Great Lion of God (53 page)

My father, thought Saul, my father who had no grandson from my loins but this, my father who never told me. And this is my son who will never say Kaddish for me, nor stand beside me in the synagogue, nor look upon my face and call me “Father,” and never rise at my entrance into his house. Nor will his children know me, nor cluster at my knees when I am old. He calls another his sire, and that man has my own and I have nothing.

“You are a Greek, Boreas?”

Again the lad shrugged. Now his smile was not so ready. His brows drew together a little, and he studied Saul more acutely, I Saul in his plain long tunic bound with leather, his cloak of rough cloth, his coarse sandals. Saul was not dressed as finely as himself. I So, with a touch of hauteur he said, “My father is a Greek—Master. He was born in Athens and has an education.”

For the first time he observed that he resembled Saul and again he stared.

“Who are you—Master?”

“My name—my name—” Saul halted. Did Peleus know this youth was not of his own loins? Dacyl had spoken of him. For the boy’s sake he must not be recognized by any of the house of the tribune, Flavius, and for his own sake, also. He said, in a voice that spoke farewell, “I am of no consequence, Boreas. I am a stranger, an alien in the land, and I go to the city, and will not pass this way again.”

Boreas nodded condescendingly. The dog was struggling in his arms, and Boreas shouted with Saul’s own laughing impatience, and the dog fell to the ground and ran. When Boreas had caught him again the stranger had disappeared. There was no sign of him on the narrow and winding road. Boreas considered a moment. He had been attracted to Saul, whose voice had been very kind and gentle, and whose face had shone upon him. But he had also been poor and footsore, and he had no chariot, no horse, not even an ass. It was possible that he was a fleeing slave from one of the great houses along the road. Yet his voice had not been the voice of a slave. Boreas shook his head in bafflement. Then he heard the distant voice of his father calling him, and he ran and forgot Saul at once.

Saul, who had plunged into a thicket when the boy had turned his back, later made his way back to the road, and his house. He thought of his father again, his father who had not spoken but had recognized his grandson, and out of the greatness of his heart, and his love and his knowledge, had assured the future of Boreas. What pain had he suffered in his nights, what longings to embrace Boreas and claim him? The boy was not even circumcised. He was a Jew, and none knew it now but Saul alone, and the boy would never know. He would never know the God of his Fathers, nor would he hear of Sinai and Moses and all the prophets. He worshiped the gods of the heathens; he would marry a woman of his mother’s blood and Saul’s seed would be lost forever, dwindled away in bodies which would not exist but for that anonymous seed.

When Saul reached his house he went at once to his chamber and threw himself face down on his bed and gave himself up to grief and remorse and longing for the son he could never acknowledge, who would never stand at his tomb and sorrow and pray.

I will return at once to Jerusalem, he thought with resolution. But he did not. He lived near Boreas, of his flesh and his blood, and there was a weary reluctance in him to leave this place as yet.

Chapter 24

S
OMETIMES
Saul permitted himself the agonizing pleasure of seeing Boreas at a far distance, in the direction of the pond which he, Saul, never had visited since that last day with Dacyl. On those days he fasted as a punishment for his weakness, and for the danger he had brought near the youth. The fasting was not very onerous, as his tastes were simple and austere, so he sought a way to increase his punishment. He worked in the gardens with his servants, ignoring the cold winds that rushed down from the fiery mountains, and he gathered the grapes and the dates and the pomegranates and raked the leaves and scythed down the grass. When he discovered that he was enjoying this he abandoned it, only to discover that his health had been improved by the labor, and God had sternly warned men to regard their health so that they might better serve Him and be no burden on their family and neighbors. So he returned to the labor. By nature a man of action as well as a man of mind, his flesh hardened in the work and he slept more peacefully at night.

He even cut wood for the baths and the fires and the stoves. The servants shook their heads, but admired his skill and endurance. He was like one, they said among themselves, who was training for the Great Games. He even learned to ride a horse and would often gallop down a lonely Roman road with a cry of exuberance. For a brief while his youth returned to him, his early youth. He discovered appetite and the comfort one could take in cold goat’s milk and cheese and fresh chill water and good warm bread and fruit and fish and roasted lamb. He even began to like wine and enjoy it. But he visited friends of his family very rarely, though invited, and entertained none. However, he would greet Aristo with real affection and feel an emptiness when the prospering Greek—who had now entered two fine horses for the races and had his own charioteer, and was investing in ships returned to his house.

“Saul ben Hillel pursues his God as Cadmus sought his sister, Europa,” Aristo said to his wife, and she replied, with that bland and lovely stupid smile of hers, “And with as little success,” thus again delighting her husband. “He will never build a Thebes,” said Ianthe.

The High Holy Days came and went and the Day of Atonement had much significance for Saul, even greater than usual. Overcome with emotion in the synagogue he beat his forehead on the stone floor and prayed, “Harken to my anguish, Lord, that I may know Your Will for me and may follow it, rejoicing, without sin, without repining, and only with joy.” For the first time in his life, as he rose, the tears on his cheeks, he felt that God had not only heard him out that He had opened His lips and was about to speak, and that His countenance had become faintly benign. It was a matter, now, only of the hour.

Then the snow wreathed the scarlet and distorted shapes of the mountains, and the wind was icy and the rain came to the valley in long gray spears of slashing water, and there was a howling in the porticoes and fistlike sounds on the windows and the strong bronze doors vibrated. The river turned to tumultuous lead, tossing wild spray to the dark heavens, and great ships rocked in the harbor and did not raise their sails. Sometimes, in the mornings, there would be hoar frost on the ground, in the stalks of the dead grass and on the branches of the trees, and the orange rising sun would make it sparkle and dazzle the eye. Then it would lift in a mist and be gone and the air would have a clear resonance so that the voices of far distant shepherds could be heard sharply across field and meadow and the atmosphere seemed permeated with tiny points of whirling light.

The red-legged storks flew over Tarsus and there were noisy clouds of other birds, migrating, and the winter was on the land.

A mysterious dreamlike peace came to Saul. He knew he must wait, that the hour was almost at hand. He was not forgotten. He had never attended any of the Roman games, but he had heard of them from Aristo, who had once told him that in every chariot race there was another charioteer waiting, so that when the first was thrown from the vehicle the other could take his place. He felt like that waiting charioteer, impatient for the race, for the victory, for the prize. Somewhere the first charioteer had fallen, or was about to fall, and Saul would be called.

Then the first pink almond blossoms appeared and Saul, like one amazed, saw that the spring was on the earth again and “the sound of the turtle was heard in the land.” The weeks had gone and he had not noticed their passing. He received a letter from his sister, Sephorah, pleading with him to return to Jerusalem for the Passover, for the Seder, which was almost at hand. If he hastened, she wrote, he would be in time. Why did he linger in Tarsus? His business was concluded. His family in Jerusalem yearned to embrace him.

He walked in his gardens and saw the deepening blue sky, the blue pond, the freshening grass, the brightening and flowering trees and the smell of the holy and fecund earth. His heart lifted like that of a warrior who hears a trumpet note, and he cried aloud, with joyful impatience, “Yes, yes, Lord, speak!” Sometimes he found himself trembling. Life flushed into his veins, passion made his spirit soar. He said to Reb Isaac, “I will soon hear the call.” And Reb Isaac said to him, with his tired seamed smile, “Recall what the people said to Moses, ‘Let not God speak to us lest we die!’”

“But you, Rabbi, have heard Him speak often in your soul.”

The rabbi gazed at him a moment and then muttered, “But not as He will speak to you, unfortunate—or blessed—man!”

Saul accepted Reb Isaac’s invitation to dine at his house on the occasion of the First Seder. And one morning Saul awakened to the knowledge that at sunset the feast of the Passover would be held, that most holy day commemorating the “passing over” by the angels of wrath who had preserved the Children of Israel in their captivity in Egypt.

Before the feast they would go to the synagogue, and then the Jewish families of Tarsus would gather at their own tables in their houses and solemnly recount the awesome occasion of the first Passover, and the grandfathers would look at their grandsons and would retell the wondrous tale, and there would be rejoicing and the finest fruits of the season and wine and laughter and lighted candles, and fathers would give thanks that they had fine sons and beautiful daughters and gracious wives.

It was warm now in the gardens, and Saul wandered in them exhilarated, as he had never been exhilarated before, at the wide loveliness of the earth which appeared to be rejoicing with men. Birds were chorusing in the passionate green of the trees. The myrtles were blossoming. The sweetest wind frolicked among new flowers and there were small white clouds in the vivid blue of the sky. The buds of the lilies were like long bulbs of alabaster, glistening and translucent, and their leaves were thin green spears. It was noon, and it was unusually hot, and Saul sat down on a marble bench and looked at the whispering and singing life all about him and laughed to see a jeweled little lizard race near his feet then race away. The black and white swans and the foolish Chinese ducks swam in their reflections, and the water of the pond was like a liquid sapphire.

The heat increased, and Saul felt drowsy and re-entered his house and slept for a while. When he awakened he ordered milk and bread and cheese for himself, and his heart was like a ready cymbal waiting to be struck. The overseer of the hall came to him and said, “Lord, there will be a storm.”

The doors of the atrium were open and from his seat in the dining hall Saul could look through the atrium into the garden. The light outside was now so incandescent that it hurt the eye. There was no sound of bird or wind, only that iridescent silence. The trees stood in it, quivering with brilliance, and the pillars of the portico seemed to have a core of fire within them, so intensely were they glowing. But Saul saw that the sky had become of a more radiant and fervid a blue, utterly cloudless.

After he had finished his small meal he went into the gardens again, and admitted to himself that never had he seen such awesome light nor felt a greater heat, no, not even on the desert. He panted, and heads of sweat appeared on his fair and freckled face. His afflicted eye smarted in the benumbing effulgence, and began to water, as did his good eye. His blue tunic clung to his body and stung him with moisture. Every object, every tree and flower, every wall—now rippling with scarlet and purple flowers—the white walls of the house, the very pond itself, burned with a blinding radiance as if each were being consumed by the sun. A very holocaust of flaming scintillation hovered over all things, appeared to emanate even from the pebbles of the paths. And the heat mounted.

But there was no cloud, no rushing wind, no sign of any storm. Saul looked at the red mountains. Surely they were raging as if being devoured by internal furnaces! Saul could not look at them long. He walked to the road where he could see the valley and the river. The hurrying water was so bright that he had to shut his eyes, and when he did so it was as if he saw, on the darkness of his eyelids, the river again, and now it was the color of blood. A curious oppression fell on Saul, a deep foreboding, a pale terror, a wan agony. He sat down on the marble bench, and panted in the heat, and yet his sweat had turned cold.

He kept his eyes closed, wondering at his sensations which almost prostrated him. He was bemused. Then, all at once, he felt a vast coldness and heard the sudden howl of a wind and it struck his flesh with savage blows. He opened his eyes.

He could not believe it. Black night was on the land, and there was only the most absolute darkness upon him.

I have gone blind, he thought with renewed terror. My sight was taken from me in that fearful light! His hands became wet, and he clasped them together, and again was conscious of the cold. I cannot live if I am blind, he thought. Of what use to God is a blind man? He groaned aloud. And then—horror of horrors—his groan was echoed from the very vitals of the earth in one low vast thunder, and the ground under his feet moved and swayed and the wind howled louder and the chill was shuddering.

Again and again the earth moved and groaned in torment and the wind screamed to the black and empty sky, and there came sudden human voices, bursting out in confused fright and stunned alarm and the sound of women’s screams, all coming from the alarmed house. The earth rumbled and slid and tilted like a vessel, and thundered in her heart as if dying. (An enormous earthquake occurred at this hour in Nicaea. In the fourth year of tile two hundred and second Olympiad, Phlegon wrote that “a great darkness occurred all over Europe which was inexplicable to the astronomers,” and that it engulfed Asia also. The records of Rome, according to Tertullian, made note of a complete and universal darkness, which frightened the Senate, then convening, and threw the city into an anxious turmoil, for there was no storm, and no clouds, the records of Grecian and Egyptian astronomers show that this darkness was so intense for a while that even they, skeptical men of science, were alarmed. People streamed in panic through the streets of every city, and birds went to rest and cattle returned to their paddocks. But there is no note of an eclipse of the sun; no eclipse was expected. It was as if the sun had reheated through space and had been lost. Many earthquakes, some of them very destructive, occurred widely. Mayan and Inca records also show this phenomenon, allowing for the difference in solar time.)