Ode to a Banker mdf-12 Read online

  As they say in official despatches, the illustrious one welcomed me by name and I returned his greeting.

  'Sod off, Marcus.'

  'Hello, Pa.'

  The sour tunic that clung to his wide, sagging frame would have been rejected even for the discards basket in a flea market. His beard had grown long enough to see that it would end up darker than his flopping grey curls. Of the famous seductive grin there was no sign.

  'So you've lost her,' I said. 'Life stinks.' I sniffed the sordid air. 'And life is not the only thing that stinks around here. This, I gather, is the start of the long decline into financial ruin and personal debauchery?'

  'I see you take the hard line with the bereaved in their grief,' he whined.

  I had already heard from Gomia, his faithful and long-serving chief porter, that the business had suffered since Flora's unexpected demise, which had happened in her sleep a week ago. Now there were distraught buyers going hairless at non-deliveries and huffy sellers taking their custom elsewhere. The warehouse hands had not been paid. Pa had lit a fire with three months' invoices, badly singeing a batch of ivories during this gesture against life's futility. Gornia had appeared with a water-skin just in time. The ivories were damaged beyond the skill of even the most creative faker Pa employed. Gornia now looked tired; he had been loyal, but might not put up with too much more of this pathos.

  'Go to the baths and the barber, Pa.'

  'Sod off,' he said again, not moving. But he then roused himself to a minor flight of rhetoric: 'And don't tell me that was what Flora would have wanted, because Flora had one great advantage – she left me alone!'

  'Liked to keep her hands clean, I expect. I see you're rallying,' I commented. 'That's wise, because if you don't pull yourself together I shall apply for a writ of custodial care on the grounds of your financial profligacy.'

  'Will you? Hades! You'll never get a magistrate to say I need a guardian.'

  'Stuff you – it's the business I'll be pious about. Roman law has always taken a strict line on leaving fortunes unsupervised.' My father did have more money nowadays than I liked to contemplate. He was either a damned good auctioneer, or a complete scheming dog. The two are perfectly compatible.

  It was up to him if he threw his wealth away, but a threat to take it off him was the best way to encourage more fight.

  'If you are abdicating as head of the family,' I offered pleasantly, 'that puts me in charge. I could call a domestic conference in the traditional Roman way. All your affectionate descendants could flock here and discuss ways to keep you, our poor darling father, out of harm's way – Pa swung his feet to the floor.

  'Atha and Galla would welcome some cash…' My eldest sisters were useless women with large families, both hitched to parasitic men. 'They both love to pry; the sensitive darlings have been perched ready to pounce on you for years. Dear sanctimonious Junia and her dry stick husband, Gaius Baebius, will be in here like ferrets down a pipe. Maia has no time for you, of course, but she can be a vengeful sort -'

  'Sod off, and this time I mean it!' roared Pa.

  I scowled and left him, telling Gornia to give it another day before abandoning hope. 'Hide his amphora. Now he knows that we know what is going on, you may see a sudden difference.'

  I was on my way out when I remembered why I came. 'Gornia, have you had any dealings with a scroll-seller called Aurelius Chrysippus?'

  'Ask the chief. He handles the dealers.'

  'He's not feeling responsive to me. I just threatened to put his daughters on to him.'

  Gornia shrugged. Apparently, this cruel tactic seemed fair. He did not know my sisters as I did. There ought to be a statute against letting that kind of woman loose. 'Well, Chrysippus has sold a few ex-library collections through us,' Gornia said. 'Geminus sneers at him.'

  'He sneers at everyone who might be trickier than himself '

  'He hates Greek business methods.'

  'What – too close to his own dirty ways?'

  'Who knows? They always share the best bargains with their own people. They glue themselves together. They go off into corners to eat pastries, and it's anyone's guess if they are conspiring or just talking about their families. Geminus can cope with honest crooks, but you can't tell with Chrysippus whether he's a crook or not. Why are you interested, Falco?'

  'He offered to publish some work of mine.'

  'Watch your back,' advised Gornia. It was how I felt myself On the other hand, I might have felt the same about all scroll-sellers. 'So how come he got his claws into you, Falco?'

  'Heard me reading my stuff in public.'

  'Oh, bullock's balls!' I was astonished by the porter's fury. 'There's too much of that,' he ranted. I stepped back nervously. 'You can't move these days without some oaf unravelling a scroll at you – under the arches with some rehashed legal speech or grabbing a crowd while they are queuing for the public convenience. I was having a quiet drink the other day and a literary halfwit started disturbing the peace, reciting a crappy eulogy he had read at his grandmother's funeral as if it were high art -'

  'My recital was invitation only, and Domitian Caesar attended it,' I answered in a huff.

  Then I left.

  VII

  Pa's disarray was something I needed to think about. The most satisfactory solution was to forget it by doing something else.

  I decided after all that I would present myself at the Chrysippus scriptorium and size up the outfit. From Pa's place at Saepta Julia back to the Aventine could easily involve a short detour through the Forum. I could pop in at the select gymnasium I patronised and be battered in a workout with my trainer; then when Glaucus had finished toughening up my body, I could follow through with intellectual pursuits.

  Afterwards, since Glaucus' gym was at the back of the Temple of Castor, I walked past the famous old establishment of the brothers Sosii, who had sold the works of Horace, to see what a decent scroll-seller looked like.

  Lucky old Horace. Maecenas for patron; free gift of a Sabine farin (I owned one, but I had paid through the nose for it); reputation and readership. And when the Sosii promised Horace to sell his works from a prime position, they were talking about a corner of the Vicus Tuscus on the edge of the Forum Romanum. Abutted by the Basilica, at the heart of public life, it was a famous street packed with expensive shops, down which paraded regular festival processions as they moved from the Capitol to the Games. Their passing trade must have been real, unlike the markets that Aurelius Chrysippus was allegedly wooing on the wrong side of the Circus. The faded sign showed that the scroll-shop of the Sosii had been a fixture for generations, and a dip in the doorstep evidenced just how many buyers' feet had passed that way.

  When I finally ventured on a recce to the Clivus Publicius, the only pedestrians who passed me there were an old lady struggling home with a heavy shopping basket and a group of teenage boys who were loitering on the lookout for some doddery victim they could rush, knock down, and steal from. When I appeared they vanished surreptitiously. The decrepit grandma had no idea I had saved her from a mugging; she muttered with hostility and set off again, wobbling up the street.

  The Clivus Publicius starts as a tough slope leading at an angle up the north flank of the Aventine from near the end of the Circus. As it climbs and flattens out, it hooks round a couple of corners, before losing itself at a quiet summit piazza. It has always been a secluded neighbourhood – too far from the Forum to attract outsiders' interest. From one side of the street are little-known but fabulous views over the valley of the Circus Maximus. When I looked around there were a few lock-up shops, whose trade must be desultory, and beyond them I glimpsed trees in the gardens of what must be carefully discreet big houses. It was a backwater. The Clivus was a public road, yet possessed a sense of isolation that was rare.

  If you live on the Aventine, the long valley of the Circus Maximus obstructs you almost every time you set out walking to some other part of Rome. I must have walked down the Clivus Publicius hundreds of
times. I had passed the Chrysippus scroll-shop, but never thought it worth my notice, although I loved reading. I knew the neat, quiet frontage of old, but the staff tended to lurk on the doorstep. Fake off-putting waiters at harbourside cauponas where the fish has been casseroling far too long. Preferring to browse at dealers (and to sneak free reads on the days when I had no money) I had only ever glanced inside this shop to where the scrolls for sale were visible in uneven piles on solid old shelves. Now when I did venture in, I found there were also boxes, presumably of better works, stored on the floor beneath the shelves. There was a tall stool and a counter on which to lean your elbows while you sampled the wares.

  A decent, well-spoken sales assistant greeted me, heard I was a prospective author not a customer, then lost interest. He showed me through a doorway at the back into the scriptorium proper. It was much bigger than the outside shop suggested, a huge room full of raw materials, the clean rolls placed with evident care on banks of shelves that must have contained a small fortune in unwritten stationery alone. A large pot of mending-glue wafted unpleasantly on a brazier in one corner. There were also bins containing spare rollers to make or repair the completed scrolls, and baskets of end-knobs in various qualities. At one side table, a slave was applying gold leaf to the finials of a decorated luxury edition. I could see the papyrus was thicker and glossier than usual. Perhaps it was a special order for a wealthy client.

  Another obviously experienced slave was carefully gluing a title page to a tine scroll; it bore a small portrait, presumably of the author – a dink who looked in the painting as if he curled his hair with hot irons and had one of the coiffuring devices stuck up his back passage. I bet a new writer such as me could not expect his physiognomy to be displayed at all. I would be lucky if my work was rolled up tight and shoved into basic red or yellow papyrus jackets, like those being popped on swiftly at a long bench where completed scrolls were packed and tied in bundles by the finisher. He was gaily tossing sets into a hamper as if they were bundles of firewood.

  Papyrus is notoriously fragile. Ever a collector of facts, Helena Justina had once described to me how the ten-foot reeds are harvested in Egyptian swamps, then the outer hull laboriously peeled away to reveal the white pith, which is cut into strips and spread out in two criss-crossing layers to dry in the sun, solidified by its own juices. The dry sheets are then smoothed with stones or seashells and stuck together, twenty or so to an average roll. Most of the work is carried out in Egypt, but increasingly papyrus is prepared in Rome nowadays. The disadvantage is that it dries out in transit and has to be moistened with extra paste.

  'Egyptian scribes,' Helena had read out to me, delightedly devouring some encyclopaedia she had borrowed from her father's private library, 'write with the sheets in a roll stuck down right over left, because their script goes that way and as they write their reed needs to pass downhill across the joins; Greek scribes turn the roll upside down, so the joins lap the other way. Marcus, have you noticed that the grain on the inner surface of a scroll is always horizontal? That's because there is then less risk of the scroll pulling apart than if the vertical side were used -'

  Here in the scriptorium specially trained slaves were bent over their rolls, feverishly following the dictation of a clear but very dull reader. He really knew how to disguise the sense. I felt sleepy straight away. The scribes were working at such a fast pace, and struggling against such vocal monotony, that I could understand how cheap editions can end up containing so many careless mistakes.

  This did not bode well. Worse followed. Euschemon was out, perhaps still rounding up writing talent, but Aurelius Chrysippus happened to be on the premises. I was not allowed to hang around the scriptorium too long, but did wait a few minutes while he saw off a heavily-tanned, dissatisfied man who said little, but was obviously leaving in a bad mood. Chrysippus seemed undisturbed by whatever had caused their dissent, but the other party was biting back hard feelings, I could tell.

  While Chrysippus smoothly said his farewell to this previous customer, sending him off with a free gift of honeyed dates like a true Greek, I gazed at the shelves of papyrus, with their neat labels: Augustan, for the highest quality, so fine it was translucent and could only be written on one side; Amphitheatrica, named for the arena in Alexandria where a well-known manufacturer was sited; Saitica and Taniotica, which must be made elsewhere in Egypt; then Fanniana and Claudia, which I knew were Roman improvements.

  'Ah, Braco!'

  I grimaced and followed him into his office. Without much preamble, I said that I wanted to discuss terms. Chrysippus managed to make me feel I was brusque and uncivilised for rushing into negotiations like an ill-mannered barbarian – yet just when I was prepared to back off and indulge in full Athenian etiquette for three-quarters of an hour, he changed tack and began haggling. I already thought the contractual conditions described by Euschemon seemed onerous. We talked for a short time before I discovered that I had mistaken the situation entirely. My main interest was the small advance for my creative efforts that I had presumed they were offering to pay.

  'I enjoyed your work,' Chrysippus praised me, with that wholehearted enthusiasm authors crave. I tried to remember he was a retailer, not a disinterested critic. 'Lively and well written, with an appealing personal character. We do not have much like it in current production. I admire your special qualities.'

  'So how much? What's the deal?'

  He laughed. 'We are a commercial organisation,' Aurelius Chrysippus said Then he socked me with the truth: 'We cannot subsidise complete unknowns. What would be in it for us? I do believe you show some promise. If you want a wider audience, I can help. But the deal is that you will invest in the edition by covering our production costs.'

  As soon as I stopped reeling at his effrontery, I was out of there.

  VIII

  Any career informer learns to be adaptable. Clients change their minds. Witnesses astound you with their revelations and lies. Life, in its most ghastly configurations, appals you like some crazy distortion of the Daily Gazette scandal page, making most published news items seem sedate.

  Me, pay them? I knew this went on. I just thought it only happened to sad nonentities, scribbling dull, long-winded epics while still living at home with their mothers. I did not expect some brazen vanity publisher to latch on to me.

  One way that informers adapt to their setbacks is by drinking in winebars. My brother-in-law's recent death while seriously drunk had caused me to restrict my intake somewhat. Besides, I did not want to look like some over-sensitive creative type who claimed to find inspiration in the bottom of a winejug and only there. So I was a good boy. I went home.

  The respectable woman I went home to could have greeted me with a welcoming smile, the offer of afternoon dalliance, and a simple Roman lunch. Instead, she gave me the traditional greeting of a Roman wife: 'Oh, it's you!'

  'Dearest. Do I take it you were expecting some hunk of a lover?'

  Helena Justina just smiled at me, with those mysterious dark eyes pretending to make a fool of me. I had no option but to take it as an empty threat. I would start raving with jealousy if I let my heart lurch the way it wanted to. She knew that I loved her, and trusted her – and also that I was so amazed she lived with me, any slight jolt could make me slip into maniacal insecurity.

  'You do like to keep me on the hop.' I grinned.

  'Do I?' murmured Helena. She had on a flimsy stole and walking sandals; she was a girl with plans – plans that were probably devious even though there was no man involved. My presence was unlikely to delay her long. I had nothingto offer. She had already learned the gossip about Pa. She was not surprised Chrysippus was a dud. She had sent our baby out for a walk with a slave her mother had lent her, but that did not mean I stood any chance of taking her to bed. 'If I go to bed, I'll fall asleep, Marcus.'

  'I won't.'

  'That's what you think,' she said brutally.

  The last thing she wanted was to be lumbered with me. She w
as going out. To a winebar, she told me. It was distinctly unlike Helena. But I knew better than to comment or to panic, let alone to object. She scowled. 'You had better come with me.'

  'This is very exciting. A woman behaving like a male rascal? Let me play too! We can be lunchtime drunks together.'

  'I am not intending to get drunk, Marcus.'

  'What a spoilsport!'

  Yet she was probably wise, for the winebar she had chosen was Flora's Caupona. Ordering a flagon there was the first step towards being sprinkled with oil on your funeral bier.

  'Helena, you do love to be adventurous.'

  'I wanted to see what was happening here.'

  Her curiosity was soon answered: due to the death of its proprietor, Flora's was closed.

  We stood for a moment on the street corner. Stringy, the caupona cat, was currently in charge of the splintery bench outside the shuttered counter; we had a long feud and he spat at me. I spat back.

  Flora's, a business Pa had purchased for his girlfriend, was an eatery so unpretentious it barely rated attention from the local protection rackets. I had drunk there regularly at one time, in the days when the place sold the worst hot stews in Rome. It had perked up briefly after an extremely brutal murder occurred in a rented room on the premises; then it slumped back into a drab haunt for bankrupts and broken men.