My nights are disturbed. I woke this morning in cold terror. Caesar had visited me in a dream. At least I am sure it was a dream, and not his ghost — small consolation. I was in bed with Longina, who lay damply weeping in my arms, overcome with the sadness that succeeds desire and its performance. Her grief was the greater because she had revealed to me that our little son was dead: "crushed in the egg", she said, over and over again. I do not know whether this is true, for I have had no word from Longina. Her silence distresses me, even though I tell myself that she may have no means of knowing where I am, may not have received my letters, and may ache because of my absence, as I do on account of hers. The pains of love, once satisfied, now denied, are sharper even than the pang of unattainable desire. To lose what you know and trust is more cruel than never to have what you hoped for.
But Caesar stood at the end of the bed, displaying his wounds. He did not speak, but his gestures, as he touched first this gash, then another, finally that which was my own work, were pitiful.
I wanted to cry out that I could acquit myself of envy, that that had not been my motive as it was (I now realise) Cassius', but there was an obstruction in my throat, and though I could form words, I was unable to utter them.
Then Caesar beckoned to Longina, and she withdrew herself from me, and slipped, silver as Diana in the shaft of moonlight, from our bed, and threw her arms around Caesar, and kissed him full on the lips. I was compelled to watch as they withdrew, with many lascivious gestures, both all at once oblivious of my presence, my rights, my very existence. The moonlight slid away with them, and I was left in the dark, and a long silence, which was broken first by a cackle of laughter, and then by a sound which I knew to be my own sobbing, though my body did not move and my eyes were dry.
A dream? Of course. I don't believe in spectres. But it left me like the last, solitary ant of a broken ant hill.
As for Longina, there, undoubtedly, my dream told the truth. She had turned away from me towards the memory of Caesar. She would, I am now certain, deny me if we should ever meet again. And what difference would that make? Would it stimulate my jealousy? I don't think so, I have never been a jealous man. Rather, the thought provokes a serene and sombre resignation, a type of detachment.
It has come to me that if we were to meet again, she might yield to my desires, something might revive in her of her former feeling, but even if this was not the case, even if my love was not returned, it would no longer matter. If we were together again, we might resume our former habits, or we might not. In any case I wouldn't stop loving her.
When I think how I took her for convenience, as an act of policy, and how I despised her, now there I find cause for shame.
My preference for Octavius over her! How callow it seems, how stupid! What nonsense the Greeks talked about the superiority of the love between a man and a youth! Perhaps it merely reflected the inferiority of Greek women? But I don't think so. There is nothing after all like the love for a woman who has given herself to you.
And if both Octavius and Longina now think of me with contempt, well, it is only her contempt that can distress me.
And yet, having written that, with the utmost sincerity, I have to confess that three weeks ago, I wrote to Octavius, pleading with him to intercede on my behalf, and so save my life. I am ashamed of that letter now, and of the terms in which it was couched. Yet if a man was cast into the sea and drowning, would he care on what terms he was rescued? There are two voices at war in my head. Thus:
Reproach: Such a plea is a denial of virtue. It is less than should become a man.
Response: We have made too much of virtue. We have made fools of ourselves over our concept of virtue. It was virtue brought me to my present state.
Reproach: Ah, then, do you deny the virtue of that act? Would you have it undone?
And then there is silence.
Octavius has not replied. Perhaps there has not yet been time. Perhaps when he received my letter, he tore it into angry pieces. Perhaps — a worse thought — he read it aloud at the supper-table to amuse his companions, to make Maecenas snigger.
On the other hand, starved as I am of news, my letter may have been pointless, too late. Octavius himself may no longer be in a position to do anything for anyone.
That thought doesn't distress me.
Artixes has grown more distant. He no longer asks me to read my memoirs to him. Either his father has grown suspicious of our friendship, or he has conceived an abhorrence for either my person or my history. So I am truly alone now.
History… there is a chance, I suppose, that this manuscript will survive me. I write it partly to fill the time, to revive memory and banish thought of the future (which nevertheless keeps breaking in); partly as an act of self-justification. This is my testimony.
Will those who read it understand me, or will they continue to reproach me with that single word Octavius directed at me: traitor?
Very well, I accept the word, adding only this: I had a deeper and more true affection for Caesar than Octavius had. My life had been bound up in his. I served him with the utmost loyalty. Does the boy suppose that it cost me nothing to put a higher duty above my debt to Caesar? Besides, I had been subject to his charm… that famous charm.
Another dream: desert sands extend in all directions, grey-purple in the lingering light of the sun that has slid behind the distant hills. I am alone. Around me lie evidences of disaster: dead horses, scraps of armour, abandoned swords, spears, great lumbering baggage carts. But there are no corpses of dead legionaries. It is as if I gaze on the debris of an army without soldiers.
I stumble on, weary, thirsty and afraid. The moon has risen as the chants begin. From a sandbank on a ridge, I look down on a hollow place, where naked figures dance around a stone altar, in barbaric but compulsive rhythm. There is a figure bound to the altar. It keeps changing in the shifting light. Now it seems young, now old, now a woman, now a youth. A squat shape disengages itself from the dancers, and hops in a crouched position towards the altar. Only the head of the bound figure is free and it turns from side to side. The mouth is open as if it is screaming, but no sound comes from those lips which are the colour of dead ashes. Then the crouching thing rises. It turns towards me and I see that it is masked. The company is silent. In the distance a wolf howls. A cloud of birds — kites or vultures — descend on the altar with the slow beating of heavy wings. They cover the figure, so that the last I see is that grey-lipped mouth, stretched wide, emitting screams that never sound. And at that moment, hands pluck at my garments, sharp nails tear at my flesh, and I wake screaming the screams that the figure was unable to release.
In the words of my poor Catullus:
"Miser a miser, querendum est etiam atque etiam, anime." — "Twice-wretched soul, again and again must I sound my sadness."