Great Lion of God (26 page)

“I thought you had—left me,” she said, and now her lips quivered and she was no longer smiling.

“Not yet, Emi,” he said. Saul, watching in a fascination he could not help but which he vaguely resented, was struck by the young man’s voice, for it was deep and strong as a venerable rabbi’s with strange and moving undertones like half-heard music. “You will know when I must go. You will not be unprepared.”

Tears appeared in her eyes. She bent her head to hide them as if ashamed. “Forgive me,” she said, almost inaudibly. “But I am weak today. Forgive me, Tinoki.”

He lovingly and compassionately touched the side of her cheek with his fingers, the vibrant strong fingers of a workman. She humbly took the spoon from him and ate of the food he had brought and he watched her with a deep and wistful devotion as if he were pondering on some pain he had caused her or was about to cause her. His own pain was obvious, as if his very vitals had been wounded, and yet he smiled down at his mother and urged her to eat when she faltered.

I have not been such a son to my mother, thought Saul, and it seemed to him that the pain of the strangers had reached out to him and had touched his own heart with a finger of fire. Deborah, in the light of the woman opposite him, took on a kind of radiance from her, as though she were the mother of all mothers, and women drew light from her. It was a foolish thought, Saul commented to himself, restlessly, but it held him. Deborah had been but a child who had never attained womanhood, a petulant beautiful child who had never been satisfied with her husband and her son and had complained in her pretty voice incessantly; the world had not given her her just deserts. Still, in this woman’s presence the memory of Deborah became sorrowful to Saul and he felt his first real grief for his mother, and he could not understand it.

Saul thought, He is her son, and she is only a woman, yet he regards her with the respect the Greeks once gave their gods, and he is gentle with her and inexplicably tender, as if, above all women, and perhaps all men, she is the most beloved to him and the most precious and sanctified.

Respect for mothers was implicit in the religion of the Jews, but Saul had often thought it too elaborate and very often undeserved. He said Kaddish obediently for Deborah, and often wondered where that child-soul reposed and in what flowery nursery it played, or if lit slept in the dust like a flower on which an iron heel had been imprinted. Yet, his mother had not been a plain woman such as this woman, and she had been born of a venerable and illustrious house, land had been a patrician and the name of her fathers was honored in the gates of the city. In her way, she had had some learning; she was no stranger to the arts of the Hellenistic culture if she were, indeed, less understanding of the religion of her fathers. Why had he not honored her as this probably unlettered workman from some scorching hill obviously honored his mother? Deborah had been almost as beautiful and certainly charming. I have been a son, thought Saul, watching the two near him, with a cold and obdurate heart. Forgive me, my mother. You did not love me and I did not love you wholly but I should have honored you. Am I less than this obscure man who regards his mother as the holiest and purest and sweetest of all creatures, and esteems her with every gesture and every glance of his eye? Alas, I am less. I am much less.

The young man reached for the basket with the doves and drew out a leather bottle of wine and a brass cup. He opened the bottle and Saul caught a scent of the wine; it was poor and cheap and acrid. The young man filled the cup and held it to his mother’s lips with deference and she drank, her eyes again on his, blue and beaming. The attitude of the two, sitting in the hard and lonely sunlight, friendless and alone, was excessively touching for all its stately posture, its proud simplicity. Crowds hurried along the great courtyard; shadows were deep purple and sharp; voices and footsteps were noisy; children darted everywhere, and merchants with carts screamed and uttered imprecations. Yet these two sat in a mysterious isolation as if unseen by all but Saul, and unseeing except for each other, the one giving profoundly, the other taking with humility. Saul had seen the man’s arm as it had emerged from his garments. It was brown from the sun, and muscular and masculine, familiar with labor, endowed with the ability to lift and carry with ease. His ankles and feet, too, were brown. They had known the soil of pastures and stony places, of torrid noons and bitter winds.

“We are all one, all sons before our Father, blessed be His Name,” Hillel ben Borush often repeated. As that was a doctrine of the Jews Saul had believed it, but only intellectually except for one short interlude. But all at once he truly felt a oneness with these people before Dim and he wanted to speak in spite of his pride.

It was then, as if Saul had truly spoken, that the young man turned his kingly head to him and looked at him fully. Their eyes met, and it seemed to Saul that his heart raised itself and shook and all his limbs were disturbed. The azure of the peasant’s eyes seemed to advance on him, as if in truth he had risen and was approaching the youth, holding him powerfully with his gaze. All sound disappeared from Saul’s consciousness. Now he had been drawn into the circle of remote silence and isolation with these two, and they were alone together.

To Saul, there came a sensation as of deep and unearthly fear as well as of massive force drawing him to the young man. All his mind was assaulted by something mysterious and compelling, yet terrible. Part of his soul said to him, “It is absurd, for you are Saul ben Hillel, of the Tribe of Benjamin, and learned and of a noble house, and your name is not despised even among the proudest and the most royal, and this man before you is nothing but a peasant and possibly cannot even write his name! Therefore, why should he draw you to him and why is your heart inflamed and troubled and bounding like a lamb?”

But another part of his soul said to him, “Arise and go to him.”

The young man was gazing at him quietly, his expression still and grave and curiously alert, and sad. Yet his lips were smiling faintly, as if he, too, had recognized Saul and knew him for what he was. The golden brows almost met above the large deep eyes; the wind ruffled the golden hair and beard. So clear was the light, so vivid the concentration of the stranger upon Saul, that Saul himself saw more intensely than usual. He saw the dim blue shadows below those pale cheekbones, as if pain dwelt there without surcease. He saw the veins in the white temples, and the throbbing of the browned throat.

The woman, too, was gazing at Saul, the brass cup near her lips. Her hand trembled a little.

They are sorcerers! thought Saul, and the terror increased in him for all a portion of his mind laughed at this superstition. So he sprang to his feet in disorder and he fled from that place and did not look back and did not cease his hurried steps until he entered the marketplace again. And the clamor and cries rose up about him and the masses of the people lurched against him, and he was free from his enchantment and the clangor of the world had never seemed so dear and safe to him as it did now, and so protecting.

I have escaped! he thought. From what he had escaped he did not know, but he was sweating violently. He felt he had been in some awesome jeopardy, but the jeopardy was unknown. He bought a handful of ripe figs and ate them greedily. Then slowly, he began to laugh at himself and to wonder at the emotions he had felt. He walked on, looking at the little shops with a friendly contempt and amusement. He looked at the pretty dark-faced slave girls and felt aversion, and then a vague pity for their state. When he came out again into sunshine he said to himself, “I am alone, and lost, and I do not know why.”

It was then that he heard or thought he heard a tremendous, familiar voice calling to him: “Saul, Saul of Tarshish!”

He looked about him wildly, but only the market rabble and the merchants were about him and the asses and the camels and the screaming children as they raced up and down the broad shallow stone of the steps. I am going mad, he thought. They have laid a spell upon me, and he ran again, murmuring aloud the prayers against the evil eye. And then he stood, trembling, the figs in his hand. He had heard that voice before, in his bedroom, in the holy Temple, and he was covered with a dread confusion.

The house of Aulus Platonius and Hannah bas Judah was in an unpretentious section of the city not far, alas, from the Street of the Cheesemakers. Therefore, the air was permeated at all seasons, in all days and nights, with the odor of sour, ripe or new cheese. To Hillel, remembering it, it had a reassuring scent; it was sound and earthy and full of authority and permanence, unlike the graceful and perfumed gardens of Shebua ben Abraham and his sons, which seemed—to Hillel at least—to have the odor of decay and transience and graves, not to mention decadence.

Aulus, as a rich man, and Hannah, as a rich woman, could well have lived on the heights of a mount in a fine villa with many slaves and servants, but they were frugal. They resembled each other in temperament; their tastes were simple, not out of deliberate ostentation or because of penuriousness, but because simplicity was of their nature. They had a fine library, the heritage Hannah had received from her father, and beautiful gardens of flowers and vegetables and fruit trees and palms, though the gardens were of necessity small in that crowded area. A single fountain stood in the center of yellow graveled paths, and in the shade of a karob or sycamore tree Hannah would work with her few women.

In all this, Hannah also bore a resemblance to Clodia Flavius. Hannah, however, was of different attributes, soft of voice, deferential of manner, meek of gesture, gentle in speech, hesitant to advance an opinion, sweetly anxious to please, and of a will which made Clodia’s seem to be as bending grass. The large brown eyes in the shelter of thick black lashes might appear to be the eyes of a doe, but a certain glint in them could make the burly Aulus quail and daughters tremble. As an “old” Jewish woman she kept her hair covered, but sometimes a brown strand of it, as frail as silk, would drop over her calm forehead. Her face was as round as a coin and expressed absolute innocence and womanliness, and her lips were tender and her complexion pale gold, for though, like Hillel, her forebears had come from Galilee she had the darkness of the Judean. Hillel loved her dearly; she had been like an elder sister to him from his childhood. He also remembered the weight of her hand in less loving moments. If, indeed, “all her ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,” Hannah bas Judah was queen of the household and, Hillel often smilingly suspected, the king also.

Aulus greeted him with pleasure and embraced him and kissed his cheek. “Shalom. This house is honored to receive you, my cousin,” said Aulus. Hillel’s hands lingered on Aulus’ shoulders, and the Roman, who desperately at all times tried to conceal a certain sensitivity of temperament—it was unbefitting a soldier—felt that lingering and the unconscious pressure of Hillel’s fingers. Ah, he thought, with commiseration, the family of Shebua ben Abraham have been too much for my poor friend. He slapped Hillel heartily on the arm and inquired of Saul and why he had not come also.

“Saul,” said Hillel, “is restless and disturbed, and is cooling his fever with explorations of the city. Youth is not an agreeable state.”

Aulus’ eyes were kind as they studied Hillel’s face. “Truly,” he said. He led Hillel through the atrium into a pleasant room full of sunlight though spare of furniture, and with a stone floor on which lay a few woolen rugs of no particular value. There were no murals here, no statues, no fine vases, no lemonwood tables, no crystal or Alexandrine lamps. But it had a certain immaculate comfort and Hillel sat down. Aulus clapped his hands and a servant appeared and Aulus ordered refreshments. “How is our beloved Hannah?” asked Hillel.

Aulus, as a soldier, had few illusions, but he had one which could provoke Hillel’s secret amusement. In spite of Hannah’s absolute rule over her household Aulus was convinced that she was the most docile of women and he invariably forgot the occasions when none dared defy her will when she had collected her mind. Had he remembered he would have persuaded himself that he had capitulated out of deference to her female weakness and because he loved her and wished to humor her. He said with heartiness, leaning back expansively in his chair, “My dear Hannah is, as always, the noblest and sweetest of women.” He beamed. His thick beard bristled with pride and affection. He wore a tunic of blue wool, for the day was cool, but he retained his iron-shod sandals and now he made a proud clattering with them on the floor. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him.

It was Hannah, herself, who led the servant with the refreshments, carrying white linen in her hands, her robe of gray and red, her head covered as always. She was small and plump, like a dove, with a dove’s full breast. Hillel rose and went to her at once and embraced her and she kissed his cheek and then held him off to examine him acutely. She had not seen him for seventeen years or more, and her eyes were the eyes of an anxious mother. “Hillel,” she said, in her gentle voice, and there was an inquiry in it.

“I am well, dear Hannah,” he answered, and was horrified that he might burst into tears.

Hannah continued to smile, but she sighed. “And Sephorah, and Saul, whom I have never seen, my cousins also?”

“My children, thanks be to God, are in good health,” said Hillel. “You will see them at Sephorah’s wedding, which will be eight days from today.”

The maternal eyes were smiling though still searching. “I have heard rumors from Aulus that Sephorah is very beautiful. My own daughters are not beautiful but have married to our satisfaction. We have grandchildren who delight us. I wish that blessing for you, Hillel, my beloved cousin.”

She covered a table with the white linen and gestured to the servant who set out bowls of cheese and bread and fruit and olives and fish, and artichokes in oil and garlic and a fine bottle of wine. Hannah watched with benign attention, and arranged the pottery plates and the simple silver cutlery. She said, not looking at Hillel, “The years pass, and we see those whom we do not love and who are strangers to us, and our hearts grow sore with longing because our kinsmen are far from us.”