Chapters of the Exiliada I

The more questions you ask, the more answers you need.

"That is a nightmare. S****y place. S****y company. S****y beer. Especially beer." She glanced at the mug of the cheap, watered down lager. "I want to forget Rome. But the more you want to forget something, the harder you think about it." When she arrived here, she thought that a Roman colony, even a distant one, would be civilized. That's where she was wrong. Barely one in ten policemen was appointed to the service by Romans. Barely one in a dozen knew a few words in Latin. Valeria could speak Russian fluently, but this language was alien to her ear, harsh and barbaric. The cyrillic letters were worse. All the signs, advertisements looked distorted, as if they were written by a retard, or a child. Or a retarded child. The streets were dirty, dug up, dark and flooded with rabble, people who would be slaves in the Old Rome or plebs in the Modern Rome. She had spent only a couple of hours here before she felt an urgent need to get wasted.

So here she was, in a beer-house at a railway station, the cheapest place to get drunk. "I used to be a knight, a fearsome and respected one. Look at me now. No nerve to stay sober, no money to shed sobriety with style. I am drinking s****y lager with mongrels. My brother would be happy if he saw me." The company was suitable. The ailing prick in a Slayer t-shirt was called Pasha, he thought he was slick and smart, but he wasn't. He talked not clever, he looked weak. Typical for his age and place in the society. The two other guys were not as annoying, probably because they were keeping their mouths shut most of the time. The guy with graying whiskers, either Vladimir or Victor, doubtlessly had a degree in the field of history. He had showed profound (for a barbarian) knowledge before he got drunk as a lord, five minutes after he started to drink. Now he seemed to daydream. Or maybe hallucinate. His stare was directed into infinity and he seemed alright with it. The drink with an awful smell, which he drank, was called "yorsh" and it was a barbaric cocktail in a nutshell: beer and vodka, no drop of a non-alcoholic drink, maybe it was the cause of his condition. The third one, Nikolay, was probably a poet or a writer. He was thick, balding, he had a sophisticated look on his face and wine - kind of wine that is usually sold in cardboard boxes. He thought too much of himself and he thought it beneath his dignity to talk with the others.

The other people in this city seemed hostile and inhospitable "That is because I look Roman. They hate Romans". When the USSR was on the brink of collapse, the Roman Empire lent it a helping hand. Most of the soviet republics kept to their independence. Siberian part of Russia gained sovereignty. But the central part of it, including Moscow, yielded to the Empire and became a colony - the first one in three hundred centuries. It was a merciful act. Romans shared their wealth, their might, their political power for Russia not to drown in riots. The Russians were not grateful: for them it was an intervention, a seizure of power. After the USSR had fallen apart, the Western Russia had its own government - the parliament, called "Duma". But it had always been controlled by the senate, and Roman political elite had always influenced the decisions of Duma. Sine her brother had always favored the barbarians, Valeria knew enough about the colonies to value the senates decisions considering Russia. "Enough for Russia not to decay, not enough to forget its place." But the barbarians always seemed unsatisfied and kept demanding more money or more independence. Valeria considered it to be ignorance. "So they hate Romans, especially upper-class Romans like myself. Or am I still an upper-class Roman?"

The other people, those who were indifferent to politics, also seemed not to be nice. "Drunkards. Beggars. Mongrels." She thought that only her brother's agenda was like that, but now they all seemed to be just parodies of civilized people. They all caused only disgust and disdain. Drunk policemen. Drunk citizens. And oh, take a look at the playground! Are these teenagers drunk? Oh, no, they are high. "A Roman would never let himself behave like that," she told herself. "A Roman would never stay in such a place for more than a day," her patriotism told her. "A Roman would never run away whining," her pride giggled. "And I will never run away," she finally decided. Many years ago these people at least had discipline. Even before that they had guts to start a revolution. And even before that they had the grace to be regal. Now they had no discipline, no guts and no grace. All they could do is to wallow in their ignorance and hatred for the Empire. Valeria felt their glares, and inside she was shouting: "I am equestrian by the right of birth! I am a Roman knight! I worth a dozen of people like you, more than a dozen!" Her face was still and showed no emotions though.

So here she was, at the Kazansky Railway Station, drinking s****y lager in a company of mongrels. “I'd kill for a nice pint of stout or dark ale.” She looked at the mongrels. The doc was daydreaming, Nikolay was sipping his wine, Pasha was...

“Hey, prick, stop staring at my tits.”

“I...” Pasha looked like a schoolboy caught cheating. “I... wasn't.”

“You were, chap, and if you do again, I will tear your f*****g eyes out.”

Valeria said it in a calm, but threatening tone, stared him down to multiply the effect and sipped her beer. “Maybe there are some benefits in being pure-blooded amongst mongrels. They fear me. Maybe they hate me, but they fear me in the first place.” And again she remembered the Empire. “They feared me there too. And respected me. For some time.” She thought about streets, parks and squares of Rome, so graceful and majestic that no city built by barbarians could compare. “Now it's all yours, little brother. God save you and Rome.” A sort of nostalgia gnawed on her. And something else. She closed her eyes. “Now I am far from Rome? Should I still keep this secret?” It was long ago when Valeria came across the folder, contents of which shook her rationalism. It all was somehow connected with Moscow, but in which way? She thought long and hard before asking:

“Hey, lad, what do you know about the Moon landing back in 1969?”