The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (13 page)

“Did he do all that without stirring from Alexandria?”

“Eratosthenes accomplished the entire calculation in the yard of the Museum,” Jivaka confirmed.

“I must think more about this,” Joseph said dazedly. “It is too simple to be easily understood.”

Bana Jivaka laughed. “I suspect that is true of the most really great discoveries. After all, Archimedes was in his bath when he discovered that a floating body displaces a volume of water equal to its own weight. The Greek mind searches always for the simplest answer and arrives at the greatest truths.”

“You were going to explain the trance you used just now,” Joseph reminded him.

“It is simply a matter of the control exerted by the spirit over the body. When the spirit is rendered insensible, the body is made insensible too.”

“But are you not afraid the
mazzikim
—the demons of the air—will fly away with his soul?”

Jivaka shook his head. “Our philosophers gave up belief in demons long ago. But we do know how strong is the control of the spirit over the body, for you saw an example of it just now with the sailor.”

“How do you bring on the trance?” Joseph asked.

Bana Jivaka took a large emerald from his pocket and held it before an oil lamp that burned in their quarters. The jewel seemed to absorb the light, for it glowed like a ball of green fire. “This merely draws attention,” he explained. “Any bright object will do the same. The rest is only a matter of imposing your own will upon another.”

“When you explain it, the whole thing seems simple enough,” Joseph admitted. “But I wonder if I could ever learn to do it myself.”

“Of course you could,” Jivaka assured him, “because you are willing to learn. Centuries ago a wise and learned physician of India named Susruta once said,
‘He who is versed only in books will be alarmed and confused, like a coward on the battlefield, when confronting active disease; he who rashly engages in practice without previous study of written science is entitled to no respect from mankind, and merits punishment from the king; but he who combines reading with experience proceeds safely and surely like a chariot on two wheels!’”

The voyage to Alexandria covered only a few days, but they were a pleasant time for Joseph. His natural eagerness to learn had been submerged by his busy medical practice during the five years he had spent in Jerusalem, but now his curiosity returned full fledged. He was amazed to find that physicians in India were far more advanced in both medicine and surgery than were the Greeks or the Romans, and that Susruta had actually performed difficult surgical operations centuries ago of which he had never even heard.

Most of all, however, Joseph liked to hear Bana Jivaka tell of the great unknown lands to the east from which he had come and the even more mysterious regions beyond the coast of Malabar, where men had progressed farther in science, medicine, and philosophy than had even the Greeks.

“Come with me to India when I return,” Jivaka urged. “We can sail when the monsoon blows eastward again next year, and you can return overland directly to Jerusalem by way of Babylon and Damascus if you wish.”

“What is a monsoon?” Joseph asked curiously.

“A strong wind that blows across the great ocean between the mouth of the Red Sea at Adana and the Malabar coast, changing direction every six months,” Jivaka explained. “When it blows from the east, ships make the trip from Muziris or Suppara to Adana and on up the Egyptian or Red Sea to Arsinoë in about eight weeks. Thence they travel by canal into the river Nile and downstream to Alexandria. When the wind changes direction, the return journey can be made as quickly.”

On another occasion, Jivaka showed Joseph a sheaf of sketches he had made during his studies in Alexandria and before. He had a great talent for setting down in simple drawings various aspects of disease. There were sketches of operations with the needle for cataract, a procedure Joseph had heard of but had never seen performed, extraction of growths from the eye, removal of tumors from the neck, and many others.

One set of the drawings in particular intrigued Joseph. They showed an operation for recreating a severed nose that Jivaka assured him had been used in India for many centuries. In it, a leaf-shaped piece of skin was raised from the cheek, with the end still attached, and moved across the face to replace the lost portion of the nose. Hollow reeds were inserted into the nostrils and the skin shaped around them and allowed to grow for a while, until it firmly adhered to the base of the nose. Then it was cut loose from its attachment to the cheek and shaped into an excellent substitute for the lost organ. Ears, too, could be replaced in the same way.

Other sketches showed the convulsions of epilepsy that Hippocrates called the Sacred Disease, a paralysis due to a horse’s kick upon the skull, the distended ankles and swollen abdomen of plethora, and one picture that Joseph had seen several times. It was a girl with staring, prominent eyes, a slight swelling of the neck, and near emaciation. Having seen such cases, Joseph knew the face would have been flushed and perspiring, the pulse racing, and the hands shaking uncontrollably.

“I spoke to Celsus about the disease you are looking at now,” Jivaka said. “He believes it is a form of the neck swelling called ‘goiter.’ He was surprised to learn that in India we treat it with dried seaweed.”

“Seaweed? How does it work?”

Jivaka shrugged. “Who knows? But when the dried seaweed is fed to the patient, it sometimes brings about a miraculous cure.”

Joseph smiled. “Thanks to you, I shall have much new to use in my practice when I return to Jerusalem. I hardly expected to—” He stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Bana Jivaka looked at him quizzically. “You were going to say you hardly expected to learn anything from one you have been taught to look on as a barbarian, weren’t you?”

“I spoke without thinking.” Joseph flushed with embarrassment. “Forgive me.”

“Of course.” Jivaka smiled. “One should never be ashamed of knowledge, no matter from whom it is acquired.” He glanced out the porthole. “It is dark and this is our third day out of Caesarea, so we may be able to see the light of the Pharos. The Alexandrians boast that it is visible all the way to the Hellespont.”

The ship was moving smoothly over the sea when they came on deck. The great sails were taut from the brisk wind, and the galley slaves were resting at their oars or sleeping in their chains upon the benches where they sat. Overhead the sky was studded with stars, and to the southwest the horizon was lit by a warm glow.

“There is the light of the Pharos,” Jivaka pointed to the glowing sky. “It guides all mariners to Alexandria. Nothing else man has ever built can equal it.”

“I would place the temple at Jerusalem above it,” Joseph said.

Jivaka looked at him in surprise. “Your temple is beautiful, but it is no such architectural wonder as the Pharos.”

“The temple was built solely to the glory of the Most High,” Joseph explained, “while a lighthouse serves only man.”

“I am properly humbled in spirit, my friend,” Jivaka said softly. “You Jews have worshiped a single God for thousands of years while the rest of us still grope futilely for Him among a host of impostors.”

“But even the Jews do not agree entirely on the purposes of the Most High,” Joseph admitted. “The Pharisees exalt the law until it becomes almost an idol. But the Sadducees who make up the ruling priests of the temple would liberalize religious practices and center all power in the temple itself and the high priest.”

“To which group do you belong?”

“As
medicus viscerus
of the temple, I am naturally expected to favor the priests,” Joseph explained. “But the Sadducees do not believe in a life after death, as do the Pharisees. And I would hate to think that everything ended with death.”

“You have no monopoly on that longing, I am afraid, Joseph. All religions have it. Here is a prayer from a very old poem of the Indian people.

From the Unreal, lead me to the Real,

From Darkness to the Light,

From Death to Immortality!”

“But the Most High chose the children of Israel to be His own people,” Joseph protested. “He favors them above all others on earth.”

“From the history of your people as I have heard my friends among the Jews of Alexandria recount it, the favor of your God would seem to be a heavy burden,” Jivaka observed dryly. “They spoke of bloodshed, persecution, and enslavement.”

“But that will not always be,” Joseph insisted. “We have been promised a Messiah from the blood of David, my own bloodline.”

“Messiah?” Jivaka frowned. “I do not understand the word.”

“He will be a great leader who will set up the kingdom of God here on earth,” Joseph said confidently, “and elevate the Jews to rulership over all the people of the world.”

“But that will mean battling against the might of Rome,” Jivaka objected. “The Jews are few in number and scattered to the ends of the earth. How could you ever oppose Rome?”

“When the Messiah comes, His glory will be such that all the world will acknowledge Him,” Joseph assured him.

Bana Jivaka shrugged. “I could believe in your God, Joseph, because I have been told that He reaches out to give men wisdom and help them over the rough places of life, forgiving them their errors if they will but ask Him for forgiveness. But I cannot see why you complicate your relationship with God by this talk of Messiahs.”

Vaguely Joseph was sure this must be blasphemy, although he could think of no real reason why. Then he remembered the words of the prophet Micah:
“What does the L
ORD
require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
When he repeated them to Jivaka, the Indian only smiled.

“You see?” he said. “Like the measurements of Eratosthenes, the simplest answer is always the best, even between a man and his God.”

Joseph was awakened at dawn by the shouts of the ship’s officers and the screams of slaves being whipped by the overseers. The long oars groaned constantly now in their leather collars, driving the vessel onward. And when he came on deck Joseph found the sea illuminated brightly although dawn had not yet broken. Captain Quintus told him they were still almost ten miles from Alexandria.

The coastline of Egypt was so low in this region that the great city itself was not yet visible, but the lighthouse of Pharos was in full view, rising abruptly from the sea. From the low island on which it stood to the top of the giant mirror before which great fires were kept burning from the setting to the rising of the sun, the tower was nearly six hundred feet in height, a pillar of alabaster-white stone directing all mariners to Alexandria. And although the fires were now dying down, the rays from the great polished mirror still blinded one momentarily if he looked directly at them.

Patterned after the Babylonian style of architecture, this tallest of the wonders of the world consisted of four towers or stories, one atop the other, the lower ones square and the topmost circular. The blocks of stone from which Sostratus of Cnidus had erected the massive lighthouse were said to be welded together with molten lead, since nothing else would have been impervious to the salt spray that dashed high against its sides during the winter storms.

“I envy you the sight of the Pharos for the first time from the sea,” Bana Jivaka said. “It was not nearly so impressive from the Nile and Lake Mareotis when I approached it on my arrival from Malabar.” They were standing in the bow of the ship while it breasted the surging breakers beating endlessly upon the shore, as if anxious to rush upon and engulf this city that was in Egypt and yet not a part of it. Behind them the overseers strode up and down the catwalks between the benches where the galley slaves sat, each chained to the great oar that he pulled. If one oar failed to move exactly in cadence with the others, the whip cracked and there was a scream of pain. Their seeming cruelty was not without reason, however, for a false move here could set the oars crashing into each other and send the ship, swinging suddenly under the unimpeded force of the long sweeps upon the other side, plunging to its death upon the rocks at the base of the great tower.

Soldiers parading along the balconies of the lower levels were plainly visible, as well as the windows of some three hundred rooms that the tall structure contained. Then, when it seemed that another sweep of the great oars would set them upon the rocks, Captain Quintus shouted an order. The slaves on the eastward side banked their oars, and the great vessel swung sharply, thrusting its prow into a narrow passage between perilously craggy rocks jutting from the sea and the end of the great stone breakwater on the left. Like an arrow directed at a target, the great ship shot through the opening into the wide expanse of the harbor itself.

The transition from wave-tossed sea to the glassy calm of the great harbor was astounding. In the protected quiet of the breakwaters, the water was as smooth as a pond. Joseph could see white sand on the bottom and rocks here and there garnished with seaweed of various hues. Anemones floated in the gentle currents of the depths, swaying as gracefully as the sleek dolphins cavorting in schools on the surface. Brilliantly colored fish, their hues rivaling the rainbow, moved about in the depths, ignoring the great ship floating above them.

From the high prow of the ship, the whole waterfront of Alexandria was spread out before their eyes. Not even in Jerusalem, for all its glory, had Joseph seen anything approaching this sight in magnificence and sheer man-made grandeur. To the left, eastward as he faced across the harbor, lay the curving breakwater called the Diabathra, a continuation of the promontory of Lochias forming one boundary of the harbor. There the royal palace stood, and close beside it, shining in the morning sunlight, was the Temple of Isis. In the smaller and protected Royal Harbor, great barges lay at anchor, thin gilded railings and colorful canopies gleaming in the morning sunlight.