The Confessions of X by Suzanne M. Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page B

let them drop heavily to his side. To marry well, ” he said.
    I thought of Paulinus and the way he had presented himself in the best possible light—a steady job, a rich gift to show he had the means to support a wife. By contrast, Augustine was pointing out all the obstacles that lay in our way. If what he was saying was not so serious, his misery so acute, I would have smiled at the irony. And smiled, too, because he had given me yet another thing to love. His honesty.
    Interpreting my silence for dismay, he went on in a low voice: “Believe me when I say, I would marry you if I could, but I am not free to do so; my family would never permit it, not even if we had a child. Do you understand? I can offer nothing but myself. I offer you my love and my fidelity, but, under the law, you can only ever be my concubine.”
    Concubine. Common-law wife. In the eyes of the law the terms were much the same. The emperor Vespasian had had such a concubine—a freedwoman named Caelis—whom he had loved many years but only lived with after his wife died. A former secretary in the Imperial Palace, she had been much respected for her wisdom and integrity. To be a mistress of a married man was a shameful thing, censured by Roman law and the Church alike; to be the concubine of a man who was faithful was another thing entirely.
    I thought of the alabaster box sitting on the table in my aunt’s kitchen and then of the shell Augustine had given me. One gift was man-made, one was of nature. It seemed to me that I would rather follow my heart and make my own destiny than have it given to me whole.
    â€œI would rather be your concubine than another’s wife,” I said.
    â€œYou are sure?” he asked.
    â€œI am sure,” I replied.
    Augustine looked at me for what seemed a long time, then took my hand in both his own.
    â€œDo you take this man to be your wedded husband?” he said softly.
    â€œI do.”
    Taking off his iron citizen’s ring, he slid it on my finger. It was so big I had to make a fist to keep it from slipping off. Then we kissed as we had seen married couples do in church, our only witnesses the eagle, the angel, the ox, and the lion my father had made. I did not realize until many years later that Augustine had not spoken a vow to me but only I to him. This was the bitter part of the honesty I loved, not the sweet.
    He accompanied me to my aunt’s house, where I gathered up what few possessions I owned and left for good. I could not write a note but I left a copper bracelet threaded on a ribbon I had worn as a child. It was a gift, but more than that it was my way of asking for forgiveness, for although I did not regret the decision I had made, I knew it would break my aunt’s heart.
    We left the house and ran hand in hand through the streets, so eager to be in each other’s arms we did not heed the people in our path but barged right through a group of slaves in the market buying food, a huddle of important-looking men on the steps of the law courts, a gang of urchins tormenting a dog, heedless of the slaves’ indifference, the men’s angry shouts, the boys’ lewd jeers. At the insula where Augustine lived he led me up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Outside the door, he paused. I looked at him questioningly. With a solemn look and with such care he might have been lifting glass, he picked me up in his arms, kicked open the door, and carried me across the threshold.
    He put me down in the middle of the floor and closed the door. Finding ourselves alone at last we looked at one another shyly, almost anxiously, as if only now we realized the momentousness of what we had done, what we were about to do. Even now his eyes pleaded with me to be quite sure of what I did, for society decrees that once a woman gives herself to a man, forsaking all others, if she does not remain true, she is forever marked a whore.
    I looked about me and saw a room small