The Confessions of X (23 page)
“Mama?” My son's eyes flickered open.
“I'm here,” I said. And when I placed my hand upon his forehead and felt his body cool at last and looked into his eyes and saw them clear, his soul looking back at me calm and sane, I knew that he would live. I crawled upon the bed and took his ravaged body in my arms and lay there, rocking him and stroking his hair and face and murmuring in his ear that he was my treasure, my only love, my joy, while tears of joy poured down my face.
Augustine awoke and seeing us, climbed onto the bed on the other side and we held him between us as we used to do when he was little.
W
hen we feared Adeodatus would die, we had sent a message to Monica during her grandson's illness. Now she arrived, accompanied by Nebridius who, faithful friend that he was, insisted on escorting her on the voyage and long overland journey from Ostia to Milan, even though she insisted she could travel only accompanied by Marta, her maid.
It was a great comfort to me to have them with us during those early weeks of my son's convalescence, especially Monica, for she was skilled in all manner of medicine and knew just which herbs to brew to clear the lungs and which foodstuffs gave strength to wasted muscles and restored the blood. Cybele, who had died shortly after our visit to Thagaste, had taught her well.
When she first arrived and went into Adeodatus, who was still too weak to rise from his bed, I saw her eyes fill with tears when she saw him. He was skeletal and hardly had the strength to lift his arm and clasp her hand.
“Avia,” he whispered. “You came.”
“Of course I came, silly boy,” she said, laying her cheek against his forehead the way mothers do to check for fever. She smoothed
back the hair from his face. “What's this I hear about you giving so much trouble to your poor mother and father?”
In this way, she made him smile and hid her grief behind a façade of bustle and mock scolding. But when Adeodatus fell asleep, she took my hand and kissed it.
“I thank you for saving him,” she said in a low voice. “If it had not been for you . . .” Here she could not go on. “Well,” she said. “Enough of that.” She rose and drew me up from the bed. “Now it is your turn to be taken care of. You must get some rest, my dear, for you are almost as thin and worn out as your son. I am here now. Go and sleep. I will rouse you if he calls for you.”
And so I did. For the first time in more than a month, I undressed and lay down in my own bed and that was all I knew until I awoke and it was the morning of the next day though I had fallen asleep in the afternoon when the sun was high.
It was not until summer that Adeodatus recovered all his strength and could resume his lessons and his normal life. But his illness had changed him and he was quieter now, more serious, as if he had crossed a threshold between worlds and returned with the imprint of their mystery stamped forever on his soul.
I mourned this too soon passing of his boyhood and missed the uproar of his former games when he would chase around the house and get underfoot until I told him, “
Pax
.” Now he sat for hours in the courtyard reading or talking with Nebridius, and when it grew hot and I told him to shift his chair into the shade, he would
answer that he was always cold and tilt his face toward the sun and close his eyes, basking catlike in its rays. Monica said this was but a passing phase, a weakness left over from his sickness, but he did not grow out of it. The perpetual coldness he seemed to always feel was like the mantle of snow that lies on the distant mountaintops even in full summer when the lowlands are baking in the heat.
A week before Adeodatus's tenth birthday, I asked him what he would like to do to celebrate. His answer surprised me.
“I would like you to give a dinner, Mama,” he said. “So I can listen to Papa's friends talk. They interest me.”
“What do you think?” I asked Augustine when we were alone in our room that night. “Don't you think it's a bit odd for a boy so young to want to be with adults on his birthday?” I rolled my head to look at him. We were lying side by side, my head resting in the crook of his arm.
“Perhaps,” Augustine said. “But his understanding is far beyond that of boys his own age.”
“Even so,” I said. “It's as if he is growing up twice as fast as other boys.”
“He's an only child,” Augustine murmured, rolling onto his side so he was looking down at me. “All he's ever known are adults. It's quite normal. Now,” he said. “Whom shall we invite? Symmachus, Prefect of Milan. We can hardly exclude him as he was the one who got me my post, after all.” He kissed a corner of my mouth. “Ambrose, his cousin, the great Bishop of Milan.” He kissed the other side of my mouth. “Vindicianus is in Rome so we can't invite him. Who else?”
But I put my hands on either side of his face and drew his mouth down to mine and all talk of the guest list was forgotten.
On the night of the dinner party, I was nervous, greatly aware of how small our house was and how plain the fare for the dinner.
“Country food” was how Monica put it. She and Marta had done most of the cooking, had insisted when she caught me sitting in despair at the kitchen table a week before disconsolately turning the panels of my wax tablet where I had jotted down a few recipes from memory, none of them complete.
“I'm used to cooking for more people,” she said. “Besides, my cook and steward at home are both wonders and have taught me everything I know.”
Together we decided on a simple meal of several courses but not too many.
“Those imperial feasts would choke an elephant,” Monica said when I asked if our guests would be disappointed at only three courses and think us stingy if we didn't serve ten. “Besides, it's bad for the digestion.”
Boiled eggs and anchovies to begin with a simple garnish of summer greens, bowls of olives to accompany them, an African stew of lamb and apricots and barley for the main course, fresh grapes and spiced wine to follow. And, of course, a birthday cake for Adeodatus. This I was determined to make.
“The bishop is a man of great simplicity,” Monica assured me. “He will be more than satisfied, trust me. His cousin, Symmachus, is another matter. He's a wealthy senator and we all know what lushes they are. Pah!”
I smiled to myself. Monica had no patience for overindulgence
of which the senatorial class was legendary but her view of Roman senators was also colored by the history of the persecution of Christians. She mistrusted the senatorial class and thought them ready to have her thrown to the lions at a moment's notice.
“He would have to throw his own cousin, Ambrose, to the lions too,” Augustine teased her one day. “I hardly think he's going to do that. And don't forget the emperor. He's a Christian too.”
The evening of the dinner arrived. We had had a quiet celebration of Adeodatus's birthday earlier, Augustine, myself, Monica, and Nebridius, and had given him our gifts then.
The Odyssey
from his father, an expensive gift as Augustine had commissioned it to be copied; a new wax tablet from me as well as a new tunic I had made for him while he lay sick, perhaps to convince myself that he would one day wear it, that he would not die. Every stitch was a tiny prayer of hope for his life.
“Thank you, Mama,” he said, hugging me. “I'll wear it at dinner.”
From Monica he received a new leather belt with a sheath on it, and when Nebridius gave him a knife, I knew they had planned their gifts together.
“Thank you,” I mouthed silently at them over Adeodatus's head.
Augustine laughed when, later, he found his book discarded on a table. “See,” he said, catching me round the waist as I made to walk past carrying a stack of clean table napkins. “I told you he was a normal boy. He's run over to Julius's house to show off his new knife.”
I dressed carefully. I was a little nervous lest the bishop and his kinsman disapprove of me as Augustine's concubine and not his wife. Most of all, I was anxious the evening go well for Adeodatus's sake.
I had briefly met Symmachus before when we arrived in Milan but never Ambrose. As I walked into the dining room and saw him standing there talking to Adeodatus, bending down and listening to him intently, I was struck by how much he looked like a soldier rather than a man of the Church. Deep lines scored his brow and around the eyes, showing white when his face was at rest, so sun-darkened was his skin. He was of medium height and blocky and when he straightened, laughing at something my son had said, his movements were fluid and precise as if he had schooled his body to do the bidding of his mind and not vice versa as with most men. His voice was gruff but the expression in his eyes was tender and faintly amused as he looked at Adeodatus.
“This is my mama,” Adeodatus said, catching sight of me in the doorway and running up. He took hold of my hand and tugged me toward Ambrose.
I felt a surge of pride at how courteous he was, how quick to make an introduction. The warmth of his hand gave me courage.
“Bishop,” I said, inclining my head.
“You're supposed to kiss his ring,” Adeodatus said in a loud whisper, suddenly the little boy.
Ambrose smiled. “Not today,” he said, taking my hand and bowing over it. “And call me Ambrose, do.”
I recalled then that he had been a courtier and moved in the highest circles of the Imperial court.
During the dinner we talked of light things. Ambrose asked Monica how her voyage had been and the state of Carthage on her departure. She and he talked amiably about crop prices and the recent droughts. Nebridius and Symmachus and Augustine talked of the court and which posts were highly sought after. I mostly listened as did Adeodatus. Augustine and I were seated on a dining couch side by side; Monica shared hers with Ambrose; then came Nebridius and Symmachus. Adeodatus started between his father and me but during the course of the meal drifted around to perch on the other couches. Sometimes, Ambrose turned to him and asked his opinion about this or that, especially interested in his voyage on the ship that had brought us to Italy. Adeodatus breathlessly related all the tales he had heard from the sailors.
The grave attention Ambrose gave my son deeply endeared him to me. Symmachus ignored him, and I thought him shallow though he could be charming when he wanted to be and he was an attractive man in his prime. I saw him glance at me from time to time as if fascinated by the relationship between Augustine and me. I reminded myself that he was, at heart, a politician, and, although grateful to him for sponsoring Augustine for his present position, I did not much care for him. He laughed too loudly and seemed to hold Augustine in such high regard that he treated him almost as an oracle. I knew that such excessive admiration of one man for another could easily turn to envy and I mistrusted it.
When the meal was cleared away and only the wine remained, the conversation turned to more serious matters. I could see that Symmachus was surprised Monica and I did not leave the men to their talk but instead remained at the table.