Great Lion of God (49 page)

The Nazarene understood instantly that he was being mocked, and the crowd eagerly awaited his response. He said, and he looked deeply into the Pharisee’s eye, “You have not understood because in your mind is only confusion, and you will not understand. I say to you, The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.”

Swift comprehension came to Saul as he heard this, and for an instant it was plain to him what this dusty Nazarene had meant, in the most subtle of fashions, and yet not subtle and even with a plainness. There was no ambiguity at all! Then, like a fog passing over a clear landscape full of light, comprehension departed from Saul and he was contemptuous and disgusted again, and in dimness.

Several miserably clad men now gathered about the Nazarene, and Saul knew them for his disciples. All the poor street rabbis had such disciples, vagrant, hopeless yet hopeful men, pious, ignorant and meek, who longed for justice and the Messias. The Nazarene prepared to leave, then all at once he turned his great august head and looked directly at Saul, and something deeply blue and radiant shone in his eyes and he smiled. Then he was gone with his friends.

Joseph said, “He knows you.”

“Not at all!” exclaimed Saul. “I have seen him rarely, once in a marketplace when I was a youth, with one he called his mother, once more at the crucifixion of the Essenes, where you were also, and then in a dream. I have told you.” He was enraged again, as he had been before, and yet again he felt loss and sadness. He looked after the Nazarene, but he had disappeared in the surging crowds. “I have never exchanged a word with him. And why should such a word be exchanged? Who is he?”

“You will know,” said Joseph of Arimathaea, as he had said so many years ago, and he would say no more. The Pharisees turned now to their friends, and the Scribes to theirs, and again they ignored the existence of the others.

Saul looked about for the young man who had been dismissed by mere words, and he was astonished, for the young man was gazing after the Nazarene and his shaking lips were curved in a smile and it was as if he had seen a vision, and had heard celestial words, and he was strengthened and comforted. He, too, is mad, thought Saul.

The hasty-tempered Saul had learned one hard lesson: When another man, arguing with you, speaks objectively and with temperance and coolness, and also with dispassionate reason, you can then both define acceptable terms and frames of reference, and the argument can proceed without animosity or heat or disorder, to mutual satisfaction and pleasure. But when a man argues solely from his inmost and emotional tempers, and is entangled, like the Laocoon, with his own passions from which he cannot extricate himself, you argue with him at your peril, for even if you lose the argument in a cauldron of steaming incoherences your opponent will hate you forever afterwards. The Scriptural father did not so resent the rape and seizure of his daughter and the flight with her as he did the theft of his household pieties, for had he not said, “You have taken away my gods?” Take all from a man and he will forgive you. Take from him his sentimentalities and his unreasonable convictions and you have an enemy for life.

To call man a rational being is to arouse the ironic laughter of Heaven, thought Saul. So, as he had a deep respect and love for Joseph of Arimathaea he curbed his usually acerbic tongue and made no comment on the Nazarene, the thought of whom made him more and more irritable. (Joseph of Arimathaea was a Pharisee. How, then, could he have smiled so fatuously on the Nazarene’s attack on the Pharisees? What a fine example of irrationality!)

The journey to Caesarea was uneventful and pleasant and Saul was careful to speak only of unimportant matters. He did not see Joseph’s half-hidden smile, nor did he know that Joseph understood. Joseph said, “It is unfortunate that your ship will not take you directly to Tarsus but will have to stop at one of the most easterly Greek islands. But the weather is fair and the sea is soft and gentle at this time of the year, and you will rest.”

I never rest, thought Saul. Even in my sleep, I never rest. But forced a difficult smile in order to please his friend. Rabban Gamaliel had also recommended serenity and rest, and Saul had wondered at this, for the Rabban talked continually of the duty of nan to live each day in the Presence of God and not to waste a precious hour or moment in wanton idleness and thoughtlessness or did man not have to account for that hour and that moment?

They were in Samaria, the province of those Jews who laughed at the Judeans and teased them on the holy days by lighting fires an their hills so that the Judean priests would be deceived, and observing those fires would believe that the sun was rising. The Samarians were lighthearted Jews, who enjoyed the hard life in their stony hills and narrow little valleys, and sinned with gusto and airiness and committed adultery with joy, and were hardly better than heathen or infidels. So, when Joseph and Saul halted at a large inn at night it was no surprise—though a vexation—to Saul, to hear the sound of music and the stamp of dancing feet within, and much revelry. “It is not a crime before the Face of God to laugh and dance and sing,” said Joseph, whose few hairs were now white. “It is also a delight to gaze at the countenances of the young, when they cavort like new lambs.”

Saul would not join Joseph in the common dining room where all this unseemly merriment was taking place. He begged that he be given goat’s milk, cheese, some fruit and bread in his own room over the inn, and Joseph gave him a sad look and nodded. But he substituted a bottle of fine wine for the goat’s milk Saul had requested, and Saul smiled a little grimly. However, not to offend his friend, he drank the wine and it refreshed and eased him, and as the cheese was excellent and of different varieties and well aged and plentiful, and the bread white and soft and the fruit fresh and full-flavored, and there was also a broiled fish, Saul found himself relishing his dinner. He loved solitude. He could reflect. Once Rabban Gamaliel, gazing at him over the heads of the other pupils, had said, “There are men who can be happy only when enjoying their own misery,” and Saul had colored with resentment. The eminent Rabban, he thought, had not understood. Saul found the company of others tedious, especially when those others were not engaged in learned discussions but talked of inconsequential matters, in which he was not interested. What misery, therefore, was there in this?

He was asleep when Joseph of Arimathaea somewhat unsteadily came into their chamber, smiling in memory of a joyous evening.

One small lamp sent its flittering light over the yellow plaster of the wall and the low ceiling. By its illumination Joseph could see the sleeping face of the younger man on its flat pillow. It was the face, alas, thought Joseph, of one of the Greek Ascetics, who believed the world was evil and alien to man. (Joseph did not know that Rabban Gamaliel had expounded on this but recently.) Saul’s profile was stern, even harsh, the big predatory nose like the beak of an eagle, the jaw angular and firmly set, the mouth speaking only of self-repression and the discipline of self, the large ears combative, the eyelids quivering even in slumber as if restless and discontented, and the mass of thick red hair emphasizing the whole. To Joseph, there was something greatly tragic in Saul’s appearance, and he remembered to pray, most earnestly, for joy to enter again into that dark and dedicated and passionate spirit, which believed the way to God was a dolorous way, set with stone and danger and terror and struggles—but never with peace, though occasionally with ecstasy. Joseph blew out the lamp and fell asleep, his mouth still sweet with the taste of wine and roasted fowl and pastries.

The next day they reached the wind-struck and scintillating port of Caesarea. Several of the Roman galleon’s sails were already set, and she bobbed and danced on the blinding waters like an enormous dove. Saul’s belongings, his chests and his one pouch, were taken below to his small cabin. He took affectionate leave—somewhat stiffly—of Joseph, and said, “I will return within two months.”

“Rest,” said Joseph. “Reflect. Meditate. It has been years since you have visited your home.”

An expression of intense pain passed over Saul’s countenance. “Do I not know that? Do I not condemn myself? If I had returned earlier I should have seen my father’s face and have received his blessing before he died.”

“It was my hope that tranquillity will come to you,” said Joseph of Arimathaea. Saul stared at him, incredulously. “I am always tranquil!” he exclaimed. “What passions of this world disturb me?”

But that is not what I mean, thought Joseph. He kissed Saul on the cheek, like a father, his long oval face tender and melancholy, his large dark eyes liquid and soft. He stood on the dock for a long time thereafter, watching until the last high white sail sank below the blue and watery horizon.

Saul had brought books of commentaries with him to study, but he found a sort of languor, compounded of sea wind and sun, overcoming him. He tried to reprove himself. He fought against a desire to sleep, to yawn, to gaze only on the sky and the sea. It was sinful not to think; it was an offense to God not to meditate upon Him constantly. Man had no reason for being except to study about God and to adore Him, and to endeavor to learn of His Will. For the world of men was but an evil dream which would pass away; it had no substance, no reality. Saul had wandered far away—though he did not know it—from the teachings of his own Pharisee sect. He had absorbed the stringencies, but never the lightnesses, and during those days on shipboard it did not occur to him that this was what the Nazarene, Yeshua, had meant, on the hot street in Jerusalem. Piety without joy, faith without gladness, duty without innocent pleasure, worship without delight—these did not please God, the Nazarene had intimated.

Despite his most formidable efforts—and they were indeed formidable—Saul found himself daily becoming more enervated, more languid. His mind was no longer the sharp knife cutting through irrelevant phrases down to the bare and uncompromising fruit. It wavered away from books, from subtleties. Saul was sometimes surprised to discover himself leaning over the ship’s rail, staring down into the fascinating colors of the sea, the changeful colors which were purple and turquoise and limpid blue, transformed at sunset into one endless plain of deep gold. Then the conflagration of the skies awed him, the terrible and silent manifestation of God made him quail. He could only mutter to himself, “When I gaze upon the Heavens, the work of Your Fingers—What is man?” And then, “The Heavens declare His Glory, and the firmament shows His Handiwork!”

Even Saul could not resist this majesty, though only a little before he would have reproached himself that by admiring the world he was forgetting God. I wonder, he thought once, if we have not overlooked many things concerning the Psalms of David, and have concentrated only on his cries of despair and piety? It was, to him, a blasphemous thought and he tried to put it aside.

The name of the small Greek island at which the ship stopped on its long and dreamlike journey escaped Saul, for it was of no consequence and its port was rude and noisy. It had little cargo to be taken aboard except for crude statuettes destined for heathen houses in Tarsus. There was also but one passenger, who was surrounded, on the dock, by men and women who vehemently kissed his hands, his cloak, the hem of his garment, and even his feet, and called him “Divinity!” Children raced about him, pausing to touch him and grin delightedly upon him. Baskets of fresh fruit were laid at his feet as offerings. He was a tall man, obviously a Greek, and of a slender but muscular appearance, and his light hair was mixed with gray and he was a man at least of some forty years. His garments were poor, his cloak patched, his feet in rude sandals and a big pouch lay near him. He wore but one ornament, a large ring on his right index finger, a knightly ring of singular beauty and fire and of enormous value, and it was this that captured, Saul’s interest.

He looked at the Greek’s face, and saw its pale and sculptured planes and outlines, and its large and steadfast blue eyes. The man had a stern yet gentle appearance. It was obvious that he was not pleased by the adulation poured upon him by these poor worshipers—did they consider him a god?—but he would not rebuke them nor repulse them, out of his kindness. He was a handsome man, yet in some way forbidding, and Saul noticed this with meager approval, and there was a somber level to his fair brows.

“Apollo!” cried some of the people, adoring him. “Asculapius! Chilon!” The children screamed and embraced his knees, and their parents looked upon him as at the sun.

Saul noticed that he carried a staff with the two serpents of Mercury winding upwards upon it, and then he saw that the pouch was really the pouch of a physician. Saul felt some disgust. The man, then, had been born a slave and educated as a physician, and then freed by some benevolent master—otherwise he would not be wandering about the sea islands in such wretched garb and with such liberty. Like most Greeks, he was probably also a mountebank. Then the thought came to Saul that mountebanks did not travel like this, in obvious poverty, and there was also that knightly ring on his long index finger. A gift from some superstitious rich man? Or, had it been stolen? Greek physicians, who had been born slaves, were not above thievery.

Saul had not mingled with the other passengers on the ship nor had he deigned to give even the captain, Gallo, more than a curt word. He suddenly found Gallo standing beside him at the rail of the ship, and Gallo, a big bluff man, was staring at the miserable Greek slave-physician with a lighted countenance.

“Yonder,” he said, “is the famous physician, Lucanus, adopted son of the greatly noble Roman, Diodorus Cyranus, whose name all Romans honor. For he was a man of the true Roman spirit and patriotism and pride, a tribune and the procurator of Syria, and a favorite soldier of Augustus Caesar. Alas, there are few left like Diodorus. Lucanus does his adoptive father’s memory an honor, for he is celebrated along the Great Sea, and is a man of considerable fortune, and one cherished by Tiberius Caesar, himself. He accepts no fees, no gifts. It is enough for him to minister to the poor. He will accept no rich patients, except those abandoned by their own physicians as hopeless, and then he will demand that they give to help the wretched.” Gallo smiled and shook his large cropped head.