Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas

Author:Christos Tsiolkas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2019-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

We deliver the criminal. The woman I hand him to is freeborn and dignified; I have to believe that she will deliver the slave to his deserved punishment. I leave that fool, Timothy, at the dwelling of the demented sect. I can hardly bring myself to farewell him. His tunic is soiled from the slave’s blood and tears. May judgement soon be passed on the old atheist. Such a handsome young man should be giving himself over to everything that is potent and manly, he should be fucking a hundred slaves and whores and foolish peasant girls, he should be thinking towards marriage and to children. This cult the old man has bonded him to has destroyed all that is vital.

That night I do not return to sleep on the roof. Such are the dishonours I have been witness to this day that I fear pollution. Has my prisoner got enough provisions and water for the night? I don’t care. Why do they keep him under house arrest? Why do our lords and senators protect vermin such as he? This is why they rebel against us in the north and the east—they smell our corruption and dissipation.

I have only one thought, one need, one will: to be with my wife tonight. As I climb into our bed, her mother starts complaining. I tell her to shut her cantankerous old mouth, and I take my wife. It is not customary to be with her so soon after the birth, but I need to kiss her flesh, to feel her plump nipples in my mouth, to inhale her scent, to forget what I have seen. I suck and kiss and taste my wife, I fill my senses with her; and I fill her with my seed. I have to do it. I will ask the gods to grant me clemency. At the temple of Venus and the temple of Mars and the temple of the Great God and the temple of my God and the temple of the Augustan Mortal Made a God, I will kneel and make sacrifices at each altar. But first, tonight, I must embrace and release myself into the intoxicating tastes of my beloved wife. I must be a man tonight to erase all that I have witnessed today.

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