The Implacable Hunter Read online

  As he paused for an instant to think, Paulus said: ‘– Garlic?’

  ‘What garlic?’ asked Soxias.

  ‘Garlic, saffron, spices and salt. Stew Diomed with these, and he would be a fish dish, fit for a king’s table.’

  ‘First catch me,’ said I.

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ said Lucius, suddenly. ‘My fingers tingle.’

  ‘I have eaten man,’ said Soxias, watching the company from under his eyebrows. ‘The chest and the haunch are the best cuts. But having paunched your man, you must let him hang three days; and then seethe him for twenty minutes in water before roasting … Oh, but that brings us to the subject of gods again.’

  Lucius staggered to his feet. Beckoning two slaves, Soxias said: ‘Take my lord Lucius to the vomitorium.’

  ‘What is the connection between roast man and gods?’ asked Tibullus, a shy little plump gentleman who had spent the past thirty years in scholarly retirement, writing a History of Asia.

  Afranius said: ‘Don’t you know? Everything is god that comes to Soxias’s pantheon. He worships them all, and believes in none.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Soxias, with a certain gravity. ‘I believe in all of ’em, my boy, all of ’em. Don’t you mock. Everything is a god that is believed in. What connection between roast man and gods, asks Tibullus. Well, I dined once with some man-eating black men who worshipped quite a potent little god made of ebony. It was when I was young and poor and carefree. I got hold of a ship and went to Africa.’

  ‘Young and poor and carefree – you simply got hold of a ship?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. And a cargo of wine and stuff. I cruised down the coast of Africa, where the forest grows down to the sea and the sea runs into the rivers. Nobody has ever scratched Africa yet, to this day. The people came out to meet us with clubs and spears, but after a few drinks of wine and a length or two of coloured cloth I had their king eating out of my hand – he loved me like a brother – big strong fellow, a Hercules.’

  ‘He showed me this wooden god of his: a badly carved image of a hermaphrodite, with a backside like a pumpkin and breasts like cucumbers, black as coal. As nearly as I can pronounce it, they called it ’Ngo; and to this thing they sacrificed boys and girls whom they afterwards cooked and ate. Our priests do likewise, only ours eat beef and mutton.

  ‘Well, the king of this rancid mob told me that whoever touched this ’Ngo would be struck dead. To prove it, he got a prisoner out of the fattening-pen and had him pushed forward at spear-point to touch the idol. Man was grey with fright, but what had he to lose? He touched the god, turned a back-somersault, and fell dead. King asked me, now did I believe in the power of his god –?’

  ‘Did you?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Soxias, wiping his mouth.

  ‘So you touched it?’ asked Afranius.

  ‘A business-man takes no unnecessary chances, my friend – oh no. I sent to the ship for a man who hadn’t seen what had been going on, and I said to him: “Go and get me that image, will you?” He went and tucked this ’Ngo under his arm, and dropped it at my feet. So I picked it up. It was only wood.’

  ‘But you had been prepared to believe in it,’ I said.

  ‘I am a broad-minded man,’ said Soxias. ‘Where was the evidence that ’Ngo was not the God of All Gods? Africa is full of surprises. The long and short of it was, the king wanted his god back. I said: “Uh-uh! First, comes a little matter of ransom.”

  ‘The rivers there are full of gold: the common people keep the gold dust, and the king keeps the larger pieces. Also, they have elephants like we have mice. I came home with gold in ballast, and ivory, as much as I could carry. And a few of the biggest and strongest men, and the prettiest girls for slaves.’

  ‘And the king got his god back?’ asked Paulus.

  ‘Why, no. I kept ’Ngo for luck; nailed him – or her, or it – up for a figurehead. It brought me good fortune.’

  ‘But not the king,’ said Paulus.

  ‘I don’t know. I sold him to an elderly widow in Sicily. I suppose she fed him pretty well. His wife went to a Greek dealer…. But to return to my point: that wooden god really did have the power to strike a man dead.’

  ‘The man’s belief in it struck him dead,’ said Melanion.

  Soxias said, brightly: ‘Yes! And ’Ngo struck me lucky because, you see, I believe in only the good-natured side of the gods.’ And then, looking at me, he closed one eye in a slow and malevolent wink. ‘Graven images,’ he said, smiling at Paulus, ‘I have a little graven image here in my house which would bring the proudest of you sprawling before her on the floor for my amusement!’

  ‘Technically,’ I said, ‘strictly technically, it might be construed as an offence not to show respect for, say, any image of the deified Augustus –’

  ‘Stamped on a coin, for instance?’ said Soxias. ‘I don’t mean that; although you know and I know that for a sufficient number of bits of gold, stamped with the image of a pig’s arse, even, there’s not one man or woman in ten thousand that wouldn’t grovel. No, no. I am referring not to a coin, or any number of coins, either gold or silver, but to exactly what I said: a little graven image – of a goddess, to be exact.’ His eyes were twinkling now at Cassius Barbatus, sometimes called Poor-Rich Barbatus: rich, because he had spent a great fortune amassing one of the most extensive and exquisite collections of rare gems in the world; poor, because he so passionately loved beauty for its own sake that he could not bear to be separated from any part of it.

  Barbatus lived quite blissfully, calm and unruffled, in a subtle world of facets and colours and curves too refined for my comprehension; a kindly, courtly, harmless old gentleman, very proud of his lineage. In his fine house, guarded by six strong slaves and surrounded with treasures, he ate mutton broth out of an earthenware dish and drank sour wine; but, two or three times a week, he dined sumptuously at the houses of rich friends where he was always welcome.

  If, in a dispute concerning the origin or the value of some work of art, you said: ‘Barbatus says …’ there was an end of discussion. And he carried with him an infection of serenity. It was good to see him, at ease in his almost threadbare robe, wearing on his thumbs and forefingers rings that Caesar himself might have kept in a locked cabinet.

  ‘I would like Barbatus’s opinion,’ said Soxias, slowly, ‘of a little something I picked up the other day.’

  ‘Most happy!’ cried Barbatus. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure.’

  ‘Something rather special,’ said Soxias.

  ‘You were speaking,’ I said, ‘of graven images?’

  ‘Everything in its proper order,’ said Soxias.

  Lucius came back, leaning heavily upon his attendants, who helped him to his place. His great face, palely glistening and veined all over with red, was like one of those roots farmers preserve as curiosities because they appear more animal than vegetable. He blubbered: ‘Soxias, you must make that fellow unsay what he said…. He has the Evil Eye…. He will enchant, bewitch …’ Then furiously, to Paulus: ‘You must call your spirits off, do you hear? Otherwise …’

  Melanion said to Soxias, with his lowering smile: ‘Better send Lucius home to bed. There is not much fun left in him now, I think.’

  Soxias ordered: ‘Take him home, take him home.’ Then he said to his secretary, a swarthy bearded man who never spoke and whose name nobody knew: ‘Fetch the black shagreen box that the Persian brought.’

  The secretary bowed and went away while Lucius, crying: ‘He will bewitch, he will fascinate!’ was carried from the table.

  ‘This thing of which I speak,’ Soxias went on, ‘nobody knows who made it or how – perhaps Barbatus will know. Naming no names, I had it off a Persian who stole it from a Greek who got it from a Sidonian character who beat about the Euxine river-mouths. It is, I am told, a true image of Eurynome who, I am told for a fact –’ he smiled at Paulus ‘– created the world. Did she, Barbatus?’

  ‘So we are informed by rel
iable authorities,’ said Barbatus, gravely, looking eagerly towards the dark secretary who was slowly returning, carrying with infinite care a square black box bound with silver, ‘for in the beginning, the world was without form and all elements were intermingled in Chaos, and thus without order. From this Chaos, Eurynome sprang, naked and beautiful, dancing.

  ‘She divided the heavens from the earth and the waters, and made the light which she wore in her hair and, whirling in her dance, scattered about the firmament in the form of the sun and the moon and the stars. She was the mother of all created things in their order: from the lowest in the depths of the waters to the highest, which is Man, who alone can stand upright and turn his head to look at the stars. For, with a clap of her beautiful hands, she made the wild north wind which she twisted into the great Serpent, out of whose love for her Eurynome produced the universal Egg, which the Serpent cracked in his mighty grip, releasing all the forces of Being.’

  ‘Now where,’ asked Soxias, unfastening the box, ‘have we heard this story before? Eh, Paulus? I thought it was Moses who brought it away, together with a few articles of jewellery, from the Egyptians! Well, here is Eurynome –’

  Paulus’s reply, if he made any, must have been lost in a general cry of wonder at the object that stood revealed in the soft light of the perfumed lamps.

  Even I caught myself exclaiming: ‘Aie! It is alive!’ and indeed the figure of Eurynome really was moving. She swayed ever so gently and then turned slowly in a full circle. I could see, at a second glance, that she was standing on the tip of one toe upon a perfect polished ball of some gem-stone of various shades: at the bottom it was black as jet, the black changed to deep blue, the deep blue to lighter blue which, in its turn, merged into a limpid rose colour, the whole seeming to imprison a straining radiance, so that one felt that if by some chance this ball should break, there would be a letting loose of light to dazzle the world.

  Nobody could ever know what love and inspired toil had been dedicated to the making of this thing. Between Eurynome’s toe and the top of the ball was a little space of crystal so pure that she appeared to be separated from the ball of light by nothing but a clear spark of this light itself. She stood, so exquisitely balanced as to rock and pirouette in obedience to every breath, only to return ineluctably to her poised uprightness.

  The stone of her body was of all the colours in heaven and earth, but her long swirling hair was of a red that was almost black where it began, fading through innumerable subtle shades to a translucent yellow where it ended. Twined about her body was a black snake whose head, neither reptilian nor human, she caressed with her left hand while she held it at arm’s length. Her right, straining high, supported the bowl of a cup – the heavens – thin as beaten gold, but cut out of the living crystal, all angry red and smoky black. And from the black rim of the cup of heaven to the black bottom of the ball of the world, this marvel measured about twice the length of a man’s hand.

  We were all silent, then, for as long as it takes to draw a fresh breath – all but Soxias, and he said, in his best merchant’s voice: ‘The remarkable thing about it, really, is that it is all carved out of the one piece. There couldn’t have been two such bits of stone. And what balance! Just blow and she spins like a feather in a drain!’ He leered at Barbatus who stood, frozen with awe.

  Afranius muttered: ‘Does he want to sell her? A man would give –’

  Melanion interrupted him. ‘– Hush! Soxias is about to have his fun.’

  Barbatus, who had been momentarily smitten dumb, said: ‘Yes. Here is, indeed, the First and the Last! Oh, Soxias, if I were the millionaire I once was, I would say: “Take everything, Soxias; take my money and my lands and my houses, but give me this Eurynome!”’

  Then, to our bewildered embarrassment, this stately old gentleman covered his face and bowed his head as if he were weeping in silence. Only Soxias was unmoved by this.

  He said: ‘What’s the matter, Barbatus? You are quite right to like this piece – I knew you would. That’s why I showed it to you. I’m not the man to keep a pretty thing locked in a box. I don’t blame you for what you say; I don’t mind telling you I paid a pretty penny for this item. Still, why talk of money? I don’t want money, I’ve got money. If I took gold by the handful and chucked it into the river, a handful every minute, I shouldn’t live long enough to get to the bottom of my coffers. Ask Melanion … eh, Melanion?’

  In a surly voice, Melanion said: ‘It’d be a damned silly question. Of course you wouldn’t, because before you’d thrown out a third of what you keep, the return on what you’ve got put out at interest would fill your strong-boxes up again.’

  ‘So; you see?’ said Soxias. ‘Money means nothing to me. I only value it for what it will buy. Such as this little cup, you might say? Wrong! I’m no connoisseur. To me, a cup is a cup, a figurine is a figurine. I like that carving, that Eurynome, as you call her, because the lives of men must have gone into making her. For the same reason, I might make a bid for the tombs of the Pharaohs, if I could get any fun out of them…. But you, Barbatus, you worship what you call Beauty. You’re refined. Money aside, what have you got that you’d give me for this unique little statue, or cup, or whatever it is?’

  ‘Half my collection,’ said Barbatus.

  Soxias shook his head, while the rest of us exchanged astonished glances. ‘No,’ he said.

  Barbatus picked up the cup of Eurynome and looked at it for a long time. Then he set it down with infinite care and said: ‘Soxias, I will give you my whole collection for this Eurynome: that is to say, my life – all I ever had and all that I ever loved!’

  There was a magnificence about old Barbatus as he stood there, with folded arms. But Soxias shook his head.

  ‘Your life? But you’ve spent it,’ he said. ‘Your collection? What’ll I do with it, sell it? What for, money? I told you, I don’t want money. What then should I do with your collection? Save it? To me it would be unrealised assets. No.’ Soxias was in his glory.

  ‘Then,’ said Barbatus, with his kind smile, having fully recovered his dignity, ‘I have nothing more to offer and can only beg you, Soxias, out of your kindness, to let me come and look at this wonder of the world sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, welcome, welcome,’ said Soxias. ‘But, wait, wait, Barbatus – not so fast! To look and admire is one thing, to have is another. Otherwise a labouring man might come home and say: “I want no supper, wife; I have seen a turnip. Now lift your skirt and let me gaze, and I can sleep in peace.” No, Barbatus, to look at what you desire and not to touch it is only torment. The pleasure a lover takes in just looking at the object of his affection is all very fine in poetry. Actually it’s only misery in fancy dress. Confess, now, Barbatus; doesn’t your true heart say: “Better to smash this Eurynome to pieces or throw her into the deepest part of the sea where no man will ever touch her again?” Eh?’

  Barbatus said: ‘I have already said that I would give all I have for her. This not being sufficient, I shall still be for ever grateful to Soxias for having allowed me to see her, if only once.’

  This seemed to displease Soxias. ‘And go home with a heartache?’ he said, with a sneer.

  ‘Yes, but the divine artist who fashioned this Eurynome will have given my vague longing its perfect form, and now my heart will know why it aches, and for what. I thank you, Soxias.’

  ‘So,’ said Soxias. He took the Eurynome cup and placed it carefully on the marble floor. It swayed in its graceful motions for a long time before it at last stood still. ‘So! You want her, Barbatus? Then you must play for her. Will you gamble your patrician dignity against my Eurynome?’

  ‘But how?’ asked Barbatus.

  ‘Simply like this. Stand on this floor with the big toe of one foot just touching the ball under the goddess’s foot.’ Barbatus did this, and Soxias went on. ‘Now measure, stepping backwards exactly four times the length of your foot.’

  ‘It is done,’ said Barbatus. ‘And now?’

 
‘Why,’ said Soxias, easily, ‘now all you have to do is, clasp your hands behind your head, and, standing on one foot, reach forward with the other; touch Eurynome’s toe very lightly, and come back to your original position. Do this, without taking your hands from your neck, without touching the floor with your engaged foot, and without pushing the ball so hard that the rim of the cup swings to the floor –’

  ‘And what then?’ asked Barbatus.

  ‘Why, then,’ said Soxias, with a gust of laughter, ‘then you must fall on your backside with your legs in the air, and Little Lucius shall make a song about Barbatus’s Bouncing Bottom that’ll be sung from here to Joppa. But if you succeed, the cup is yours to keep. Well?’

  ‘Oh, unkind!’ Afranius protested.

  ‘Unfair,’ said I. ‘That is a trick to play on a young man, and a supple one, at that.’

  Barbatus was silent, considering; his cheeks were red with outraged dignity, but he wanted the cup so much, and the distance seemed so short.

  ‘I have seen a dancer pull a thigh muscle playing that game,’ said Melanion. ‘Diomed is right.’

  ‘Who asked Diomed to interfere?’ cried Soxias. ‘Unless, of course, he would like to have a try at the Eurynome for the honour of the Roman infantry? Eh, Diomed?’

  I replied: ‘I am not here as your clown, Soxias. I do not want your cup. And watch your jokes.’

  Paulus interrupted, smooth as oil: ‘Oh, but Diomed, why should Soxias watch his jokes? He can afford any kind of joke. And as for fair play – how foolish you are, Diomed, and you a police officer! Fair play is for children, don’t you understand? Could Soxias be where Soxias is if Soxias played like a perfect little gentleman? Soxias is Soxias because he is a perfect scoundrel. That’s what I like about Soxias – you know where you are with him.’