Fanina Read online

  Fanina

  by Pierre Sabbagh & Antoine Graziani

  She was forbidden to love

  As a vestal virgin she was condemned to chastity and the penalty for loving was to be buried alive.

  But one day as she went to fetch sacred water for the cleaning of the temple her way was barred by a blue-eyed young man from Gaul.

  Beautiful tempestuous Fanina's dangerous surrender to love is absorbingly depicted against its violet and vivid roman background.

  First published in UK 1966 by Wm. Heinemann Ltd.

  This edition published 1968 by Pan Books Ltd.,

  33 Tothill Street, London, S.W.I.

  330 02040 4

  © Opera Mundi, Paris, 1965

  Translation © William Heinemann Ltd., 1966

  PRINTED AND BOUND IN ENGLAND BY

  HAZELL WATSON AND VINEY LTD

  AYLESBURY, BUCKS

  Chapter One

  ‘Fair, oh fair, fairest of all,

  Fanina.

  Star of her house, light of the City,

  Fanina.

  Flower, bee, and honey. Ah!

  Fanina....’

  NEVER, NEVER again would Hemonia dare to sing that familiar ditty. She would be too afraid that once again she might rouse the anger of the gods that had been unloosed on her darling little one that summer afternoon when...

  No one in Rome could recall such a hot afternoon. The city seemed quite dead. Everywhere – in the private bathing-pools and the public baths, in the temples and the taverns, wherever a trace of coolness might be found – people were waiting for the lowering storm to break.

  Meanwhile, up at the top of the Palatine, in the oldest house of that ancient quarter, the nurse had laid her little charge on the heavy table of green porphyry, the better to rub her after her bath and apply an unguent of delicately scented oils made by her own secret process. Fanina was laughing as she felt the vigorous hands at work and, wriggling impatiently, she clamoured: ‘Stop, Hemonia, stop!’

  It was no use; Fanina struggled in vain and her nurse went on just the same, rubbing every inch of her skin with all her might and continuing to sing with the beat of an incantation:

  ‘My little apricot, my tender fruit,

  Oh, Fanina.

  This little dimple, this sweet pucker,

  My Fanina.

  This little rosy budding breast,

  Of Fanina....’

  ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone now,’ Fanina groaned. She was getting drowsy, feeling the slow delicious currents in her blood lulling her as, little by little, sweet sleep crept over her.

  ‘Off you go, my darling. Sleep and dream of what you are going to be – that you will be more beautiful than any other woman in Rome, in the wide Empire or even in the whole world. ... Sleep and dream of that fortunate mortal, the chosen of the gods, in whose arms you will lie close on that day when you loose your virgin’s girdle.’

  ‘We’ve had enough of that nonsense,’ cut in Terentia, Fanina’s mother, exasperated. Up to that moment she had not said a word, as she bent over the loom to which, like the proud Roman matron she was, she devoted the greater part of her day.

  Fanina smiled, her eyes half closed and every muscle slackened as she settled into the arms of her nurse. Argument, however, had to come, as ever – it was all part of the routine; although strangely, on this day, the two women had not yet started to spar over their differences about the child.

  ‘What have I said that’s wrong?’ asked Hemonia, nettled. ‘Is it silly to recognize that our Fanina will, one day, be worthy of an emperor? Where have you ever seen, mistress, a little girl so beautifully moulded, with a skin that makes one think of the clear amber that the seamen bring back from the Baltic shores. And look at her hair – have you ever seen such hair ... a brighter gold than that of the most beautiful girls from beyond the Rhine?’

  ‘That is no reason for going on saying it to her at every turn.’

  ‘The little thing is only six, mistress, but she is too intelligent not to have noticed that no one who meets her can hide a gasp of admiration.’

  Hemonia turned towards the walls of the hall, decorated with frescoes depicting numbers of processional figures: they were painted in a range of dull colours against which the coal-black beards and flowing locks, the shining enamelled eyes narrowed like oriental idols, and the faces and hands burnished in a dull gold stood out sharply. Here were to be seen the most renowned of the illustrious family from which Fanina sprang.

  Some were consuls, some censors, others praetors, military commanders, and especially religious dignitaries – pontiffs, vestals, augurs and the sacrificial kings. In the midst of these and towering over them, was the figure, dominating and terrible, of Mastama Marcius Faninus, the great ancestor; Mastama, the last of a line that came of a powerful Etruscan royal house; Mastama, the Master, the Mage, the sorcerer, the ‘emissary of the gods’. This was Mastama, without whose counsels Romulus would not, maybe, have founded Rome; the hero whose courage and terrifying powers were the constant boast of those about Fanina, and whose high character no one denied.

  ‘It’s really extraordinary, mistress!’ the nurse went on. ‘Not a single Roman woman of ancient lineage is as strikingly fair-haired as Fanina. You yourself, mistress, have hair almost as dark as that of Faninus, my master. Look over these portraits around us and you won’t find a single fair-haired individual – not even if you go back as far as Mastama.’

  Still holding forth, the nurse was wrapping the little girl in the ample folds of a great sheet of finely embroidered linen, when a dazzling flash of lightning lit up the room sharply, picking out the characters in the fresco, so that, for a moment, they seemed to be about to take the first steps of some strange dance. Another instant and there was a deafening clap of thunder, very close.

  Hemonia trembled violently and Terentia, startled, gave a cry. In a shady comer in the garden, the four Libyan slaves who were supposed to be doing the watering had stopped work to rest in the cool. Now they leapt up and began muttering and pointing to the sky, which was quickly covered with vast lurid clouds. Rome had certainly got its storm this time.

  Fanina sprang up with a start.

  ‘It is only the thunder, my little queen,’ whispered Hemonia in her ear soothingly. ‘Come now, lie down again.’

  But Fanina no longer wanted to go to sleep. Turning round towards the garden, she said, ‘My father is coming: I can hear him.’

  ‘She has the most sensitive hearing in the world,’ exclaimed the nurse, who never failed to marvel at her darling’s talents.

  Terentia and Hemonia, who had Fanina in her arms, passed along the peristyle enclosing the garden, where the slaves hastened to get to work again, and looked towards the opening of the main gallery leading into the house.

  The sky was now quite leaden. Now near, now far off, the rumbling of the thunder was like a continuous roll of gigantic drums.

  Fanina caught sight of about twenty men gathered at the far end of the gallery. Most of them were simply dressed, and they now crossed the atrium and made for the garden, forming a deferential escort for two senators in flowing white togas, bordered with a purple band. These men were the senators’ ‘clients’ or retainers, living on their patrician masters, according to the ancient Roman custom.

  The younger of the two senators was Cnaeus Marcius Faninus, the father of Fanina; he was a man about forty years of age, short, slim, with black hair and a sunburnt skin; the line of the eyes was drawn out towards the temple and his chin appeared narrow and hard. His companion, obviously older, going grey and tall in build, walked with the easy gait of a patrician of ancient lineage. This was Cornelius Dolabella.

  Fanina, with her lithe little figure, wriggled out of Hemonia’s arms and slipped to the ground. She let go the linen sheet that covered her; and the radiant little naked creature, with her long golden tresses floating behind her, ran to her father, calling out happily: ‘Father, Father, how lovely you have come back so soon!’

  For years afterwards Fanina remembered every one of those moments she had lived through during that storm in the late afternoon: sights that lasted only a second and were gone, the faintest of sounds, those even that died away instantly, unnoticed, were yet registered indelibly in her memory....

  Faninus and Dolabella stopped still just near the fountain in the middle of the garden, arrested by the charming picture of the little girl under this sky, leaden with thunder-clouds, streaked with lightning, the flashes coming with ever greater frequency.

  Suddenly Dolabella, wrinkling his brow, leant towards Faninus and whispered a few words in his ear, pointing with his chin at the running child. Faninus, obviously angry, replied, and what he said was heard by Fanina, just as it was by Terentia and Hemonia.

  ‘You have too much imagination, Dolabella. Why do you think Fanina should be the victim? Coward he may be and cruel, but surely he would not dare to avenge himself on a child...’

  Before he could say another word Fanina, in a single leap, was round his neck and covering his face with her eager little kisses. Dolabella gave a slight shrug and, assuming a look of unconcern, he addressed Terentia, who, with Hemonia behind her, came up to them with an oddly strained look on her face.

  ‘My dear Terentia, I shall never cease to wonder how you and Faninus managed to produce such a child; it is no less than a miracle. How has the dark strain of Etruscan ancestry thrown up this ray of sunlight? Mysterious ...’ Then, pretending to study Fanina’s face, pressed against her father’s, an
d going through the motions of a scientist examining a rare animal, he added, ‘No, there is no mistake about it. We have here a descendant of the “divine” Mastarna. Mark the shape of the eyes, and their unblinking stare. And that mouth, red and full and ready to pronounce home truths. Pity, really, that this engaging little creature cannot sit in the Senate as her father does: we’d hear something that would make us sit up – and no mistake!’

  The senator, Faninus, was renowned throughout the Empire for his vehement speeches and for his passion for getting things put right and exposing, analysing and rectifying State affairs. Often Fanina had heard it said that her father was ‘the Senate’s conscience’ and that dishonest men trembled at the possibility of his denouncing their frauds. As to enemies, he had countless ones. He was proud of it; and Fanina, who believed the whole world revolved round him, could not understand why her mother, usually so gentle and timid, and the faithful Hemonia, too, should venture to advise him to restrain himself.

  This time, however, Fanina felt a vague anxiety suddenly come over her. Why were her mother and Hemonia both so pale, just at this moment? Why, with a break in her voice, did Terentia say:

  ‘What are you referring to, Dolabella? What happened in the Senate?’

  ‘What is this vengeance, to be taken on Fanina?’ muttered Hemonia.

  Faninus’s face was impassive, but the child held closely to him felt the muscles of his jaw tighten.

  ‘Have I your leave, my dear colleague, to inform your wife what everyone in Rome itself knows about the dispute dividing our august assembly?’ Dolabella asked ironically.

  ‘You have already said too much for there to be any question of silence,’ Faninus said drily.

  The storm was gathering in force from moment to moment; the flashes of lightning became more frequent; the thunder continued its low rumble. It seemed hardly the time or place to go over the debate in the Senate. But not one of the four individuals standing round the fountain seemed to notice it; nor did Fanina, who felt an unnaccountable anguish in her heart as her father dandled her nervously in a loose fold of his toga.

  ‘Well,’ continued Dolabella, who did not mind giving his friend a piece of his mind, ‘what came up today was the appointment of Domitius Aenebarbus to a very important job in the Narbonne province of Gaul.’

  ‘Brazen-beard?’ cried Terentia.

  ‘Exactly, my dear. Domitius, the loathsome scion of that illustrious family of red-heads, related to the Emperor, remember. The males of the line claim, you know, that they have had red beards ever since some god or other stroked the black beard of one of their ancestors... .’

  ‘What, his beard was black and it turned red?’ asked Fanina, her great eyes wide with wonder.

  ‘Red as a scoured copper cauldron, my pretty one.’

  Once again, Terentia cut him short and, looking from Dolabella to her husband, said, ‘And who, might I ask, had the idea of putting forward Brazen-beard for the post?’

  ‘Who would you think? It was his friend, Lucius Vitellius, morally as lean as a flat-fish and physically as fat as a trout. But Faninus here only allowed Vitellius enough time to pronounce the name of his candidate; then he stood up and denounced Domitius, drawing such a lively portrait of his depravities that, within a moment, the Senate had divided into two camps which hurled at each other a whole gamut of insults – the immense variety of which serves to show the inexhaustible richness of our language.’

  ‘And what did you say to them, master? What did you say then?’ asked Hemonia, with a lump in her throat, turning to Faninus. He, pretending not to hear, went on rocking his daughter to and fro.

  ‘Exactly what everyone in Rome knows but does not dare to say aloud,’ Dolabella went on, his face darkening. ‘That Domitius is a monster of cruelty, which he wreaks on anybody who has the misfortune to get into his clutches; they know, too, how Domitius, a year ago, at the dinner-table, killed a freed-man who declined to drink with him, and how last February he had the eye of a Roman gouged out because he reproached him for his lax morals. And then it is common knowledge that Domitius only recently crushed a child who was in his path under his chariot-wheels. Further, Domitius has diverted to his own use the funds meant for awards to the victors in the games, and every day he is the chief actor in shocking orgies too revolting to describe. And Domitius, like many others in Rome, I must admit, has a weakness for little boys, while he carries his love for his sisters to the point of sharing their bed – this happens especially with the beautiful Lepida, clearly his favourite....’

  ‘Has the Emperor heard this indictment?’ interrupted Terentia, quite horrified.

  ‘Yes,but you know Tiberius. He did not turn a hair,although he might have felt he was being alluded to when your husband made a direct reference to the liking Domitius had for longhaired little boys.’

  ‘There are people coming! Look, at the entrance!’ cried Fanina, who had long since lost the thread of the conversation. ...

  ‘When the gods have decided to put on a drama, they go into every detail and devise the setting with jar greater skill than the most expert theatrical producers. Nothing is left to chance. Everything works together to strike the imagination and to terrify. For everything must be engraved indelibly, as if with a branding iron, on the spectators' minds.’

  So Dolabella, many years afterwards, conjured up for Fanina the dreadful scene in which she was the chief character and the spectator – the witness who hears all, sees all and, though he does not always understand what he hears and what he sees, never, never forgets....

  The lurid sky hung low, very low. A rumble of thunder came from far off, with long intervals of silence, as if the secret forces of nature, having threatened to let loose some cataclysm, were taking breath.

  Sheet lightning streaked the sky. The retainers were huddled together under the peristyle – waiting. Side by side near the fountain, Terentia and Hemonia glanced at each other anxiously. In front of them, looking absolutely unconcerned, Dolabella was standing with Faninus, who kept his child wrapped in a corner of his toga, as if she were a kitten.

  Suddenly cries were heard, coming from the porter’s lodge, then from the atrium, where they blended with the noise of some sort of struggle, punctuated by the sound of a body falling into the water. Then there were guffaws of laughter coming nearer with, in the background, a dull heavy tramping. At last a single man appeared, running at speed.

  Clinias, the nomenclator, the slave whose duty it was to recognize visitors and remind his master of their names, emerged from the gallery, breathless, his clothes hanging on him wet, sticking to his body, his nose bleeding and his eyes all swollen.

  ‘Master! Master!’ he called. ‘Brazen-beard! Domitius is here with an escort of gladiators! They mean to smash up everything! They threw me into the atrium fountain. They mean to—’

  ‘They mean to give you a lesson for denouncing me to the Emperor and the Senate, Faninus Viper-tongue! ’ shouted a man in the prime of life, short, deathly pale, with red hair and beard and wearing a splendid robe of embroidered silk. He was literally wedged into a human block formed by a dozen or so bodyguards of every race, muscular as giants, and had just forced a way through the retainers of the master of the house.

  Those words, shouted harshly, echoed under the colonnade round the garden. Then there was silence – a silence that made its deepest mark on Fanina, who, terrified, had shrunk as close as possible against her father.

  At the far end of the garden the Libyan slaves were standing in a group against the walls of the great gallery, not daring to confront the gladiators, in the midst of whom stood out the ghastly face of Domitius and the gilded flowers of his robe. His features were distorted by a strange smile, forced and painful, like a nervous grimace.

  What was going to happen? Why were they hesitating – her father and mother and Hemonia? Fanina’s eyes went feverishly from one to the other.

  Still keeping hold of Terentia’s arm, Hemonia stepped nearer. Her face had become stony, her grey eyes screwed up and her lips set. This was Hemonia in her dark mood, and Fanina knew her too well not to realize that she was like a bowstring stretched to breaking-point.