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LXV Sixteenth day before the Kalends of Maius. Eleventh hour of the day. [Monday, April 16, c. 5:30 p.m.] I wandered the night in a vast and featureless wilderness, unbounded by any horizon, the stars at such a height that I could not see them. Yet even in that emptiness, at last I found myself at the foot of the Caelian. I looked up into the alley. The cess-trench was filled with dirty hail, like frozen excrement. I walked upward in this icy filth. The stairwells were vacant, as deep and dark as caverns, the wind howling within them. When I approached the crest, the terror of all my wanderings consumed me. I knew I would have a revelation there. The final revelation. I stood in that terrible place as I have stood there a thousand times. The wind roared violently, whipping piercing fragments of bone against my skin. I was naked then. I knew that Metilia would emerge from the stinging darkness like a whore of Hecate and taunt me with her triumph. The wind screamed at me: "You know nothing! Your every revelation has been a delusion! You have learned nothing!" The wind fell away. A woman stood before me. "Mother? Why are you here? This is not your place." "I found her here." She showed me the infant in her arms. The tiny face was a dreadful blue. My eyes were wounds, my tears like blood. "I left her here, Mama. This is where I put her out." "Did you love her?" In that dream I remembered as vividly as life the moment my baby lived on my breast. "I loved her, Mama. More than anything before or since. I loved her." "As I loved you." Her face was not the girl's face in the portrait. It was the face of a woman my age. Her age when she left. When she died. She wore around her head a garland. The white blooms of desert roses. "I know," I said. "Florrie told me. She was the vessel of your love, when I would not hold it. She held it for me all these years." I wept again. "I was wrong, Mama. All these barren years I have believed that love is the most fragile of all things. That it can only wither and perish. Now I see what it is. It is like the desert rose. It endures within us even after our memory of it has perished. And then our tears will revive it." Again Mother held my daughter before me. Her tiny face was no longer blue. Her face had become perfectly white. As white as the blossoms around it. "Now can you see her?" Mama said. "She is at peace." Here I awakened, an hour before dawn.
Sperata still slept. I went onto the pavilion. The wind from the south was sufficient to have cleared the fog. The sea was utterly black. But the harbor was lit everywhere. Torches moved about on the mole and braziers speckled the decks of the freighters. Several lamps illuminated the deck of L. V--'s galley. After a time, light flickered behind me. I turned and saw that L. V-- held the torch. In his other hand he held a tablet. "We are sailing with the sun. I want you to see this." The tablet was not sealed. I opened it. He held the torch so that I could read: "Marcus Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, to Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus. I acknowledge receipt of seventy-five gold talents, the aforesaid a gift to the people of Judea, for the sole purpose of constructing an aqueduct in the Valley of Pools. Said aqueduct to be gratefully dedicated to the glory of Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus." Pilate's seal had been stamped into the wax. "You have brought them back," I told him. "The lost children." He shook his head slightly. "I believed that I had come back for you. That was my cruelest vanity, that I believed I could yet return for you. That of all who have cursed me, you would forgive me. I was late by a lifetime." "You came back. It is my choice to remain." "Your choice." He gave the merest smile. "Then you admit that fate cannot decide every question." "Perhaps fate leaves us choices. Perhaps we even have the choice to refuse a cruel fate. To turn back from the dark shore and begin our lives again. But you will never convince me that the deity does not guide us." "And you will never convince me that the gods speak, except among themselves." Again his slight smile. "But possibly there are moments when we can hear their voices. When you have finished your aqueduct, will you come back to Italy?" "I don't know. I only know that I have come out of the labyrinth of the past. And I could not have done so if you had not returned for me there." Tears glittered his eyes. "I have no words for this. I must go to Caesar." I held his face in my hands. "The Jews have the most profound farewell. Peace be with you, L. V--." "Peace be with you, Marcia." Our eyes were joined only a moment longer. Then he turned and left this house.
Pilate returned here at the seventh hour. At the tenth hour, I sent down to him that I wished to have the engineers' tablets and the ledgers for the aqueduct. Now I have received them, without complaint or comment. So this day ends. Perhaps here this volume ends. It is the history of another life. I have bled these words upon its pages. They will be my salvation. No water of forgetfulness can ever wash this blood away. So I begin again. |
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Contents Commentarii Appendix Glossary How to Use this Site Contact the Editors Copyright
(C) 2004 Michael Ennis
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"The Valley of the Pools" probably refers to a complex
of three ancient reservoirs known as the Pools of Solomon (until
recently Jerusalem's principal water supply). According to Josephus
(Jewish Antiquities 18.60), Pilate built an aqueduct 200
stades long (about 23 miles), terminating in Jerusalem. This is
the approximate length of an ancient aqueduct, remains of which
are still visible, running from the Pools of Solomon to the city.
Pilate, however, probably re-engineered or extensively
renovated an earlier system, and some archaeologists suggest that
his aqueduct was a system of similar length that fed the Pools
of Solomon from a large pool farther to the south. 