Great Lion of God (23 page)

Then, all at once, he was acutely and even frightfully aware, as if a hand of flame had touched his flesh and had seared it. He swung his head about. He saw nothing but the dimmed forms of men about him; he heard their breathing, their praying, and even their faint cries. All were hooded. He could see nothing of their faces but their chins and the tips of their noses and a wisp or two of their beards. Many there were richly clad, nobly arrayed. But near Saul, as he saw for the first time, was a small group of men in the coarse garments and cloaks of countrymen, their leather sandals plain and undecorated, their folded hands rude and scarred by toil. They wore no jewels to flash in the light as did his kinsmen; their beards were not scented, neither was their flesh. They smelled of the field and the hills, of domestic animals and goat’s hair, of cheese and rough dark bread and sour milk and stale oil. Not even sedulous ablutions could obliterate these odors, which now so permeated their bodies.

But Saul, newly dazed and again trembling, felt that from one among them had darted a lance of flame which had touched him. He stared at them. They prayed with quiet fervor. Nothing distinguished them from their fellows; in truth, the haughtier and richer of the men of Jerusalem had tried to put a little space between themselves and their brothers from the provinces. Before God, they often said, all men were the same. But they did not believe it. For, was it not said that the just were favored with worldly goods by a rewarding Lord, blessed be His Name, and that they were never forsaken by Him and their children never begged bread? A destitute man, a poor and humble man, a miserable toiler, then, was indubitably a sinner and deserving of his fate. The probability that they, themselves, were truly forsaken and that their children might beg in vain for the Bread of Life, did not occur to them, and had one spoken to them of this they would not only have been outraged but made wrathful and vengeful.

What? Who? thought Saul, with a kind of anxious fever. He had often heard of the poverty-stricken but holy and wandering rabbis of Israel, who frequently evoked miracles and who preached in the streets and in the dust to the heedless mobs, and who devoted their lives to the enlightenment of their fellows and to the greater glory of God. “They care not for money nor for rich meats and bread, or even for shelter and warmth or for protection against the rain and the sun,” Hillel had told his son. “They sleep in barns or under arches and on thresholds, and desire nothing but service, nothing but prayer, nothing but the opportunity to extend compassion and hope to others. They are the blessed of God.”

Was there one such among that group of countrymen? asked Saul to himself. It seemed to him that he must know, that he must approach them and lift a hood to search for a face, for a spirit which had touched him invisibly but with power. He was filled with longing, with an urgent hope. His old impulsiveness returned to him, his old recklessness to have what he desired to have. He made a movement.

It was then that he was certain that a strong and familiar voice said within the hot cave of his skull: “Be still. The time is not yet.”

He thought, I am going mad! I did not hear a voice, yet I swear I heard it! I am undone. My emotions are in disarray. Wild winds disturb my soul. Suffering has distorted my perceptions. My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?

But even as he thought this a heavy peace came to him, a quietude, a surcease, as if a kind and merciful hand had been placed on his incoherent and clamorous mouth. He sank into mute prayer, into a soundlessness that was like sleep.

Though Clodia Flavius had commanded her Jewish cooks to prepare the proper feast for the Holy Days, and no rich and ritualistic dish had been excluded, and the prescribed wines had been provided, the prayers and ceremonies at the table in the magnificent dining room were languid and perfunctory. The goblets might be of gold and the platters and plates of the finest wrought silver, the spoons and the knives of artful Egyptian charm, the wreathed candlesticks and lamps scented and exquisite, the cover fashioned of cloth of gold, the Alexandrine glass and crystal vases filled with scarlet and white and Purple flowers, but there was none of the sober gaiety that follows the Day of Atonement, when men believe fervently that the book of their last year’s sins had been closed by the Angel of God and a new year of hope and faith lies before them.

Shebua ben Abraham and his sons and their sons did not wear the embroidered and jeweled caps befitting their situation in society. They did not wear caps at all. Hillel ben Borush and his son Saul wore them only. They had listened to Shebua’s desultory and abbreviated prayers and they detected the faint and indulgent amusement in his creamy voice, and the ennui. They knew be was making a polite gesture in the direction of the faith—he had abandoned, even as atheistic Romans and Greeks poured libations to the gods. It was a pretty gesture, and, Hillel suspected, even that was made only because of the presence of himself and Saul. Shebua was a man of gestures; Hillel bitterly wondered if he were anything else, for though Hillel listened keenly he never once heard Shebua make an original remark though he was very proficient in quotations from the mighty Greek philosophers and Virgil and Homer—which he delivered with a graceful wave of his hand and a soft smile that requested admiration. Even these remarks, virile and passionate often in context, exuded desultory daintiness. I am sure, thought Hillel, who was rarely moved to deep vexation—knowing the frailties of men—that even his excrement is perfumed and his urine scented. How he had brought himself to the sweat and lustiness and violent thrust of begetting these sons of his is beyond my imagination. He has two concubines. I am certain they are still virgins; no doubt he delights them with a lyre or poems or pretty little songs!

Or, thought Hillel, becoming more and more incensed, it may be that he is a practicer of Platonic love, in imitation of the Greeks. He glanced down the gleaming table at his father-in-law, and despised him. Shebua was elegantly disposed in his ebony and pearl-inlaid chair; he played with his goblet; he ate with an air of absent discrimination, every gesture excessively refined. His blue tunic, belted with an intricate web of gold and gems, was heavily embroidered; his arms were banded in armlets, glittering like stars, and on his right index finger was a fine ring which Herod Antipas had given him for favors—or friendship—unknown. He had refrained from the last enormity: Egyptian necklaces, fringed with gold and jewels, and earrings. These he had left to David ben Shebua. Again, Hillel thought that David was a parody of his father, and then he felt he was unkind. David had more intelligence than his sire, and was capable of a little originality and a little sudden imagination. Perhaps that was why Shebua disliked him more than he disliked the more pragmatic and avaricious Simon and Joseph, who made no pretense at scholarship and were frankly worldly and unashamed of their worldliness.

The dining room was finer even than the dining room of Herod Antipas, or Pontius Pilate, as they had admitted, themselves. It was, in truth, a banquet hall, of the purest white marble imported from Italy. No color touched it except for the passionately colored murals on the white walls, beautifully executed by the best of artists, the thrown Persian carpets and the high ceiling of fretted copper in a maze of entwining forms and angles. The snowy columns of Corinthian design—no Ionian simplicity for Shebua—had their capitals delicately tinted. And on pedestals, in niches, stood nude and indelicate little statuettes of white marble brought from Greece.

The evening was hot. The bronze doors stood open and the pale silken curtains had been drawn back, and Jerusalem lay below them on her hills, tier rising upon tier, sharply illuminated. They could hear the fountains outside, musically laughing to the stars, and could smell the fragrance of warm gardens under the dew. Everything that met I the eye was entrancing, and Hill el appreciated it, but did not appreciate his host and the brothers of Deborah.

Hillel, forgetting the graceful conversation about the table for a moment, looked at the young man who would marry Sephorah. Certainly he was not handsome, like his father, David, but neither did he resemble his grandfather Shebua ben Abraham, thanks be to God, blessed be His Name. The youth was shy and silent, but his eyes were very blue and candid, his expression alert yet retiring. He sat next to Saul who was very gray of face tonight and whose features were set in a tense and inflexible look, as if his thoughts were far from this room and his kinsmen and were bent on seeking, yet in terror of the seeking. His coarse white linen tunic did nothing to enhance his appearance, nor did that vital flare of red hair and the deep lost blue metal of his eyes.

The prophets had often spoken of the fire that inflamed their hearts with love of God, for the fire was love given and received, and it was rapture and ecstasy. (O Love of my desiring! thought Hillel, and he felt the hot burn of tears in his eyes. But this was not the love which his son knew, for all his transports in the Temple.) Hillel sighed again, and turned with pain from his son and listened to his boring father-in-law again.

Then he spoke. “Shebua, you have been conversing of the wonderful conceptual abstractions of the Greeks, out of which rose their code of ethics—which they observe no longer. Anything based on abstractions is alien to the flesh and the life of men; abstractions are the toys of the effete mind, which will endure no suffering or the sight or sound of suffering, or any of the fevers and sores and agonies of the flesh—particularly of other men. I not only call this trivial, and insulting to the manhood of humanity, but disgusting. Words are no substitute for actualities, nor exquisite phrases a poultice for reality. Men are born; they excrete and fornicate and void; they are tortured in their flesh. They smell. They often reek. They must labor—and pay taxes. They sleep. They eat. They beget. They die. These are the earthly and immutable verities of our being, our flesh. We cannot disguise them forever in the silk and embroideries of what you choose to call Greek civilization, or any other civilization, or in cantos or pentameters, however pretty, however sublime. I do not denigrate poetry or music or any of the other decorations men can invent, for life is not lovely, not comely, for man or beast. I admire, while I pity, these desperate efforts to hide the appalling face of reality, for none can bear the vision long with tranquillity, or without the help of God. Or without softening her lineaments with the veil of art. But we must admit it is only a veil. If we do not, then we shall surely go mad.”

Shebua narrowed his pale eyes upon him and began to speak, but Hillel lifted his hand. “I beg your forbearance for a moment longer,” he said. He was aware that he was boring Simon and Joseph. They had fastened a look of exaggerated filial respect on their father while he had been speaking before Hillel’s interruption, and he had bored them even more. They did not conceal their ennui from Hillel, and leaned back in their chairs with expressions of resignation.

“You would say,” Hillel continued, “that art and the graces of the mind distinguish us from beasts. But, we are beasts with diem! I do not call this degrading; I call this coming to terms with reality. From that strong base we can proceed, and we must never deny it for if we do—again—we shall go mad. It is said that animals have no souls; I dispute this. It is of no moment. You have implied that animals have no code of ethics. Who has enlightened you on this? I have seen animals and birds with more mercy and solicitude for their kind than any man has displayed! Animals do not betray; they do not exploit; they do not oppress; they do not enslave; they do not sin. They have their being, and their being is honest, and who can say this of man? It was necessary for men to invent ethics, for, before God blessed be His Name, man was not born with ethics, nor could he survive without them! He is the fierce devourer of his brother, a cannibal, and no other animal is such except rats, who disquietingly resemble man.

“As an exercise in grace and in handsome reason, I admire the intellectual code of ethics of the Greeks. I admire the Roman hubris, the pride of country and race. I admire the Roman law, for it is based on human reality as the ethics of the Greeks are not. But as neither the ethics of the Greeks nor the Law of the Romans is based on God and the Reality of God, they have no true verity except in the most narrow of senses. It is only the ancient laws of the Jews, set in the matrix of the Reality of God, which can survive in this world, for they are cast in mercy, in compassion, in love, in justice—all the attributes of God.

“To us, life is sacred, and this is true of no other religion, no code of merely mortal ethics, however grand the language or profound the thought. The Greeks were never urged to love their fellowman; the idea is preposterous to the Romans. So it was to the Babylonians and the Egyptians, except for one very brief period in Egyptian history far long ago. Only to Jews is human life sacred. Only to us was given the Commandment: Thou shalt not kill! I will concede that we have obeyed this Commandment no more heartily, in our past, though we knew of it, than the other peoples obeyed, and they knew it not. Yet, it is there. Thou shalt not kill!

“For uncountable generations the Greeks have practiced infanticide. They find nothing immoral in that. They say it is a way of controlling their numbers. The Romans have begun to practice it also, and feel no repugnance, no guilt. Other nations have practiced this direful crime, without horror. But Jews do not practice infanticide. They do not kill lightly, and wars are no occasion for rejoicing, though we are a warrior people. For God has warned us not to kill. He has warned us to love and revere and fear Him, and to love our fellows.

Surely, Shebua ben Abraham, you will admit that our ethics, based on God, are superior to the ethics of the Greeks and the Romans! And that our civilization, however it amuses you, is more attuned to the nature of man and God than any other!”

Saul, stricken and mute, had begun to listen. He looked with astonishment at his father and did not know him, for the usually gentle and conciliating Hillel had a tawny flame in his eyes and his face deeply flushed.