Dear and Glorious Physician

by Taylor Caldwell

  He approached the gates of Nain, and a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, who is a widow, and a large gathering of her friends were with her. The Lord, seeing her, had compassion upon her, for she was weeping disconsolately, and after looking long and lovingly upon her He went to the stretcher and gazed at the bearers, who became very still. He lifted His hand and said to the dead son, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise!’

  Lucanus, you must believe it, for I have seen it, and have I ever lied to you? I declare that he who was dead sat up, and began to speak in a vague and confused voice, like one who has been aroused suddenly from a deep sleep in which he has been dreaming sweet dreams. But the Lord took his hand gently and lifted him from the stretcher and gave his hand to his mother, and she fell upon her son and embraced him, then cast herself down at the feet of Him who had restored her son to her. The people retreated in terror, and then some of them glorified God with mighty shouts, crying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us, and God has visited His people!’

  Lucanus, I saw it; with these eyes of mine, which you restored to me, I saw it!

  I crept after Him, thinking to myself, If He does not restore my voice, I will not regret, for I have seen Him, and what man needs more? But I wanted to get closer to Him; I wanted to see His eyes shine upon me, though I am a man dark of face. Surely, I thought, He will not despise me, He who made me; surely He will lift the curse of Noah from my people. He was conversing with His followers, young men like Himself, then suddenly He paused and glanced over His shoulder, and His eyes lighted on me. He smiled, and seemed to wait, and then suddenly I felt a stirring in my throat, a trembling on my tongue, and all at once my voice was on my lips, and I cried out, ‘Blessed am I, who have seen the Lord our God!’

  I must have fallen in the dust in a faint, for when I awakened I was alone in the hot and dusty sunset, and when I rose I knew what I must do. I must return to my people and bring them the message of life and joy, for I had seen God, and I had known Him, and the curse had been lifted from us.

  Peace be with you. May His peace descend upon you, and may He draw you to Him. For He is He whom you have been seeking. Farewell, but we shall meet again where men do not hate each other or despise each other, but understand each other’s heart.

  Lucanus put aside the letter, and the heavy sickness of heart and depression was on him again, the huge repudiation. He, as a physician, believed he knew what had happened to Ramus. He had seen what he had wished to see; the hysteria which had silenced him had been released, suddenly, and he had spoken again. It was very simple.

  But what of the young man who had been raised from the ‘dead’? That too was simple. The man had been suffering from catalepsy; he had been in a state of suspended animation. Fortunate for him that he had not been locked into a tomb, to awaken to find his mouth stuffed with earth! This Jewish teacher must be a sort of physician, who had known the man was not really dead.

  I have many explanations, Lucanus began to think. Then he paused, struck. Must I always rationalize? he thought suddenly. Must I always rush in a frenzy to explain things in the light of reason? What has my reason brought me but sorrow? Yet anything that is not logical to me is disgusting, childish, even profane.

  Without knowing why, he began to weep.

  Chapter Forty

  Lucanus returned to Athens. It was a warm day in the early spring, and even this dry and astringent air had a liveliness in it, a gaiety. The women who sold flowers sat in their stalls with small mountains of laurel, violets, little roses, anemones, and poppies before them. They called out in raucous voices. The streets streamed with life; it was never very cold here, yet when the spring came, with blossoms and with a bright blue air, the people became vehement with a kind of joy and pleasure. The little shops rang with bargainers; there was a smell of cooking sausages and garlic everywhere. Children ran and shouted and wrestled in the gutters. Old men smiled at each other, lifted aside their beards, and talked in learned voices. The hills had freshened into a pure green. Upon the Acropolis the Parthenon was a crown of frozen light; the mighty statue of Athena leaned against the sky. Everywhere there was a quickening, a sense of anticipation. Young girls and young men strolled hand in hand, smiling. Babies laughed from their mothers’ arms. The Roman soldiers leaned against the walls of buildings, yawned, grinned, and scratched their chins as they looked eagerly at the women. The horses drawing chariots pranced. Dogs barked. Lawyers and businessmen had stopped their bustling; they walked easily, and forgot to discuss their problems.

  Lucanus knew that this was the beginning of the Jewish Passover. There was a synagogue nearby, but he shunned it. He had the feeling that he was scuttling, his head bent, as if fleeing from something. But this was ridiculous. He had landed at midnight, and had gone to his lonely little house. He had several old patients to visit, and he would do this tomorrow. He was not one to walk casually for the pleasure of it, and he did not know why he had been drawn to walk the city today. But there was a thirst in him now for the sight of his fellow men, and he could not have enough of seeing. I am not young, he thought. I have not been one to mingle with others or enjoy their company. What ails me? He smiled at an old flower woman and bought a small bouquet of little white lilies from her. He walked on, and he buried his nose in the flowers, and the fragrance almost overwhelmed him.

  He decided to return to his house and write long-overdue letters to his family. The garden was quiet and full of sun. There had been a wind earlier, but now it had fallen. Everything had a patina of light such as he had never seen before. Each tender leaf was plated with it; each flower was drowned in it; the fountain sparkled with it; each grain of earth was illuminated. The walls of the little house shone as if polished. Lucanus looked at the sky. Never had it been clearer or more brilliant; not a cloud stood in it.

  He ate his small and frugal meal. He drank his wine. He listened to the silence of his house. It was as if something had drawn a mighty breath and was holding it. Nothing stirred. Now everything reflected radiance, even his plain silver goblet, even his fork and spoon, even the sides of his hands, even his scrubbed white wooden floor. His eyes began to sting with such light. He felt an overpowering weariness and thought, I will lie down and rest.

  He lay down and shut his eyes. He hoped to sleep during the afternoon heat. But there was a glaring, an insistence, behind his eyelids. He felt himself beginning to sweat. His whole body felt a stretching, an agony. He could not rest. He got to his feet, and he was very weak. Is this the fever again? he asked himself with alarm, thinking of the patients he would have to visit tomorrow and the throngs which would gather at his door. He could not fail them; they waited for him. He stumbled about the house in that awful flood of light until he found his pouch. His groping hand reached to the bottom and closed on something cool and metallic, and he brought out the cross which Keptah had given Rubria and which she had given to him. He looked at it in his palm, and it glittered blindingly, as if fired from the sun, and now it burned his flesh.

  Blinking, he put the cross down and stared at it, and all his dreams, all that he had heard returned to him in one thunderous clamor. But what had this cross to do with a miserable Jewish teacher in distant Israel, who, it was claimed, raised the dead, performed miracles, and brought multitudes about him? What had this cross of the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Egyptians to do with one so far away, and one so humble and unknown to the world of men?

  There was no rest in this house; there was no rest anywhere for one so beset and so besieged and so desolate. Lucanus went into the garden, panting for shade. But there was no shade, no protection from the sun. Everything stood in shadowless light, affixed in flaming crystal. Then, all at once, a darkness fell on the face of the earth, swallowing all light, extinguishing it, driving it before it like a tide and banishing it. Ah, thought Lucanus, there will be a storm, a cooling storm! He looked at the sky, the very dark sky.¹

  ¹An enormous earthquake occurred at this hour in Nica
ea. In the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, Phlegon wrote that “a great darkness” occurred all over Europe which was inexplicable to the astronomers. The records of Rome, according to Tertulhan, made note of a complete and universal darkness, which frightened the Senate, then meeting, and threw the city into an anxious turmoil, for there was no storm and no clouds. The records of Grecian and Egyptian astronomers show that this darkness was so intense for a while that even they, skeptical men of science, were alarmed. People streamed in panic through the streets of every city, and birds went to rest, and cattle returned to their paddocks. But there is no note of an eclipse; no eclipse was expected. It was as if the sun had retreated through space and had been lost. Mayan and Inca records also show this phenomenon, allowing for the difference in time.

  Where was the sun? He stared at the black sky, searching. Everything was very still. No cricket lifted its voice; the birds were silent, though they had been murmurous all morning.

  Lucanus looked at the city. The Parthenon was a faint outline of pure silver. The city was in darkness. Then he heard a distant and muffled sound as if from a sea, and he knew it was the voice of the city, full of panic and questioning. He ran to his gate; the road that passed it was empty. He looked beyond the road and dimly saw cattle lying down in the grass, as if sleeping.

  The air was as clear as water, and as limpid, and as cool. So, thought Lucanus, this is no dust storm. He sat down on a bench, and felt a coldness as of death running over his body. He remembered old myths of the wrath of the gods. There would be a day when the gods, sickened by men, would withdraw the sun and plunge the earth into everlasting darkness and death. He moved his body restlessly. He stood up and walked around and around the garden. A scent of roses and lilies rose on the air, as if they had been crushed under a giant foot. The city began to shine and twinkle with hastily lit lanterns and torches. Lucanus knew that most probably a huge river of humanity would now begin to pour up toward the Parthenon, there to beseech the gods to lift this terrible and inexplicable darkness from the world. As for himself, he was consumed, not with anxiety for himself, but with a passionate questioning.

  As one who had been taught by the greatest scientists in the world, he began to conjecture. It was believed that one day the sun would burn itself out, and this planet, earth, would roll through space gathering ice and deathly cold, and all life would die on it. But that, the astronomers had said, would take ages; the sun would slowly die, would redden, would wink out like a cinder. It would occur over eons; it would never occur instantaneously. But this had occurred in a twinkling, between one breath and another. Lucanus searched for the sun, the retreating sun, again. Was it possible that it had hurled itself away from its children to join its radiant brothers?

  An enormous sense of excitement suddenly swept over him, and also a terror he had never known before. Where, among those burning constellations, was the sun now? What chaos was it causing among the orderly brotherhood, this intruder from a corner of the universe? What planets was it devouring in its flaming passage?

  Then he felt he was not alone. He peered about him in the moonlight and the starlight. Were there pale shadows moving about him in the garden, or only the illusion of his strained eyes? His heart leaped. Shadows paused near him, and he thought he saw the faces of Rubria and Keptah and Sara, smiling dimly. They drifted on like snow, and there, surely! was Diodorus, young and strong and valorous, his hand lifted in greeting. There was Joseph ben Gamliel — oh, this was mad! — with a tender glance. There among many shades of the women he had succored stood Aurelia, animated and smiling. A multitude passed him, paused before him, hailing him in silence and with affection. He shook his head violently, and gasped, and closed his eyes.

  Then the earth lifted as if on a wave, shivered, trembled, and slid under his feet. A deep rumble muttered up from its bowels. A wind rose, like a hurricane, then fell as swiftly, then rose again, howling, so that Lucanus’ breath was smothered in his throat. Now he was no longer physician, philosopher, or scientist. He was a man, and he was overpowered by fear. He stood up and shook, and his teeth rattled.

  He walked about the garden, which was ghostly. His flesh quivered as if in an ague. He went to the fountain, and heard its leaping waters. He went into the house. There he forced himself to light a lamp. He stood and stared at it blankly. He picked up a book and put it down. His head throbbed.

  In a moment he tried to speak reasonably to himself. He remembered the astronomy he had studied. The sun could not detach itself from the ‘wanderers’, its children, the planets. Where it went, the planets went also. “Certainly, certainly,” he said aloud to the heavy silence about him, and nodded his head as if satisfied. But he knew this was an idiot’s reflection. The sun was gone; the sky was very dark above. All man’s reasons, his most profound reflections, could not alter these facts. For once, he could not attach a name, a theory, to what was impenetrable; he could not adjust what was not known to what he knew. Nevertheless, Lucanus’ mind flew out like a distracted bird, feverishly attempting to explain what could not be explained. Again the earth thundered under his feet, and a long moaning poured into the cool air.

  Had the world tilted behind another planet? A thousand solutions whirled in his mind, and he rejected them at once as absurd. Then for the first time he thought of his family in Rome with a tremor; he thought of Priscus in Jerusalem. If the world was being destroyed inexorably and mysteriously, then all men must die together. Panic, selfishness, fear, terror, anxiety, love — all these could accomplish nothing, could not fling off the cold hand of fate. He lit another lamp, and then another, until his house was full of light. He sat down and stared before him.

  He came to himself with a start, conscious that he had fallen into a sick sleep, overwhelmed by the awful thing that had come upon the world. His lamps were flickering low; he got to his feet to refill them. Then he noticed that a gray light stood at his doors and windows like a dawn. He ran into the garden again. The light became stronger, but very slowly. The earth no longer slipped and quivered and rumbled; it was steadfast. Lucanus looked at the sky; a vast rosiness hung there, as if a sunset were spreading from horizon to horizon. The earth lost its ghostliness; color flooded back moment by moment. The birds cheeped or chattered excitedly in the trees. The fountain sang louder, as if relieved. The voice of the city reached Lucanus; it was the sound of rejoicing, but it had a hysterical overtone. Then the rosy hue parted like a curtain, and the sun leaped into the sky like a warrior with a golden shield.

  Lucanus breathed deeply. Never had the world, no, not even when he had been a child, looked so fair to him, so dear, so precious, now that it had been delivered from death. And from death it had surely been delivered, as a bird is released from an enraged and imminent hand. The foundations of the earth had been shaken; the sun had been lost. But now the terror and the anger had departed, and a sweetness rose from the flowers and the grass, as if the earth had exhaled a breath too long held in fright. Lucanus pressed his fingers over his face and sighed deeply.

  Certainly, he thought now, there is a scientific explanation for this. Because I do not know the cause of this phenomenon does not mean that it is beyond explanation. It was late afternoon. He was hungry. He sat down and ate a small meal, and never had wine tasted so delightful, and never had bread and cheese had this flavor before. He wrote letters, and one was to an astronomer in Alexandria, commenting on the darkness, asking if it had been observed there, and what the cause was, and if it was likely to happen again.

  When he slept that night it was as if he had been reprieved, and with that reprieve had come not only pardon, but life and a peace and a tranquility like the first day the world had ever known, and man was born anew.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Dozens of the patients who came to Lucanus the next day were new to him. They were suffering from shock, were very pale, and some were almost speechless. He reassured them, smilingly, that nothing that could not be explained by learned
men had occurred the day before. Very possibly it was an eclipse. Only children were frightened by them. Had not the Egyptian astronomers, long ago, been able to predict eclipses not only for the immediate future, but for ages not yet conceived? One must trust the wise, the men who understood, who could chart the heavens, the phases of the moon, the movement of the stars exactly. Lucanus, while his patients crowded about him, demonstrated an eclipse with an apple and a nut. They were very interested; they followed his demonstration with open mouths and widened eyes, and, as he had done yesterday, they nodded their heads wisely at each other and declared that they had known this all the time. They are no more learned than I, thought Lucanus, with some wryness.

  “It is all very well,” said an old man, shaking his head and looking shrewdly at the physician. “But you have explained nothing. This is beyond the explanations of man.” The others laughed at him merrily and called him graybeard, but Lucanus did not laugh. The old man’s strong and piercing eyes transfixed him. He said, “Well, let us look at your rheumatic ankles again, my friend. I have a new salve which I believe will help you.” “I hoped, yesterday,” said the old man, “that it was the end of the world, for are we not all a wicked people, an insult to heaven?” The others laughed at him even louder, but they glanced at him with some malevolence. Men, meditated Lucanus, did not enjoy being called evil and an affront to the gods, and let the man beware who told them the truth.