Status Updates From Waiting for the Barbarians

If we were to disappear would the barbarians spend their afternoons excavating our ruins? Would they preserve our census rolls and our grain-merchants' ledgers in glass cases, or devote themselves to deciphering the script of our love-letters?

I chafe his hands between mine. He flexes his fingers painfully. I cannot pretend to be any better than a mother comforting a child between his father's spells of wrath. It has not escaped me that an interrogator can wear two masks, speak with two voices, one harsh, one seductive.

I carry my sleeping-mat out on to the ramparts where the night breeze gives some relief from the heat. On the flat roofs of the town I can make out by moonlight the shapes of other sleepers. From under the walnut trees on the square I still hear the murmur of conversation. In the darkness a pipe glows like a firefly, wanes, glows again.