The Emperor Waltz Read online

  The perfumes of the garden from her dream were still in her mind. She could feel the cool touch of the gold, the substance of it in her hand. In the world she lived in, the night was dark, and the roar of the sandstorm was pitiless. She shook her bedclothes; a layer of yellow sand covered them. She could have woken her slave to do this – she still slept at the foot of the bed – but the slave was deep in sleep, her dark face hardly showing in the room. Only by her comforting, warm, womanly smell could her presence be deduced. The merchant’s daughter thought she would allow her to sleep. The floor could be swept in the morning. She had never asked her slave about her history in detail. For the first time in her life, the merchant’s daughter wondered what it would be like to be somebody else.

  3.

  In the morning, the storm had subsided. The merchant’s daughter had thought, at one point, that the underworld had surfaced, and was mounting a great futile rage against the Christians who had chosen death. She had slept long; the sun was high in the sky. Around her, the comforting hiss and whisper of the stiff wicker broom at work. The slave was mildly commenting to herself on the amount of sand that had come into the chamber.

  ‘Oh, I slept so well,’ the merchant’s daughter said, raising herself up. ‘I always sleep well when there is a sandstorm. I believe I was born during one.’

  ‘You are alone in that,’ the slave said. ‘It keeps the rest of us awake with its boom, boom, boom, and the shriek of it.’

  ‘It did not keep you awake!’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘You snored all night. I woke once – I heard you.’

  ‘I snored,’ the slave said passively. ‘I snored. Your mother was asking for you, once you are dressed and fed and awake. Do you want to send her a message?’

  ‘No,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘Let her wait. I woke up only now. You know those people? The ones in the courtroom?’

  ‘Christians,’ the slave said.

  ‘What happens to them? Are they going to be put to death immediately?’

  The slave did not reply. She made a gesture of the hand, which was one that an elder person might make to a younger person. But the slave was the same age as the merchant’s daughter. She had been bought for the merchant’s daughter as a child, to keep her company.

  ‘What happens to Christians? Do you know?’ the merchant’s daughter asked sharply.

  ‘I know what happens to Christians,’ the slave said. Sh-sh-sh, the broom went across the floor. ‘But the magistrate does not know what happens to him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘The magistrate ordered the Christians to be put to death.’

  ‘The magistrate, too, will die,’ the slave said. Her eyes turned to the merchant’s daughter’s face, fearful but full of knowledge. She seemed to be inviting more enquiry and turning it away at the same time.

  All that long, hot, dusty roar of a day, the merchant’s daughter was slow and absent. Her tutor commented on it. They were in the Peloponnesian war, and she had not prepared the chapter. Some of the words were not familiar to her, and she was close to remarking that if the names of the different ropes of ships were to be of any use to her, she would learn them when she became an oarsman, no doubt. The tutor, an aged Greek with a blue wig that kept slipping from his bald and polished pate, was patient, but he commented on it, and remarked that those who worked hard at scholarship were the ones who found it of greatest support, all their lives. ‘I, now, have read the great Thucydides twenty or thirty times, for pleasure or for these purposes. And each time I learn more about the world as it is constituted.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘I had other matters on my mind. I was called away from the great Thucydides and had no time to prepare. Tell me: what are Christians?’

  ‘Christians, madam?’

  ‘Christians,’ the merchant’s daughter said.

  But the tutor could tell her nothing. He knew that there were some who had been put to death that morning, in the amphitheatre. But he knew nothing of their beliefs or their habits. To tell the truth, he thought that very little that had happened since the great Augustus was of any interest or importance, and nothing at all that happened in this small marble city in the African desert with one poet only was worth his attention, or ever would be.

  Her parents dined out that night, taking her two eldest brothers and their wives with them. There was a general in town. Her mother bathed in scented oils and had her hair elaborately curled. Her mother’s chamber was filled with musk and rosewater, and even her father had had his hair cut by his manservant. The merchant’s daughter retreated into alcoves with a pomegranate and a pin to get out of the way of the servants. They rushed with bowls of hot water and tiny jars of green glass the size of a thumb, with paint and knives and strigils. Her father hoped to impress the general as a supplier of goods for the army, should an army return this way. Her mother looked beautiful and smelt delicious when it was done and they mounted into the four-man palanquin to take them to the dinner. The quiet urgency had been very much like the household activity around childbirth, her eldest sister thoughtfully remarked. The child last being born had been the merchant’s youngest daughter, who went back into the house; also thoughtfully.

  ‘My sister has forgotten about my little brother,’ the merchant’s daughter remarked after dinner to her slave. The evening had been independently splendid. Their parents, as a gesture towards their own luxury, had not stinted on the household arrangements. The children had dined in great style, on sows’ udders and little birds, on dates and even on dried fish. Afterwards, the remains of the dinner would be thrown out to the midden heap at the back of the marketplace. The family was rich, and was growing richer. Her parents had gone to dinner with a famous visiting general, and were welcomed there.

  ‘I am sure your sister remembers your brother,’ the slave said, drawing a comb through her mistress’s hair.

  ‘She forgot. She said the last time my mother had a baby, it was I. But it was not I. It was my brother, the one who died.’

  ‘It was a slip of the tongue,’ the slave said. The brother in question had been a pretty baby, with curls and a fat smile. His mouth and eyes opened wide and easily. But at two, his fat cheek had begun to swell, and then to blacken. He had had a black growth on his jaw, and his face had rotted. It was swollen, foul and deformed, his baby teeth showing through a great hole in his cheek. There was nothing that could be done. He was kept from the sight of his parents. The merchant’s daughter, who was only three years older, had gone into his small and bare chamber and waited with him for death. The stench of the sick chamber had turned her stomach. It was perhaps unsafe to enter the world of the sick so lightly. But she had gone in, and spent time with her brother, whose frightened eyes and muffled cries of pain were all the speaking he could do. He had died in great pain and was often forgotten about by the elder brothers and sisters. He had been their brother, and had been born, and been the subject of rejoicing at his birth.

  ‘Do you think the dead know about us, after they are dead?’ the merchant’s daughter said.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ the slave said. ‘I believe that they can be helped, and that we can make offerings to reduce their sufferings.’

  ‘But they do not suffer,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘They are dead! They cannot suffer more.’

  ‘I believe that the life of suffering can be eased during life by kindness, and after death by making offerings. I have heard that the suffering of the dead is such that they look back in longing for the suffering they lived through when they were here on the earth. But there is bliss, too, and happiness we cannot conceive of.’

  ‘Offerings,’ the merchant’s daughter said. She put her hand up and halted the progress of the comb through her long hair. ‘What offerings? You mean an animal sacrifice, on their behalf? You offer that at the temple?’

  ‘No,’ the slave said. ‘It is just my offering, and very simple. I kneel and I make a request on behalf
of the dead, and that is all. It is quite soon over.’

  ‘But you make a request of whom?’ the merchant’s daughter said. She knew the answer. She did not know why the slave was stating the facts of the case with such clarity and fearlessness.

  ‘I make a request of God, and of Christ,’ the slave said. ‘Christ who is my God. Now you know everything.’

  ‘You were crying when those Christians were sentenced to death,’ the merchant’s daughter said.

  ‘They were my brothers,’ the slave said. She returned to her work with the comb.

  4.

  That night, the merchant’s daughter had a dream. The dream was about her dead brother. He came to her, and they were in a hot, dry place. He was crying because he was so thirsty. There was a fountain of cool water playing, but the bowl of the fountain was far above his head. His face was black and disfigured and holed as it had been. About them were the sands of the desert. The merchant’s daughter, in her dream, drew her veil across her face against the blast of the sand. But her brother, wailing, had no cloth to protect his mouth and his poor damaged face. He plucked at the rags that hung about his body, and he pulled at his sister.

  In the dream, she did not know what to do. She was not suffering. She did not even feel the heat. If she grew thirsty, she could reach out and take the golden cup that hung from a hook in the fountain, and drink from that. There was nothing to cause her suffering or irritation in the dream, except for the small, ugly, torn and swollen figure by her. It was more like a dwarf than a child, or a moving statue, destroyed in part but still a recognizable whole. She was astonished at how much suffering and irritation this figure was causing her.

  But then, as if with a cool wind, an understanding came to her. The understanding was that it was her brother, and that he was suffering more than anyone could ever suffer, now, somewhere, after his death, and that nothing could halt it except her kindness. All at once, her thoughts turned away from the annoyance she felt. She understood what her brother needed, although, in his animal suffering, he did not realize it himself. She took the gold cup and dipped it in the running water. How cool it was, both cup and water. She bent and, shielding it with her veil, she lowered it to her brother’s poor mouth. She bent his head to one side, so that the water would run only into his whole cheek, and not run out at the side of the cheek with great purple-black gaps in it. She wiped his dirty face, and he looked at her, with surprise. He did not recognize her. She gave him a second drink of cool, fresh water, and this time he gave her a look of recognition and gratitude. In her dream, she stood up. Please, she said silently, not knowing to whom she was talking, please make it all right for him. He is my brother. The beautiful word is sang out to her. She could have said was.

  It seemed to her that she was thirsty now, and there was an ache in her face. The light in the desert was so bright she shielded her eyes against it. There was water in her eyes. But she was looking after only herself, and she turned again to her small brother. His right cheek, where the growth had carried out its worst destruction, was now scarred but mended. His face was the face of her brother. She understood that he no longer suffered. She woke up, and the tears on her face were real tears, not tears in her dream. Her throat choked with joy. At the bottom of the bed, the slave slept. She made small snuffling noises in her sleep. The room was filled with her comforting animal odour.

  5.

  The next day, the nomads rode into town to kill and steal.

  The tribes of nomads in the deserts sometimes came to the town on horses and rode through as if they recognized neither wall nor gate. They took from the market what they needed and paid what they wanted. Their faces were dark and they did not shave their chins. The merchant’s daughter had seen them through the window of their house. Once, they had seen her and pointed her out to each other. The servants had pulled her away from the window and bundled her into an inner room. The oldest manservant of her father had made a gesture out of the window meant to ward off wickedness and evil. The nomads in their blue cloaks, on their splendid horses, rode on. Afterwards, her mother had explained to her that they had been fascinated by her red hair. They had never seen it before. She should be proud of her red hair, the result of a British princess in the family, five generations before, a grandfather who had been one of Claudius’s quartermasters. Her family had always travelled. Now Rome had brought the red hair of the British princess to Africa, and the nomads in their blue cloaks had stared and pointed.

  ‘Why do they not come on their camels?’ the merchant’s daughter asked.

  ‘The camels are for long journeys in the desert,’ her tutor explained. ‘When they may need to escape quickly, they ride on horses, like the civilized world.’

  ‘How long do camels live?’ the merchant’s daughter asked.

  ‘Until they are killed for meat by their masters, when they are hungry,’ her tutor explained. ‘And their humps are filled with water so that they can continue in the desert for weeks without drinking.’

  The nomads did not ride in on camels. They came in on their magnificent horses, their blue robes wrapped about their faces. They rode in with swords raised, and they fell on the faces of the townspeople. They rode into the marketplace, and slashed and thrust and seized the gold from one trader, kicking over other stalls, wheeling and roaring. They rode their horses into the temple itself, turning awkwardly, their weapons raised. They had no understanding of what the temple was for. They did not ride into the baths, which was where the Roman general was, and where he sensibly remained, flushed and naked and frowning, the whole morning. He would not have been recognized by the nomads, who had followed their white and gold splendour across the gold and white desert and recognized only that clothed splendour.

  All this was told to the merchant’s daughter by her slave. The merchant’s daughter had been bundled away into an inner room, the only red-haired daughter in the family. The slave had watched from the windows, and had been told of what had happened in the town by others of her sort.

  ‘I was afraid we should die,’ the merchant’s daughter said.

  ‘I knew we should not,’ the slave said.

  ‘It is strange, that those Christians were put to death only yesterday,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘But if they had not been discovered, the Christian whose business was in the market, he would have been there and would have been killed, only by barbarians instead of by the magistrate.’

  ‘Yes, that is so,’ the slave said placidly.

  ‘Did anyone die that we know?’

  ‘Your mother sent a message to the Roman general enquiring after the health of the general and of all the members of his suite. She would not forgive herself if harm came to him or to them from his visiting our humble town.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a reply saying that all the members of his suite and the general himself were quite well.’

  ‘Was it from the general himself?’

  ‘No, the general must have been very busy.’

  ‘That won’t have pleased her one bit. She wants to be great friends with the general, and he is here only for another two days. She looked so pretty and she smelt so delicious, too.’

  ‘It is all the same, in the end,’ the slave said. It was so unusual a remark that the merchant’s daughter lowered her veil. They were walking in the street. It had been forbidden them, but the merchant’s daughter had veiled herself and her slave, and they had slipped out. They wanted to see the disaster. All about them, there were interesting signs of blood on the walls, and splintered wood and scattered objects, the product of undisciplined destruction of the market.

  6.

  The daughter of the merchant was of an age to marry. She was aware of this. There were meetings between her parents and friends and acquaintances of theirs at which she was brought in and greeted. Sometimes there was a son as well; sometimes not. Her parents were sociable creatures, but all that winter they seemed to go out every night, oiled and perf
umed.

  ‘It is because nobody wants you,’ the merchant’s daughter’s slave said, when they were alone.

  But the merchant’s daughter believed that the process was protracted because her parents were being careful over her future. There were not so many families in the small marble town in the white and gold desert. Her parents would want to be sure of the right choice for her, as she was their youngest child living. The merchant’s daughter could remember the last time this had happened, and her sister had been married off. That had been no more than five years before. She remembered some of the same visitors, her sister being summoned to show herself, some of the same suitors, in fact.

  Her mother went out in the afternoons to the temple, to make offerings. One of the elder daughters would arrive, perhaps the second, heavily pregnant and sweating in the heat of the desert town. They would retreat into her mother’s chambers and emerge some time later after nightfall, having discussed the suitors of the previous days. They would ladle themselves into the waiting palanquins by torchlight, and the pair of them would set off. The merchant’s daughter was not included in these outings, and she was not supposed to know about them. On past occasions, her mother had taken her to make the offering on behalf of an elder daughter. This time, too, there would be the incense; the smell of animals’ blood; the cool and gritty feel of the temple’s marble floor; the banging of drums and the wail of pipes and voices; and, to one side, the malevolent presence of the temple virgins, standing veiled and observant, their eyes full of resentment and malice. When it was done, they would nod sourly, pull back their wicker baskets inside their robes and watch the merchant’s wife and the merchant’s daughter retreat. When her mother and her sister departed, she could reconstruct the sequence of events. She hoped that the husband who came would not be too tall; she hoped he would not be as old as her father; she hoped that he would not be one of the two men that all her sisters and half of the town had turned down over the last twenty years.