Tiberius by Allan Massie Page B

stepfather's feeling for his sister, her daughter was not expendable as my poor Vipsania was.
    No, Drusus was safe.
    I did my best. I have nothing with which to reproach myself. For a moment I was even optimistic. For a little time it seemed as if it might work, as if we could live in afternoon contentment.
    Julia bestowed her most radiant smile on me. When we were alone, she murmured, as she had used to do, "Old bear, old bear" and stroked my cheeks with fingers light as a flower's touch . . .
    "What a hard face, old bear, grizzled and weatherbeaten . . ." She kissed my lips.
    "Like Agrippa's," she said. "How strange it will be. Like going back in time and yet coming full circle . . ."
    She slipped out of her shift and stood before me in her full ripe loveliness. Moonlight streaked into the room, casting a silvery-gold sheen over her flesh. She knelt before me and thrust her hands under my tunic.
    It is night as I write this. I can hear the waves break on the rocks below and silence rises from the town and I see again Julia's upturned face, lips open, and a dewiness under her eyes. She breathed desire, and I was afraid lest I should not be able to satisfy her. She drew me to the bed . . . "Come, husband, come, old bear, you delighted me once, and I . . ." she nuzzled me, "Tiberius, Tiberius, Tiberius . . ."
    "Tiberius, Tiberius, Tiberius ..." I was always anxious. Even when I believed I was giving her pleasure, I was anxious, alert for the comparisons I was certain filled her mind . . . Even when she cried out in ecstasy, my mind seemed to remain apart, and I asked myself whether she was simulating her joy.
    Did she try too? I believe she did. I must believe she did. Now that I have nothing urgent to do, I spend hours casting back over my life, weighing my own behaviour and that of others. Too many hours perhaps, for such introspection can become a disease, a potent drug. There are times, however, when I imagine that Julia snatched at the opportunity afforded her by our marriage as a means of escaping the imperatives of her own nature, which she knew well, and sometimes (I think) feared. Like all who experience a strong impulse towards dissipation, a nostalgia for whatever is base and filthy in human existence, she was torn between that attraction and a longing to live a virtuous life, an intermittent longing certainly but one none the less strong for being frequently in abeyance. She lusted after the manifold pleasures of the senses, seeking satisfaction in extremity, yet ever aware of how she received from her debasement diminishing returns. In her best hours she appeared to me as a godlike child of nature, spontaneous, bountiful, joy-giving and joy-enhancing. Yet there was always a desperation in her happiness, as if she pursued pleasure to flee a vision of emptiness. She filled her life with sensation in order not to be compelled to gaze upon a vision of insignificance. Finding no sure foothold in experience, she experienced a sharp and recurrent apprehension that nothing mattered. "We live, we die, and that's that," she said. "Why live except to prolong and intensify pleasure ... ?" But, when she spoke like that, I seemed to see a dark river mist surround her, chilling the blood and obscuring the future.
    She accompanied me, as Piso had recommended, to the armies. She delighted in the life of the camp, and was tireless and uncomplaining on the march. Men and officers adored her, they admired her high spirits and readiness to laugh at discomfort and the accidents inseparable from military life. I found my own popularity — never great, for I had always known that I gained respect rather than affection — grew on her account. To my surprise, Agrippa's widow was more at ease on campaign than Agrippa's daughter had been; for my dear Vipsania's private and retiring nature had been revolted by the inevitable brutality of army life. To some extent Julia shared her feelings, but, whereas Vipsania shrank from them, Julia spoke