The place was full of steam and very humid.
The columns that divided one part of the baths from the others appeared to be
sweating, as everyone else in that place. There were mostly men, as the women
baths were located separately but some women came in, naked of course, and
served the high-ranking men. Prostitution was forbidden in the baths but
business in that field was done there anyway and the act would be performed
somewhere else, so that way the owner of the baths wouldn’t have any problem
with the authorities.
Many military loved the baths; especially
after the long campaigns the emperor sent them too. The ones that came back,
successful or not, were considered better than normal men so they received
every single kind of gift and appreciation possible by the general public. For
example, there was this general in one of the pools, enjoying the hot water,
but also caressing a young man he had taken an interest for and eating with
that boy many tropical fruits that were only accessible to the most important
people in the empire.
The fruits were served cut and ripe in a large
plate. This was all done by men as women were believed not to be “good enough”
to serve such powerful and important people. Women were always entertainment or
responsibility, never anything else. Some of them resented that and claimed
that women should also be treated like gods and so on, but the response was
always that women did not go to war, so they had no idea what real sacrifice
was or how loyalties and strategy worked.
The baths were a men’s world.
The hand of the general went up and down the
young men’s leg and the only thing he could do was to smile. His family had
been the one to send him against his will to the baths. He didn’t wanted to be
there but had to as the general promised a very large sum to his family in
exchange for his company. This meant that the poor boy had to be around the
general every single day, at every time and everywhere until the older men just
decided he liked someone else or until he verbally declared the boy was not
suitable anymore.
The boy knew it was cruel to think that way
but he wanted another boy to appear soon and be more of the liking of the
general. He didn’t cared what happened to that other boy, he just wanted to be
replaced in order to go home and become a scientist as his parents had once
promised him. He had only attended a few lessons with a known master of the
city when he was picked up by the general in a crowded street. He had gotten
lost going to class and that had been his downfall.
But not all were anxious to be rejected. In
another pool, a younger man was been honored with the most delicious wine and a
nice ration of roasted boar. He was the young son of a general that had become
an official too in Northern Africa. He had combatted a tribe there that had
tried to liberate some slaves. The man had won, making his father and the
empire very proud of him. So he had chosen a boy too to accompany him but the
difference was they had agreed on all of it before.
The boy was not from Rome. He wasn’t a kid
with a family or with any prospects. No one really knew this, but he had been
one of the many people captured in Africa to become slaves. His skin was dark
but not as dark as to draw looks from everyone he encountered. He was beautiful
and that was an advantage in a society were beauty was so important. The young
military had seen that and liberated him with the condition that he should
remain on his side as long as he desired.
Strangely but not uncommon in these exchanges,
the two men formed a very tight and deep relationship. They travelled together
from those far lands to the capital and in the process got to know each other
and taught one another things about themselves and about their worlds. The
father of the young military man was not thrilled by his company but decided
not to do anything about it because he was too proud at the moment to spoil his
boy’s happiness. But he felt something had to be done in the long run.
In the baths, the boy and the young military
were side by side, holding hands and telling stories to the group that was
around them. Everyone listened and laughed and sobbed in the right moments,
asking questions and being curious in the most charming way possible. Of
course, many of them were spies and others were poor trying to infiltrate the
higher levels of society. But no one really cared because even there, with
everyone naked in hot steamy water, people were still not fully themselves;
they still hid some of their secrets and real feelings.
No one would ever see any of those men do more
with the boy than touching. That was all that was permitted in the bathhouse,
by law. It was in their homes, their private dwellings, were every lie was shed
and only the truth remained with all these gods that dressed like soldiers. And
they did believe they were gods, or almost at least. They knew that they were
better than others, smarter and much more valiant. They didn’t have the
necessity to do anything else than be. That way people honored them everywhere
they went and applauded their every thought, word or act, just because of they
were. And their companions, boys or girls or women or other military men, were
glad to be there to see it all.
But not everyone was happy. In another pool,
three military men cared only for the warm water and the food. They had no one
tending to their needs or asking them to tell stories. That was because they
had yelled away anyone who got close to them from the first day they had came
back from the field. These men were a group that battled barbarians in the
northern borders and had been together for many years. They knew each other
from their first training and, although one could not see it, they were glad to
be together and alive.
However, there was no real happiness as many of
their men had been killed by the savages. It has to be understood that in that
group there was a head, a men with grey eyes called Decimus, but every decision
was agreed on by every single member of the group. When they left the capital,
they were seven men from the best families in the empire, ready to do what was
needed to defend their land. But in the process of defending that land, four
had died in the hands of the enemy. Their deaths had been atrocious and laid
inside the brains of the three many that steam tried to relax.
The women that brought the fruit often let
some skin be seen by the men so they would initiate business with them. But the
group of three man didn’t care at all about breasts or legs or anything else
than their troubled memories. They weren’t seeking young boys like the others
and had no mind to be thinking in romance or sexual pleasure. They just wanted
to be left alone with their sore bodies and their ghosts, who were all there
with them, reminding them of every single moment of the battle, again and again
and again.
They had refused real medical attention and
also the presence of healers that would care for their wounds right there in
the bathhouse. They just didn’t want to talk to anyone. They were voluntarily
sinking in their own nightmares, feeling that they did not deserve a better
luck that their friends that had died in battle. They felt that real justice by
the Gods would have been to kill them all on the field, leaving all with the
honor of having defended the empire and all that it stood for.
Yet, they were soaking in a bathhouse, feeling
the pain of something that would never happen. The pain was stronger because
the bond between those seven men was too strong. It was friendship but it was
also love that linked one to the other. Forever they would feel the presence of
the others and the ominous feeling that something else should have happened and
that their lives should have ended in a different way.
The steam of the bathhouse had that
peculiarity, of making everything possible and impossible at the same time.
