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

daybreak. We had forgotten that Augustine and Nebridius had arranged to go to the games with him, but Alypius had vowed that if his friends accompanied him this one time he would quit his compulsion forever.
    â€œOne last time,” he pleaded.
    My father had never taken me to the games. He believed that the arena was an accursed place of death. He could not understand the willful destruction of anything that was beautiful—man, beast, or artifact.
    â€œYour father was a wise man,” Augustine often said.
    But I was curious to see what my ears had often heard—the roar of animals rising from the amphitheater—and I confess that I wanted to see the other face of Janus. So I persuaded Augustine to let me accompany them.
    In my heart I was afraid to witness the suffering of others but most of all I was afraid I might discover that I enjoyed it. My aunt and her Christian friends condemned the spilling of blood for sport, said it was barbaric, unnatural, that human life was sacred. I knew that in the time of the Emperor Diocletian, thousands of Christians had been executed in the arena, some whole families burned to death or torn to pieces by wild animals, babes in arms and little children clinging to their mother’s skirts in terror. I have heard that, in Rome, so great was the slaughter, so unending, that the crowds began to riot, and the emperor, fearing for his life, made a proclamation that the purge be ended, that Christians waiting in cages underneath the arena be given amnesty. People in Carthage still talked of the black pall of greasy smoke that hung over Rome for weeks, the stench of burnt flesh that clung to clothing and permeated the taste of their food. Even though we had a Christian emperor now, the horror of that time was remembered, and the power of the emperor’s edict feared.
    When we descended to the street from our apartment, we joined others who were already walking toward the amphitheater. The trickle soon to become a torrent as the morning wore on. On game days, the city was like a giant lake slowly draining down roads and alleys, flowing to the stadium. The shops were shuttered, the usual commerce of the day suspended, the city as silent as at a time of plague. On the air the roar of the gathering crowd came to us distantly, the sound as familiar to citizens of Carthage as the booming of the sea against the cliffs of our coastal city.
    Alypius strolled beside us blithely talking of his future winnings, how he would pay his landlord and pay Augustine back for the money he often lent him, in spite of the fact that we were poor and barely scraped by on the meager stipend his father could afford his younger son. I glanced at Augustine, eyebrows raised, but he shook his head to warn me to remain silent.
    I stole a glance at Alypius as he walked beside me. He was indeed a different person, putting a hand on my arm while we walked. Augustine noticed I was uneasy and, with a graceful movement of his arm, swept me across to his other side so I now walked between him and Nebridius. I gave him a grateful smile. Nebridius took my other arm and we continued.
    Alypius led us to a private box. His family was rich, his father influential on the city council and I, a woman, was allowed to sit in it because of this. Otherwise, I would have been forced by custom to stand with slaves and poor male citizens on the very top tier of the stadium. I was glad of this. It allowed me to hold tightly to Augustine’s hand, but it also meant that I was much closer to the arena and could make out the faces of those doomed to die. I determined that I would keep my eyes shut, although I could not block out the sounds even with my stole drawn close about my head. But when I heard the roaring of a lion and the rasp of metal as it was released from its cage, my eyes flew open.
    An enormous yellow lion emerged, its mane tattered, its side scarred from previous battles. Its flanks were sunken with hunger, one of