Threshold of Fire (5 page)

Because of his mother, the young Klafthi belongs forever to the others, not to the People. Eliezar has never doubted the precision of the Law. And yet … the word “slave” will never cross his lips in connection with that child. He can’t even think it. The overseer, a freedman, assumes that the boy who has been entrusted to him belongs to his own caste. The boy himself knows nothing; he accepts his place and his surroundings as a matter of course …. But is
that really true? Whenever Eliezar is on the estate, his eyes search the grounds until somewhere — near the stables, or outside the wall with the watch towers, in the orchard — he discovers that tanned figure, swift as water. The superintendent’s clerk has said more than once that the boy can think as fast as he can run; he learned to read and write with as much ease as if he were playing a game.

Behind Eliezar’s closed eyelids appears the fleeting gleam of white porticos, the long galleries of the schools of Alexandria. The desire to develop an unformed mind — is that pride? to be able to put in charge of the estate, which holds no interest for his legitimate heir, a young administrator, a child of the country who values the land … To glide through the reeds in the dahabyah in the cool of the evening under a yellow-rose sky and listen to a trusted voice next to him reporting on harvests and flocks … Is it pride to want to think about the future? Is it better to do nothing, to let matters drift, to wait passively to see what will happen to the boy: a servant in the striped shirt of a fellaheen, working the land, rowing the dahabyah, who might one day, consumed by an uneasiness he doesn’t understand, run off to become a thief or an assassin?

Standing in the darkness, his eyes fixed on the luminous blue rectangle of the gauze-curtained open door, Eliezar pushes these questions aside, cleanses himself spiritually before the Divine Presence, utters the Shema for peace through the night.

Perhaps it is the light falling over the meandering black and white pattern of the mosaics — suddenly the image rises before the Prefect of a chessboard divided into black and white squares, and a hand cautiously shifting the carved ivory figures, one by one. An echo of words spoken long ago in a house in Alexandria, in a space dominated by a silver candlestick with seven branches …

His own voice, too loud in the stillness, expresses what was for him the conclusion of the conversation that had just ended. “It is we who rule the world.”

The other’s silence lasts until he takes a chess piece out of play. Then the ironic question:
“We?”

Hadrian can never understand or tolerate this constant need for precise consideration of the fine points of Roman status. In spite of the favor bestowed upon him by Rome, in spite of the prestige and official citizenship of his family — which has served the Empire with honor for several generations
— he feels himself to be a Roman of the second rank, compared with the Romans of Rome. This man opposite him, with his tired eyes and soft voice, has no aspirations, for himself or his kinfolk, to what the Christianized Egyptian Hadrian considers the highest honor; he doesn’t mock Hadrian, but he seems to detract from his identification as a proper Latin, to which he has a right through his upbringing, his outlook, and above all, his recent appointment.

After that first noteworthy working visit to the estate in the Delta, an unusual relationship has developed between Hadrian and Eliezar ben Ezekiel — not friendship, even less a conventional exchange of courtesy visits (Hadrian goes to Eliezar, never the other way round).

His own motivations are not clear to Hadrian. Sometimes he is overcome by a certain uneasiness, a feeling that he is poised on the brink of an abyss: he feels compelled to sound its depths. But he always draws back from the decisive step. He does not pay his visits for business reasons; Eliezar fulfils his obligations with exemplary precision, satisfying all demands. What other points of contact do their lives have? As an Egyptian, a Christian and a Roman by preference, Hadrian feels a triple weight of distrust
toward the Jew, mixed with wonder and secret aversion. His visits to Eliezar’s house carry a touch of self-torment and at the same time seem necessary to slake a nameless, growing curiosity. What is he seeking? Why?

Hadrian cannot play the Indian game — with two groups of ivory figures on a board with black and white squares — which Eliezar keeps within reach of his hand. He doesn’t see the sense of it: why a complicated system of related shapes, conjuring problems over and over again out of nothing? The Egyptian finds frivolity and the pursuit of profit understandable (and objectionable) reasons for playing games, but what delight can there be in seeking solutions to endlessly repeated problems?

Eliezar never receives his guest in the family circle, but always in the quiet austere chamber where the only signs of personal taste are the chessboard and the seven-branched candlestick. In spite of this reserve, Hadrian senses vaguely from the other’s manner, something which is never put into words but which they have in common. It is this which drives Hadrian at intervals — under some pretext or other which is always courteously accepted — to pay his visits to Eliezar’s house.

At that first non-working visit, questions are asked casually, answered casually, about the outcome of the incident in the canefields. Order has been restored, that kind of mischievous behavior will not occur again. The boy who killed the cock has been sent away.

“An intelligent child — restless because he’s so talented … I’ve sent him to school in the city; he has the makings of a teacher, a secretary, or at the least, a helpful administrator for my estate.”

A quiet hint: no reason for doubt or uneasiness on the part of the official, who is always well-informed about the regulations promulgated by the Emperor Theodosius on the subject of pagan practices. Hadrian is no longer faced with the choice of guilt for ignoring a punishable act or of getting Eliezar into trouble. He wants to indicate in no uncertain terms (magistrates who ignore their duty in these matters commit a crime) to the Jew — who had taken justice into his own hands so quickly and with such self-assurance — that this has become a question of conscience. Hadrian therefore evokes the militant stance in matters of belief of Ambrosius, the Bishop of Milan, whose influence is felt beyond the court to the farthest corners of the Empire. Often Eliezar
appears better informed than Hadrian himself, about what is happening in Constantinople and Milan.

They discuss politics — that is, Hadrian takes the floor, not only to broach a subject which passionately interests him, but also to look like even more of an authority — in short, a Roman — in the eyes of Eliezar who, while he listens, usually looks at the chessboard and from time to time moves a piece. The stream of words is directed against the other’s slight reactions. Hadrian has difficulty establishing a connection between what he is saying and the older man’s rare responses: a smile, a frown, a thoughtful look, a sorrowful closing of the eyes. Has he ever secredy hoped to catch Eliezar in opinions which would be considered unacceptable by the pious Emperor Theodosius and his powerful bishops?

Later, thinking back on these visits, Hadrian realizes that on questions of domestic and foreign policy, Eliezar prefers to analyze the present situation rather than express an opinion about objectives. He never uses the words “divine” or “august” when he speaks of the Emperor, but praises Theodosius’s zest for work, dependability and family feeling. There is always a noticeable strain of skepticism which the young official finds extremely provoking. Does that
elusive reserve hide a seed of rebellion, a danger to Rome? He tries to get a hold on Eliezar’s political opinions; his picture of them is alternately black and white, like the squares on the chessboard.

Shreds of conversation, submerged for thirty years, rise in Hadrian’s memory while he stares at the black and white marble floors of the prefecture. He remembers some things which he himself had said and what Eliezar had replied, or implied. There was the question of the appointment of Flavius Stilicho to the supreme command of the army. As an Egyptian by birth, Hadrian could hardly take the liberty of openly criticizing the elevation to the highest military post of someone who was of half-Greek, half-Vandal descent. Since he had only recently become a Christian himself, Hadrian could not look down on the Christianized Stilicho.

Because of his irrational aversion to the streak of Northern barbarism in the most powerful personality at the Imperial court, Hadrian entered into an alliance with those authorities in Alexandria who were hostile to Stilicho. A rumor was being bruited about that the liberal attitude of the new
Magister Militum
toward unbelievers had incurred the
displeasure of Bishop Ambrosius. Eliezar had this reaction: “Flavius Stilicho is a diplomat and a man of integrity. His appointment is a counterbalance to the influence of incompetent or corrupt advisers.”

Hadrian (tensely): Such as?

Eliezar (calmly): Let’s say such as the
praefectus praetorio Orientis.

“Rufinus?”

“Rufinus.” (An enemy of Bishop Ambrosius and, in addition, a pagan Gaul. No possible objection there.)

Still another memory: a rebellion against the authorities in Thessalonica was punished, at Rufinus’s insistence, by putting to the sword seven thousand inhabitants of the city after they were invited to the circus on the pretext of watching games. For this mass murder, Bishop Ambrosius laid a severe penance on the Emperor. When Hadrian praised this action of the Church, Eliezar looked away: “Whoever is guilty can’t be free: a man is like wax in the hands of those who know what evil he has done.”

A new flash of memory: there was news that Christians at Callinicum, on the Persian border, had destroyed a synagogue. Emperor Theodosius gave orders that the criminals should be punished and the
Jewish community fully compensated. But Bishop Ambrosius forced the Emperor to annul these measures, arguing that to tolerate Jews is to persecute Christians. When Hadrian mentions this, Eliezar does not react. His sharp-featured face looks ashen in the reflection of his purple caftan; his eyes are filled with shadows. Suddenly he begins to talk about Flavius Stilicho, a solitary man in the most responsible post in the Empire, unimpeachable, capable, prudent. “A man who is the object of hatred and threats because he won’t allow anyone to manipulate him. He is indispensable as no one else is …”

Nevertheless, Hadrian does not feel more sympathetic to the barbarian — on the contrary.

Gradually, he has begun to talk persistently about religious questions—specifically the new laws against idolatry and heresy, hoping to trap the Jew into reactions that will confirm his own belief that he, Hadrian, alone knows the truth. But from the first, he faces an impenetrable wall. Like a mirror or a sounding-board, Eliezar echoes what Hadrian says, or is silent insofar as his silence does not become
discourteous.

“In the name of Jesus Christ our Redeemer who died on the Cross for our sins,” Hadrian, time and again, curses the worship of Serapis, who has been the god of the city of Alexandria since the time of the Ptolemies; he describes in profuse detail what goes on in that irritatingly gaudy temple, which is as impregnable as a fortress: loathsome orgies, debauchery between men, infant sacrifice.

Eliezar: That’s what they say. It’s never been proven.

Hadrian: All the priests are castrated or perverted, a clique of so-called initiates in the secrets of Serapis as god of the underworld, who practice magic, call up spirits … It appears that a goodly number of young students are involved in this scandalous situation.

Eliezar: Those sorts of temples preserve very old traditions of knowledge. Remember that the unfamiliar and incomprehensible always rouse fear and distrust.

Hadrian
(angry at the other’s conciliatory attitude; naturally, Eliezar doesn’t have to worry about it)
: There’s a stinking ulcer at the heart of Alexandria. When will that be burned away?

Eliezar: Violence is pointless.

Hadrian: In the battle of Good against Evil, we don’t talk about violence — it’s a sacred struggle.

Fragmented memories, like bubbles rising from the depths of a marsh. Whatever is fermenting on the bottom is hidden from Hadrian. He knows only the surface of the conversations with Eliezar which he remembers now. It is impossible to tell what thoughts were going through Eliezar’s head as he bent over the chessboard. But perhaps this:

Who can dare to believe that he can checkmate the evil in the world? The “Savior”: those who follow him imagine that they are “redeemed”. Pride, pride, but dressed in deceptively humble garments. As if it could have been given to mortal man to settle accounts miraculously, in the space of a moment, with the powers of darkness. The Nazarene did not act wisely when he preached a doctrine that most people would misunderstand. He himself knew the full significance — would he otherwise have spoken in parables?

He has split Judaism into two camps; those who respect the Law and know all things come in their own time and demand their own price — including the fulfillment of our hopes — and those who covet salvation, who cannot wait, who desire redemption, who refuse to admit that each of us, fully aware of our own limitations, must, alone and unyielding, regenerate our alliance with the Eternal. Good and Evil are inherent in human nature, indissolubly bound up with conscience. Knowledge of evil, or even complicity in it, is the price man must pay for his sense of morality. This imposes the heaviest responsibility, demands the greatest humility. To be a Jew is to know that being chosen also means suffering beneath the full weight of evil, which must multiply a thousandfold before human insight into these things is accomplished. And to be fully aware of this always, never to forget it, is the essence of justice itself.

To be “redeemed” — it means to be able to enjoy the privileges of the human condition while being at the same time as innocent, as
irresponsible, as the beasts of the field. To worship a Redeemer — it means wanting to serve two masters, to be half man, half animal, relieved of the burden of guilt and sorrow created by our own imperfection. To go on living halfway between the unthinking acceptance of the state of nature and the assurance of having been made in the image of God.