spoiled by the saw of the workman who cut the tusk. It is believed to confer upon the human owner of it, immense strength, great endurance, keen foresight, good hearing, and a remarkable memory, all of which attributes Alexander undoubtedly possessed.
B.
I said: ‘This makes twice in the day that I have had occasion to be reminded of Alexander. These things go in threes.’
‘My cup seems to be making everyone rich,’ said Paulus.
‘You have known me for a while, now, Paulus, and ought to have watched me. What does it mean when a man like me talks like an old woman about “things going by threes”?’
‘I should say that although you never look like anything but a bronze statue of a gladiator in repose, broken nose and scars and all, you are nervous. What about, I don’t know. Neither do you, I think, or you would not be nervous about it.’
‘Good. Let us eat and drink. It is time for my daily meal. I hope we finish it.’
I sat facing the north. Whatever was going to happen would happen there, because when I turned to the south I felt an uneasy tingling at the nape of my neck. I have come to rely on this sign, or presentiment – ignored it only once, when I was young, and will carry to my grave a dent in my skull to remind me how wrong I was.
4
L OOKING at my simple table Paulus said: ‘Diomed, I am honoured.’
I knew what he meant. I put out a variety of dishes only for strangers. When I dine alone, or with an intimate friend, I eat plainly, in the old fashion. Egg to apple – given a fish or a fowl, a roast of meat, some fruit and a piece of cheese, together with good wine – what more does a man require for his complete enjoyment? Show me a refiner of honest appetites, and I will show you a man on his way down. In the beginning man ate dirt because he could get nothing better. And he progressed through eleven hundred ways of cooking a pig – to what? Raw goldfish, a paste of unborn mice with honey and caraway seeds, and maggots begotten of creamy cheese soaked in sweet wine? Bah! When you make luxury of what the jackals eat – I mean, when you step out of your way to acquire a taste and need nausea fora relish – you are making sophistication out of decent disgust, and are going home to the cloaca and the rats. Honest hunger is the best sauce.
This evening we had a dish of eggs, a fish and a young lamb. I said to Paulus: ‘You’ll eat worse than this before you die, if you want to be a soldier. I say nothing of dead horses and fresh dogs: once, in the swamps, I fought a water-hen for a clutch of nearly-hatched eggs. I hadn’t the strength to catch the bird. The chicks were pulsating, but I ate them all but two, which I brought back to Sergius; and so he and I rallied the men, and we all had a supper of beef that night. And here I am.’
‘I like plain food,’ said Paulus.
‘Anchovies so salty they cut your throat and bread that breaks your teeth, washed down with sad water flavoured with sour wine, warm from your hip – these things you will learn to relish at the end of a long hard day,’ I said. ‘How many ways of dishing up a fish does your father’s cook know?’
‘I don’t know. You lead every conversation back to my father, Diomed. What do you want to know about him?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I only asked you, before, whether you loved him. You told me that you did not.’
‘Excuse me; I did not say so.’
‘If you can remember our recent conversation, Paulus, you must realise that you have said everything.’ I went on, in gentle admonition: ‘If you have nothing to say, better say nothing.’
But now Dionë began to sing in another room; some sad Cilician song of the forlorn love of a child of the Captivity alone among strangers. Whoever first made that song sang it drop by uncontrollable drop in tears to an outlandish twilight. And whoever picked it up let it out again, not from the heart but from the vulva. There is not much difference
B.
I said: ‘This makes twice in the day that I have had occasion to be reminded of Alexander. These things go in threes.’
‘My cup seems to be making everyone rich,’ said Paulus.
‘You have known me for a while, now, Paulus, and ought to have watched me. What does it mean when a man like me talks like an old woman about “things going by threes”?’
‘I should say that although you never look like anything but a bronze statue of a gladiator in repose, broken nose and scars and all, you are nervous. What about, I don’t know. Neither do you, I think, or you would not be nervous about it.’
‘Good. Let us eat and drink. It is time for my daily meal. I hope we finish it.’
I sat facing the north. Whatever was going to happen would happen there, because when I turned to the south I felt an uneasy tingling at the nape of my neck. I have come to rely on this sign, or presentiment – ignored it only once, when I was young, and will carry to my grave a dent in my skull to remind me how wrong I was.
4
L OOKING at my simple table Paulus said: ‘Diomed, I am honoured.’
I knew what he meant. I put out a variety of dishes only for strangers. When I dine alone, or with an intimate friend, I eat plainly, in the old fashion. Egg to apple – given a fish or a fowl, a roast of meat, some fruit and a piece of cheese, together with good wine – what more does a man require for his complete enjoyment? Show me a refiner of honest appetites, and I will show you a man on his way down. In the beginning man ate dirt because he could get nothing better. And he progressed through eleven hundred ways of cooking a pig – to what? Raw goldfish, a paste of unborn mice with honey and caraway seeds, and maggots begotten of creamy cheese soaked in sweet wine? Bah! When you make luxury of what the jackals eat – I mean, when you step out of your way to acquire a taste and need nausea fora relish – you are making sophistication out of decent disgust, and are going home to the cloaca and the rats. Honest hunger is the best sauce.
This evening we had a dish of eggs, a fish and a young lamb. I said to Paulus: ‘You’ll eat worse than this before you die, if you want to be a soldier. I say nothing of dead horses and fresh dogs: once, in the swamps, I fought a water-hen for a clutch of nearly-hatched eggs. I hadn’t the strength to catch the bird. The chicks were pulsating, but I ate them all but two, which I brought back to Sergius; and so he and I rallied the men, and we all had a supper of beef that night. And here I am.’
‘I like plain food,’ said Paulus.
‘Anchovies so salty they cut your throat and bread that breaks your teeth, washed down with sad water flavoured with sour wine, warm from your hip – these things you will learn to relish at the end of a long hard day,’ I said. ‘How many ways of dishing up a fish does your father’s cook know?’
‘I don’t know. You lead every conversation back to my father, Diomed. What do you want to know about him?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I only asked you, before, whether you loved him. You told me that you did not.’
‘Excuse me; I did not say so.’
‘If you can remember our recent conversation, Paulus, you must realise that you have said everything.’ I went on, in gentle admonition: ‘If you have nothing to say, better say nothing.’
But now Dionë began to sing in another room; some sad Cilician song of the forlorn love of a child of the Captivity alone among strangers. Whoever first made that song sang it drop by uncontrollable drop in tears to an outlandish twilight. And whoever picked it up let it out again, not from the heart but from the vulva. There is not much difference
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