Dear and Glorious Physician

by Taylor Caldwell

  She had lifted a white kitten in her hands and had kissed its small head. Lucanus could hear her murmuring affectionately to it. It jumped on her shoulder and put its muzzle against her chin and was content. “But,” said Aurelia, “we also know that love is inexhaustible, that there will always be something to love; the world is full of things to love! A lifetime is not long enough for the loving.”

  Lucanus had thought, wildly, How incredible, and piteous, is this innocence!

  Aurelia had smiled at him tenderly. “You think we are children, without reason or comprehension. You think we are vulnerable. I waited for Clodius, though I did not know of his existence until he came to this house with his parents. But I knew him instantly. We are not afraid, Lucanus, of living.”

  This struck Lucanus dumb. He had searched the shining core of his sister’s eyes, not only as a man but as a physician. And a pure light returned to him, gentle and strong. Aurelia, sitting on the grass like a young child near her brother, leaned her head against his knee in utter confidence.

  “I am not a scholar, Lucanus, for books are old and the world is young and full of glory. But when I saw Clodius I remembered what Keptah had once told me: Socrates had said that a good man needs fear neither this life nor death.”

  “The world is full of evil as well as beauty,” Lucanus said, with harshness.

  “That is because it hates, and does not love,” Aurelia answered. A dog raced barking into the garden, and Aurelia called to it and jumped to her feet and went to comfort and play with it, and Lucanus was alone and very still. When he rose to enter the house, musing, he felt as brittle as parchment which has had nothing written upon it.

  “They will always be happy,” he said to his mother now. “There will never be an end to their happiness and their love. And I confess it is a great mystery to me, and I am not a young man.”

  Iris smiled at him, and all at once it came to him that his mother was one similar to Aurelia. “I am content,” she murmured. “Yes, I am content, for one day, I feel in my heart, you will find such a love and such a happiness.”

  Sara bas Elazar came into the garden and found Lucanus alone. She walked slowly, for she had been ill for several months, and was a guest in this house where all loved her for her gentleness and charity. She was thirty-five years old now, and no longer young, but her violet eyes were as radiant as when she had been a child, and her sweet and daintily carved face held a wise serenity touched with sadness. Her slight figure was concealed by a woolen garment the color of her eyes, which Iris had made for her to warm and cherish her ailing body, and she wore a white shawl over her shoulders. Her dark hair, streaked with gray, was worn simply in a coronet of braids on the top of her small head, and her beautiful mouth curved in the slightest smile. There was a flush of bright color on her high cheekbones, and this, as she approached Lucanus, and he rose to meet her, was the first thing he inevitably saw about her, especially in the late afternoons. Her hand in his was unusually warm.

  He remembered that Hippocrates had warned physicians never to treat those they personally loved, for fear either made them shut their senses against the truth they suspected or they bungled out of frantic anxiety.

  “Have you coughed much today, my dear Sara?” he asked, as he conducted her to the chair where Iris had been sitting and as he wrapped her thin shoulders snugly in the shawl against the coolness of the afternoon air. She smiled up at him sweetly. “No. I have coughed very little these last few days, Lucanus.”

  He said, “You refuse the offices of Rome’s best physicians. Sara! You must let me summon some to examine you.”

  She pressed her cheek against the hand on her shoulder. “I am quite well. Do not alarm yourself. You are physician enough for me.” She looked at the hills calmly and with peace. “I shall be sad to leave your home, but I must return to Jerusalem for the holy days. I leave the day after tomorrow.”

  “But you have not recovered! The travel will be too exhausting. Sara, do you know that I have remained here because of you?”

  Again she smiled, for she knew that this was only part of the truth. “Do not be anxious,” she murmured. “I long for my people.”

  He sat beside her, leaning towards her, studying her fragile profile which was as pure as a cameo in the golden afternoon light. If Sara, he told himself, were ill she would not have this calm; flesh, when filled with premonitions of its own calamity, manifested its uneasiness in the twitching of an eye, the distension of a nostril, the constriction of a lip. His physician’s penetrating gaze could find none of these on Sara’s face. Sara’s expression, as always, had a quiet joyousness in it, a fulfilled hope.

  He sat beside her in silence, her hand in his; he could feel the frail bones in her fingers, the softness of her silken skin. They looked at the hills and the valley for a long time. Lucanus thought to himself, Why should I not marry her and keep her with me, this dear one I have loved for many years? I have wandered all over the world, for I had no home, and I have always fled away from love. But now I am no longer young; it is possible that my lassitude, my emptiness, my crippling despair are the results of my rootlessness, my sense that I have lost, or never attained, the meaning of life. If I marry Sara, then I would have a home, a hearth, a loving companion for the rest of my days. I can buy a small estate, a villa, where we could have our own vineyards and orchards, and, though it is very late now, perhaps a child. I have deprived myself of what men always seek in their lives.

  He moved with an access of his old restlessness. He said to Sara, and bent towards her, ignoring the sad stir that had seized him again, “Sara, my beloved, will you marry me, and remain with me in Rome, and build a house with me?”

  Her quiet profile remained so still, so unmoved, as she looked at the hills, that he thought she had not heard him in the midst of her thoughts. “I am filled with emptiness,” he said, and put her hand to his lips.

  Then Sara said, “You have been made empty in order that you may be filled with joy and peace beyond your imaginings, Lucanus. Love tells me so, but does not tell me how. No, Lucanus. I cannot marry you, for in marrying you I will keep you from your destiny. That which you must find is not in my arms. God calls men from out the cities, from their own firesides, from their wives and their children, from all that they love, and His voice cannot be ignored. He has called you.”

  “That is nonsense,” said Lucanus. “I am empty because I refused to love, for fear of what love can do to a man. I have been afraid of living, Sara, and I ask you now to live with me as my wife.”

  She shook her head slightly, but firmly. “It cannot be, Lucanus. Once, when you left Alexandria, I believed it was possible. But over all these years I have known it was impossible, for you belong to God. You long for Him with a terrible longing, and it will be satisfied, for you are His.”

  Sara was gone, and now Lucanus was alone with his family, and the old sick restlessness was upon him again. The house was filled, but there was no one with whom he could talk, and he marveled at this. There was his unmarried brother, Gaius Octavius, eternally busy with his books, a serious young man who lived a secret and engrossing life of his own. Lucanus knew he had a great intellect, but, strangely, he was less able to converse with the unsmiling Gaius than with anyone else in the household. There was a great formality and courtesy between the brothers, but Lucanus could not penetrate the reserve of the younger man. These pedants! he would say to himself. They are narrow and selfish. They are opinionated and quietly contentious. They live on a white mountaintop, where they reign alone.

  Priscus, the merry and happy soldier, returned home from his campaigns with Drusus, whom he never criticized for his manifest follies and lack of organization, but merely commented on them humorously. Lucanus loved him best of all the children. He wondered, however, if Diodorus would have found him so satisfactory, for Priscus accepted everything with a joke and simple contentment, and was never very serious about anything. His round brown face and brown eyes reminded Lucanus piercing
ly of Rubria; he had her gay manners, her humor, her quick laughter, and her twinkle. He loved war, and he loved peace; he loved his duty, and he loved his family. He was never happier than when guests were in the home; he had many friends, and visited them when he returned. It was evident that he enjoyed life, made no unreasonable demands upon it, loved the games, theaters, dicing, all gladiators, evenings with drinking companions, jests, and good-humored gaiety in general. He adored his children. When Lucanus spoke of politics, he was as bored as Aurelia, and he would relinquish the subject with a broad wink and a smile, and go off to inspect the great farm. Lucanus suspected that Priscus, who loved him, also found him tiresome.

  Nevertheless, Priscus was head of his family, and Lucanus felt a pressing need to make the exuberant captain regard the world in which he lived seriously. He had a large fortune; he had military and political influence; he had children, and that was the most important thing of all. So one night Lucanus called Priscus into his rooms, and the soldier swaggered in on his strong brown legs, dressed in a simple tunic. He had been playing with his children before they went to bed, and his rough black hair was tousled, and his broad red lips were smiling. He greeted Lucanus affectionately, but his heart sank when he saw the older man’s sober expression.

  Priscus tried to avoid what he feared would be a weighty conversation by several lusty remarks on the grape harvest, the condition of the orchards, his plans to restock the stream with more fish, his pleasant curses on the limp attitude of freedmen and slaves, his suspicions about his overseers’ honesty. His voice was happy, his face unlined, his manner easy.

  Lucanus said, “As you know, Priscus, I am leaving soon. You must bear with me; you are the head of this household, and what you think, and what you do, is of the greatest importance not only for your family but for your country.”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Priscus, helping himself to a bunch of purple grapes from the plate on the table. He sighed; he was patient, and he loved Lucanus. “I always do my duty; I find it easy, I must confess.” He sat down and ate the grapes with enjoyment, spitting the seeds into his hand and putting them in a little pile on the table, for he was very neat.

  “Your real duty,” said Lucanus, “would not be easy.”

  “So you have told me often,” said the soldier. He polished an apple on the short sleeve of his tunic. “But I never understand, and you cannot forgive that.”

  “I suspect you understand only too well,” said Lucanus, grimly. Priscus bit into an apple and offered Lucanus the plate, which he impatiently refused. Priscus shrugged. “All too true, perhaps,” he said. “But, I am several centuries too late, I believe. What can I do about Rome now, in my generation? Let us be reasonable, Lucanus.” His brown eyes were suddenly without laughter, and a little hard, when he stared at the other man.

  “Your father died doing what he could,” said Lucanus.

  Priscus’ thick eyebrows drew together. He chewed the apple absently. “Yes,” he said, “and, as you have said, he died. What profit was his admonition, his death? Did it move one man a jot? Did it make one corrupt senator less corrupt? Did it inspire one Cicero, one Cincinnatus? Did it make Caesar less than what he is? I remember that you told me that Caesars do not seize power; it is thrust upon them by a degenerate people who have lost their virtue and their strength, and who prefer security to manhood, ease without work, and circuses to duty. Did what my father said on the day he died arouse the conscience of one man? Was it ever inscribed for the ages? No. He could not, even in his own lifetime, do one single thing to stop the course of history.”

  “You misunderstand me, Priscus. I know that it was inevitable that Rome become what she is. Republics decay into democracies, and democracies degenerate into dictatorships. That fact is immutable. When there is equality — and democracies always bring equality — the people become faceless, they lose power and initiative, they lose pride and independence, they lose their splendor. Republics are masculine, and so they beget the sciences and the arts; they are prideful, heroic, and virile. They emphasize God, and glorify Him. But Rome has decayed into a confused democracy, and has acquired feminine traits, such as materialism, greed, the lust for power, and expediency. Masculinity in nations and men is demonstrated by law, idealism, justice, and poesy, femininity by materialism, dependency on others, gross emotionalism, and absence of genius. Masculinity seeks what is right; femininity seeks what is immediately satisfying. Masculinity is vision; femininity ridicules vision. A masculine nation produces philosophers, and has a respect for the individual; a feminine nation has an insensate desire to control and dominate. Masculinity is aristocratic; femininity has no aristocracy, and is happy only if it finds about it a multitude of faces resembling it exactly, and a multitude of voices echoing its own tiny sentiments and desires and fears and follies. Rome has become feminine, Priscus. And feminine nations and feminine men inevitably die or are destroyed by a masculine people.”

  Priscus still tried to lighten the subject. He said, jokingly, “My soldiers, the legions of Rome, are no females, Lucanus!” But he frowned and considered. What was a man to do? He was absolutely impotent when the people unanimously preferred soft slavery to hard freedom.

  So Priscus said, “I grant you that you are correct. But I have told you that my father was born too late. He died of a broken heart. I was born even later. I do not intend to die of a broken heart. What price my attempting to call even a single man to sobriety and heroism? It would accomplish nothing.”

  “Again you misunderstand me, Priscus. I understand that you can not halt history, for decay and death are inevitable in republics. The only society which can endure with grandeur in the world is an aristocratic society, governed by chosen wise men, priests, scientists, heroes, artists, poets, philosophers. Republics breed exigent politicians, and these politicians always, without end, create democracies, and death. If men would only watch diligently, so that masculinity would not depart from a nation! But it never happens.

  “Priscus, you as a husband and a father, and most particularly a father, can cultivate the masculinity of free and noble men in your children; a man must always begin in his own family, and then reach forth for his neighbors. He may fail, but at least he has tried. It is not in the failing that a man is judged, but by the lack of his efforts. At the last, man is judged singly, and never in the mass.”

  Priscus was annoyed. “I did not make this world, Lucanus. I cannot change it. Should I then beat my head against a wall and crush my skull? I live my life as usefully as possible, serving my country, closing my eyes to her fatal defects which I cannot eliminate, enjoying my existence, my family, my home, my friends. Forgive me, but for all your philosophy you have never enjoyed life. Who then is the more fortunate?”

  “Is that all there is to living, Priscus?” asked Lucanus, sadly, knowing well that his brother had understood. “Merely enjoying life? Surely a man has a greater destiny than that. His life has a greater meaning beyond this world.”

  Priscus stood up and stretched his arms over his head, and yawned. “You must tell me, Lucanus,” and there was a light mockery in his robust voice.

  Lucanus was silent. He suddenly thought of Keptah, of Joseph ben Gamliel, of all the philosophers and devout men he had known. He said, hesitatingly, “It is possible that man’s destiny is beyond his death, and what he does here decides that destiny.”

  “You do not believe that!” said Priscus, laughing. “You are the most skeptical of the Skeptics. I have heard you speak many times in this house.”

  Lucanus was silent again, and he despised himself. He saw the awful responsibility of adults, whether father or brother, that they must forever teach the young that they are more than animals, that their lives have a subtle but greater meaning than what appears superficially. Lucanus put his hand to his head, which suddenly ached. Priscus, looking at him, narrowed his eyes.

  “Do not accuse yourself, Lucanus. You spoke always from out of conviction, if bitterly. Could you have made me
different from what I am? No.”

  Yes, thought Lucanus, with gall in his mouth. He said, “And you are satisfied, Priscus? You want nothing else but what you have?”

  Was it possible that Priscus was hesitating? Lucanus looked up, in hope. Priscus was now serious; he was scratching his chin, as he absently flexed his muscular arms. Then he spoke, as if to himself.

  “I have been hearing rumors on my last campaign. Foolish rumors, perhaps. They came out of Syria, or perhaps it was Armenia, or Egypt, or Israel. I do not remember. But the rumor is to the effect that God is manifesting Himself somewhere, and that He will change the world very soon.”

  He looked at Lucanus and laughed sheepishly. “Naturally that is a foolish rumor. Our religion is full of the manifestations of deity, as you know; the gods are always cavorting and interfering with men, or quarreling vastly among themselves. Yet,” and he paused, “this rumor appears entirely different. A great revelation is at hand, so it says. And the world will be regenerated.” He clapped his hand on Lucanus’ shoulder. “So be of good cheer, my brother. Perhaps all is not lost.”