Great Lion of God (17 page)

When Saul did not answer or move, Hillel continued, “It is the way of youth to intensify, to throw itself into the depths, to climb the most incredible mountain, to rejoice as a madman rejoices, to mourn as though the end of all being had arrived. I would not have you believe that it is my opinion that youth cannot sin, and even most dreadfully. But it does take a certain amount of knowledge and experience to sin willfully and with the full consent of one’s soul, and to rejoice in the sinning, and to know it was sin from the first moment of temptation. Youth has not had these—advantages.” And Hillel smiled.

Saul said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger, “My father, you were always a tolerant man and not always did you adhere to the teachings of the Pharisees, and often jested at a point you considered too rigorous.”

It is useless, thought Hillel. He rose, but he did not know where he should go.

He was now too distressed. He only knew he must leave his son. I have lost him, he thought. And then he thought, “But I never had him and I must face this finally.”

He said, “You are committing a mortal sin. You defy God to forgive you.”

It was then that Saul seized the red hair of his temples in an agony and pulled his head down upon his knees. Seeing this, Hillel felt deep anguish of his own, and he pondered, his unseen hand outstretched to his son. It was not God entirely, then, which so tortured his son, nor even a misapprehension of God. This was a human guilt that beset him, a human woe. Saul was using his God as a Scapegoat, as the Receiver of his torture. When a man cried, “God will not forgive me!” he often meant “I cannot forgive myself!”

So Hillel said, “All pain passes, all loss, my son.” His voice was deep and compassionate. “I thought I should die when your mother died, but it was not God’s will, blessed be His Name. I had no desire to live. I longed for the sight of her face, her voice, the rustle of her garments. When I considered that no longer would I see her, no longer caress her, and that she was lost to me, I almost lost my mind. My sorrow is still almost beyond my capacity to bear. But we were born to be men, and not weak beasts, who lie in the dust and tamely give up their lives when it becomes unendurable. What tears your heart has torn the hearts of multitudes before you, and will tear them again, age after age. But hearken to this: You are young. You will survive. Your wound will heal. It will leave a scar, but it will heal.”

It was as if Saul had not heard him, so Hillel slowly went from the cabin and returned to his daughter. Saul lifted his head. He said aloud, “It will not heal. No, it will never heal.” He began to weep silently, in rage and love and hatred and in passion of spirit, in longing and in loathing, in yearning and in self-disgust.

Hillel said to his daughter, Sephorah, who was much concerned about his sad face and mournful eyes, “I fear it is as Aristo has said and I dared to laugh in my ignorance when he said it!—that two giants struggle in the soul of my son: The normal young lust for life and joy in living and rejoicing in each morn, and an iron certainty that these are evil and must be smothered and murdered in order that all a man’s thoughts should be centered on God. Saul, then, deprives himself of his youth and his natural young gaiety and the wonder and the beauty and the grandeur of creation, and his expectation of tomorrow and its gifts, considering these worthless and a snare for his soul.

He would shroud God in crepuscular clouds and terrible lightnings and make of Him, not a loving Father, merciful and full of lovingkindness, but a Judge armed with terror and vengeance, seeking out the smallest sin or error in order to punish it most cruelly, land delighting not in His children but regarding them as an oppressive king regards his people, suspecting them of crimes and rebellions, and preparing for them the most hideous flagellations and death. Surely,” said Hillel, as the full enormity of the thought developed in him, “that is a sin which God, blessed be His Name, must find it hard to forgive!”

He added, “In one of the Psalms David says, ‘When they said, let us go into the House of the Lord, I was glad.’ But Saul goes to the House of God like a chained criminal, desirous, aye desirous, not only to worship but to be chastised. What secret sin he has committed does not deserve so fearful a fate, my poor son.”

Saul leaned on the rail of the ship and saw the great port of Joppa rising out of the blood-red sea and standing against a sky as scarlet and as ominous. There was the land of his fathers, the holy land, the sacred soil of the prophets, the mountain filled with fire on which God had thundered, the home of the patriarchs, the cradle of the Messias to come, the matrix in which the Messianic Age would be formed, the little land from which would speak the Voice which would reconcile the nations and bring eternal peace to the world. There rose the blessed Mount of Sion, and the golden Temple and all the wisdom which would enlighten mankind and lift the darkness in which it lay, groveling like a beast.

The thin silver thread of the new moon lifted itself over the sea and into the direful sky, and one single star, burning large and gold, stood in the zenith.

Now Saul could smell the earth, acrid and spicy and lustful, as the galleon swung toward the harbor. This was an hour he had dreamed of all his life, and he had anticipated his joy and excitement. But he felt no joy, but only an anxious dread. He had no right to step on that soil, a corrupt man, except to atone, to pray that one day he might be forgiven.

He knew that among the many passengers also watching the approach of Joppa stood his father and his sister, Sephorah. He knew his father suffered for him; he knew he had given his father sorrow, and it was an awful pain in him. But how worse a pain, perhaps, if his father guessed the truth! Sometimes a small thought twisted in him that his father might not be so pained, might consider his sin small and trivial and easily forgiven, and might plead his youth and the natural temptations of youth. Perversely, for that very reason Saul could not confide in Hillel. Worse than the thought of his father’s possible pain was the thought that the sin might not pain him at all! He preferred to believe in Hillel’s condemnation.

As for Sephorah, Saul’s love for his sister was a misery in his heart, but he could not bring himself to admit that he had been too harsh to her. If she were not restrained now in her wanton behavior, were not taught the precepts of the mothers of Israel, then she was doomed in body and in soul. Better it would be for her to die before she had been corrupted, as he had been corrupted. A virgin death was better than a harlot’s life. Yet there was an intangible sickness in Saul’s thoughts, as he contemplated his sister and he dared not explore the reason. She would marry Ezekiel ben David and be subject to his mother, Clodia, rumored to be a just and rigorous and virtuous woman. She would be immured from all the voluptuousness of this present evil world, and all its vices and clamors, its pollutions and its destructions. Saul sought relief in the thought, and when it did not come, he was dismayed.

Hillel and Sephorah were not avoiding Saul; it was he who was avoiding them. In fact, they had begun to converse amiably with other passengers and the centurion who was the officer of the Roman legionnaires. How was it possible for them to be amiable to the enslavers of their country and their people, the despoilers and blasphemers of their land? Saul had never loved Romans. Now he despised and hated them.

He glanced sideways along the deck, full of gloom. The vast leavens, the vast sea behind and about them, still glowed as if in Barnes, but the ship’s deck was dark, the figures on it dark also. The white sails were lashed with scarlet. Joppa rocked nearer over the burning water and Saul now saw that the famous harbor was full of ships, small and large, a forest of denuded masts like the bare branches of winter trees. A hot breath blew from the heated land, resinous, perfumed, somewhat putrid, peppery, dusty, reeking of crowded streets and humanity. Plangent sound came over the water, voices, roars, shouts, hard loud laughter, a sudden ruffle of drums. Now twinkling lights of lanterns appeared on the docks and the crimson flare of torches. And there, rising and fluttering in its hugeness, the banner of Rome, its red color almost lost against the red sky, but Saul knew what was on it: “S.P.Q.R.—Senatus Populusque Romanus—The Senate and People of Rome.”

Blasphemous, incongruous, shameful, frightful! thought Saul ben Hillel, and he beat his fists heavily on the rail of the ship. He could have wept in his anger and hatred and outrage. Someone touched his arm. Hillel said, “We are coming into the harbor. Calm yourself, my son.” Hillel’s face was pale and shadowy in the light of the celestial conflagration. “It is not to be borne,” said Saul through his teeth. What must be borne must be borne,” said Hillel, and returned to Sephorah and her maidens.

But the Messias, blessed be His Name, would drive the Romans into the sea as the Egyptians had been drowned, and Rome, that boastful monster of a city, that dragon of a city, foul to the heart of her, dripping with the blood of the conquered, would die in one flash of avenging lightning.

The galleon was swaying between the crowded ranks of other ships and vessels in the harbor and the crew were ready with ropes and anchors and there was much running on the deck and excited voices from the passengers, and eager laughter. The sailors darted among heaps of chests and coffers and pouches belonging to the passengers, and their hoarse and impatient cries were like the voices of foxes. Vultures, black as death and as silent, were wheeling and circling against the redness of the sky. The galleon docked. Beyond the wharfs was the tumultuous city of Joppa, full of lights and torches, clamorous. All at once darkness fell on the earth, the ominous color was gone except for one long ember on the western horizon in which the last scarlet circle of the sun still burned, a dying eye.

Amid the flickering of the lanterns and torches on the docks stood the ubiquitous Roman soldiers, helmeted, the famous short-sword fastened to their leather girdles, their legs spread, their faces apparently indifferent, their breasts armored in thick leather. Behind them seethed and fluttered welcoming relatives of the passengers, and behind them was a crowd of chariots and cars and horses and workers waiting to unload the vessel and big wagons and asses and yoked oxen. The shifting light of torches splashed them redly, illuminating a face here and there then plunging it into darkness, catching a waving hand then losing it. The noise, to Saul, was overwhelming, the heat unexpected for all it was autumn.

“We have a long journey to Jerusalem,” said Hillel, coming to his son again. “We will stay the night in an inn. It is possible that some of our kinsmen may be greeting us. I hoped we could have landed at Caesarea, but there was no ship leaving Tarsus for another three weeks and I wished to spend the High Holy Days with my people.” He thought of Deborah with melancholy.

The soldiers would not permit friends and kinsmen to rush upon the ship, with the possibility of foundering it, but their captain made way for a group to embark and Hillel said with happy astonishment, “David ben Shebua, and his brother, Simon, and that is surely the young Ezekiel, bridegroom of our Sephorah, and Joseph ben Shebua also, and, no! It is! My dear cousin Hannah’s husband, Aulus, the centurion!” Hillel’s eyes were suddenly filled with tears.

His cousin, Hannah, and her family and her husband, were his only living kinsmen for his had been a family of few children and he was the last child of his dead parents.

It was Aulus, himself, the centurion, who was, with calm and stately Roman gestures, ushering the kinsmen upon the ship and all the passengers stared to see who was so honored and so conducted, and the captain made his way to greet the Roman officer. Saul looked at him with contempt, in the light of the lanterns now lit on the galleon. Aulus was a man of some forty-five years, short but powerful, with a jovial and bearded face under his helmet, big white teeth, a huge nose and kind strong brown eyes. He was the first to embrace Hillel, seizing him in his bared arms and kissing his cheek. He smelled of sweat and hearty food and garlic and leather. “My dear Aulus,” said Hillel, much moved. “Shalom.”

“Shalom,” said Aulus. He struck Hillel an affectionate blow on the shoulder. “I have come to conduct you to Jerusalem.”

Then the family of Deborah was upon them, the elegant David scented and urbane, clad in fine wool and silk of purple and gold, the less elegant older brother, Simon, but a man evidently well-dined and prosperous and exceedingly plump and jeweled and arrayed in blue and silver with an Alexandrine dagger in his girdle, and Joseph ben Shebua, his twin brother and almost a replica, but less sleek. All, of course, wore no beards and all had their sister Deborah’s marble complexion, richness of lips and her blue eyes with auburn lashes, and their uncovered heads showed their tawny hair carefully arranged, curled and perfumed in the Greek manner. However, in spite of their jewels and gold and garments Simon and Joseph exuded a certain complacent grossness, an oiled polish, which offended Saul who waited while his father was lovingly greeted. The youth Ezekiel, but little older than Saul, himself, stood apart in shy respect and deference, and Saul saw that he was thin and somewhat small and insignificant and dark and very Latin in appearance. He had his mother’s Roman nose, her definite and prominent profile, but his eyes were the eyes of his father, David, lake-blue and shining. His clothing was not as elaborate and rich as his father’s. He wore a long tunic of white linen bordered with gold embroidery, and a brown cowled cloak, and there was but one ring on his finger and no gemmed bracelets clasping his arms such as clasped the arms of his father and uncles.

The family did not cry “Shalom!” to their kinsmen, as Aulus, the Roman, had cried. They embraced Hillel calmly and greeted him and made him welcome. They regarded Saul with some curiosity, and were polite, and David thought that the youth had not improved in appearance but indeed had lost that bright color which had once given him an appearance of exuberance. Hillel answered them as gravely and formally. He was somewhat disturbed that the young Ezekiel was with his father, David. It was unseemly. A bridegroom did not look upon his bride until the day they were espoused, but the family of Shebua evidently thought that anachronistic and old-fashioned and unworthy of Sadducees who were civilized and cosmopolitan. Ezekiel was David’s youngest son, and not handsome, but he had his mother’s virtues and was very intelligent, so David had forgiven him his lack of comeliness. It was unfortunate, and a little amusing, that the Roman mother had made the youth into a reasonable image of a Pharisee and had sternly urged upon him his Jewish duties and faith.