©2011 by Sarah A. Hoyt
Cover image
Sunset: noblejose
Statue of Antinous:Rictor Norton and David Allen
Published by Goldport Press
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. For information address Goldport Press – goldportpress@gmail. com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
This story was first published by Blood Songs in Australia, and it was a year’s best honorable mention for World’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2004, edited by Ellen Datlow. It was first published in the US by Dreams of Decadence.
"Sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge
You heard from Adrian's gilded barge the laughter of Antinous
And lapped the stream and fed your drought and watched with hot and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth"
(Oscar Wilde, The Sphynx)
Thirst
Sarah A. Hoyt
Sometimes I wake up in the evening and think them here, immaterial wisps of dream in the cold twilight air, and yet undeniably themselves: the Emperor and the boy he loved, etched by time into heroic figures without flaw.
The Emperor wears his purple, and the boy stands in one of those sweet, head-drooping postures immortalized in his countless statues.
And sometimes, confused by a day of death-sleep and the centuries that have flown heedless by my changeless self, I reach for them, try to clutch them in my long-dead yet immortal hands.
They laugh and vanish through my fingers like smoke. As they did so many centuries ago.
In those moments, I am again a nameless thing, crouching on the muddy banks of the ancient Nile, my mind filled with hatred, my body with thirst, while I stare at the gilded Imperial barge anchored in the dark waters. And I hear again the laughter of Antinous.
Hylas is my name, or was my name, when I was a mortal among mortals, a living, breathing being in the sun's embrace. A Greek name for a Roman boy born in the Suburra, raised in that maze of smelly, noisy streets that was the pulsing heart of Rome.
My father was a Greek freedman, a grammarian who grew prematurely old teaching Greek and writing to uninterested students on the sidewalk, in front of our insula. My mother, softly rotund, wasted her life bent over the cooking fire. Both of them were mere props in the stage of my life. I can't recall a thing they said, nor anything they taught me.
They lived in two smoky rented rooms in an insula, a vertical slum, where people crowded side by side and on top of each other, crammed together as close as possible, for the wealth of the rich landlords.
My own life was not confined to such a prison. My true teachers, my true instruction, were in the streets. From other boys, my neighbors, I learned all there was to know. Who could be safely robbed, where to buy the best wine, and just the right time to go to the entrance of the Circus and get the seats closest to the arena, from where we could scream encouragement at our favorite gladiators and hoot the cowards.
I will forever remember those afternoons as the best of my childhood: the sun-dappled, bloodstained sand, the certainty that life and death were shows played for my entertainment.
It all came to an abrupt end the Summer I turned fourteen. Late at night my friends and I waited in the darkened portal of an insula for wayward citizens, full of wine and gold, making their way home through unlit streets. That night I tried to cut the wrong purse. We couldn't have guessed who he was. A merchant, we thought him, because of his colorful, expensive clothing. But we didn’t think him rich, certainly not noble, since he walked the streets of Rome alone without a single slave for escort. We were wrong. Publius Aelius Hadrianus, as he then was, thought himself invincible and reveled in facing alone the danger of Rome's streets.
He immobilized me quickly. I thought he would call the sebaciara. But he was full of wine and mirth, and I amused him more than angered him. Besides, I had dark flowing curls, the face of a girl and the well-muscled body of a young thug. All of which he liked, as I would come to know, when our acquaintance became such that I could call him by the familiar diminutive of Adriano.
For the next two years I followed him. To the end of his stay in Rome, where he was house-guest of his cousin Trajanus, the Emperor, then to the far reaches of the Empire with the legions he commanded. He gave me better food than I was used to, better wine than I'd ever tasted, and a position no one disputed. Even rude legionaries spoke graciously to me because I was the commander's page... or lover, or any other name you might care to call it. All of them meant I held power not to be ignored. Two years I lived with him. He was strong and admired, built like a hero's statue, with reddish hair and beard, and dark gray eyes that could see to the depths of my soul.
He taught me to read, and schooled me in rudimentary Greek, amused that I, the son of a grammarian, had never come by such gifts. And he read aloud from the Odyssey and the odes of Virgil and told me of Alexander and Julius and Augustus.