Great Lion of God (40 page)

Then holding his friend’s hand tightly, Joseph turned to Saul who had stiffly alighted from the car and had thrown back his hood to catch the coolness of this place.

“Jochanan, my brother, my friend, I have brought him of whom I have written, Saul of Tarshish, who chooses, like us, rather to obey God than man, and to serve Him.”

Saul looked directly into the countenance of Jochanan, who had been greeted as a brother by Joseph of Arimathaea, and as the dearest of friends, and he discerned, with a kind of shrinking awe, the pure and terrible holiness of .those great black eyes, which seemed to force their gaze into his heart to discover all that lay there, and to pass inexorable judgment. It was like facing the blaze of the sun, from which nothing can escape. Saul felt himself mute and small and miserable and uncomely and without significance, and an intruder.

Then Jochanan set his long hands on Saul’s shoulders and smiled down at him with a fearful scrutiny, and then his brows drew together, then relaxed, and he said in a most gentle, almost compassionate voice, “Shalom. Greetings to the friend of my friend, Joseph of Arimathaea, and may Our Father, blessed be His Name, grant to you all that He desires to grant. Welcome, Saul of Tarshish!”

As if some intense moment and climactic had arrived and then had passed in safety and peace, the youths, at a distance, raised a happy cry of jubilation, and Joseph smiled as though in relief. And Saul, who was bemused and bewildered, felt a loosening in him and the banishment of the fear he had momentarily experienced, and which could not be explained.

Some of the younger and chattering boys were capering away with the provisions, which they carried to the cave where they stored their few goods and their meager possessions. Jochanan put one arm about Saul’s shoulders and the other about Joseph’s, and led them to another cave where the dimness was welcome after the conflagration outside, and where there was a coolness as if the earth were breathing through some crevice. In truth, Saul felt the light chill breath and sighed with pleasure. The cave was large and furnished with a pallet on the earthen floor, a low wooden table, and two benches. The floor bore scattered black and white hides of goats, and in one corner was a heap of scrolls. There was nothing else. The two guests sat down and Jochanan said—and Saul heard the deep and rapid timbre of his manly voice—“Thanks to you again, Joseph, we shall have a feast!”

“You have but to say the word, Jochanan, and every seven days such ‘feasts’ will arrive without fail.”

Jochanan shook his powerful head. But he smiled. “My young friends would then grow fat and long for the flesh-pots, and there would be few else to praise His Name and keep pure His Commandments, and speak of the Messias.” His mighty knees gleamed darkly in the spectral light of the cave and his chest was like leather armor, and black with thick hair. He looked with kindness at Saul and said, “Though you do not know me, I know you, Saul of Tarshish.” He paused. “Joseph has written often of you.” But Saul felt that he was speaking with constraint and not saying all he could say.

Two youths with lively faces brought in plain pottery plates and a platter heaped with the cheese and bread and fruit and meat which Joseph had brought, and earthen goblets foaming with beer and a bottle of wine. Saul discovered that he was hungry, but Jochanan ate sparely as did Joseph, and the two friends spoke together in quiet grave voices of things mysterious to Saul. Nevertheless, they were words of import.

“I leave, before the full moon,” said Jochanan. “Therefore, we do not meet again, Joseph, for some time.”

“You have received the summons?”

“True.”

Even in the dimness Saul could see the sudden sadness of Joseph’s face. He heard him sigh.

“The drama, then, begins,” said Joseph. He clasped his hands together on the table and contemplated them.

“And never ends,” said Jochanan. “Come, dear friend. Would you have it otherwise?”

Joseph was silent for a space. Finally he spoke, still contemplating his hands: “We cannot avoid, even by prayer, what has been ordained from eternity. Of a certainty, we should rejoice that we have been permitted to know this hour. Still, as mortal man, I am filled with sorrow and with pain. I would die one thousand times, ten thousand times over, to spare him one pang. I would lay my body before his feet, for the trampling, and call myself blessed. I would be flayed alive, for his sake, and rejoice. But that is not my destiny.”

Jochanan touched the clasped hands quickly. “No, it is not your destiny. You have another. But rejoice with me that I have finally received the summons, and must go.”

To Saul’s amazement, Joseph’s eyes filled with tears and he bowed his head. Of what man were they speaking? What prophet unknown to him, what holy man? If they knew of such, why was not he, Saul ben Hillel, permitted to sit at his feet?

As if Joseph had heard these questions, he lifted his bent head and strove to smile at Saul. “Forgive us, that we seemingly speak in riddles, my Saul. We cannot tell you as yet. but in His time God will enlighten you. That, Jochanan has told me.”

Saul’s red brows drew together and he could not refrain from saying, “We have met but today! He knows me not!”

“Ah,” said Jochanan, “God, blessed be His Name, has told me many things. Do not be impatient, my son.” His puissant face darkened for a moment. “How He will call you I do not know, though I know He will. Do not turn aside when you hear His voice.”

Saul frowned again. He felt himself diminished to the state of a schoolboy, for all he was twenty-five years of age and this wild man—with the rude accent of the province of Galilee—was hardly more than five years older.

He said, “I am not without friends. My cousin’s husband is the Roman officer, Aulus Platonius, and his son is Titus Milo a Praetorian captain in Rome, and I am a Roman citizen versed in Roman law, and my grandfather is the friend of Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, and if there is some Jew who is in danger or pursued or under sentence of death, it is possible that I could plead for him.”

He had no sooner said these words than he colored with shame of himself, though his boasting had been innocent and he had felt himself offended.

The older men regarded him gently. Then Jochanan said, “There is none who can save him, for he has chosen this for himself.”

Saul remembered how Joseph of Arimathaea had saved many from the dreadful death on the cross nearly ten years before, and had preserved others from suffering. So his harsh anger—at both himself and the others—disappeared. But it was replaced by discomfiture. He drank more wine. Suddenly, he remembered the dream of the nameless peasant who had perished on the cross also, and whose dying body had become encased as if in the shell of a seed and had dropped into the earth, and had given birth to a limitless harvest. Saul’s face changed.

“Yes?” said Jochanan, in a quick and urgent voice.

Saul stared at him in open surprise. “I was but remembering a dream,” he said.

“It was a dream that preceded an almost mortal illness of mine, and which left me with this half-closed and sunken eye.”

“Tell me,” said Jochanan.

Saul told himself that this was absurd. Why should Jochanan, and Joseph, also, be so intent on him now, demanding that he speak of a dream he had had so long ago, and which was only the precursor of a fever? Or the result of it? He smiled in embarrassment, but the two men kept their gaze upon him, commanding.

Thereupon he told them, watching for amused smiles, for shrugs, for answering embarrassment, even for a laugh. But their faces became more intent and grave, and they began to exchange glances and leaned closer to him, and they seemed hardly to breathe.

“I was sickening,” said Saul. “I had seen the execution of fifty young Jews by the Romans. There was death and agony in my heart. I was also chilled by the storm and wetted by the rain that followed. I could not free myself from the memory of the poor workingman— though he was none of importance—who had walked among the crosses and had appeared to lighten the suffering of the dying. Joseph saw him, also.” He glanced at Joseph who nodded speechlessly.

Saul continued: “I had seen him once before, during the High Holy Days, with one he addressed as his mother. She called him Yeshua. His face haunted me. I do not know why. He was poor and humble.’ Why I should dream that he, too, had been executed, had fallen into the earth—” Saul became silent.

There was silence all about him. He looked up to see the moved faces of the older men and now even Jochanan’s eyes were wet with tears. Joseph made an impulsive gesture, but Jochanan laid his hand on his wrist, as if in warning.

“It was but a dream,” said Saul, in a lame voice, and he was ashamed again that he had been indiscreet.

All life is but a dreaming, though a frightful one,” said Jochanan. But one day you will understand the significance of that dream, my Saul. Come. The sun is declining and you must soon leave us, and I wish to speak to my boys, for soon, I too, must go.”

They went outside. The sun was falling to the west and though the earth and mountains still glowed as if from a furnace the air was slightly cooler. The youths had gathered together, crouching on the ground, sitting, squatting, and waiting for Jochanan. Jochanan, with the dignity of a king, climbed the top of one cave, and then another, until he stood over them like a dark statue imbued with wildness and authority, and all faces were turned to him.

His voice sounded among them like a gigantic trumpet.

“I go because I have been summoned and the hour is come! I go to prepare the way! This you know, this you have been told, my children, my little ones. I go with rejoicing and in triumph.

“You must not grieve that I leave you, for you will see me again. I ask but your prayers. I ask but that you wait, for the last hour draws near.”

He looked down at those silent faces and his own great one became tender, as the face of a father is tender, and he spoke in the words of Isaias:

“‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light! Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. For the yoke of His burden, and the staff for His shoulder, the rod of His oppressor, God has broken as on the day of Midian! For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult, and every garment rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for the fire.’”

A deep awe appeared to spread over all the desolate land and invade the very sky. Jochanan’s face became lustrous, exalted, filled with a mighty light of its own, and he raised his eyes to the sky.

“‘It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the House of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills! All the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, in the House of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways and that we walk in His paths!” For out of Sion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and shall decide for many peoples. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more!’”

It was as if fire and flame had touched his cheek, and the sun his eyes, and Jochanan came forward on the roof of the cave and lifted his hand in exultation, and cried:

“‘For unto us a child has been born, and to us a Son has been given!’”

All wept, even Joseph of Arimathaea, but Saul stared up at the brilliantly illuminated figure of Jochanan with overpowering bewilderment, for the change of tense in the latter words was astounding and incomprehensible to him. He said to himself, It is but the rude pronunciation of the Galilee dialect, with which I am not familiar in all its nuances.

Jochanan stood, a tall image of burnished bronze against the suddenly empurpling sky, and he lifted his face and he was lost in contemplation and prayer and did not speak again.

Joseph touched Saul’s arm and said, “It is time that we go, for it will soon be dark and the desert lurks at night with robbers.”

While they prepared to depart Jochanan still stood as if caught in timeless ecstasy, his face transfigured, and his youths stood and gazed up at him and did not move, nor were they aware of the departing guests. At the last, Saul heard them raise a tremendous shout:

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!”

The car rolled rapidly toward Jerusalem and the desert air became chill. Saul was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I do not understand that peculiar man. I do not know whereof he speaks. He repeated the words of Isaias. Nevertheless—”

Joseph said, and Saul could hardly believe that he had heard the words:

“He knew of this hour in his mother’s womb. Like Sarah, Elizabeth was of a great age when she bore him, long after her years of fecundity. His father, Zachary, had been an old priest and in the Sanctum of the Temple he had been told by an angel that his wife would bear a son, and he had not believed. Elizabeth was bent and wrinkled and her hair was as white as a dove. Because he had not believed, he was stricken dumb. But it indeed came to pass that Elizabeth gave birth, and the lusty child was called Jochanan, and when the men came to kiss the beard of Zachary his speech was restored and he praised God. But of his words of rejoicing I cannot speak, though I know them.

“I implore you, Saul, do not question me. The time has not yet come.” He covered his face with his hood and the astonished Saul knew that he was weeping, but why he wept he did not know. Saul pondered with increasing incredulity on what he had heard and seen this day and finally it appeared all a dream in a blasted desert, and Jochanan a madman, and the cultivated Joseph of Arimathaea one deluded by a wild creature of the desert who was probably capable of casting spells, and had a devil.

Chapter 17

“W
E
have a story,” said Hillel ben Borush to his old and now decrepit friend, Reb Isaac.

“When did a Jew not have a story?” asked the ancient rabbi, and shrugged. But his glance was kinder than his words. He was much alarmed at Hillel’s appearance, for though Hillel was but fifty-seven he appeared very aged, and bowed, and gaunt, and there was a silvery cast in his white beard so that he resembled a prophet. They were sitting in the rabbi’s library and a cold wind was rushing down from the scarlet mountains and the garden was withering and winter was advancing on the land. Here it was very warm, for the rabbi’s old bones demanded heat now, and there were two braziers burning on the stone floor and there was a fur rug over his knees. Woolen curtains protected the windows from drafts, and a harsh wind was blowing.