Page 2 of Don't Let Me Go
“We must all marry sometime or other,” Marcus sighs. Then, extracting himself from my embrace, he rises from the bed to dress. Without the furnace of his body to warm me, I feel the chill of the early autumn air. It’s subtle but pervading. Not unlike loneliness.
We must all marry sometime or other.
It’s a statement not worth refuting.
The stories of Jupiter and Ganymede, of Hercules and Hylas, may be known to every man in this city. Such loves may be celebrated as the true and rightful passions of the gods and their favorites, but nonetheless they are passions that most Pompeiians prefer to witness in their poetry, not their neighbors.
Hypocrites.
There’s hardly a youth who hasn’t played Patroclus to another boy’s Achilles in some fevered moment of desire, and yet there isn’t a single elder in the entire city who wouldn’t condemn a man as unfit for public office if he dared to play the wife instead of taking one.
But that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? What is pure and noble between a god and his cupbearer on the heights of Olympus is sullied and unspeakable when it occurs between two merchants’ sons.
There’s no surprise in this, and so there’s nothing to say as I watch Marcus sit on our bed and don his sandals in the late-morning light. From the first time that our hearts marked each other as our own, we’ve known there is only one way for our story to end.
“I’ll see you later tonight if I can,” he whispers, leaning across the bed to kiss me.
Our lips touch, and it occurs to me that the next time I see him, the next time that he is in my arms, he may very well be betrothed to another. How long until he is wed? Until I am wed? Until wives and children and obligations fill up our lives so that there is no longer room for each other? Until this kiss and all our kisses are nothing but distant memories of some other life we once led?
Pushing those thoughts away, I clasp his cheeks between my palms and hold his face against mine. If this is the last time that I will call him my own, truly my own and no one else’s, then I want to hold on to this moment. I want it carved in marble. Or written in song. A kiss between two boys captured in time forever.
Marcus gently pries my fingers from his cheeks. He kisses my left hand, then my right, then folds them both against my chest directly over my heart. My heart that will never be anything but his.
Then, without a word, he’s gone.
The noonday sun is warm on my face as I wander through the busy stalls and shops of the market district. There’s nothing I want to buy, but when your soul is heavy, it’s better sometimes to be adrift in a crowd than to be a prisoner of your own solitude.
I should head home, make an appearance before my family starts to worry, but I’m not in the mood for Mother’s prying eyes or pointed questions. Father, thankfully, is in Naples today, hiring more fishing boats to add to his fleet, or else I’d have to endure his scrutiny too.
I wonder if he’ll be home in time for my birthday feast tonight. I shouldn’t count on it. Not content to be the most successful garum merchant in Pompeii, my father recently declared it his intention to become the largest distributor of fermented fish sauce in all of Rome’s wide empire. He’s even started marketing a special garum made without shellfish to sell to the Jews so that no household on the peninsula will be without Titus Flavius Maximus’s special sauce.
Father is a mediocre man of great ambitions. And whether I like it or not, those ambitions extend to me. Someday I shall inherit his “empire.” That is the life that he has decreed for me. A life of commerce and condiments.
Crossing the square, I pass a wine vendor, whose shelves of amphorae bring to mind an afternoon of bliss I once spent with Marcus in his father’s storeroom, our ruby-red lips stained with wine and kisses.
I wonder if Marcus has left for the Lucretian vineyard yet. If so, is he thinking of me? Or is he even now steeling himself against the future by erasing all traces of me from his heart?
The thought of someday being nothing more to Marcus than a youthful indiscretion—a half-forgotten memory—is enough to bring tears to my eyes.
Why didn’t I try to stop this marriage when I had the chance?
For months, the threat of Lucretia has loomed in the distance, casting a shadow over our happiness, but I held my tongue. I stayed quiet even though all I wanted was to beg Marcus to refuse the match. To refuse every match his father might make on his behalf.
Even now, the blood pounding in my ears is telling me to run. To find him. To stop him before it’s too late.
But I don’t. Not because I fear his father’s wrath or even the wrath of my own father. No, what I fear is far worse and at the same time far simpler. I fear the truth.
If I asked Marcus to choose me above everything else—above family, duty, reputation—what would he say?
For my part, I know that if he asked me to, I would turn my back on the world and forsake everything for him. But would he do the same? Would he risk the ridicule and the censure of his friends and family for me? For us?
I’m afraid to ask for fear of what his answer might be, so I delude myself that we have no option but to submit to the careful lives that our parents have planned for us. The lie that we have no choice hurts less than the truth that we do and that Marcus won’t choose me.
Pushing aside this thought, I turn onto the main thoroughfare and head north toward the Forum. As I do, my feet stumble, and I’m forced to steady myself against the nearest storefront to keep from tripping. When I resume my walk, I stumble a second time, at which point I realize that it’s not my distracted thoughts or tired feet that are at fault but the ground itself that has started to shake.
A clay amphora topples from a merchant’s passing cart and shatters on the street. A whimpering dog scurries inside its master’s shop and hides under a table. All around me, the early-afternoon shoppers steady themselves against the sides of buildings or cast nervous glances at their companions as they cling to one another in surprise.
I force myself to stay calm. Earthquakes are as common as thunderstorms in Pompeii. I’ve grown so accustomed to them over the years, they’ve become easier to ignore than the persistent stench of anchovies that pervades my father’s clothes.
