The Emperor's Babe Read online

  Bernardine Evaristo

  * * *

  THE EMPEROR’S BABE

  A Novel

  Contents

  Prologue

  Amo Amas Amat

  I   Londinium Tour Guide (Unofficial)

  The Betrayal

  The Betrothal

  Osmosis

  Till Death Do Us

  II   Metamorphosis

  Two Hot Chicks

  Sisterfamilias (Relative Values)

  Zuleika and Her Girls

  Another World, Natale Solum (Native Soil)

  III  Primum Deterge Eam (Wipe It First)

  Capistrum Maritale (The Matrimonial Halter)

  Modus Vivendi (A Way of Living)

  Doesn’t Time Fly When You’re Having Fun

  Ab Asino Lanam (Wool from an Ass)

  IV   Important Matters of State

  A Quiet Bedtime Voice

  Cumulonimbus (or, It’s That Time of the Month Again)

  V  Zuleika Goes to the Theatre

  Obsession

  Dum Vivimus, Vivamus (While We Live, Let Us Live) or, Babe Talk

  Missing Pieces: A Perfect Match

  Venus Winks at Lovers’ Games

  My Legionarius

  Post-coital Consciousness

  VI   Post-coital Colloquium

  The Language of Love (I)

  The Language of Love (II)

  Amari Aliquid (Some Touch of Bitterness)

  VII  Zuleika’s Trip to the Amphitheatre

  Nulli Secundus (Second to None)

  Abyssus Abyssum (One Depravity Leads to Another)

  All the Evil of the World Let Loose

  VIII Thus One May Go to the Stars

  Verbosa Orgia

  Dum Spiro, Spero (While There’s Life, There’s Hope)

  Post-mortem

  IX  Every Lover is a Soldier (Militat Omnis Amans)

  X  When You Least Expect

  Vale, Farewell, My Libyan

  Albatross

  The Language of Love (III)

  Animula Vagula (Little Soul Flitting Away)

  Domum Dulce Domum (Home Sweet Home)

  Exit Stratagem

  The Price You Pay, My Beautiful Wife

  Vade in Pace (Go in Peace)

  Epilogue

  Vivat Zuleika

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bernardine Evaristo is the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of several books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize in 2019. Her writing also spans short fiction, reviews, essays, drama and writing for BBC radio. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She was made an MBE in 2009. As a literary activist for inclusion Bernardine has founded a number of successful initiatives, including Spread the Word writer development agency (1995–ongoing), the Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets of colour (2007–2017) and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2012–ongoing).

  www.bevaristo.com

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE EMPEROR’S BABE

  One of The Times’s ‘100 Best Books of the Decade’, November 2009

  ‘Adventurous, compelling and utterly original. You won’t read another book like it this year’ The Times: ‘Best of Summer Books’

  ‘Sexy, clever and ingenious: a verse romp set in Roman Londinium. Why must fiction always be in prose?’ Independent: ‘A Dozen Alternatives to the Booker longlist’

  ‘Exotic, erotic and incredibly entertaining, this is, amazingly, a verse novel you can’t put down’ Observer

  ‘Evaristo’s strikingly original The Emperor’s Babe makes you feel that you are reading something that has never before been attempted, a sensation to savour. Written in fresh, zingy, witty language that combines tags of Latin, historically authentic references and twenty-first century teen slang, it is a fast, exciting read whose occasional bittersweet notes build until it turns like a ballad from comedy to tragedy … The Emperor’s Babe is a modern work of art that uses the literary tradition with such light assurance that everything seems new. Brushing off the dust of 1,800 years like a cobweb, Evaristo’s golden lads and girls dance in the sun before us, glistening, frail and real. Vivat Zuleika’ Sunday Times

  ‘The Emperor’s Babe is unexpectedly sassy, funny, engaging and very sexy. Honest to God, you’ll love it’ Sunday Independent (Ireland), a Book of the Year, 2001

  ‘If there is any justice in the world, The Emperor’s Babe will be a huge hit. Fictions like Evaristo’s, overflowing with energy and originality, are as rare as the sautéed peacock brains she has her heroine consume … Evaristo’s triumph is to transmute politics and history into a glittering fiction whose words leap off the page into life … brilliant’ The Times

  ‘Evaristo’s skill lies in taking standard metaphorical models and twisting them in the most unusual, original, inventive ways. The Emperor’s Babe is exactly what the title suggests: the adventures of a sassy, sexy, girl about town … It’s also funny, engaging and a daring evocation of the possible genesis of black British history. By puncturing the imperial pomp of Latin vocabulary with the cut and thrust of modern street talk, Evaristo demystifies much of the gilded decorum Rome evokes … The punchy poetry is perfect for the rhythm of the emperor’s babe, the epitome of all that is fast, fresh, funky’ Independent on Sunday, a Book of the Year, 2001

  ‘Evaristo’s delicious The Emperor’s Babe is, as they say, something completely different: a fresh and original historical novel, narrated in verse’ Bookseller

  ‘It is a highly enjoyable romp’ Guardian

  ‘Evaristo uses her second verse novel to set about the Roman Empire with a gleeful disregard for decorum … the ancient Romans haven’t suffered such irreverence since Carry on Cleo … It has great charm and vitality’ Daily Telegraph, a Book of the Year, 2001

  ‘This is a belter of a book. Told at breakneck speed by an incredible talent. This novel deserves to win every award going. Bound to be a bestseller and a classic’ New London Independent

  ‘Wildy imaginative’ Red Magazine Pick of the Month

  ‘The Emperor’s Babe is an undoubted triumph … it is a beautifully crafted work’ Wasafiri Literary Magazine

  ‘Evaristo re-writes history in her extraordinary tale of Roman London … [The Emperor’s Babe] breaks all the rules. A world where ancient and contemporary zeitgeists converge, it offers a whole new take on the concept of the London novel … an hilarious, streetwise tragicomedy’ The Voice

  ‘Evaristo is youthful and daring, with hidden depths of wisdom and hilarity, and she has delivered an entirely new concept for the historical novel, as well as the London novel’ Independent

  ‘There are few books more quirky and original than Bernardine Evaristo’s new offering The Emperor’s Babe. Evaristo has managed to capture, with contemporary clarity, humour and a host of quirky characters, what London might have been like 2,000 years ago’ New Nation

  ‘Irreverent, fun, and amusingly anachronistic … The gladiatorial scene is not to be missed … Consistently amusing, clever and inventive’ Library Journal USA

  ‘Smart, imaginative and readable … a rich farrago of historical fact and outrageous fancy’ The New York Times

  ‘A vividly imagined albeit distinctly modern look at a woman’s role in Roman times by a talented writer with a fertile mind and playful spirit’ Publishers Weekly

  For Nicholas

  The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

   –OSCAR WILDE

  PROLOGUE


  * * *

  Amo Amas Amat

  Who do you love? Who do you love,

  when the man you married goes off

  for months on end, quelling rebellions

  at the frontiers, or playing hot-shot senator in Rome;

  his flashy villa on the Palatine Hill, home

  to another woman, I hear,

  one who has borne him offspring.

  My days are spent roaming this house,

  its vast mosaic walls full of the scenes on Olympus,

  for my husband loves melodrama.

  They say his mistress is an actress,

  a flaxen-Fräulein type, from Germania Superior.

  Oh, everyone envied me, Illa Bella Negreeta!

  born in the back of a shop on Gracechurch Street,

  who got hitched to a Roman nobleman,

  whose parents sailed out of Khartoum on a barge,

  no burnished throne, no poop of beaten gold,

  but packed with vomiting brats

  and cows releasing warm turds

  on to their bare feet. Thus perfumed,

  they made it to Londinium on a donkey,

  with only a thin purse and a fat dream.

  Here in the drizzle of this wild west town

  Dad wandered the streets looking for work,

  but there was no room at the inn,

  so he set up shop on the kerb

  and sold sweet cakes which Mum made.

  (He’s told me this story a mille times.)

  Now he owns several shops, selling everything

  from vino to shoes, veggies to tools,

  and he employs all sorts to work in them,

  a Syrian, Tunisian, Jew, Persian,

  hopefuls just off the olive barge from Gaul,

  in fact anyone who’ll work for pebbles.

  When Felix came after me, Dad was in ecstasy,

  father-in-law to Lucius Aurelius Felix, no less.

  I was spotted at the baths of Cheapside,

  just budding, and my fate was sealed

  by a man thrice my age and thrice my girth,

  all at sweet eleven – even then Dad

  thought I was getting past it.

  Then I was sent off to a snooty Roman bitch

  called Clarissa for decorum classes,

  learnt how to talk, eat and fart,

  how to get my amo amas amat right, and ditch

  my second-generation plebby creole.

  Zuleika accepta est.

  Zuleika delicata est.

  Zuleika bloody goody-two shoes est.

  But I dreamt of creating mosaics,

  of remaking my town with bright stones and glass.

  But no! Numquam! It’s not allowed.

  Sure, Felix brings me presents, when he deigns

  to come west. I’ve had Chinese silk, a marble

  figurine from Turkey, gold earrings

  shaped like dolphins, and I have the deepest

  fondness for my husband, of course,

  sort of, though he spills over me like dough

  and I’m tempted to call Cook mid coitus

  to come trim his sides so that he fits me.

  Then it’s puff and Ciao, baby!

  Solitudoh, solitudee, solitudargh!

  I

  * * *

  Londinium Tour Guide

  (Unofficial)

  One minute it’s hopscotch in bare feet,

  next you’re four foot up in a sedan in case

  your pink stockings get dirty. No one

  prepared me for marriage. Me and Alba

  were the wild girls of Londinium,

  sought to discover the secrets

  of its hidden hearts, still too young

  to withhold more than we revealed,

  to join this merry cast of actors.

  She was like a rag doll who’d lost its stuffing:

  spiky brown hair kept short ’cos of nits;

  everyone said she was either anorexic

  or had worms, but Alba was so busy

  chasing the dulcis vita that she just burnt

  everything she ate before it turned to fat.

  She’d drag me out on dangerous escapades,

  we were partners in crime, banditos, renegades

  she said there was more to life

  than playing with friggin’ dolls, like causing

  trouble and discovering what grown-ups

  did in private without getting caught.

  We were gonna steal from the rich,

  give to the poor, keep seventy-five per cent

  for ourselves and live in one of them mansions

  with a thousand slaves feeding us cakes,

  all day every day, but until such time … Her dad

  owned the butcher’s next door but one.

  Mine couldn’t care less what I did.

  His precious Catullus got the abacus and wax,

  I got the sewing kit and tweezers.

  He was even bought a ponytail for his curly

  little head, so’s he fitted in at school

  with all those trendy Roman kids.

  Bless his sockless feet. Imagine.

  Some days we’d tour the tenements

  of Aldersgate. He’d trail behind

  like a giant sloth, his big muddy eyes

  under sleepy hoods (just like his father’s),

  and plead with us to slow down;

  I’d tell him to futuo-off, you little runt,

  leaving him behind as we raced towards

  the slums, swarming with immigrants,

  freed slaves and factory workers (usual suspects).

  We’d play Knock-Down-Ginger, throw stones,

  break windows, then leg-it down an alley

  outa-sight, arrive home breathless

  and itching with flea bites and jigger-foot.

  What with the alfresco sewerage running

  between paving stones, now

  in my neighbourhood, summer evenings

  were spiced, trout fried on stalls, fresh

  out of the Thames, you could eat air

  or run home for supper in the back-a-yard

  Dad called an atrium. That’s

  if the rush-hour traffic allowed, carts

  clogged up the main drag to the Forum, unloading

  produce from up-country or abroad.

  Sometimes, I’d hear a solitary flute through an open

  window, and stop ………. breathing.

  Later we’d sneak out for the vicarious thrill

  of the carnal experience. Like two toms,

  we’d prowl the darkened alleys, our noses

  sniffing out the devastating odour of sex.

  Peeping through candle-lit shutters,

  we were amazed at the adult need to strip off

  and stick things in each other.

  Men and women, women and women,

  men and men, multiples of all sorts

  groaning in pain. Absolutely fascinatio!

  And then we encountered death,

  Lucan Africanus, the baker of Fenchurch.

  I was the daughter he never had, he said

  (though his eyes spelt wife),

  gave us fresh bread dipped in honey.

  Our thanks? To raid his store one night,

  find his great, black, rigor mortis self

  in a cloud of flour, two burnt buns for cheeks,

  too much yeast in his bowels, emptied

  on the floor. That stopped our missions,

  for a while. Some nights we’d go to the river,

  sit on the beach, look out towards

  the marshy islands of Southwark,

  and beyond to the jungle that was Britannia,

  teeming with spirits and untamed humans.

  We’d try to imagine the world beyond the city,

  that country a lifetime away that Mum

  called home and Dad called prison;

  the city of Roma which everyone

&n
bsp; went on about as if it were so bloody mirabilis.

  We’d talk about the off-duty soldiers

  who loitered in our town, everywhere,

  they were everywhere, watching for lumps

  on our chests, to see if our hips grew away

  from our waists, always picking me out,

  plucking at me in the market,

  Is our little aubergine ready?

  ‘No, I’m not, you stinking pervs,’ I’d growl,

  skedaddling hotfoot out of their reach.

  Sometimes we’d hear grunting

  on the beach and imagine some illicit

  extramarital action was in progress,

  we’d call out in our deepest, gruffest voices,

  Hey, polizia! and rock with laughter

  ’cos we’d interrupted their flipping coitus,

  we’d hear them tripping over themselves

  as they scuffled off and then everything

  changed, I got engaged. I wasn’t allowed

  out no more, I had to act ladylike