Great Lion of God (34 page)

The Roman official and his physicians had duly examined Saul, had questioned his doctors, had gravely examined the other members of the household, and had come to the correct conclusion that no plague existed or any of the other diseases of the unspeakable Parthians. So the seal of quarantine was not affixed to the doors of Shebua ben Abraham’s house, and the official and his physicians graciously accepted Shebua’s invitation to dine with him that evening—and, later, his lavish gifts given in mighty relief that nothing threatened his house.

Clodia Flavius assisted the nurses and ministered to Saul also, and told the father, “There is a fever in his soul, and that is worse than a fever of the body, but not fatal. He will recover, Hillel ben Borush, though it is possible that he does not, deep in the depths of his afflicted spirit, wish to do so.” She regarded him kindly as she would a child.

She was like tireless strength in that chamber. She permitted Sephorah to enter her brother’s chamber, and Sephorah wept over him and put cool wet cloths on his burning cheeks and brow and called to him in her soft and fluting voice. But beyond his sudden wild cries and threshings, his sudden struggles as if he were trying to escape from his flesh, he did not answer nor open his eyes, and his face became smaller and grayer as the hours passed, and sunken.

Aulus Platonius and his son, the captain of the Praetorians, visited the anxious father and consoled and cheered him, and so did Joseph of Arimathaea who stood for a long time in silence beside the bed, gazing down on the unconscious youth and listening to his incoherent groans and exclamations.

On the day before Sephorah married Ezekiel ben David, Saul regained consciousness. His fever had subsided. The sweat following it had been washed away and he had been clothed in fresh white linen. He opened his eyes to see the face of his father bent over him. But one of the eyes did not fully open, though Hillel was not aware of that in his joy that his son had regained his senses.

“It is well, my son,” said Hillel, with tenderness, and he kissed his son’s cheek and rejoiced that once again it was cool. “You have been ill, but God, blessed be His Name, has spared you to me. You will soon recover your strength.”

Saul whispered, and tears appeared on his eyelids, “I would that I had died.”

Rabban Gamaliel was in the chamber also, and he came to the bedside and said gravely, “It is God’s will that you live, and you must not dispute Him. You must rest and become strong, for He has wonders for you to accomplish.” His face was suddenly exalted, and Hillel gazed at him mutely and with a far fear.

“I fell into the darkness, and it was death,” said Saul, still in that faint whisper, and it was as if he had not heard the Rabban. “I was not afraid, though it was only nothingness.”

He suddenly fell asleep, but his left eye remained partly open and they could see the white of it and the lower edge of the blue iris as it was upturned.

It was not for some days that the physicians regretfully informed Hillel that the fever had partially paralyzed that eye and while it was not blind it would never be as the other again. And it was still later before they knew that the fever had permanently affected a part of the brain, which would leave Saul a victim of occasional seizures. “The epilepsy is not serious,” they told the grieving father. “It is possible that it was latent before his illness and has only been somewhat intensified. Is he a youth of passions and strong urges and vehement emotions?”

“Yes,” said Hillel, sadly. “But he has had no seizures.”

He lifted his hands and said, “Why has God afflicted my child? Why did He not afflict me in his place? If He had stricken Job’s children, then God and Job would not have triumphed over Satan! For what man can witness the suffering of his children and not turn from God?”

Rabban Gamaliel said, “It is written that we must not question God, for His ways are not our ways, and we trust in Him, that in His wisdom He has a reason for all.”

But Hillel could not be comforted. He sat for hours beside Saul’s bed and looked upon him and his heart was as bleeding fragments. There were times when he knew that Saul was not sleeping and was aware of his presence. But Saul did not speak.

Chapter 14

S
PRING
was on the land and the almond blossoms were like pink butterflies and the sycamores took on a liquid green and even the dark cypresses had a bloom. Captain Titus Milo Platonius was recalled to Rome, for his leave had expired. He was departing, with his men, for the Joppa Gate, in the radiance of the early morning, and his father, Aulus, accompanied him in a last farewell.

I am a soldier, thought Aulus, but I am also a father, and my years are increasing and it may be long before I am permitted to return to my beloved country, and in the meantime I shall not see my beloved son. I must remember that I am a soldier and am born of soldiers and I would have nothing else for my son, but still I have a human heart and it is sad.

The marketplaces were already in great ferment, and wagons were being unloaded from the country and the merchants and farmers were haggling with blasphemies and oaths and threats and shaken fists and wild and furious eyes. One marketplace was a replica of another; the awnings were blue or red or green, and the narrow streets were weltering with hurrying men and women and children, all vociferous. But many of the houses still slept quietly behind their yellow walls, while slaves cleaned the gates and washed down the courtyards and tended the new gardens. The early sun was already warm and the breeze fresh from the distant sea.

Milo soberly discussed the condition of modern Rome with his father, and their faces became increasingly somber as they rode steadily to the Joppa Gate. “We have talked of this before, my father,” said Milo, “and have come to no conclusion save that Rome as she is now cannot continue unless the good citizens are more and more oppressed and finally enslaved in the service of the inferior. We know that newborn infants can no longer be supported by parents once called the ‘new men,’ the middle-class, and are being exposed so that they must die. Each day that passes sees more onerous taxes inflicted on the industrious and reverent and productive men, for the enhancement of a lavish court, subsidies to farmers, the looting of politicians, the free housing built for the idle, slothful, stupid and degenerate mobs, the free entertainment provided for those self-same mobs, the erection of grand government buildings to shelter the ever-growing and lustful armies of the bureaucrats and other petty officials, the granaries which dispense free food to the rabble, and the ambitious dreams of the sons of freedmen to remake the streets, the alleys, the roads, the houses and the villas and the countryside of Rome into a grandiose ‘city of alabaster!’ Then, there are the wars to nourish the manufactories which make war materials and blankets for the mercenaries, and which drain the public purse—now almost empty. Tiberius Caesar began with a noble thought: To restore the Treasury, to pay the public debt, to encourage the thrifty and to punish the idle. But he, too, succumbed under the evil pressures first established by Julius Caesar, who paid the mobs to support him.”

“No nation,” said Aulus, who was a student of history, “took that path without perishing. So, Rome must perish.” His face darkened with pain.

Milo said, “In our lifetime we can live virtuously and with strength, scorning the weak and the depraved, detesting the luxurious, honoring our gods, paying our debts.” He smiled. “And our taxes—when the murderous taxgatherers catch us.”

“If all good citizens of Rome refused to pay taxes, what then could a tyrannous government do?” asked Aulus, with an eager glance at his son, compounded of humor and wryness.

Milo laughed, reining back his tall black horse to prevent the treading down of a scurrying child. Then he no longer laughed. “Do you think the lustful mobs, the luxurious, the decadent, the abandoned, the slothful and the contemptible, would not fight for their sustenance from the purses of the proud? I tell you, Caesar would turn the mobs on good Romans and let them loot and burn and destroy as they would, and kill, until Rome was one river of blood and the fruitful men reduced to beggary and slavery. You will recall that Catilina attempted that, but he had Cicero to oppose him and finally to destroy him. But we have no Cicero now, no loud patriotic voice, alas, and few Romans remain to fight for their country, for the honor of their gods, the ashes of their fathers, and for their heroic pride.”

“Despair,” said Aulus, “is not an evil. It is a virtue, and can inspire men to restore grandeur to their nation and virtue and industry and pride. But the swine have taken even despair from the hearts of men and have left worms behind and Circe seducers who say that all is in vain, that sufficient it is to the day to endure and survive and let tomorrow fend for itself. So men who should man the battlements and guard the gates look upon their wives and children and shrug helplessly, and do not despair. Despair left them long ago, when liars told them it was useless to oppose tyrannical government which professed to love the mobs and had infused those mobs with envy and greed and lusts and had informed them that those who worked for their bread were their ‘natural enemies,’ and should be looted through taxes. If I dared,” said Aulus, “I would erect a temple to the goddess of Despair and clothe her in flaming armor and give her a terrible bright sword, and would implore her to destroy the festering creatures who are eating my country alive and devouring her bowels and drinking her golden blood!”

“As my mother would say, ‘Amen,’” said Titus Milo Platonius. “Do not the Jews say, ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat?’ Amen. Amen. Once Rome had such admonitions, but it is so no longer. However, as Cicero said, do not a people deserve their government, their fate? It is true.”

They had reached a converging of streets. Milo and his father drew in their horses abruptly, and their entourage halted also. A wild and roaring crowd had drawn together, and they were raising sticks and bringing them down furiously on the heads and bodies of half a dozen men in their center, and cursing and reviling them. The men had fallen on their knees, protecting their heads with their arms and wailing for mercy. About them were strewn books and papers and pens, and the mobs stamped upon them and dispersed them and spat upon them.

Milo lifted his mailed hand and a soldier trotted his horse to his side. “Inquire, if possible, as to what is causing this unseemly disturbance,” he said.

Aulus frowned. “It is my duty, as a centurion, to keep order.”

“True,” said Milo, and he was faintly smiling again. “But I think, in this matter, that you would prefer to turn aside your eyes.”

The soldier trotted back, saluting. “Lord,” he said, “the men are beating the taxgatherers, and it would seem that they not only desire their blood but their lives.”

Aulus prepared to dash forward, but Milo put a restraining hand on his father’s horse’s neck. He lifted his eyes serenely to the broad blue sky.

“It is a pleasant day, and I am enjoying the first part of my journey,” he said. “Let us enter this street, which is peaceful.” And he turned his horse sharply aside.

Aulus gaped at him, frowning deeper. “We employ the taxgatherers,” he said. “They are doing but their duty,”

“And with pleasure,” said Milo. “They oppress their own people, because they are mean and evil little men, who enjoy the sight of pain and distress. Therefore, let them have a taste of what they bring upon others. In a small way it is our own revenge on the taxgatherers of Rome, herself, and would that Romans had the spirit of these poor and distracted Jews! For once, let the goddess, Justice, be satisfied.”

Aulus smiled in his beard, and the entourage turned down the quiet street and left the shouting and tumult and screams behind them, until they could hear the sound no more.

I have been remiss, thought Aulus. My duty was plain. But, is it not a fearful thing when one’s duty is tyranny and the rescue of the abominable and the punishment of those who are justified in their despair and anger? When does the maintenance of law and order descend into the offal-pit of oppression?

Behind him, he heard the chuckling of Milo’s men and he hoped that they were chuckling with the same thoughts that were passing through his own mind.

Twenty-five Jewish taxgatherers were attacked in the streets of Jerusalem that day by the despairing people, and ten died of their injuries. For a time, thereafter, the taxgatherers, though protected by the Romans, walked carefully and did not rob nor extort nor torture nor seize property nor call upon the guards to arrest. They knew the hatred their own people bore them, and the desire for vengeance in their hearts, and so for a time they did not provoke them, and moved with circumspection. Romans were not always present.

This was partly due to the intervention of Aulus Platonius who issued a proclamation to the effect that any taxgatherer caught in a venal act would be executed. He would collect scrupulously and fairly, and without threats and implications of punishment, and would not extort any longer nor take the bread from the mouths of children nor the roof over a man’s head. Otherwise, he would die, and publicly, as an example to other criminals.

A general “arrest and seize” had been issued by Aulus against those desperate men who had maimed and killed the taxgatherers, but for some strange reason none were ever arrested. “After all,” said Aulus virtuously, to fellow officers, “it is truly none of our affair. We employ the taxgatherers. That is true. But if they are criminals, themselves, let their own people administer their rude justice. Have we not said that of all nations we have brought into the Pax Romana? Above all, we wish peace.”

With less irony but with even more virtue Shebua ben Abraham, the Sadducee, said, “It is a monstrous thing that government agents and officials cannot pursue their office and duties without being threatened by rebellious creatures, who have no respect for law and order.” But then, Shebua, through his friendship with Herod and Pontius Pilate, paid little in taxes, and much of his profits was discreetly banked in Rome and Athens in the care of even more discreet bankers, who professed not to know the true names of their clients. The friends of Caesar bore no burdens nor suffered hardships, and preened themselves on their safety and their devotion to law, and no one menaced their households nor seized their property nor inflamed their crafty hearts with wrath, nor diminished their fortunes. Nor did they look upon the conquerors of their nation with anger and hate, for they had no pride, and love of God and country was dead in them, or had never lived.