The banana segments resembled a fallen column. They lay on the plate in a neat line, as if recently toppled. Brandmeier stared at the pieces; could the temple have been that far gone by 800? He put a segment in his mouth and walked to the window.
His wife’s voice followed him from the table. “Honey?”
“Hm?”
“What time would you like lunch?”
Questions and more questions; life was nothing but. Still, Brandmeier gladly embraced the pleasant new reality that to hear “honey” from a woman who loved him was nothing short of a miracle.
“I don’t care, dear,” Brandmeier said, “any time is good.”
Any time: that was good. Here he was pulling his hair out trying to pin down centuries, only to turn flaky on lunchtime.
“Noon?”
“Sure, noon is fine.”
Dory was a good woman and respected his need for space. Still, she didn’t always get it. Just the other morning, she said “Aren’t you afraid of this becoming an obsession?”
He felt himself flush. What were Beethoven and Einstein and Edison, if not obsessed? “Oh, it’s definitely obsession,” Brandmeier said. “It has to be. It’s good focusing on one thing and living with it.”
“I get it,” Dory said. “I just hate to see you frustrated.”
“Not at all, sweetie, frustration’s part of the game.” He walked over to her, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and said in a mock-Spanish accent, “And obsession, my dear Dory, is another word for passion.”
She giggled warmly and he kissed her cheek. “I need laser-like focus, here,” he growled, “like I focused on you.” He kissed her again. “Remember my laser-like focus?”
“I remember,” Dory said, her eyes blinking rapidly. “You focus away, darling. I’ll never call you ‘obsessed’ again.”
“See that you don’t,” he teased. He considered pulling her out of her chair and taking her back to bed. Instead, he went into the study and fired up the computer.
For three years he had been obsessed with the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus. Among the greatest monuments of ancient Rome, it stood for centuries in successively grander iterations atop the Capitoline Hill, the seat and symbol of Roman power. A colossal gilded statue of Jupiter presided over the gloomy sanctum sanctorum, and on the marble plaza in front, beasts were sacrificed to the gods and prisoners paraded before being garroted. Late in the fourth century Christianity vanquished paganism, the temple was closed, and over succeeding centuries the columns toppled, the roof crashed, and at last the ruins were recycled into basilicas and palazzos by the popes and princes of the Renaissance.
Brandmeier took it almost personally. How could they be so blind and so venal as to obliterate their own heritage? Okay, maybe you couldn’t live in ruins. Still…His anger at the plunderers fired his enthusiasm and he plunged into research, devouring every source he could find. None gave a definitive account of the temple, but frustration turned to elation as he saw his opportunity. He would write the account, trace the temple’s life and death step-by-step, century-by-century. The young associate professor of history made his pitch to his department head, who smilingly assured him that publication of such work would open the door to full tenure. That evening he and Dory celebrated at their favorite Italian restaurant.
But now, he was stuck. He wanted exactitude. When did the first piece of roof fall? What did Charlemagne see when he was crowned king of the Franks in Rome in 800 A.D.? When did the last bits disappear? Puffing his cheeks, he stared out at the rain. Rain: the ultimate temple-killer. Rome can be sodden and miserable in winter, and what barbarians and popes could not accomplish, nature certainly did. But how could one pin down the time-frame, exactly? There was only one way forward: Brandmeier had to go to Rome. He must climb Michelangelo’s great stairway and see the pitiful remaining shards of frieze and pediment in the Capitoline museums. He must see the massive foundation stones still undergirding the Palazzo Caffarelli. He must study the tantalizing accounts of Bracciolini and Biondo, who may have seen the temple debris field in the 1400s. The questions and the possibility of answers thrilled him. Rome beckoned.
So why in the name of Jupiter did he promise Dory they would go to Las Vegas? Las-Wayne-Newton-Rat-Pack-Elvis-Ann-Margret-fucking Vegas. If there was any place on Earth that attracted him less, Brandmeier couldn’t name it. What would they do there, gamble? He’d rather be garroted.
“No, honey,” she said, lying only slightly, “we don’t have to gamble. There’s lots of other things to do there: shows, swimming, exploring. It’ll be neat to just see it. Just like you want to go to Rome.”
Brandmeier winced. It was nowhere near “just like.” She didn’t get it; she had no idea of what went into historical study, didn’t know the rigors and pressures, not merely of the academic world but of the historian’s own drive to discover and reveal. No, her whim to “just see” Vegas was nothing like his passion—his obsession.
But he loved her all the same. “Okay,” he said, “Vegas it is. When shall we go?”
“Spring break, like we talked about?”
“Okay, honey, let’s do it. Why don’t you put it together? Just don’t let’s stay with all the spring-break kids.” He had a flash: “I know: check out Caesar’s Palace.”
Her face lit up. “That’s a great idea! Oh, honey, thank you!” Her delight moved him, and that night they made love more fervently than they had in ages. Afterward, Brandmeier pondered the little flecks of light and color that danced behind his eyes during orgasm: eye-shards, dancing dust-motes of eternity, dancing like Vestal chorines and chanting, take us, make us…into the temple…take us, make us…in, in…He fell asleep in blissful wonderment.
Next morning was dull and gray, but Brandmeier sat exalted at the computer. Sex: he could feel it bond him, a man in a twentieth century American apartment, to another man in a brick Roman insula two thousand years earlier, and he knew that his book must convey this bond and touch the eyes, minds, and thoughts of Romans who watched their city crumble. Did they feel nostalgic? Yes, said the historian Zosimus, when in the fifth century he looked back fondly at the pagan era and blamed Christianity for Rome’s decline. Yes, said Pope Gregory I when he likened tottering sixth century Rome to a dying eagle. Yes, said Bishop Hildebert when he wrote in 1106 that, “Rome scarcely remembers Rome.” Sure, they were members of the educated elite, but Brandmeier had no doubt that even the lime-burners and statue-smashers paused in their destruction to marvel at what they were destroying. Nostalgia? Absolutely.
There were dangers. “Don’t romanticize history,” one of his graduate profs had lectured. Bullshit. Rome was nothing but romance, and Brandmeier had long believed in driving a stake through outmoded ivory tower prejudice. He lectured enthusiastically in his classes, ruminated on the lives of the ancient masses, and waxed poetic over ruins. His students loved him. Of course, proper rigor must be maintained—he still remembered the middle school teacher who wrote on his report card that he seemed “reluctant to finish things.” That damn paper on Napoleon. But middle school also brought him Rome one sunny autumn afternoon when he discovered the book of Piranesi etchings in the school library. He turned it open and entered a fantastic landscape of weed-grown columns and skeletal ruins. What was this place, and what had happened to it?
It had been fascinating—and depressing—finding out. Refreshing his mental picture, Brandmeier stared again at the dates rife with clues: 455, Gothic overlord Gaiseric strips bronze roof tiles; 510, Cassiodorus notes Rome’s advanced ruin but describes the Temple of Jupiter as still one of the city’s crowning glories; 664, Byzantine Emperor Constans II filches metal structural clamps—that had to hurt! Okay, so things were probably looking pretty grim by the time Charlemagne showed up. Already, a monastery had encroached on the site of the Temple of Juno Moneta at the opposite end of the Capitoline Hill, hinting that Jupiter, too, was probably at least partly in shambles. The big quake of 847 toppled the immense Temple of Venus and Rome, Basilica of Constantine, and the southern half of the Colosseum; how could Jupiter not have suffered the same fate? Excavators of the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries unearthed great chunks of entablature from beneath streets at the foot of the Capitoline hill, a sure sign of cataclysm.
So many probabilities—how did you justify one? Brandmeier also had to face the greatest danger of all, self-doubt. Even if he wrote a definitive new book, who would care? How many young people knew when World War II was, let along anything at all of ancient Rome? What did Henry Ford say? “History is bunk.” Look at Las Vegas, constantly reinventing and blowing itself up, motivated by one thing only: money. Money and novelty. You could almost call Vegas a new Rome, loud and venal and magnificent in its tawdry way. Rome was just as much about money and novelty as Vegas, if not more so—popes, princes, plebs, and patricians would have loved Las Vegas. Brandmeier scowled out the window then shrugged. Vegas. Oh, well, maybe the place would give him some fresh insight. Maybe they’d even get to see an implosion—kaboom!
He turned to the CD rack and extracted an album of Gregorian chant. The austere plainsong filled the room and Brandmeier thought again of Gibbon, who did his bit to muddy the waters with his famous declaration that he was inspired to write Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire sitting “amid the ruins of the Capitol” listening to “bare-footed friars singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter.” Total rubbish, of course; there were no ruins on the Capitol by Gibbon’s time, least of all a still-standing Temple of Jupiter, and any monkish chanting would have been in the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, on the site of the Temple of Juno Moneta. But of course, Gibbon was writing “for effect,” as they would have said in his day. “Do not romanticize”? Tell that to Gibbon.
Late that afternoon, after lunching on tuna salad and dithering and dilating and looking again at Facebook and throwing a few more probablies and possiblies into the works, Brandmeier stood and stretched. What did Gibbon do when he ran into holes in the record? Invent, of course. Holding that thought, he powered off.
Dory came in and turned on her computer. Brandmeier said, “So, my dear, what will we do in Vegas—gamble our life savings away?”
Dory placed her hands on his arms. “Sweetie, there’ll be plenty to do, but maybe we just won’t do anything for a couple of days. Just hang out at the pool. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”
Brandmeier had to admit that that did not sound bad at all. He smiled impishly. “I can bring my notes with me.”
“No!” she exclaimed, stomping her foot. “No work! This is a vacation. For a few days, at least, you’re going to get away from work. You need a break, you need to lighten up a little.”
Lighten up? The words rankled, but she wasn’t so wrong. He was on track, a few days away wouldn’t matter. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I’m probably getting anxious because I feel like I’m getting close.”
“I know you’re anxious to get to Rome,” she said, stroking his arm. “I think we should go soon—or you, at least.”
“We are going, together.I want you with me. But first, Vegas.”
“Are you sure?”
“Never been surer.”
She squeezed him. “I know you think Vegas is silly, and it is silly.”
“Not really. No sillier than anything else.” Did he really believe that? He might as well. “Hell, it’s America, our ‘shining city in a desert,’ a city of contradictions and paradoxes, beauty and ugliness. Like Rome. Do me well to see it, and with you it’ll be fun. I’m actually looking forward to it.”
He kissed her and went into the bathroom and turned on the tub. A good old Roman soak would refresh his brain. He undressed and gazed at the framed print on the wall, Maarten Heemskerck’s haunting sketch of the Temple of Minerva in the Forum of Nerva, made in 1532, just before some nobody of a pope declared the poor old thing an eyesore and ordered it pulled down. The Dutchman got it like nobody had before him; his haunting images were stark in their black-and-white simplicity, almost primitive yet astonishingly modern. Good old Heems, his feet planted in two eras, his pen capturing fleeting reality for the ages. Did he know how lucky he was?
Easing into the hot water, Brandmeier sighed, closed his eyes, and floated off to Medieval Rome, that dusty, funky, fallen-down old attic, its proud history lying in rubble, only a few thousand inhabitants wondering where their next meals would come from. What was it like, being harassed, hungry, desperate, surrounded by rats and filth and disease and other Romans with knives, year after decade after century? Hell, probably: pure hell. And yet, people survived and so did Rome. And all the while, there it sat, the temple on the hill, a looming specter of a past ever more remote, unreal, and incomprehensible. Slowly it sagged, a cake moldering away until— banana slices in the weeds. When did the last column fall? How long for collective memory to fade to myth? How long till lunch?
Brandmeier flexed his fingers and felt history in his grasp. If an individual could not define history, what was it exactly? Some force, some agency independent of men? No, that would not do. History was a very human proposition and therefore subject to manipulation and interpretation. He, like Gibbon, must interpret—had the right to interpret.
No. Beware the viper. One cannot know history. It was dangerous, this feeling, like holding a python by the tail. History would not be handled, would not be controlled. There was no taming time. Do not romanticize.
Bah! Scotch the serpent of self-doubt! Brandmeier felt doubt slough away, he felt in control. Later? Hell, why worry? One day, teetering on the brink of incontinence or dementia, maybe he would lie here in a nice hot bath and open a vein the good old Roman way. What better way, when time was poised to swallow you?
But this time—this glorious time, now, was about Las Vegas, his lovely wife, the girl in the front row whose eyes never left him, the book begging to emerge, and the vanished glory that he, Brandmeier, was bringing back to life. He felt his back tingle. Vegas-Rome, Rome-Vegas: why, he would create a grand synthesis! Gigantism: was it a symptom of underlying pathology, or just healthy human vigor at its peak? Those temples: who could call them anything less than grand? The slaves who built them, perhaps? Did even slaves they take pride in their work? Hell, they probably didn’t give a shit. Being whipped, beaten, starved, parched, and sucking in granite dust all day: who liked being a slave? Those Gregorys and Gibbons who mourned decline—surely there were many others, unrecorded, illiterate, but no less moved by the fall. Or was it all too much to process for minds overloaded with survival and fogged by Christian piety? Maybe it was something they did not want to admit, or maybe it was that eternal Latin fatalism: sic transit: all passes, the eternal shrug, what can you do, no? Yes. Even Las Vegas will pass and we, too, will be too busy surviving. So fall, Caesar, kaboom!
The mood shifted. Grand synthesis? Bah, trying too hard. This was a focused work, a narrow picture. Still, a grand one: not a grand synthesis–a grand slice. His eyes drifted back to Heemskerck, whose drawings inspired Piranesi and others to see Rome in a new way. But they sure in hell didn’t stop the damn popes and princes from plundering their own history! Shit, who the hell were the Caffarellis, anyway, next to Jupiter? Brandmeier sighed; no, you couldn’t live in a temple. Marble floors are damned cold for sleeping, and what good is a debris field? No, you couldn’t begrudge them—hell, how long did Penn Station last? Still, it hurt.
Drip, drip, drip went the tap; drip, drip, drip went the rain on the temple roof, on the Rostra and the Theater of Marcellus, on the Janus Quadrifons and the Odeum and the Septizodium, on eons of scurrying, eager, sad, happy, dark-haired, hungry, horny heads. Not shades, not shadows, people: people in passage, passage to wives, husbands, lovers, jobs, births, deaths. He must never forget them in all this: things like the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus were only a grand summation of human will. Okay, so, human behavior often followed patterns. Were there patterns to be discerned in the collapse of stone buildings? The temple was, after all, a structure of a certain type: a central cella surrounded by columns. So, its movements over time might well be predicted. In this case, it stood to reason that this building probably fell from the outside in, the central roof, supported by the cella, holding out longest. Probable, not certain. Well, probable would have to do.
No. Forget patterns, there are none. Whether due to earthquake, ambient temperature, topography, human hands—the circumstances are unique to each structure. So, the temple was lost, its decline and fall a mystery. Okay, use the mystery. Let people make their own scenarios—be their own history detectives. Transcend dates, but give them something to hang the mental imagery on: tantalizing possibilities, any and all of which could be “real.” He would have to be content with informed deduction plus healthy imagination. He would find the right words and deploy them as no one else had, and invite his readers to see the temple in their own minds, to walk its ruins, to…
He stared at the picture. Heemskerck, standing in the midst of the ruins with his pad and pen. Pen. Brandmeier’s heart lurched. Christ, it was obvious: pictures! He would draw the temple! He would re-create it from Etruscan beginning to Vespasian’s crowning glory, to the first columns falling, the first piece of roof, then sad crumbling cake, debris field, and finally, Renaissance palazzo. Why not? He did flip books as a boy—a nifty little flip of the Titanic sinking. And now, there was YouTube: he would create a short video flip-book as an enticement. Gibbon saw ruins where there were none, but he, Brandmeier restitutor, would recreate those ruins, with pen and ink and video. What Heems and Bracciolini and all the others had missed, he would fill in—he would be the eyes, the eyes of Gregory and Hildebert and the marble-gangs and all the young romantics of Rome, 1500 years later. He would conjure the monument as the generation saw it, from the full golden glory of antiquity to the crumbling blackened hulk of the early Middle Ages…he would picture its blank backside looming imperiously over crowded apartment houses, and toppling in slow motion down the Tarpeian Rock, centuries at a time. Sun and shadow and rain would bring the seasons to life, and smoking braziers and overflowing sewers the very smell of Rome. Yes! He would fling his masterpiece at the face of academia and cry, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Brandmeier leaped from the tub, dripping and ecstatic, to tell his wife, who soon joined him in ecstasy.
Poolside at Caesar’s Palace was pleasantly busy. Young people chattered, kids splashed, parents smiled. Brandmeier looked around, content: this wasn’t bad, this wasn’t bad at all. Not any much different from the great baths, actually. Rome, Vegas—it was all good. He took up his pad again and studied the sketch for 800. We didn’t really know, did we? But this—this was close enough. Maybe Poggio or someone else would help, but he doubted it. He lay back and felt himself sink toward the earth’s core. History was his, now. It didn’t feel heavy at all.
“Not sorry we’re not in Rome, are you?”
“Nooo,” he said in a mock-mournful voice, “I guess not…”
She gazed at him fondly. He returned the gaze, felt an ancient tingling. “No, sweetie, I’m happy.”
“Good.” She kissed him. “So, when shall we have dinner?”
Brandmeier sighed happily. His head, his body, his soul were in sublime equilibrium. “Any time is good.”