Following these dire scenes of correction, the house was grim. At meals, few spake; none came to dine; Mr. 03-01 surveyed the paintings on the walls, determining in what order they should be sold to discharge his debts.
My mother did not issue forth from her chamber for any but the most necessary engagements in the rest of the house. She chose, instead, to closet herself in her room, where she acted the tyrant with the servants.
The first few nights, heart moved with sympathy, the cook sent up in secret soothing delicates and stews, supplemented with heavy spirits to draw off the pain, and whispered comfortably things such as, “Tell the dear to rest well, and that we know her woes”; my mother returned the dishes peremptorily as being too cold, too liquid, too morose, too dry. She demanded other dishes, special preparations, sauces glacées, a blanquette of veal seasoned with oysters, chapon Flandrois in white wine, pluck and numbles rubbed with Ceylon herbs.
After two meals of this, the cook frowned and sent up half a loaf of salt bread, as instructed.
I did not return to my studies for several days following the altercation. I lurked around corners, and stood in the dark crevasses by the stairs, and could meet no one’s eyes; this shrinking and secretive manner being the product not just of the extremity of my physical discomfort, which discouraged conversation, but also of the greater stinging and biting inwardly; for within me, the flagellation had not yet ceased.
I do not know that for four or five days I spake at all, after that first interview with Bono. My reserve was greater and more obdurate than ever before. Often, I was Observant for hours at a time, and would respond to none, but instead sat motionless and noted the minute stitching of brocade, or the ingenuity of wood.
When I was taken to Dr. 09-01’s rooms upstairs for our lessons to be resumed, I dreaded the interview. He had, since the whipping, seemed in a perpetual irritation, glowering around the rooms, leaving company often, saying he wished to ascertain whether matter still subsisted in his chamber.
He was kind, however, when I went to him. He spake gently to me.
Still, surveying the page, I felt I knew no language. I would answer nothing. That day I did not speak.
Nor the next day. He returned me to my room.
On the third day when I went to him, he had a stack of books by his side.
“Sit down, Octavian,” he said. “We begin a new lesson today.”
I sat.
He handed me a book, open in the middle. It was some history I had never before read, written in the Latin tongue.
“One. Read the passage,” he demanded. “Two. Construe.”
I mumbled half a sentence of the Latin; he tapped his foot. “That is all?” he said. “Is it a day for sotto voce?”
I stared at him.
“Good God, boy, stop gawking.” He snatched the book from me. He stood above me, held the book aloft, and in a loud, even piercing tenor, declaimed: “Hoc anno, servus nomine Eunis qui a paucis esse magus dicebatur in dominos suos coortus est.” He looked down at me; and I began to translate —“In this year, a freeborn slave named Eunus, reputed a magician, rose against his masters . . .”— while he continued his bellowing over me —“et, manu conservorum comitante, hos contra urbes in Siciliae finibus duxit”— until my voice was as loud as his —“. . . gathering a force of fellow slaves and leading them against cities in the region of Sicily . . .”— and together, we shouted of servitude, arms, and Rome.