By late afternoon, the sun’s heat has warmed every corner of the garden, and she has discarded the blanket Secundus brought her. She is beginning to feel a little anxious that Pliny has forgotten her, when he arrives, followed by a slave carrying a trunk. “How have you enjoyed the gardens?” he asks, joining her in the shaded colonnade.
“They are wonderful,” she says. “I’ve never known such happiness.”
He nods, looking pleased. “If you would read a little to me now,” he says; “I will be able to tell if I find your voice easy to listen to or not.” The slave hands her a scroll. “I brought Herophilos’s On Pulses; I need to study him in any case, and it helps if you are familiar with the text.”
The scroll in Amara’s hands is a thousand times finer than the one from her father’s house, but she feels a flood of emotion unrolling it. “Is there a section you would prefer?” she asks.
“Start from the beginning,” Pliny says wryly. “I generally find that helps.”
Amara begins to read. The text is more complete than the one her father owned, but the phrases and cadences are still familiar. It is like recounting a prayer, an incantation to all she used to hold dear. She has been reading for some minutes, with Pliny scribbling notes, when he stops her. “Go back a little,” he says. “Just a couple of lines.” She obliges, and he nods, satisfied. She continues, reading solidly for several hours, helped by the odd glass of water brought by the ever diligent Secundus. Eventually, they break for dinner.
“You have a musical voice,” Pliny says. “Not too cloying. I can see why your father found you so useful. I find many women’s voices hard to listen to for long periods, but yours has just the right quality.”
“Will you let me sing for you?” she asks.
“I’m not sure I’m really a man to be serenaded with Sappho,” he says, sounding amused rather than unkind.
“I wasn’t going to,” she replies. “I used to sing a version of Nausicaa’s meeting with Odysseus for my parents. I thought you might find it pleasant.”
“By all means then,” he says, though his tone suggests he has agreed more through politeness than eagerness.
Amara and Pliny have dinner in the garden. With only the two of them present, there is no question of the dining room. He asks her about The Argonautica, about her views of Apollonius’s depiction of the love between Jason and Medea. She is grateful to have read enough to discuss it. After they have eaten, one of the slaves brings her the lyre, and she plays for him, a tune that takes her back to her childhood and the affectionate gaze of her parents.
She looks at him expectantly when she finishes, hoping he has enjoyed it. But the expression she sees on his face is one of immense sadness.
“Your parents did not serve you well, Amara,” he says at last. “You are a lovely girl. They should have ensured you had a dowry.”
“Please,” she says. “They are both dead. I cannot think badly of them.”
Pliny inclines his head in acknowledgement. “I understand. Forgive me.”
When it is too dark and chill to stay longer in the garden, they walk back up to Pliny’s room. There are even more scrolls scattered about than she remembers. “Ah, I forgot,” he says, pointing to a pile of women’s clothes. “I had them find you some more suitable things.”
“Thank you,” she says, resisting the urge to pick them up and see what he has given her. “I will wear them tomorrow. You are so kind to me.”
He watches her get undressed, with the same intent expression that she remembers from the morning. Amara hopes that he wants her, that this evening he will not move away. She knows that it is not him she has fallen in love with – it is the gardens, the beauty of the life he possesses – but there is no focus for her desire other than the man in front of her. In spite of her efforts undressing, he does not join her on the bed, instead sitting down at his desk to work.
“Could I not read for you?” she asks
“You must be tired,” he answers. “I would not expect you to sit up reading all night.”
“Please,” she says. “I would like to.”
He hesitates then passes her the scroll he is studying. “From there,” he says, indicating the point in the text with his thumb.
This time there is no Secundus to bring her discreet glasses of water and the treatise on plants is unfamiliar and even worse, the scribe’s handwriting is cramped and hard to decipher. More than once, she hears Pliny wince or tut impatiently as she stumbles over a phrase, but still, Amara reads on and on, until she thinks she will lose her voice or fall asleep exhausted over the parchment. Finally, he has had enough and gets ready for bed. “I see we are alike in our avoidance of sleep,” he says. “It always seems a kind of death to me.”
She lies closer to him as he gets in beside her, hoping he will put an arm round her. He doesn’t. “Amara is not a name I have heard before,” he says, when they are lying facing one another in the dark. “I take it it is not your real name.”
“My master gave it to me,” she says, and the mention of Felix is like the cold of a knife laid flat against her heart. “He told me it is halfway between love and bitterness.”
“Yes, amare, amarum,” he says. “A bit poetic for a pimp.”
Pliny rests his hand in the hollow of her waist, the same as he did last night, and she is afraid he is going to fall asleep. She leans towards him, so that his hand slides into the small of her back and kisses him. His lips are as dry and unmoving as before. She kisses him again, trying to imagine he is Menander, that he will respond to her like Menander, but instead, he pushes her gently away.
“I just want to please you.” It’s a line that she has repeated endlessly to so many customers without a trace of sincerity. This time she wishes the need wasn’t so abject in her voice.
“You do please me,” he says, as if humouring a child. “I like looking at you; you are very lovely.” He runs his fingers slowly through her hair, the same way he did when he woke her in the morning. “I don’t feel the need for more.”
He must be impotent, she thinks, and finds the idea neither disturbs nor reassures her. She is too exhausted and the bed is too comfortable for her to mind anymore about the puzzle of Pliny. She falls asleep, lulled by the sensation of him still stroking her head.
Time passes like a silk ribbon through her fingers. Every hour spent as Pliny’s guest sees her fall more deeply in love with his life, her days an endless procession of pleasures. She bathes alone in the private bath suite, has her hair dressed each morning, eats freely without considering the price of the food. Slowly, she feels her own body return to her. Nobody touches her without permission, still less with violence. In the beautiful garden, the brothel’s ugliness starts to take on a sense of unreality. But she still knows it is there, like the fading bruise on her arm.
Pliny becomes the obsessive focus of her hopes. She never spends as much time with him as she did on her first day – he is often busy receiving guests or dining out – but every night, she reads to him and falls asleep under the weight of his hand. She sits in the shadow of the colonnade, watching silently when guests call on him in the garden, trying to learn more about his habits, his views, anything that might allow her to make herself indispensable to him. He would be a good master, she tells herself, imagining her life as his secretary. Even if he lost interest in her, if she became a half-forgotten beautiful object in his home, something to set alongside the flowers or the fountains, her voice would still be useful to him, he would still treat her with kindness. Sometimes, alone in the garden, she thinks of the other women, of Dido most of all, and she longs to talk to her. Then she is flooded by guilt at her planned abandonment. She tells herself elaborate lies: that if Pliny bought her, she would persuade him to buy Dido too, that her own good fortune could be shared. She tries not to think of Menander, the memories are as painful to hold as burning firewood.