no Homeric canonical text, Paris being slain in combat beside the reedy river of the Trojan shore — located, conveniently, offstage-right — curtain. A moment for the audience to taste the aftertaste. And then followed what critics were fond of calling, it being after all an easy call and one that required little resort to Aristotle or others, “a knockabout farce”; this subsided into a song and dance and a collection taken up in hopes that at least a few patrons would have forgotten having paid on their way in.
By then Vergil was backstage, “backstage” having the geographical reality of the Plain of Troy. A man, perhaps the manager, who had been leaning against the wall, whence he could see the “stage,” turned his head and looked at Vergil with the same look of contained sardonic amusement with which he had been watching the scene; merely raised his eyebrows in inquiry. “I thought,” said Vergil, “that I might be allowed to have a few words in private with the Lady Helen. . and I should try to put them all in decent Greek.”
The man said, briefly, “Haw!” managing to get into the one syllable all the emotions of his look; then, “I am sure she would be very pleased.” The tone was civil, even sincere; some slight glance he let show which indicated that he himself would, would some slight circumstance be different, be pleased to have a visit in private with the visitor, be this with what tongue might be; but this was as brief as the single syllable. A coin changed hands, discreetly, politely, with no change of expression on either face. Vergil found himself in a curtained cubicle. He had been in such before. Presently, in came the actress, gave him a pleasant-enough look, if a slightly appraising one.
“You seem decent,” she said, “but you are not Greek.”
“Neither, I trust, am I a Trojan troll.”
The woman chuckled. Clapped her hands. In came an older one with a basin of hot water, sponge, soft and scented soap, and a few cloth-pieces worn and washed till they were soft enough to serve as towels. “Let me get this muck off,” and, proceeding to remove her stage-paint, asked, “Well, what did you think of the play?”
Barely he hesitated. “Evocative,” he said.
This time she laughed outright. Then she murmured to the other woman, who put upon a tray most of the items which she had brought in, and went out. The woman “Helen” placed both hands upon his shoulders. “Are you going to give me a nice present?” she asked.
“More than one, I hope.”
She did not laugh now. “I believe you. I trust you. We won’t haggle. We will …” A moment she paused. “We will play our own play. This time I shall really be Helen. You will really be Paris. And now we are really together.” And added, “And alone.” It had grown dark. He did not ask nor linger thinking why, but moved closer to her. And what happened next between them was nothing, really, like anything that had ever happened between him and any courtesan or trull before. What he felt was no mere assuagement of need or indigency in satisfying a simple, essential lust; what he received with her was certainly none of the imitation passion, be it perfunctory or most highly skilled, that anyone may obtain for pay; however pay be made. He had rapted her away, in what guise he could not recall, from her kingly husband’s court, though not far off the martial camp-fires gleamed; she had been briefly fearful and fear at once gave way to relief and relief to wonder and to quiet joy; now and then the scented forest breathed for them and the faint smoke ebbed away.
He scarcely gave thought, presently, to the heated scented water and the soap and the soft cloth and the ministrations performed with them. He was hardly aware of dressing or of being dressed. He was faintly sensible that there was more light, and, this being so, he moved again toward her and bent to place a parting kiss; slightly she turned her head, one of her eyes only could he clearly see, and there was that in the corner of that eye which was not her, which was not “Helen,” whoever “Helen” really was; who was someone else: in that sole gray glint, gone as fast as it appeared, was that which told him all, yet told him nothing.
“Poppaea,” he said, faintly. The scene somehow shifted. The stage was bare. He stood alone. The door was open, he saw the street outside. “Poppaea,” he said. He moved his lips. No sound came forth. His legs trembled, yet they held him up, as he moved. He would have turned, he could not have turned, he no longer wished to turn.
And in his silent heart his voice said, as his heart beat, beat, beat: Poppaea. Poppaea. Poppaea. Poppaea.
• • •
Rain in Averno. It came down in drops as hot, almost, as the waters of the bath, though much less cleanly. It came down slowly, as if it had paused to embrace the smokes and stinks and to absorb a measure of the “sweet airs,” it refreshed no one and nothing, it left soot streaks and stench of sulfur. It oozed down the pitted sides of the buildings like oil and, it may be, left them even more pitted than before. It thickened the filth in the streets and turned it into a sort of paste, a black paste perhaps fit, very fit, to use upon the binding of some evil and feculent grimoire. Rain in Averno.
Although the entire city stank notoriously, except in limited spaces for limited times, when someone had a room sprinkled with an attar from the rose-red vales beyond Ragusa, or burned opobal-samum or some similar gum in a brazier; notorious though it was that all the city stank, this area through which he now picked his way was notorious even within the city for its own evil odors: its name, Canales, offered perhaps explanation enough, though none was offered for the plural form when there was but one canal. And that one for the most part hidden from sight by the moidering, bulking sides of warehouses. An ancient jest was much told by the magnates: “An’ he says, ‘Torto, why you don’t shore ‘em up, the sides o’ your warehouses, be bulging out already, you don’t see?’ An’ he say — ” Here the heavy face of the teller would play a series of grimaces intended to imitate that of “Old Torto,” and these alone always brought heavy chuckles. “ — he say, ‘Why shore ‘em up? It ain’t failled down, yet.’ ” Great laughter; the point of which, it was often explained, being that if Torto (or anyone) had shored up the tottering walls, it would need have been at his own expense, whereas were they actually to fall, and thus constitute an obstacle, the cost of repairs by reason of some ancient legal quibble grown to the status of a municipal privilege would be paid for out of the taxes levied on the property of such aliens whom a particularly hard fate decreed should die in the Very Rich City. This too-often tale was, Vergil by and by realized, not intended merely to indicate commercial acumen as it was to delineate certain aspects of the character of “Old Torto.”