Afterwards we walked up the hill of Aventine and my father said with a sigh that we should not have turned off into the inn after all, for the garlic sausage had given him a stomachache which not even the wine could allay. He was feeling pressure in his chest and was filled with evil forebodings, which grew worse at the sight of a crow flying past on our left.
In among the new and old apartment blocks, we wandered past several ancient temples which looked sunk into the ground beside the large buildings. On the other side of the hill, my father at last found the Manilianus family property. Compared with our house in Antioch, it was quite a small and neglected building which had at some time had an additional story built on to it to provide more space. But it was surrounded by a wall and a wild garden. When my father saw my contemptuous expression, he said sternly that the plot and the garden alone bore witness to the age and nobility of the house.
The bearers had long since arrived from the Capua gate with our luggage and Aunt Laelia was expecting us. First she let my father pay the bearers and then she came down the steps and along the garden path between the laurel bushes. She was a tall thin woman and had carefully rouged her lined cheeks and darkened her eyes. She was also wanting a ring on her finger and a copper chain around her neck. Her hands trembled as she came to meet us, her cries of joy carefully controlled.
She made a mistake at first, for my father in his humble way had stood in the background to pay the bearers himself, and she stopped in front of Barbus, bowing a little and covering her head as if in prayer.
“Ah, Marcus, what a joyful occasion,” she cried. “You are much changed since your youth. But your stance is now better and your figure more powerful.”
My father burst out laughing.
“Oh, Aunt Laelia,” he cried. “You are as shortsighted as ever. I am Marcus. This good honest old veteran is our companion Barbus, one of my clients.”
Aunt Laelia was annoyed at her own mistake. She went up to my father, peered at him with glittering eyes and fumbled over his shoulders and stomach with shaking hands..
“It is not so strange,” she remarked, “that I no longer recognize you. Your face has swollen, your stomach sags and I can hardly believe my own eyes, for you used to be quite good-looking.”
My father was not offended by her words. On the contrary.
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“Thank you for your words, Aunt Laelia,” he said. “A weight has fallen from my mind, for I have had nothing but trouble from my appearance before. As you didn’t recognize me, then hardly anyone else will either. But you haven’t changed a bit. You’re as slim as before and your features are just as noble. The years have not changed you in the slightest. Embrace my son Minutus too, then, and be as good and considerate to him as you were to me in the lighthearted days of my youth.”
Aunt Laelia embraced me with delight, kissed me on the forehead and eyes with her thin mouth and felt my cheeks.
“But Minutus,” she cried, “you already have the beginnings of a beard and are not at all a child to be hugged.”
She went on, holding my head between her hands and looked carefully at my face.
“You look more like a Greek than a Roman,” she said. “But those green eyes and fair hair of yours are certainly very unusual. If you were a girl, I should say you were beautiful, but with those looks you will certainly make a good marriage. Your mother of course was a Greek, if I remember rightly.”
Not until she had stammered and chattered away for some time, as if she herself did not really know what she was saying, did I realize that she was in a state of utter terror. At the entrance we were greeted by a bald, toothless slave, and at his side stood a lame and one-eyed woman. They both knelt in front of my father and called out a greeting which Aunt Laelia had obviously taught them. My father looked embarrassed, patted Aunt Laelia on the shoulder and asked her to go in before us as she was the hostess. The little room was full of smoke which made us all start coughing, for Aunt Laelia had had a fire lighted on the household altar in our honor. Through the smoke I could just make out our family gods in fired clay, and their yellowed wax masks seemed to move in the swirling smoke.
Nervously tripping, coughing and gesticulating, Aunt Laelia began verbosely to explain that according to the traditions of the Manilianus family, we ought really to sacrifice a pig. But as she had been uncertain of the day of our arrival, she had not acquired a pig and could now offer us only olives, cheese and vegetable soup. She herself had long since ceased eating meat.
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