Chapter 1
THEY CANNOT KNOW it is the year One Hundred. Anno Domine, even. That’s for another day. A future generation, another calendar. For the present, for these two--well, they’re just waiting for their wine. They’re completely unaware that tonight in Antioch, even as they sit here, their beloved city is giving birth to a new world religion.
“Thavmasios!”
Excellent!
He pronounces it carefully, doing his best to achieve the correct nuance. He’s prepared for this performance, for this delectable moment. They’re seated together at last at the Red Hill Taverna, silhouetted softly against a purple curtain in the muted glow of its dim interior, servers scurrying by, movement everywhere, the music beginning, a surrounding choir of murmuring diners. The time is ripe, the evening is young, the lady lovely--a feast for his eager new Antiochian eyes, drinking it all in.
“Bravo, Marcellus! I am impressed.”
His smile is triumphant. But before he gets a chance to amplify the moment, a platter is being lowered onto the table between them.
“O astakos! Lobster, my favorite dish! You remembered!”
He’s done it again. They’re off to a good start. The evening looks promising. Sapphira pokes around on her plate, the pleasure of anticipation illuminating her joyful countenance.
Another head appears, interposed between theirs, hovering over him, whispering in his ear.
“Urgent? What? Who is it?”
“Sir, he didn’t say. The message is over there at the desk.”
He’s on his feet. His puzzled face peers down into hers, attempts reassurance.
“Listen, I’ll be right back.”
He moves off, behind the retreating waiter.
“I’ll be here,” she sighs.
Maybe it’s Old Iggy, with a hot new flash from the Gnostic front.
But this cannot be, he reasons. Though the evening is young, the bishop is surely out like a light, fast asleep in his bed, still wearing his almighty miter, dreaming of Rome and the Coliseum, the oncoming rapacious lions, his ticket to immortality.
I really must stop thinking like this, if I’m to be his right-hand man.
A furtive figure is creeping unnoticed along the wall behind the Red Hill’s patrons, over against the purple curtain, slyly, glancing about, clearly on some devious mission. The man approaches Sapphira’s table. Standing behind her now, he waits for his moment. It comes. He jumps (her eyes being presently averted) onto the opposite chair. His smirk is mischievous, watching for her recognition.
She turns around, wide-eyed.
“What are you doing here?” Spitting it at him, injecting herself the italics, into the inflected rage, into the belligerent stare.
“I thought I told you…”
“Ah but my dear,” he says, “You know you’ve missed me. You really must try to contain your obvious delight. We have much to say to one another, my darling.”
Her face is a shadow, some few shades darker than its normal olive hue. She stammers, attempts to gain a bit of control. Finding her tongue, the words tumble forth--a cadence at once measured and militant, meant to be devastating.
“I am not delighted, I do not miss you, and most of all, I do not wish to talk with you. And furthermore, if you do not leave immediately, I shall call that Roman Guard over there and have you bounced out of here.”
“Hear hear my dear, is that any way to treat a longtime admirer, seeing we’ve shared so much together, so many precious moments?”
He welcomes her rage. The man is clearly manipulating her. She has lowered her gaze, appears to be studying the arrangement of the still untouched lobster on the plate before her.
“I’m doing my best to forget.”
“Who’s this creep you’re with, my dear? Is this the same Roman faggot you used to hang out with, that same old foramen…?”
He stops, checking himself.
“Whatever are you talking about, foramen, not that I really care…”
She knows enough Latin to catch his meaning, his use of the word for hole.
“Fill it in my dear, fill it in,” he says.
Grinding her teeth, she fixes upon him her most spine-tingling stare.
“Mister Ananias, this conversation is over.”
“He’s a puella. I’ll bet he wears satin underpants.”
She attempts to rise, apparently to leave--but is halted by the return of Marcellus, her date for the evening. A figure in a frozen frame, he stands there confronting her, expressionless, watching her slump back onto her chair. She is more than a trifle distraught. And now he sees the other: his enigmatic old adversary Ananias sits over there, smirk intact, as maddening as ever. His irritation seems appropriate; she’s grateful that it nearly matches her own. For now though, it has yet to find its proper focus. His gaze, flickering for a brief instant on the man presently occupying what had been his place at the table, fastens again on her.
“Listen, what the… Can you believe it? Who’s doing this to me, this fake message game?”
Now it dawns. A double-take. Sudden recognition, seeing him anew. With mordant resignation, he turns again to ogle the man.
“You’re back,” he groans.
Ananias gives him his most impudent grin.
“Hey, I’m back to pay you that two hundred drachmas I owe you.”
“Oh, thavmasios!”
The grin gets wider. A new sardonic joy floods Nye’s face, as Sapphira looks on.
Marcellus extends an open palm across the table.
“Okay then, let’s have it.”
Ananias is only faintly flummoxed.
“I’ll give you my I.O.U.,” he sputters.
The luminous smirk returns. He’s clearly pleased with himself: that sparkling wit, that virtuosity, the hint of injured nobility. A touch of sarcasm, what he hopes will be heard as humor. He’s taunting Marcellus, a man who, Sapphira is silently observing, carries himself with an embarrassing ingenuousness, especially for a supposedly urbane native of The City, Rome itself, capital of the world, here to teach them all how to run their affairs.
Marcellus is out of words, can only glare at the man.
Same old Nye.
Sapphira sinks back even further into her chair, limp with resignation.
Same old Marcellus.
Her rage is undiminished, even as Marcellus subsides.
The impotent fool. Just see him standing there, helpless as ever. And must he keep mouthing that silly Greek word, like a child with a new toy?
She attempts to speak, but is silenced by a sudden burst of music, a trio of very loud (rude! she thinks) entertainers: jovial, ebullient, insistent, right behind her. Still another server bends now between them, balancing a tray of drinks, clearing a space on the table. This new voice now compels their attention. He is placing libations beside their plates, ignoring Marcellus, even bumping him aside, interrupting their conversation, as if he himself were the evening’s main event.
These joints are all alike.
“Sir, madam,” he says, “your first entrée and the wine of the evening will follow shortly. For now, please enjoy a glass of our exceptional Absinthion, your aperitif for this special occasion.”
What special occasion?
“You mean this lobster is just an appetizer?”
But the man has disappeared.
He turns once again to his drooping dinner date. The stare is back. He’s seeing her in a new light. The intensity of her rage, directed at Ananias, had been incomprehensible, though the man is enough to tax anyone’s patience. Is this his enlightened one, paragon of self-discipline--his little Sasha, as he has come to call her? These three have had their go-arounds, to be sure, but all that was before she met up with her beloved Sophia, her Lady Wisdom. Where is her vaunted new spirituality, her precious self-control? But now he remembers: this man ‘Nye,’ erstwhile rival for her affections, has always had access to her special secret button, has always had the knack--knows still just when to push it, how to bring on the fury. He relishes getting her riled.
But now he’s working on me…
“Hey Marcy, what’s this I hear about your new gig? Special assistant to that so-called bishop of yours--what’s his name? Priggy or Ziggy, or what? What’s that you call him? And does he know you’re here tonight, out on the town?
Marcy loses his cool.
“You’re in my chair,” he roars.
“There are other chairs. Please join us.”
“For the last time, simia, you’re in my chair.”
Being called an ape in Latin rubs Nye the wrong way. He makes a subtle signal to a nearby stooge, who appears to be placing a chair behind Marcellus.
He waits.
“Now please Marcellus, in the interests of propriety, won’t you please sit down and stop making such a scene? For the sake of the lady, do it old boy. The evening is young. Do not spoil it for her.”
This seems to work.
Marcellus is watching her, reconsidering. He sees her continuing emotional struggle, the mighty effort to rein in her rage. Meanwhile Nye has made another signal to his seeming (oh he’s a sly one) accomplice over there in the shadows--a scarcely discernible wink and nod. As Marcellus attempts to seat himself, the man behind him abruptly removes the chair. Marcellus falls to the floor, landing on his hindquarters, limbs askew.
Pandemonium!
As Sapphira leaps to her feet, amid the surrounding hilarity, the band strikes up a strident tune, some raucous oriental mischief. Cymbals clash, sitars jangle. An emcee now dominates the room’s ambiance, commanding attention, shifting the mood.
“O andhri kai gineti.”
He is shouting over the noise.
“We present for your pleasure zondani musiki…”
Marcellus, strewn across the floor, prostrate amid the tittering patrons at nearby tables, sees it all from underneath. He watches as the other man turns and is facing her.
“Thelis na chorepsume?”
The classic invitation to the dance, delivered in Greek. Standing there so suddenly accessible, she can hardly attempt to remove his arm as it slides around her waist, can scarcely dare to resist the urgent pull of his shoulders, the muscles of his back, the rapid backward movement of his legs. Together in sync they move off, swift boats on the Orontes, disappearing onto the dance floor, lost now among the revelers. Swept up in the circle of dancers, hands looped about one another’s waists, they’re whirling around the room, caught up in a carousel (Hii-yaa, hiii-yah!), abandoning themselves to the moment’s madness.
He climbs off the floor, sits alone at the deserted table. Disconsolate, he reaches for the krasi, the wine of his sorrow.
The guy beats me every time.
Why?
How?
A word comes back, and with it the bishop. It was his, just this very afternoon…
Magisterial.
Yes.
I get it now.
I see what he meant. It’s what he said his new precious Church needs to be. And what about me? He didn’t say it, but he was giving me that certain look.
Sapphira though is certainly--in the end, and beneath all her seeming reluctance--obviously still quite taken with the man.
He’s always known just how to work her. They dance to the same tune, a Hebrew melody.
She’s done her best to shake him, but he keeps coming back like an unwanted song. O
One they both know, he thinks, and only too well.
In the end, they belong together, move to the same rhythm. It probably goes all the way back to Miriam, some ancient hymn from the days of Moses, pre-Sinai even. No doubt the bishop would know all about it.
Ah yes, the bishop. Sitting there watching them dance by, so blissfully having dismissed him, his thoughts turn again to Old Iggy. The afternoon’s interview returns, plays over again in his mind, as it will for the rest of his life: his very own tune, even if he can’t quite bring himself to dance.
