Great Lion of God (39 page)

He sighed. “Those boys at the gates are not to be held accountable. They believe the lies they are told by their government. When will people not believe the lies of their government? If that day arrives, surely the Messianic Age is at hand, and a Theocracy emerges!”

A few years before Saul would have expressed his loathing for Rome in execrations, but now he listened, even with still some dubiousness. He knew his cousin’s husband well, the noble Aulus Platonius, and Aulus’ son, Titus Milo Platonius, and he loved and respected them and visited their house and dined with Aulus and Hannah bas Judah. His rage remained for Rome, but not for the individual Roman who was as helpless as he in the golden fist of Empire. But more even than Rome herself he hated the traitors and collaborators among his own people, who pressed their heels on the prostrate necks of their kinsmen. Empires lived for loot and conquest, but the betrayers of Israel lived only for their pleasure. True it was that little Israel could never have resisted Rome, but it was not necessary that the suave Sadducees and the Scribes and the merchants should eagerly fawn on the conqueror and assist him in degrading a helpless little people and robbing them of their sustenance and torturing them with despair.

Joseph was reflecting: “Our young Saul has advanced into manhood these ten years since first he came to Jerusalem, and he understands now that man’s evil is ubiquitous and that there are no good nations as opposed to evil nations, just as there are few if any good men. Ah, what a marvelous world this would be if any nation were righteous, even if she boasted only ten thousand inhabitants! But wickedness is endemic in man; it is the hidden plague in his soul, awaiting the implosion of infection. A little kingdom is no more righteous than a great Empire, nor are her rulers more virtuous. We of Israel have been a singular nation, admonished and led by God through the centuries. We have eaten out of His Hand as lambs eat from the hands of shepherds. We have been given guides and prophets. We were given Moses. We have been given the Messias. As the householder tends his children and teaches them and loves them and cherishes them, and protects and guards them, so has God guarded Israel and loved her. Yet, we are not now more honorable than Rome, more worthy of mercy. His judgment has fallen upon us, just as it will fall upon Rome, for God is no Respecter of persons, and all men are His own and one is no dearer than another, nor one more deserving of punishment than another. May God have mercy on the souls of all men.”

The earth was dark and silent, lit only by the huge and wandering light of the stars, and it was very still out in the desolate places. It was also chill, and Saul wrapped himself in his dull warm cloak of goat’s hair, which he had woven himself, and it was stiff and unyielding. The iron-shod wheels of the car rumbled over thin rubble and gravel and sand and dust, and the horses’ hoofs struck fire on stone and a fresh sharp wind lashed the face. It was an arid wind, smelling only of rock and desolation and a few acrid desert plants, and it also smelled of the ages, for this was an ancient land and the dead earth was the tomb of vanished nations.

Dawn comes with sudden swiftness and a kind of silent and enormous tumult in the lands of the east. At one moment the earth was blank and dark, the hills invisible, and at the next the whole eastern sky was a blazing amber conflagration and the hills started against it and then they poured with a glittering coppery light like water that had been set aflame. That light rushed down mountainside and terrace, engulfing them in burning radiance, and cypresses and sycamores and groves seemed to leap into existence where there had been nothing before, and little white houses turned red as if their facades were on fire. Then the sun stood shouting on a mountaintop and the earth awoke with a murmurous echo.

Saul, always sensitive to the sights of the earth and beauty—though he frequently and sternly said that these were distractions from the contemplation of God—was awed as always. He glanced at Joseph of Arimathaea but Joseph’s large bald head and part of his long oval face was still hidden by his hood, and now he leaned forward and murmured something to the Nubian driver who touched his whip hand obediently to his forehead. The car turned on the dry yellow earth; the stallions’ hides were flecked with foam. They reached a spring and the horses drank. Joseph said to Saul, “We have far, still, to go, into the desolate places, so refresh yourself.” So Joseph and Saul left the car and bathed their faces and dusty hands in the spring and drank of it, and Joseph produced cool fruit and wine and bread and excellent cheese. He shared this with his servants, courteously, and he and Saul ate and drank, and the sun became excessively hot and Saul threw off his cloak, revealing his dark gray linen tunic. His red hair caught a vivid blaze from the sun and Joseph said, regarding his fair and freckled face, “It is not well to expose yourself in these places, Saul, so draw your hood to give shelter to your complexion and to protect your eyes.”

His own eyes, so big and dark and liquid, beamed on Saul with affection, and again Saul was baffled at the kindness to him of this good and renowned man. Saul could not see himself as Joseph saw him—a young man of ardent if somber passions, with an ascetic face strong with square and angular bones, and with eyes that appeared to glow with visions.

There were many who considered Saul formidable, and ruthless with slow men, and arrogant with knowledge, and impatient beyond toleration, but Joseph knew him as a young man with destiny large in his blue eyes, even in the eye that drooped and reddened at too much light. Saul had many imperfections; he was unable to endure fools gladly, as Solomon had suggested, and he had no patience for weakness and fragility of character and compliance and that effeminate gentleness which many of the Sadducees and the Scribes cultivated, as part of their civilized lives. (“We are kind,” they appeared to be insisting on all occasions, in rebuke to others they considered ungentle. But Joseph remembered what a sage had said: “Strange it is that those who wish all men to be kind are themselves incapable of kindness.”)

In Joseph’s estimation—and he was a man who knew men—Saul’s manifest virtues, some of them extreme, overlaid his imperfections as a fine and brilliant glaze overlaid the base coarseness of pottery. They were not virtues which would endear him to many but rather aroused their contempt, their hatred, their uneasiness and their hostility. He was incapable of the gentlest of hypocrisies or the slightest of deviousnesses, and he spoke bluntly and roughly and offended many—often to his own bewilderment for he still retained some of his younger delusion that men preferred truth to lies and candor to guile.

They drove away in the cauldron of yellow light which was now full morning, and the heat beat at them like heated rods through their garments.

Saul was not a stranger to deserts and lifeless places, but now, as the wheels turned rapidly farther in the direction of Damascus he was stunned, not only by the heat but by the complete and barren desolation which lay all about him, empty of all life even the most I hardy, except for thistles, treeless, raging with incredible and blinding light, the hills beyond a pure stony brass, the ground below saffron and thick with dust and boulders and gravel and flat as a man’s palm, the sky a stark and staring blue too intense for more than a quick glance, and cloudless, the sun an enormous hole of flame approaching the zenith, and here and there, where little spring rills had run, straggles of dry amber crawling over the stricken earth. Vultures, black and silent and sharp as ink, soared against the sky, seeking and bending and wheeling. Occasionally, scattered caves appeared, trembling in waves of heat, their openings like great dry mouths dead of thirst, and gaping. There was no waterhole visible anywhere, no green oasis in this landscape of Gehenna. Once Saul thought he saw the lurking shape of a jackal casting a clear shadow on the parched and blighted ground, but as jackals were the color of the landscape, itself, it was impossible to be certain.

Saul had often pondered on the thought that he would like to retreat to the desert for a space, to this immense and lifeless silence, this incandescent light. But as he looked about him now he confessed that he could not understand why even the most dedicated and fervid Essene or Zealot should choose a place which could only resemble hell. It was said that these men could find locusts and wild honey when necessary, and water, but Saul saw no spot where these could be obtained. They were far from the city, and yet they penetrated more and more into the wilderness, and Saul guessed, by the sureness of the Nubian’s driving of the black stallions, that this was no new territory to him and that he was familiar with it. His massive earrings cast golden shadows on his polished ebony cheeks, and he was gazing about him with indifferent pride. Saul began to be more than grateful for the umbrella raised over his and Joseph’s head by the servant who sat between them.

Joseph lifted his hand and pointed toward the hills and Saul saw below them, dancing in heat-waves, a cluster of low caves, just beginning to climb the lower flank of the nearest hill. “Our destination,” I said Joseph.

In that air, as clear as molten glass, the caves appeared to be much nearer than they truly were, and Saul was beginning to suffer from heat and thirst long before the yellowish stone of the caves reluctantly approached them across the barrens. Suddenly the tiny figure of a man appeared on the top of the lowest cave—or cavern—and he seemed as black and intensely sharp as a vulture against the sky. He waved an infinitesimal hand in greeting, then stood there, a wild and bearded little figure, watching them. After a while he was joined by similar figures, and there was a shagginess about them which suggested fur garments about their loins. They wore no cloaks nor hoods to shelter them from the sun and the heat, and as the car raced closer to the caves Saul could see their faces, almost as black as the Nubian’s, and thick with beards. Their arms and hands and legs were dark and thin but muscular, and now they leaped as lightly as goats to the ground and their voices could be heard, vivid yet fragile as flutes: “Shalom! Shalom!”

Joseph was smiling in the shadow of his hood. He made a trumpet of his hands and called a greeting in return to those who awaited him. They were growing in number. Now there were at least fifty, then more, then more, and then more than one hundred. They seemed to leap not only from the caves but from the earth itself, and the sun struck gleams from their eyes and from their teeth. From their actions, their gestures, their movements, Saul could see that they were young, and that some were hardly more than boys who had just reached early youth, for these had small or no beards. He felt his own sweating chin. He wore no beard, himself, for his skin was so fair that a beard irritated it beyond sufferance, and induced sores, and Rabban Gamaliel had said: “God desires us to love and to serve Him, but not to endure unnecessary pain in that service, for that is vainglorious. And did not Lucian, the Greek, say that if beards were necessary for wisdom a goat would be a veritable Plato?”

Some of the younger of the desert dwellers could not restrain their joy and enthusiasm at seeing their friend, Joseph of Arimathaea, and came running toward the car, raising fiery clouds of yellow dust in their wake. Saul glanced at the provisions Joseph had brought: Leather bottles of wine, wheels of cheese, wheaten and oaten bread, fruit, and vessels of artichokes in vinegar and garlic, and kegs of beer and closely wrapped bottles of sound Syrian whiskey. There were baskets of onions, also, and citrons, very pungent in the heat, and heaps of dates and figs and boxes of pastries and jars of rendered fat and dried meats. There were small leather pouches which Saul more than suspected contained respectable amounts of Roman gold sesterces and drachmas. There were also many books, tied with rope, and blankets and pottery and cutlery. In truth, the huge car was so provisioned that there was barely room for the four riders in it.

The young men had now reached the car and were shouting and laughing and calling like children, and grinning at Joseph and casting curious looks at Saul. They leaped and they danced, and clapped their hands, and Saul, who had expected gloomy recluses with stem and remote faces, thought that he had never seen so merry a gathering, and so joyous. They shouted inquiries of Joseph. They asked of his family and his and their friends. They uttered laughing oaths at the mention of the priests in the Temple. Some, in their exuberance, engaged in little running wrestling matches. Their feet were bare and sinewy and almost black, or, at the most, they wore rope sandals. They might be as lean as bone and their flesh like hard strings and sinews, but their eyes shone with clear delight in living, and glowing passion.

The Nubian watched all this with the indulgence of a man several years older than these dark and dusty youths and even deigned to smile occasionally and flicked elegantly at his silken turban of many colors and shrugged his golden necklace about his long and serpentine neck. He was a barbarian emperor in the midst of his wild and almost naked servants, and he bestowed a very white smile upon them and urged them to watch the horses’ hoofs, which only made them dance the merrier into dangerous proximity. The air was clamorous with their young voices. They sang. They guided the Nubian to a place behind the nearest caves, and here, to Saul’s amazement, the shadow cast by the caves was almost cool, and purplish, and in its midst was a bubbling spring. He thought: “The shadow of a great Rock in a weary land,” and understood completely, for the first time, the full meaning of the phrase in the Scriptures.

Now a man rounded the side of the sheltering cave, an older man of some thirty years, broad of shoulder and tall and incredibly emaciated, but giving the impression of immense vitality and indomitable strength and authority. His beard was black and thick and curly, his nose sharply and thinly beaked and predatory, his mouth faintly smiling, his black eyes large and shining under shaggy black brows. When the youths saw him they fell back in respect, and he held up his arms to Joseph and almost lifted him from the car. The two then embraced and kissed each other. Joseph, as usual, was finely clad, but the man he held so tenderly was nearly nude with a goat-skin about his loins, and his burned skin glistened with sweat. They held each other off and gazed into each other’s eyes, and smiled, and embraced again, and murmured the holiest of greetings, concluding with a passionate, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!”