Great Lion of God (31 page)

The stranger turned, and Saul saw his face, white and motionless as a statue’s, with eyes that appeared to see no one any longer. He approached the crowd of watchers, and melted among them, and Saul, against his will, wished to be among those near him. But when he came to the thickest of the crowd he heard only bewildered and hushed voices:

“Where is he? He was here, but he has gone. He was among us, and is no longer with us!” And they craned and searched, and pushed comrades aside, and peered and questioned and exclaimed and shook their heads and shrugged and lifted their hands in bafflement. “He was here, but he is not here!”

It was then that a roar of enormous thunder shook the brassy sky and the purple mountains and a great wind rose and a long booming assaulted the earth. Then the sky turned very dark and black clawing clouds rushed across it and a sudden torrent began to fall.

Saul felt someone take his arm and he started wildly, and he saw that the man who had accosted him was Joseph of Arimathaea, his hood pulled over his head.

“Come with me,” said Joseph, and he led Saul away and Saul, though he would have resisted could not. They passed through the Damascus Gate and there was Joseph’s litter, waiting, and he pushed Saul through the curtains onto the cushions and sat down beside him. The bearers lifted the litter and hurried away through the sudden crimson lightning and the screaming wind that flung the curtains about and the bursting violence of the thunder.

Saul felt weak and undone, shattered in body and mind. What he had seen, what he had endured, flooded over him. He was horrified to the heart, but he began to weep. Joseph watched him compassionately in the mingled flaring and dimming of the lightning.

Saul found his kerchief in his pouch and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. He did not wish to speak to Joseph of Arimathaea, but he said, “Who was that man, with the presumption of a prophet, who attempted to console the condemned?”

“He is not a prophet,” said Joseph in a peculiar tone. “And he comforted them.”

Saul tried to see Joseph’s face, but the darkness increased. “Who is he?”

Joseph did not speak for a moment. Finally, in a very kind voice he replied, “One day you will know, Saul ben Hillel. Ah, yes, you will know!”

Hillel decided that he would ask for his daughter, Sephorah, to come to him despite Clodia Flavius’ rigid dictum that women should not appear in the men’s quarters nor in the main house, and especially not virgins, unless the occasion was imperious. But Hillel’s misery too acute and he was desperately lonely and full of grief and sense of abandonment.

But before he could clap for a servant his wife’s brother, David ben Shebua, appeared in the atrium. He looked at Hillel and it was a moment before he responded to his greeting. He appeared sober and a little stern, most unusual for the graceful and courteous David. His mouth was set and he seemed coldly displeased. He indicated a carved chair and asked Hillel to seat himself, and then he regarded Hillel under his light brows and his blue eyes were hard. Now the earring did not look absurd to Hillel, who was vaguely disquieted, but even a little sinister.

“Were you desirous of visiting my father?” asked David.

“No. My daughter.”

David continued to contemplate him as one contemplates an unpleasant stranger. He said, “You have gravely disturbed my father, Hillel ben Borush.”

“He has gravely disturbed me,” said Hillel, coloring with humiliation, for was he not a guest in this house, though unwilling? “I assume you are referring to the night I implored his intervention with Pilate, the Roman Procurator, and King Herod, in behalf of his people?”

David raised a slender and impatient hand. “Not only that. You have perturbed him since your arrival.”

“For that, I am indeed sorry,” said Hillel. “We are in conflict in our characters. We are armed against each other, in our beliefs. I fear your father considers me uncouth and provincial and uncultured. I consider him superficial and effete and an alien to me.” He tried to smile in spite of his distress, and David’s expression changed in a peculiar way and he regarded the rings on his fingers pensively.

“I believe,” said David, “that it is the teaching of the ‘old’ Jews that one must give respect under all circumstances to one’s elders, and particularly those in a patriarchal position.” The faintest smile passed over his beautiful lips. “I should ask my father’s forgiveness for even suggesting that he is a patriarch. The very idea would revolt him.”

Hillel could not help smiling in the very face of his wretchedness. “True,” he said. “It may be that I was amiss recently, but you know I spoke truth, David ben Shebua, and so did your brothers. They hated me and that is proof enough. Is it now an evil thing to plead for the condemned? That disturbed your father more than our previous conversations.”

David sighed. He fixed his eyes now on a distant wall, and considered. “My father,” he said, “is not what you think he is. He is the creation of the style and postures of others. He is a mirror what he believes is admirable. You shattered that mirror. He is now confined to his bed, under sedatives.”

Hillel was astonished. He said, “Is it possible I made an impression on him? That I discomfited him? I thought him an armored man, armored in his disdain for such as I.”

“You do not understand,” said David. “My father cannot live without the esteem of others. He cannot endure it that a single man might despise or criticize him. He is not a man. He is an image, easily scratched, easily stained; he is colored plaster.”

Hillel was even more astonished, but he was also incredulous. He said, “I have heard that of all the traders in Israel, and the merchants, and the bankers, and the stockbrokers, and the investors, he is the most astute! I have heard that in these pursuits he is a man of iron, and cannot be moved.”

“That, too, is true,” said David. “But those he deals with in those matters are men like himself, of sweat and iron and bronze and hard fists. However, only in the reek of the marketplace. It is a different Shebua ben Abraham who returns to this house and goes to his baths and his concubines and his perfumes and his togas. He no longer remembers those grimy adversaries and allies, those adroit dealers. He is the great gentleman of culture and fineness and I sophistication, in this house, and in those houses he visits—which are not the houses of his companions of the day. The Shebua ben I Abraham who is raucous and adamant in the marketplace is not the Shebua ben Abraham who visits Pilate and King Herod and dines with the philosophers and the elegant Greeks. This Shebua is a cosmopolitan, another posture, another appearance, another countenance, another aim, another desire, another aspiration. And that dainty man is easily shattered, easily injured, if others look upon him, even for a moment, as if he is still a man of the marketplace.”

“Or a man of flesh and blood,” said Hillel, with bitterness. “You are implying that I made that delicate man tremble in his plaster and rattled his rings and bracelets? Are you not saying that he is very fragile? Shebua is not one, even in his postures, to care for the opinions of a man like me, who has no pretensions.”

“He is fearful of the bad opinion even of a slave,” said David. “Ah, I meant no offense. This is the house of my father. In this house he stands in imperial dignity and beauty and refinement. It is all his borrowed creation. You thundered ruthlessly among the silks and the perfumes and did it on a number of occasions, like a wild man from the desert roaring into a lady’s bedroom.”

“The analogy is, perhaps, very apt,” said Hillel. “And so your father is annoyed?”

“He is overcome,” said David. He was smiling handsomely now. “I know you have considered me an imitator of him. Let me suggest that he imitates me, instead.”

Hillel exclaimed, “I had not thought of that! But it may be true.”

“It is most true, and that is why he dislikes me,” said David.

Hillel felt a little regret. “One must admire him for his aspirations above the reek of the marketplace.”

“I trust you will remember that,” said David, and he was stern again. “There is another matter. My father dearly loved my sweet sister, Deborah, and he cannot forgive you that you made her sorely unhappy.”

Hillel’s tired brown eyes widened in utter stupefaction. “Deborah! I loved her with all my heart! I thought of little but her happiness! I cherished her, protected, sheltered her! She was as a daughter to me, a precious one. I would have given my life for her!”

David was studying him keenly. “That is not what she wrote to my father. She wrote of your lack of interest in her, her loneliness, of avoidance of her, of neglect, of your devotion to more spiritual things, of your relegation of her to the level of a concubine, or the meek mistress of the kitchen.”

“Before God, it is not true,” said Hillel, and felt the anguish of betrayal, the sad gall of it, the unbearable acridness. He could not believe that his adorable Deborah, his charming child, for whom his heart was so broken, could have betrayed him in such a fashion, and in such cruel false words, could have craftily written letters unknown to him, accusing him of things of which he was not guilty. Deborah’s face subtly changed before his agonized inner eye. It became the face of an ugly malicious stranger, who hated him, who leered at him, slyly.

“Did you think I loved such as you?” she seemed to be saying with contempt.

This was worse than her death to him, the knowing that she had despised his love for her, that she had lain in his arms detesting him, plotting evil letters to her father, deceiving him, that he had embraced a woman he had not known at all and had given her all his heart—which she had mocked. Even one so unendowed with true intelligence—even a dog—knew when love was given. But a dog returned that love. Hillel could have wept with his overpowering grief and degradation, considering the treachery which had been done to him. He mourned for one who had never existed except in his mind and his soul, and he mourned that Deborah had been what she was. Light though she had been, he would have trusted her with his life.

David, watching him, felt compunction. “Women are very trivial and not to be trusted,” he said. “And Deborah was more trivial even than the majority of women. Not all have wives like my Clodia, who can make life very stringent, but is a shield and a sword in the house. I would tell my father that Deborah was only a pampered child, and that she complained like a child, but he chose to believe her and take her most seriously.”

But Hillel hardly heard him. He had been prostrated by Deborah’s death. He was now more prostrated. He had been lonely. The loneliness he had felt, the bereavement, was nothing to the loneliness, the hollowness, of what he felt now.

“My father chose to believe Deborah because he has never liked you,” said David, with kind candor.

“But he arranged our marriage,” said Hillel in a muffled voice. “He sought me out.”

David laughed a little. “That was because you were of a truly noble house, and a pious Pharisee Jew, and though he does not know it, my poor father, he has a Jewish soul and has lurking fears that the God of Israel is a very jealous God—though he does not believe in God, naturally. Let us be charitable and admit that he did not seek riches for Deborah, and many there were here in Jerusalem, and Romans of great houses, too, who desired her in marriage, and were notable for wealth. Who can penetrate the secret caverns of a man’s heart?”

“Not I,” said Hillel. “I confess I do not understand even myself.”

“I did not tell you about Deborah to sadden you,” said David. It was merely in explanation of my father’s antagonism to you, which has many reasons. I wished you to think of him more kindly. He deserves your pity.”

“That I know,” said Hillel. He rose. “I wish to see my daughter, Sephorah.”

“Ah,” said David. “She is ministering to my father. He dotes on her now. If you were to deny her in marriage to my son, to take her away, he would bear her away as did the Romans with the Sabine women.”

“He will turn my child against me!” cried Hillel.

“No,” said David. “She is a wise child, your Sephorah. You are heart of her heart, my poor kinsman.”

But I have nothing at all now, thought Hillel, neither wife nor child, for my daughter will marry a stranger and forget me, and my son is obsessed with God and belongs to no one, not himself, and perhaps not even to God, blessed be His Name. In truth, he has never been my son. Though he comes from my loins his soul is far from me. I am abandoned, and there is none who loves me, and at the last that is the most unbearable thought of all—that one may die and never be mourned or remembered by those he loved.

The thought of the everlasting love of God could not console Hillel now. He needed the love of a human creature. It was then that he thought of suicide for the first time. “In the grave there is no remembrance.”

The overseer of the hall entered and said one Rabban Gamaliel desired an audience with the lord, Hillel ben Borush. He had opened the bronze doors of the atrium and the sudden storm, dark and scarlet and blazing, seemed to explode into the still whiteness of the hall.

“Rabban Gamaliel!” exclaimed Hillel, his pain overcome for a moment by his joy. He turned to David and his worn face was transformed. “I was named for his grandfather, Hillel, may he rest in peace! The Rabban is Nasi (The president, or chief presiding officer) of the Sanhedrin. What an honor it is to receive him, though I knew him in school in Jerusalem and we were lads together! I did not seek him out, fearing presumption.”

“I know the Rabban well,” said David, in a dry voice. “But let us invite him into this house lest he drown in that rain and smother in that wind. That would be a sad fate for the illustrious Teacher of the Law.”

But his tone, his condescension, could not impair Hillel’s Joy, and he hastened to the doors of the atrium and stood in the portico. A sturdy curtained litter stood outside held by four dripping youths who winced at every crash of thunder. The sky had steadily darkened. Though it was but mid-afternoon, it seemed on the verge of night, lit only by the inflamed lightning. Impatiently, hands extended, Hillel awaited the guest, who pushed aside the curtains, alighted, then ran like a youth for the portico. Hillel fell upon his neck, embracing him, kissing his cheek, uttering incoherent exclamations of affection and happiness.