Les Cochons d'argent

When the girl came rushing up the steps, I decided she was wearing far to many clothes.
It was late summer. Rome frizzled like a pancake on a griddleplate. People unlaced their shoes but had to keep them on; not even an elephant could cross the street unshoed. People flopped on stooles in shadowed doorways, bare knees apar, naked to the waist - and in the back street of the Aventine Sectorwhere I lived, that was just the women.
I was standing in the Forum. She was running. She looked overdressed and dangerously hote, but sunstroke or suffocation hadn't yet finished her off. She was shinning and sticky as a glazed pastry, and when she hurtled up the steps of the temple of Saturn straight towards me, I made no attemps to move aside. She missed me, just. Some men are born lucky, others are called Didius Falco
Close at hand, I still though she would be better of without so many tunics. Though don't misunderstand me. I like my women with a few wisp of drapery: then I can hope for a chance to remove the wisp. If they start out with nothing I tend to be depressed because either thay have just been striped off for someone else or, in my line of work, they are usually dead. this one was vibrantly alive.

"Marcus Didius Falco, you are not seducing me", smiled Helena Justina as she solved my moral dilema with the sweatness I had so long failed to recognized in her. "I am trying as hard as I can to seduce you". I had always know that she was a forthright girl.
I have no intention to describing what happened next. It is private between me, the senator's daughter and the gardener's horse.

La journée d’un esclave n’offre pas le temps de se perdre dans les souvenirs. Nous n’avions ni espoir, ni mémoire du passé. Nous nous levions à l’aube – enfin, il faisait encore nuit. Nous grimacions tristement devant nos bols de bouillie remplis par une femme sale qui ne semblait jamais dormir. Nous traversions en silence le site où tous les volets étaient clos.

Mon imagination s’était vidée de ses rêves comme un abcès crevé par la dureté de cette nouvelle vie. Si j’avais entendu un poème, j’aurais esquissé un sourire moqueur, comme pour le charabia incompréhensible d’une langue étrangère.

J’estime que tout homme libre doit avoir son mot à dire sur le gouvernement de la cité où il réside. Il est anormal que le Sénat confie tous les pouvoirs, à vie, à un seul homme. Même s’il n’est pas fou, corrompu ou immoral, il a toutes les chances de le devenir.