Great Lion of God (78 page)

“I have observed your Nazarenes in Tarsus. It is true that the majority of them are Jews, and that may partly explain their somber countenances. I have listened to them, unfortunately, and I have listened to you. I find nothing in your revelations, as you call them, which inspire me with joy, or give me fresher pleasure in the world, or a happier heart.”

“You are an old lecher, and a voluptuary,” said Saul, but he smiled.

“If I am those—and I do not deny the truth of it—then I have also done no man any harm. To be harmless is the greatest of virtues, Saul. I treat every man with as much justice as there is in my nature, and do not cheat, unless it is in the marketplace where all men are cheaters. I could wish nothing more than the epitaph: ‘He enjoyed the world and loved it, and saw beauty in it as well as ugliness and pain, and he departed with regret yet with relief, for he was old and would sleep.’

“I do not question why we are here, nor how we arrived, nor the purpose, for I do not believe there is a purpose. Ah, you frown, Saul, in your old impatient manner. I am content to be here, to watch the banners of the seasons and the changing of the trees and the flowers, and to lie in the arms of my beautiful wife and stroke her hair, and dine, and read poetry and admire vases. You would say you know the purpose of our being, and you have explained it to me. I confess it bores me. Who would wish for eternal life except a ravenous fool who cannot satisfy his greed and his appetites? A man dies when he is surfeited, whether he is young or old. How long he lives is not important; it is only how he lives, in as much beauty as he can see with his eyes, touch with his hands, hear with his ears.

“Sometimes I remember the beliefs of the Indus, that we are endlessly born again. Is that not a frightful thing to contemplate? Lovely though the world is, one life is quite enough for any man, and then silence and darkness and rest. Thanos is a sweeter god than any other, and I await his call in tranquillity.

“Tell me, my Saul: Is your faith a happier one than mine?”

As he was obdurately honest, Saul hesitated. Then he said, “But we look for even greater happiness in an eternal noon, and a contentment beyond our present knowing, face to face with the Beatific Vision of God.”

Aristo sighed and scratched his cheek thoughtfully and narrowed his eyes against the sun that struck like fire on the gardens. “I confess the thought wearies me. Who would wish to spend eternity glaring at any vision? Again, I have listened to your Nazarenes and their ecstatic accounts of their coming Heaven, and it does not tempt me. They seek to convince their fellow Jews, who usually repel them, and I find that very perspicacious of them—”

“Jew or Nazarene, we believe in the same God, and in the same Heaven, Aristo.”

“How unfortunate. It does not appeal to me. Nor do spiritual raptures, except those incited by beauty. I hear rumors that the new Jewish sect is spreading like fire in dry corn. I think that is very sad, for too many reasons, many of which I have already confided to you. I do not love the Romans, but I admit that they have brought order and peace to the world, and they are the people of Law, and of a rigorous if unimaginative nature. They are also scientists and men of valor, though not famous for discrimination, and are gross materialists. However, they have built magnificent if heavy cities, and have established commerce and trade and amity and health among nations, and are rooted, more or less, like oaks. Can you imagine what disorder and confusion and catastrophe would occur in this world if the Romans ever embraced your God? All that they have established would vanish, and as Nazarenes do not love conquest or the sword nor harsh justice, the lusty barbarians would seize the world. If I could pray to any god I would pray that this disaster never come upon the Romans, though I have cursed them in my lifetime.”

“It is useless,” said Saul, and looked for a ripe fig and began to suck it. “We can never come to terms in our semantics.”

“Why do not you Jews keep your Messias, as you call him, for yourselves alone, and let the rest of the world bask in peace?”

“It is commanded we feed all men the bread of truth,” said Saul. “For the sake of their eternal souls.”

Aristo held up his veined hands in mock horror. “Let me make a bargain with you: Attend to your own soul, and in gratitude I will attend to mine!”

“I love you,” said Saul, in a low voice, “and so I would bring you to the Messias. I have told you how I saw Him, and His glorious appearance, and the utter joy that came to me on the desert near Damascus. I am not eloquent, though you have said I am, otherwise I should have convinced and awed you, and you would have come to Him, yourself.”

Aristo was touched. He tapped Saul lightly on his knee. “Dear child,” he said, “you are eloquent enough, and Ianthe is entranced by your words. But as all men would not desire to live in Rome, or even in Athens, so all men cannot desire your Heaven. Possess it for yourself, and may the gods not disappoint you.”

“And you are not moved by the thought that you will see your beloved wife in the world hereafter, if you fall at the feet of the Messias and accept Him?”

Aristo laughed a little. “One life with a woman is quite enough, however loved, and I am certain that in her heart Ianthe would not desire to spend eternity with me, though she loves me. A repetition of feasts would be very Hades, itself, and so would be endless communication even with those who are of our hearts. Your Heaven must be a noisy place, and I prefer the waters of Lethe, and now, if you will forgive me, dear child, I will return to my house and sleep until the day has gone and the cool night has come. More than that, no man can desire.”

There were but two households in Tarsus where Saul was welcomed, and those were the households of Aristo and the sons and grandsons of old Reb Isaac, dead these many years. In the latter house there dwelt the beauteous and childless young widow, Elisheba, who had once desired to marry Saul and whom he had rejected. The male relatives and descendants of Reb Isaac were cordial and kind to the lonely young man, partly in deference to the memory of the old patriarch, and partly to the fact that Saul was of a noble house and rich and unmarried.

All had become Nazarenes and Saul found comfort in the house where he had studied as a youth. None of the men had the intelligence and wisdom of the patriarch, but they were friendly souls and Saul curbed his impatience when they merely stared at him with embarrassment after he had made some obscure reference to some obscure prophet or commentator. At first he sought to teach them and brought them ancient tomes, but though they, in their efforts to please, accepted those books and promised to read them they, alas, were no more informed than before. Only their confusion grew.

Why had God limited the intelligence of the great majority of men? Then Saul suddenly remembered what Rabban Gamaliel had told him: “The world is a world of labor and physical necessities. If all men were born delicate scholars and men of intellect and artistry, who then would hew the wood, build the fires, draw the water, erect the houses, establish roads, manufacture goods for commerce, sail the ships, wash the walls, clean the sewers, plow and sow and reap? Not that,” said the Rabban with a chuckle, “I would not like to observe some of the said scholars forced to do some of that labor, also! It might drive various of their dreams from their heads—dangerous dreams—and acquaint them with raw reality and put calluses where they dash perfume, and send them to bed, not to toss on soft pillows, but to sound sleep on straw. Beware of the man who denigrates those who labor. He is a fool, however learned. And one must consider if the man with skilled hands is not at least as valuable as a man with skilled brains, and has his own intelligence.”

The table in the house of Reb Isaac, though no longer presided over by the dead and famous Leah, was excellent, and Saul was welcome at any time. The ladies of the household—the wives and daughters of the men, and Elisheba—cooked lustily and lavishly, and served fine wines. Modestly, they waited on the men, as they had been taught, their faces averted and their heads covered as becoming to Jewish matrons, but Elisheba’s luminous dark eyes dwelt on Saul lingeringly, and her pale bright face became brighter, and for some careless reason a wing of her brilliant black hair would frequently escape her headcloth and lie over her rounded cheek. The same carelessness was sometimes evident in the tightness of the sash about her slender waist, and the smoothness of her garments over her rounded bosom and hips. The men did not reproach her, nor did their wives and daughters, and often Saul caught the fragrance of mint or rose or jasmine as she passed him meekly with the dishes or gave him another spoon or knife.

Obtuse in the ways of women, and unaware of a household conspiracy, it was some time before Saul became overtly aware of Elisheba. His aversion for women since Dacyl had not decreased over the years, and the yearnings and fevers of his flesh he ascribed to sinfulness and forbidden lust and he had quelled them. Now, after a year in Tarsus the yearnings and fevers were returning, and mortifications of his flesh and labor in his own gardens and endless studies and long stridings along the roads did little to suppress them. Women were a snare and an evil, though a necessary one for the propagation of the race, and they had wiles and were innately wanton, and therefore should be rigorously controlled by the men of the family and sternly kept in place, lest God be offended, and they should not be permitted to rule or raise their voices. And the urges men felt for them, apart from the marital bed where appetites should be judiciously indulged at specified times only, were the snares of Satan for the souls of hapless men. Had not the prophets so warned?

Nevertheless, Saul became more and more aware of Elisheba, and all his efforts to regard her as a trap for his unwary soul did nothing to abolish that awareness. Lately his heart had a curious way of bounding when she entered the dining hall with a dish for the table, her beautiful eyes lowered and her rosy lips held in a demure line, and when she left a brightness left with her. He was puzzled. Faint echoes of what he had felt for Dacyl began to haunt him. He did not recognize them for love, but told himself they were lust. Elisheba’s dead husband had had no brothers, and so she was still a widow, which Saul thought unfortunate, and he wondered often why her male relatives had not sought another husband for her. It was very strange that when he considered reminding the men of their duty he felt fresh yearnings and umbrage.

Then one night when he dined at the house of Reb Isaac Elisheba did not wait on the table with her female relatives, nor did he see her in the halls, gliding gracefully and with bent head. It took some time before he, with an affectation of uninterest, inquired about her. His host informed him that she was visiting her sister in Tarsus, the sister having recently given birth. She would not return for some time. Saul did not notice the smiling glances exchanged among the men. He only was conscious, with a sudden aghast knowledge, that the absence of Elisheba devastated him.

How could he, who had given his life to God and His Messias, have been so betrayed by his own flesh? he asked himself in anguish for several days and nights thereafter. Was this another temptation, another snare, of Satan to draw him from his ordained dedication? Saul walked the dim roads at midnight and wept and wrung his hands. It horrified him when he discovered that without his conscious knowledge he was haunting the vicinity of the house where Elisheba lived, in the dark hours before dawn.

It was during one of these dark hours that he encountered her outside the walls and the gardens of her brothers’ house.

At first he was affrighted, thinking her a shade, and then he was appalled at the shadow of a young woman creeping about alone in the darkness, and he advanced upon her, and then, by the faint light of the stars he saw Elisheba’s shining countenance, mute, glowing, filled with helpless love for him. He stopped, struck and trembling. She raised her hands to him, and he saw her long uncovered hair and the whiteness of her neck and the quick lifting of her bosom.

At what moment she was in his arms he could never remember, but with an acute sensation of joy he felt the pressure of her young breasts against his chest, and the warmth of her body against his own, and then his head bent and their lips met in hot and tender passion. All his flesh shuddered with an anguish of rapture when she put her arms about his neck and her sleeves fell back and the warm roundness of her flesh was unimpeded. This was quite different from the raptures of the spirit which he had known, yet in some fashion it was not too dissimilar.

He held her tightly in his arms, as if afraid that she might be turned into mist or vanish, and he heard her warm murmurings against his throat, and his heart rejoiced and his eyes melted in tears of happiness, and yet his mind roared against him. He was betraying God, to Whom he had pledged his miserable life in absolute service. He was betraying the Messias, Who had forgiven his monstrous sins and had condescended to rescue him and give him a mission—though the mission, after a year in Tarsus, still eluded him. Another thought shrieked in his brain: Was the Messias permitting this new temptation of him, this glorious temptation, from Satan, to test his worthiness?

But, how sweet was woman flesh, and the scent of a woman, and the softness of a woman! How could anything so desirable, so fulfilling, so lovable and so full of beauty, be sinful? Saul’s head roared with mingled passion and horror at himself.

Now he could hear what Elisheba was whispering against his throat, and it was the love song of the Queen of Sheba, and never had it sounded so heart-shaking:

“‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love! His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me! The voice of my beloved—!’”

The whole spirit of Saul thrilled and leaped at these wondrous words and his lonely heart knew the heat of love and desire and total ecstasy, and he held Elisheba closer to him and murmured in reply, in the words of Solomon: