Azi led me back inside, providing a tour of her home. It had belonged to her parents, she explained. Its appointments were laid out with great care, even if the taste for Egyptian splendor was myopic. It was much too large a house for only Azi, with three levels and high, airy ceilings on each. No room felt cramped, for all the furniture adorning the place. The whole of my parents’ home, including the business establishment, could fit inside the kitchen alone. All gleamed, all was well-tended. She brought me again to her private bathhouse, which spoke to me of great wealth, though the absence of servants suggested otherwise. It fascinated me immensely. Azi was explaining the necessity of “flushing” when a small talking artifice buzzed and chimed, pregnant with news from some unknowable source.
“A tenant,” Azi said.
“You are a boarder,” I said, smiling.
“They arrive tomorrow for the school year. They are family.”
“My mother, also.”
She put the flat side of the tablet to her face and spoke, presumably to someone else. Her voice rode a wave of surprise, unhappiness, and forced politeness. The words themselves were lost to me, but I knew what had transpired nevertheless, having heard that same conversation so many times before. She cursed, I gathered, from the sharpness of her tongue as the tablet was secreted away in her garments, and she pressed her hands to her hips.
“Lost one?” I asked.
Her gaze shifted quickly from the tile floor to me. Resigned to it, she guided me out again into the hallway on the upper floor and unlocked the second door to the right. When she gestured for me to enter, I knew she was giving me the room, at extreme cost to herself. The depths to which she was allowing my reawakening to crash in upon her knew no bounds.
“I cannot accept this. It is your livelihood,” I protested.
“It cannot be helped.”
“Can you not find another?”
“I let only to…advanced students. All are arranged now. This is good. It may be many months before you can travel to Rome.”
“Thank you, but no, Azi. It is too much. After all you have done already.”
“What would your mother do?”
I smiled then, for I knew she would have done the same, and more. She would kiss both of Azi’s cheeks with tears in her eyes for taking such good care of me, if she could. She would have liked Azi very much.
“I’m sorry,” she said, seeing, I think, my countenance grow melancholy as I sat on the bed. On my bed.
I smiled at her, pinching her chin in my fingers and reassuring her. “Thank you.”
“Do you need anything?” she asked.
I took in the room at last. The linens on the bed were immaculate and possessed a clean, wonderful fragrance. At the base were primly folded towels for bathing. There was a wooden desk furnished with an individual lighting apparatus and shelves for books or possessions. I had neither. The walls were decorated with a handful of small, well-executed landscapes.
“This is more than enough,” I said softly.
Azi stood awkwardly in the doorway, not fully in or out of the room. I do not think she knew quite what to do with me in that moment. I certainly had no ideas to offer.
“I think I should go to the store,” she said after a prolonged silence. I stood to go, but what she said next pulled me back down into my soft, unmoving seat. “I am not walking. Using…the chariot with no horses. From last night. I will return soon. I will bring food. What do you want?”
“I will eat whatever you cook,” I said graciously.
“I am not cooking,” she answered quickly. I was at a loss for a reply. It had been long enough since our breakfast for my appetite to grow, but what could I ask for? What would be easy?
“Meat?” she offered. I shook my head. “Rice? Wheat?”
“Wheat,” I answered meekly, not knowing which choices would increase her burden.
“Vegetables? Fruits?”
“Please.”
“Boiled, smoked, or fried?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, and my mouth twisted into a wry grin at her meticulous questioning. She flashed a wide smile in return, and I got the impression that nothing I could request would be outside the realm of possibility. I began to second-guess going with her, knowing that I would eventually have to brave that nauseating beast and feeling guilty at having so quickly shrunk from the possibility of it before.
“Will you be all right?” I asked. “Should I escort you?”
“I will be fine,” she replied smartly. “Women do not require escorts. Will you be all right alone?”
I raised my right eyebrow. “Grown men do not require chaperones, either.”
She feigned a laugh, followed by a genuine smile, then left.
I walked first to the small reflective glass set into the dark wooden wardrobe. The glass was impressively cut from a single piece, reaching down to the floor. The clothes Azi had provided were humble, but I was not entirely displeased by my countenance. I hoped Azi would forgive me for not appearing at my best. If anyone was to understand why, it would of course be her.
I ventured back into Azi’s bedchamber to examine the talking artifice. I fiddled with the surface and its edges, but it did not respond to my touch the way it had to hers. Wandering to the common area of the main floor, I found much of interest, but all too delicate to touch. So, I retreated to my room and did what I was most comfortable with—I slept.
I had lain undisturbed for a little more than an hour when a gentle knock on the door roused me, and I joined Azi for a hearty meal of warm, spicy noodles, as she called them, assembled with finely cut vegetables and a crispy pocket of I-know-not-what dipped in a sweet, fruity jam.
Well-fed and in a pleasant mood under the circumstances, Azi ushered me outside again, walking a small stone path to the rear of her house. She owned a small plot of land, with space for a metal table and fire pit encased in stone. At the far end near the wooden boundary of the property was a patch of tilled dirt, laying ready for a new crop. Where the edge of the soil met finely manicured grasses lay a collection of small, smoothly polished stones in all colors, large flat tiles of a cool gray substance, and thicker, brick-like stones of white. There were also potted flowers, greenery, and, I believe, an orange tree still in its infancy.
She made a sweeping gesture at all that lay there. “I did not know…what you might want. I thought you would want to build something.”
“Build something?” I repeated curiously.
“For your parents. In their memory. It is your custom to build memorials, no?” She crouched down, her fingers lightly touching upon one set of materials, then another. “I just did not know what you would…” She stopped herself, opened up a wide bin, and mixed a bit of the sand within with water that she drew from a nearby spout. It formed a paste, which acted as mortar to bind the stones. She opened another parcel, a miniature fountain, connecting it to her water supply and demonstrating its function for me.
“Here,” she said finally, handing me two hand-shaped skeins of fabric. “Gloves. To cover your hands. Keep them clean.” She looked up into my eyes, unsure of why I had kept my silence for so long, fearful perhaps of having done or said something wrong. I took the gloves she offered me and pulled her as close as I could. I ran my hands through her silky hair as she pressed her face to my chest.
“That you would think to…” My emotions conquered me, and I squeezed tighter. “I fear I shall never stop saying ‘thank you.’”
I could feel her laughing against my skin as she parted from me. “I will be in that room,” she said, pointing to the topmost window in the circular addition jutting from the main house.
Forgoing the gloves, I chose to dirty my hands in the work. I considered it a necessary inconvenience, not having done my duty to care for my parents, to tend to their illnesses, and finally, to bury them with all the honors they deserved. I hoped that the Empire had treated them well in exchange for their ultimate sacrifice. In exchange for me. I built a monument as high as I could with what was so magnanimously given to me, constructing a grotto of sorts, and setting the fountain into its deepest recess. My mother had loved the soft whisperings of the Tiber River. She and my father spent many peaceful afternoons there with me as a boy.
I laid a blanket of vibrant summer flowers at their feet, mingled the deeper pinks and violets with the lighter hues of sunshine, flanking the edges of the space with the long thin blades of greenery that hung low in their pots, and crept along the ground where I planted them, ushering in the serenity of the place. The perfect spot for the orange tree presented itself behind the east wall of the grotto—there I committed it to the ground. Azi had bought much more than I could use. I looked about me, trying to decide what to do with the unplanted blooms, when my mother’s familiar voice echoed between my temples.
All these flowers, and you don’t know what to do with them? Give them to the girl, dummy.
She paid for them, my thoughts countered.
So? Make them nice. You’ll see.
I did as I imagined my mother would bid me, and used the thin red ribbon tied around the orange tree, picking individual blossoms at the height of perfection and wrapping them together. Satisfied, I laid them aside, and set to arranging the smaller polished stones into a pleasing pattern. The sun, bursting through those boastful, portentous clouds of the morning, beat down upon my back. Such warmth as the fabric on my back provided me would have been welcome in Britannia. Here, it stifled, and I sweat profusely. That, and the obstacles of finding a good design for the stones joined to confound me. Thinking to save Azi from washing it prematurely, I peeled the upper garment off and continued in my work, stymied by my lack of aesthetic. I had an eye for appreciation of the arts, but its creation was another thing entirely.
Azi came out again and found me thus. When I stood to face her, I could not help but notice her distraction at finding me only half-dressed. She tried hard not to stare as she offered me a liquid reprieve, but whenever her eyes turned guiltily again to my bare arms and chest, her face reddened. Flattered, my grin turned wolfish.
“It is beautiful,” she said, assessing all I had done, and putting her mind to something other than me.
“I am not sure how to finish it,” I said, pointing to the array of rounded glass at my feet. “I thought for the face of the arch, maybe.”
Her gaze shifted back and forth between the stones and the intended surface. She crouched and began quickly rearranging them. I could not discern the method by which she reordered them, but the effect was dramatic, playing on the subtle undertones of each to give an impression of intentional gradation. At the same time, the clear outline of a winged bird emerged.
“Is this okay?” she asked, not bothering to translate.
“You have a great eye for color,” I said, thoroughly impressed.
“I am told.”
Tsk tsk, go on—a separate corner of my mind nudged me. I lifted the bouquet and placed it in her hands. Her face lit in pleasant surprise. She took them, see? Now it is settled. The echo of my mother’s laughter faded, and I felt my eyes moisten.
“What?” Azi asked, finding my expression curious.
I shook my head as if to say “nothing” as she lifted the blossoms to her delicate nose.