Three Hands In The Fountain

By now there was a slow but constant exodus from the stadium. People were walking lazily, tired out by fifteen days of Games, tired of excitement and yelling themselves hoarse, tired of commercial food and cheap sticky wine, ready for normal daily life again. Mid-September. The weather would become cooler soon. The long hot summer must be reaching its end. Two weeks would see the traditional finish of the fighting season. October brought the end of the school holidays; after three and a half months, it would be a relief to some (including schoolteachers, by now desperate to earn new fees). October would also bring fresh festivals, but we were not there yet. There was still tonight, one last chance to make these Games memorable, a few final hours left for simple pleasure or outright debauchery.

Inside the Circus I could hear the cornu band going at it now: the huge, almost circular brass' horns, supported on the players' shoulders by cross-bars, their different notes blown with sheer puff. Or missed, frequently. Especially after a long day of events.

I decided there was one class of suspect we could discount: no cornu player would have the strength to overpower a woman after blowing his heart out with the band.

Limp applause down the length of the valley finally ended the Ludi Romani for another year.

By that time those of the audience who had been glad to see the Games over were long gone. The remainder were now shuffling from the Circus, chivvied by the ushers who wanted to close the gates, yet reluctant to depart. Outside, groups were standing about. Young people were hoping for more excitement. Visitors were saying farewell to friends they only saw during festivals. Youths catcalled after giggling girls. Musicians stood around in case somebody offered to buy them a drink. Snack-sellers slowly packed up Gypsy-eyed pedlars: from Transtiberina drifted from group to group still trying to force last-minute sales of shoddy trinkets. A dwarf, hung all around his waist -with cheap cushions, waddled off towards the Temple of Mercury.

Deep in the shadow of the stadium hovered the working women. Skirts hitched, legs flashing, tottering on high cork heels, goggling through soot-rimmed lashes, they showed themselves in ones or twos.: False hair, or real hair endlessly mistreated until it looked false, towered above their chalked faces, each mask-like visage slashed with lips dyed the colour

of pig's liver. Men regularly went up; to them. They I exchanged a few words then quietly disappeared into the darker gloom, reconvening not long afterwards for another business-like encounter.

Behind me, up in the darkness of the, Temple entrance, I could hear noises that suggested commerce went on there too. Or perhaps the fun was not being paid for, and some youth had struck lucky with one of the bad, loud girls marauding among their sassy friends hours after their mothers had told them to be home. I might have cheered it once. I was a father now.

The whole scene was sordid. From the drunks lolling against closed, shops offering horrible overtures to scared passers-by, to the squashed melon pieces in the gutter, their innards as red as bright fresh blood. From the sneak thieves skulking off home looking pleased with themselves to the smell of urine in the alleys, where antisocial deadbeats couldn't wait. It was growing worse. The few lamps that were now hung outside open lock-ups or in overhead apartment windows only made the spaces between them even darker and more dangerous. A couple of chairs lurched by, their horn lanterns swinging on hooks. Someone was singing an obscene song that I remembered from the legions.

Two men clung together on the back of one donkey, both so drunk they hardly knew where they were; their greycoated mount was trotting off down the Via Piscinae Publicae with them, choosing the route for himself. Perhaps he knew of a jolly winebar under the Servian Walls, down by the Raudusculana Gate. I was in two minds to follow him.

There were so many people who looked up to no good it was difficult to choose which to watch. In every direction women were being brazenly foolish while sinister men eyed them hopefully. I hated having to stand here looking like part of all this. My nerves were so wound up I almost felt anyone who put themselves amidst this ghastly scene deserved all they got.

The exodus continued for a couple of hours. In the end my mind was so benumbed it started wandering. I suddenly came to; I realised that for the past ten minutes I had been staring fixedly in front of me, perfecting my plan to hire a hall and give a public recital of my poetry.(This was a dream I had been nurturing for some time now; so far I had been gently dissuaded by the good advice of my close friends, especially those who had read my odes and eclogues.) I returned to real life with a guilty start.'