Hut Tullia teasingly laughed aloud and brushed her hand across my father’s.
“Now I see why I was so insane about you once, Marcus,” she said. “No other man has ever been able to pronounce my name so delightfully.”
And to tell the truth, when my father spoke her name there was a touch of melancholy in his voice. Of course I could not possibly see what such a fine noble woman could see in my father. Aunt Laelia came up to us, tittering cheerfully, and gave my father a playful slap on the cheek.
“You’re not sitting here squabbling like a pair of young lovers, are you?” she said warningly. “It’s high time you calmed down, my dear Tullia. You’ve already had four husbands and the last “one has hardly had time to grow cold in his grave.”
“Exactly, dear Laelia,” admitted Tullia. “It is time I calmed down. That is why I am so unutterably glad to have found Marcus again. His presence calms me wonderfully.”
She turned to me.
“But you, young Achilles,” she went on, “your new sword makes my mind uneasy. If only I were ten years younger, I should ask you to come with me to look at the moon. But old as I am, I cannot. Go then and amuse yourself. Your father and I have much to settle together.”
When she mentioned the moon, I was disturbed and went up to the upper floor to remove my armor. I felt my short hair and my smooth cheeks and was suddenly disappointed and sad, for I had been waiting for this day for so long and had dreamed about it and now nothing was as I had expected. But I had to fulfill my promise to the oracle in Daphne.
I went out the back way and in the kitchen acknowledged the good wishes of the sweating slaves. I told them to eat and drink as much as they could manage, for there would be no more guests arriving now. At the gate I dutifully straightened up the almost extinguished torches and thought sadly that this was perhaps the greatest and most solemn day of my life. Life is just like a torch, which at first burns clearly and then is extinguished in fumes and smoke.
A girl wrapped in a brown mantle stepped out from the dark shadows of the wall.
“Minutus, Minutus,” she whispered. “I want to wish you happiness and have brought you these cakes which I baked for you myself. I was going to leave them with the slaves, but fate was kind to me and let me meet you myself.”
67
With horror, I recognized Claudia, against whom Aunt Laelia had warned me. But at the same time I was flattered that this strange girl had found out the day of my majority in order to wish me happiness. Quite unexpectedly a great rush of joy went through me when I saw her thick black eyebrows, her wide mouth and sunburned skin. She was different from all the aging soured guests who had gathered in our house. Claudia was living and real and genuine. She was my friend.
Claudia shyly brushed her hand across my cheek and was not at all as arrogant and self-confident as when we had first met.
“Minutus,” she whispered. “You’ve probably heard evil things about me, but I am not as bad as people make out. In fact I want to think only good thoughts now I have met you. In that way you’ve brought me happiness.”
We began to walk side by side toward the Moon temple. Claudia adjusted my toga at the neck and together we ate one of her cakes by taking turns at biting into it, just as we had done with her cheese at the library. The cake was spiced with honey and caraway. Claudia said she had collected the honey and caraway herself and ground the wheat-flour with her own hands in an old hand mill.
As we walked she did not take my arm, but shyly avoided touching me. Filled with my manhood, I took her arm and steered her around the potholes in the street. She sighed happily. In strictest confidence, I told her about my promise and said that I was now on my way to the Moon temple with my votive gift in a silver box.
“Ugh, that temple has a bad reputation!” cried Claudia. “Immoral mysteries go on there behind barred doors at night. It was a good thing I was standing outside your house. If you’d gone there alone, you might have lost more than your gift.
“I don’t even bother to watch the State sacrifices any longer,” she went on. “The gods are just stone and wood. That lying old man in Palatine is reviving old ceremonies just to bind people more firmly with the old chains. I have my own sacred tree and a clear sacrificial well. If I’m sad I go to the oracle at the Vatican and look at the birds flying.”
“You talk like my father,” I said. “He did not even want to let a seer read in a liver for me. But powers and witchcraft exist. Even sensible people admit that. So I prefer to fulfill my promise rather than not.”
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