BERENICE: sample text
The Romans are back
From the novel “BERENICE – Sir Basil Cheltenham’s second life” by Johannes Themelis
One of the numerous plot lines of the novel deals with an ancient Roman military unit called back to duty by General Scipio Africanus in order to support one of his comrade commanders in a difficult situation.
Perhaps Ray Kravcuk and Dan Mai Zheng should not have chosen just the term “limes” for their line of demarcation between Grand America and Greater China, particularly since this term asked to much of all involved persons anyway, from the former US president (for lack of general education) to the Chinese Council of State (for lack of interest in European culture). Nevertheless it was literally in the protocols, and therefore the whole world accepted it as definition for the real phenomenon it represented.
The flippant use of this expression under serious circumstances (thus for the designation of a material border, similarly that of the Imperium Romanum) resulted in the revival of the sleeping heroes of the Legio Decima, killed in action in Gallia and Britannia as members of Caesar’s favourite unit. And they hurried to the weapons, put on the lorica, which protected shoulders and torso, as well as the heavy nailed caligae, engirded themselves with the gladius, covered their heads with the galea and seized the two pila and the scutum.
Less than two centuriae they managed to accomplish a legion, although in their historical time death had raged excessively among the Tenners (not only once the fate of their imperator had only been turned in the last second by their self-denying commitment) – however it seems, as if a great number of these veterans had vanished in a funnel of the space-time structure to be seen never again. From there even the Walemira Talmai, who naturally – as with Giordano Bruno’s former manifestation in a new existence – took a hand in these valiant Romans, could get them out anymore. However, what she was exactly up to with the remaining troop no one could recognize for the time being.
The command of this handful of perhaps 150 fighters was without hesitancy taken by the only available officer, and he pronounced to them the old oath “to follow into whatever wars they were called, never to flee the flags or do something else against the law!”, and each individual soldier, when it came up to him, confirmed loudly “Idem in me!”. At the top of their voice that came, because who had withstood Ariovistus’ roaring Teuton hordes or the bloodthirsty Britannians, didn’t know any fear. The young centurion had drawn his last breath of his real life at Gergovia, and during the entire intermediate existence since then was obsessed of the fact that his intensive training in strategy and tactics as well as the back-breaking physical drill could have been completely futile. Behold, now there were realms again similar to the imperium caesario-augustinum, and hence there had to be commanders-in-chief, for whom it was worth to fight!
The Roman unit just emerged within Franz Josef Kloyber’s scope of responsibility. The first lieutenant, already challenged to his maximum stress limits, became quite desperate.
CENTURION QUINTUS RUBELLIUS TAURUS:
Actually everything was rather simple. I have received a dispatch of General Scipio Africanus, who instructed me to come forward with my troop to one of his comrade commanders, a certain Keyhi Pujvi Giki Foy Holby. Initially we should materialize in the compounds near Vindobona, firstly because we Tenners were familiar with that area (what, by the way, turned out as pure wishful thinking, given how much the location had changed in hundreds of years), secondly because there allegedly existed a possibility to start the endless way to our employment.
Unfortunately also in this respect he was not wholly up to date, because the theatre building which this information referred to was, as is well known, since long burned down, the crystal ball – the potential vehicle of the two centuriae – transferred to England…
CENTURION QUINTUS RUBELLIUS TAURUS:
… to Britannia!
However!
Kloyber didn’t hesitate for long and decided against all rules not to contact his superiors (whom he trusted no more – were they human at all?) in this complicated case, but to address Sir Basil Cheltenham directly. As a courier – because he didn’t want to rely on technical communication channels – he sent his secretary and by now lover Sissy Dobrowolny, not suspecting that he thereby was going to loose her eventually: Otherwise he probably would have savoured her physical assets to the full, when they made love for the last time before her departure.
“How are you doing with the first lieutenant?”, Sir Basil asked his agent, when he and Berenice sat together with her at the country estate of the defunct Lady Pru, in order to fathom the situation. The person who answered had nothing in common with the shy sweet Sissy: “In accordance to your orders I have him as far as eating trustfully out of my hand!” The Walemira Talmai chuckled to herself – the everyday part of her nature reacted with the mild irony of an experienced woman: How stupid men were, if one duped them with a groaning orgasm! And she didn’t thereby exclude Brian, though she loved him dearly and with all her heart.
As a result of the conference and after a short consultation Cheltenham had with the king of VIÈVE, who made quite a pressure in this affair, a dry message of Dobrowolny came to the private address of the first lieutenant: Britannia vocat.
Kloyber visited the legionnaires in the abandoned factory floor, where he had accommodated them. Somehow he was glad to get rid of the slick centurion with his polished fingernails (these as a detail had particularly attracted his attention).
CENTURION QUINTUS RUBELLIUS TAURUS:
The Vindobonensian optio prior (thus I had translated his rank, which anyway was below mine) dared to ask me if we probably would be capable to reach the large island. I used the opportunity to carpet him firmly – his superiors had obviously missed quite a lot with him. First of all I pointed out that he owed me – a captain – unconditional obedience without questioning anything. When he began to digest this mouth open (instead of saluting me without thinking, as it is usual in all armies on the whole orbis terrarum), I secondly instructed him on the capacity a well trained legion can show. With an iter iustum, a daily performance of 16,500 double paces, and inserted itinera magna of 26,500 double paces we could reach the Itius Portus at the Fretum Gallicum within 40 to 45 days, given the roads were in an outstanding condition.
“You can bet on that, captain!“ Franz Josef Kloyber drawled with the arrogance of a later born, who, simply due to the facts of history handed down to us, believes to know better former protagonist’s reality or motivation, even when they were presumably beyond understanding. He had made out that the centurion obviously spoke of a place in the vicinity of Calais, and lively imagined the attention, that the legionnaires would evoke on the motorways from Vienna to the English Channel. “Shouldn’t Sir Basil, who also is a friend of your General Scipio” (what the first lieutenant actually valued to be a hair-raising connexion), “help you and better provide a mechanical means of transport for you?”
He intentionally avoided the term airplane (aeroplanus it was probably in Latin). His concern thereby was not so much that Taurus would react uncomprehendingly, but at the contrary the disturbing assumption that the centurion possibly knew exactly, what an aircraft was. But his anxiety was unfounded – his opposite made clear in a snotty way that he was able to help himself very well: that meant he planned to march on another time level where nobody would dare to mock even such a tiny Roman military unit, let alone to attack it.
In the meantime his flock of legionnaires showed some not ignorable unrest: They simply were not accustomed to see officers discussing before their faces and endowed the stranger with rather unimposing epithets.
LEGIONNAIRE I:
Prodigium!
LEGIONNAIRE II:
Homo iactans!
LEGIONNAIRE III:
Procax!
LEGIONNAIRE IV:
Cacator!
The Latin skills of our first lieutenant didn’t go far enough to understand such vocabulary in its full raffish meaning. His nuntiis commotus Caesar duas legiones in Gallia citeriore novas conscripsit – yes, sir, of course! But it was beyond Kloyber’s imaginative power what the individual conscript thereby thought to himself or called out to his neighbour (while each of them popped up a louse from his cuirass and crushed it pleasurably between his fingers).
CENTURION QUINTUS RUBELLIUS TAURUS:
Here you see, what a mess you made with your twaddle. Seems you really haven’t a clue of discipline – or do you believe earnestly, a Roman officer could be called shithead by a subordinate without immediately killing that bloke?
Franz Josef Kloyber’s unheroism prevailed even in this provoking situation, in a filmy way connected with the je-ne-sais-quoi, which is characteristic of higher Austrian military personnel still as a far echo of the Habsburg monarchy. The first lieutenant saluted informally: “All the best for your journey through time and space, gentlemen!” With these words he elegantly plutoed the centurion by placing him on the same level as his crew, and at the same time disavowed his daring project to a ridiculous farce.
CENTURIO QUINTUS RUBELLIUS TAURUS:
I will submit you for a castigatio or for a gradus deiectio!
The catalyst of his anger now smirked blatantly and broadly. Neither the threat of physical punishment nor that of degradation did particularly impress him, especially from this side. Notably the increasing grumbling of the legionnaires did amuse him, as that seemed to point on the fact that the centurion did not have his heap under control as well as he might have imagined at all.
One last good advice our Franz Josef still had for the departing. “Learn from us, amicissime” (Taurus obviously boiled with rage on this address), “how we in Vienna assimilated orient and occident, by adding to our linear way of thinking that of the eastern circularness. The same phrase therefore can mean with us ‘ignore’ or ‘consider’. Which appears to remain standing monolithically as a brusque refusal at our life’s path, can be – if one leaves oneself the possibility to return to the same place again – transformed into a polite togetherness at least. In turn, ‘yes’ in reality may mean ‘I understand that you think in such a way, but I am nevertheless of the diametrically opposite opinion’.”
CENTURION QUINTUS RUBELLIUS TAURUS:
Thus we would have been hardly capable to conquer the world!
What sense it would probably make to conquer the world at all – the first lieutenant did contemplate that only, because the Roman soldiers didn’t any longer leave it at insults by now, but advanced threateningly against him, until a nearly imperceptible indication of their officer stopped them. Immediately after that the centurion yelled “Parate vos! Pergite!”, and the whole club disappeared in a vaguely opening archway.
Where interpreters must fail, Kloyber pondered (while still listening to the legendary, unmistakable sound of the marching legion), that is, where the world outlook is a completely different one and thus an untranslatable. He abandoned himself again to his beloved picture of the spinning time, which always returns – quite dissimilar to the straight-line model of Rubellius Taurus, in which constantly final and irrevocable decisions had to be made. The centurion would never be able to interpret the course of things in the same way as the first lieutenant, although he actually owned the same apparatus of perception.
Kloyber on the other hand confidently allowed himself to crawl into a time hole every now and then and to wait there with a certain prickling anticipation until he could take up the thread of his history in an already past place again. Even if he was, unlike the Roman officer (and as far as he knew anyway), not capable to enter another time level than the present, he had nevertheless an ability, which counterbalanced the advantage of that feat by far. Perhaps one day he would take a plentifully vacation, and it seemed to him, as if he should thereafter be able to become a completely different person, that savoured everything without hesitation and without unreasonable renouncement of even the smallest pleasance from the arch-onset to the arch-cessation.