Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  Aristo made a sound of commiseration and sympathy, but Telis raised a hand. “I am returning to my house in Jerusalem,” he said, “because Israel teems with holy rabbis who cure the sick in the twinkling of an eye, I have heard, though I never saw such a miracle for myself. Again, I am not superstitious, and most miracles are superstition. But I have heard a strange rumor, out of Israel, from a traveling friend. Another holy rabbi has appeared, it is said, out of Galilee, and on a visit to Jerusalem, on one of their High Holy Days, he cured a blind man, a man in extremis, a woman with a cancer, a crippled child, and, it is said, he raised a youth from the dead, whose body was being conveyed to a cemetery. He has aroused much enmity, and much love. I hear he has returned to his province for a space. It is my I intention to seek him out. I will fill his hands with honest gold, and not debased Roman currency. Now, why should not such a man establish a shrine—for us—in Israel, and make a fortune for us?”

  “An excellent thought,” said Aristo.

  They debarked at the beautiful port of Caesarea, and Aristo saw that Telis was growing weaker and paler in spite of his natural liveliness and humor. “I have friends in Caesarea,” he told Aristo, “and I have promised to visit them. Herod Antipas built a fine house for Pontius Pilate here, and they know him well. I hear he is a man of some refinement, for all his alleged excesses and brutalities—before I left Israel, he had ordered the crucifixion of some hundreds of youths in Galilee for defying the taxgatherers and urging the overthrow of the Roman garrison, and even attacking it, and tearing down its standards and spitting on it. Tut, tut, that grieves me!” He gave a dark smile. “The Romans have their troubles everywhere, in spite of their Pax Romana and their leadership of the world. Do I wish them well?” He made an obscene sign and Aristo laughed.

  “One should pity them for doing exactly as Greece did, and empires before her throughout history,” said Aristo. “For her end will be the same.”

  They parted at Caesarea but not before Telis had arranged, magnanimously, for Aristo to be conveyed in lavish style to Jerusalem. “What is money?” asked Telis, with a wink.

  Aristo surveyed the country luxuriously as he was driven in a fine gilded car with four white horses to Jerusalem. He did not find it entrancing, for it was winter, and the air was chill and the bare mountains were gray and the fields blasted. The towns appeared dismal to him, and the valleys unfruitful, for he was accustomed to the lushness of the valley of Tarsus, even in winter. As a Greek, he felt superior to all other men, and these poor Jews in the fields and the crowded little towns appeared to him to be a miserable and hopeless people, their faces sullen and reserved and abstracted. He saw the round and square brick Roman fortresses, and the ubiquitous soldiers and the snapping standards of Rome. In Greece there were these also, but the people accepted them with droll smiles and witty tauntings and did a fine cheating business with the Romans, and mocked them merrily so that the Romans had to laugh in spite of themselves, and were friendly. They were also awed at the fabled glory and majesty of an ancient Greece, and desired to be known as cultured also. This was hilarious to the Greeks, who humored them for gain.

  But the Jews were a stiff-necked people who thought their pride and myths would sustain them, and eventually would free them from the Roman. In the meantime they despised them openly and fought with them vainly—a mouse challenging a tiger. Of course, there were the Sadducees of whom Hillel had told him. To Aristo, they appeared wiser men than their fellow Jews, more realistic and therefore more civilized. To do rich business with the conqueror, and rob him in the process—over a goblet or two of wine—was sensible, and a subtle revenge. The majority of Jews did not understand this, or would not accept it. Therefore they were neither clever nor astute, and had no humor.

  Aristo was not impressed by Jerusalem, though this was the teeming commercial center of trade between the east and the west, and always full of caravans. But he did admire the delicate austerity of some Greek temples he saw, and smiled at the large ornate Roman ones. He thought the air of Jerusalem dreary and somber, and too crowded. At sunset, he entered the fine inn recommended by Telis, and was pleased both by his bedroom and the fare of the kitchen. The food was a strange mixture of Jewish, Greek, Roman and Egyptian cooking, and exotic, and the wine was excellent, and Aristo thought that he could endure a week or two in this city, and retire to a soft bed and listened awhile to the howling of the jackals outside the gates. He would find Saul tomorrow. As a wise man he refused to dwell on the meeting and the news he must convey. Tonight he would sleep.

  The next day Aristo hired a chariot and a driver from his host, who directed him to the Street of the Tentmakers. It was in a very poor quarter, near the walls, and next to the Street of the Cheesemakers, and as goat’s hair and cheese are pungent in odor Aristo did not find the air delightful. Again, he was appalled at the queer habits and beliefs of the Jews. The sons of rich men, who chose to be rabbis or teachers, learned a humble trade, for they could not accept either money from their fathers or from those they taught. They had a revolting belief in the sanctity of bare labor and endless work, and despised the idle and the malingerer, though they freely give alms to the unfortunate.

  The narrow little Street of the Tentmakers was very steep and roughly cobbled, though clean and barren, and each side was filled with tiny shops where the harsh goods could be purchased. Aristo saw the glow of small reddish lamps within, for little winter light reached this street, and he saw the bearded old men and youths in their shops, or saw them bustling about in the rear. They had an air of dedication, such as men who labor strenuously wear, and it depressed Aristo. What a people to believe in work for its own sake, as if hard labor was not to be despised but to be cherished!

  Some came to the entry of their miserable little shops to stare at the expensive chariot that came rocking over the stones, for it was evident that few such came here to purchase this humblest of wares. They stared at Aristo in his rich cloak and hood and his embroidered boots and raised their eyebrows. When he halted at one shop and asked for the shop of Saul of Tarsus astonishment overcame the bearded old proprietor. “Saul, Saul, Saul of Tarshish?” he muttered, with incredulity. “You wish Saul of Tarshish?” The old man pointed at the lower end of the steep street. “His shop is the smallest and the poorest. Master, if you desire better goods, I have them.”

  So, thought Aristo with wryness, our Saul has not told these poor creatures that he is the son of one of the noblest families in Jerusalem. It is certainly like him, unfortunately.

  “He has an afflicted eye, and his work is clumsy,” wheedled the old man, hopefully. “Now, Master, if you will honor me, I will show you splendid goods.”

  “I am not buying,” said Aristo, with courtesy. “I have come with news of the family of Saul of Tarsus.” He gestured to the contemptuous driver, and they rolled down the street. The old man watched his passage in new amazement. What family could that impatient and ill-favored and stricken and lonely young man possess, that one dressed like a king and in a gilded chariot should visit him with news of that family? The old man ran inside to his grandsons to convey the gossip, arid to shake his head. “I have heard,” said a grandson, “that he studies with the great Rabban Gamaliel.” But the old man could not believe it.

  The last shop was indeed the meanest, smallest and darkest of all, and Aristo looked into the recesses to see the tall loom and a busy figure seated before it. The Greek stood for a moment or two, observing, and shaking his head. He had seen Saul but once in eleven years, on the occasion of Saul’s visit to Tarsus five years before, and the change in the twenty-seven-year-old man appalled Aristo. He was thin to gauntness, and bowed, and his red hair was long on his neck and shaggy, his strong profile like an eagle, his cheeks hollow, his mouth much sterner than before. He was very pale, from lack of sun, and too much work and study. Rolls of goats-hair cloth lay all about him, and the odor was repelling. His hands flew. His thoughts seemed far away. His garments were those of the poorest of m
en and his sandals, in this chill, could not have warmed his feet, for they were made of rope. It was apparent that he disdained boots, such as Aristo wore. One tiny lamp, flickering and smoking, lighted the recess, and Aristo, knowing of Saul’s afflicted eye, was alarmed.

  Saul, feeling himself observed, glanced up impatiently, and the two men stared at each other across the wooden counter that stood between them, also heaped with rolls of cloth. Saul blinked. He did not immediately recognize his old tutor, but he rose courteously and approached the counter. “May I serve you?” he asked, and it was the old powerful voice, full of hauteur and command, which Aristo remembered.

  The Greek was so moved and so dismayed that he could not answer, and Saul came nearer, blinking, and now the feeble light shone on those metallic blue eyes and red lashes and the virile nostrils. Then Saul stopped abruptly, and a Took of intense astonishment and disbelief rushed over his face, and he cried, “Aristo? Aristo!”

  “Yes, it is I, Saul,” said Aristo, and he pushed himself between the counter and the wall and entered the dreadful little shop. Saul watched him approach, and then with an odd and muffled cry he flung himself into Aristo’s extended arms and embraced him, and clung to him, and tried to laugh but the laugh was more of a dry sobbing. He rested his head on Aristo’s shoulder, and Aristo held him close to his own body, and hated himself for the news he must convey.

  “Aristo, Aristo,” Saul said in a choking voice. “How happy I am to see you!”

  “And I to see you, my dear pupil,” said Aristo. He was not an emotional man, but he struggled to prevent himself from weeping.

  Saul slowly lifted his head from Aristo’s shoulder and stared up at his face, and was silent, his brilliant and intelligent eyes searching. Then he said, very quietly, “It is evil news you bring me.” He had always had great intuition, and it was keener now. A spasm raced down his thin throat. “Tell me,” he said. “You would not have come to Israel on a mere pleasant journey, or to visit me. It is my father.”

  Aristo held him tightly by the arms. “It is so,” he said.

  Saul released himself and went toward the rear of the shop, slowly. He said, without turning, “Come into my bedroom, where I live, and let us sit down.”

  He picked up a sharp knife and Aristo was freshly alarmed, but he followed Saul to the rear, which was concealed by a length of goats-hair cloth. The room was tiny, and contained only a low pallet, two chairs, a table heaped with books, a small chest on which a lamp stood, and a tiny unlit brazier filled with ashes.

  Saul sat down on the floor. He slashed his poor garments in silence. He reached into the brazier, removed a handful of ashes and strewed them on his head. Then without sound, though his lips moved, he rocked back and forth in the ancient movement of mourning. Aristo sat down in that gloom and misery and now he could not refrain from tears, not for Hillel ben Borush but for his son. He took his perfumed handkerchief from his sleeve and the room was immediately filled with the scent of roses as Aristo wiped his eyes and cheeks and could not stop his tears.

  “He was the noblest of men,” said Aristo, “the kindest, the gentlest, the most tender. Rejoice that he was your father.”

  But Saul continued to rock back and forth on his buttocks, and the slit places in his long gray tunic showed his thin arms and breast and thighs, and the ashes ran down his cheeks to mingle with his tears. And now the faintest wailing came from his lips, in Hebrew, and though Aristo did not know the language well he recognized the sound of grief and prayer.

  The room became darker and darker, and Saul was but a shadowy figure, and Aristo sat and waited and shivered in the chill for all his leather boots, his embroidered wool tunic and cloak. He looked about for wine, but there was none. The wailing rose and fell in measured cadences, mournful, even majestic, but terrible to the Greek’s ear.

  Finally the Greek could endure it no longer. He knew that Saul had forgotten him, and that he could leave this place and his going would not be observed or noted. But Aristo could not bring himself, in spite of his own pain, to depart. Too, he had letters for the younger man.

  He said, with sadness, “Saul. Saul, I am here, your friend and your tutor, and you know my love for you, and I know your love for me. We are men. There are letters for you and things you must do, in spite of sorrow. You have a sister, and kinsmen, and they must be told.”

  It was dark now in the room. Saul stood up, bent and slow as an old man, and he went into the workshop and brought a taper mutely to Aristo, and Aristo understood that he must light it at the lamp in the workshop and then light this lamp on the chest. Sighing, he did so, in silence. Saul had resumed his seat on the floor, and was again rocking back and forth.

  The wretched little lamp hardly lightened the room. But now Saul was looking up at Aristo, and he said in a hoarse voice, “Tell me.

  However, Aristo himself could not speak, so he gave Saul Reb Isaac’s letter, which he had written at Aristo’s dictation. Saul bent forward and read it slowly. His father had been ill a long time but had not desired his children to know or to be alarmed. He had died peacefully in the pond, into which he had fallen during giddiness. He lay in the tomb beside his wife, Deborah. He had not suffered, except from weakness. It was possible that he had fallen into the water because he had expired on the bridge. His son would say Kaddish for him on the Sabbath, of course, for a year. Reb Isaac spoke eloquently of Hillel’s character and his nobility of soul. The old man sorrowed, not for Hillel, who now lay in the bosom of Abraham, but for his children. He was certain that he would not wish his children to grieve, but to rejoice that the long travail of living had ended for him and had delivered him to bliss and the Vision of God, blessed be His Name.

  “Truly, my son,” the old man had written, “your beloved father could all his life say with David: ‘How amiable are Your Tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longs, even faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God! Yes, the sparrow has found a house and the swallow a nest—Blessed are they that dwell in Your House. They will still be praising You!’

  “So your father lived, longing for his King and his God all the days of his loving life, and now he will sorrow and long no more, but rest in peace. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!”

  Saul muttered, “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord! Hear, O Israeli! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!”

  Aristo compressed his lips. He would never understand these Jews! The gods afflicted: wherefore should they be praised? Prometheus was a nobler Titan than this. He defied the gods—and who should not, for was not the lot of man dark and desperate and ordained to suffering, his soul flickering out at the last like a little lamp in the eternal night? For this fate then, this fate that moved poets to tears, should a man rejoice? He should rejoice only at the moment when he dies, for he is finally delivered from life, the evil Fates having cut the cord of his existence and returned him to the nothingness from which he came.

  He said, “Saul, you have duties, as I have remarked before. I have letters from your father’s lawyers. You are a man of property and much wealth, my Saul, and you must consider what you must do.”

  Saul rose. “I go to the Temple,” he said, “where I will pray for the repose of my father’s soul.” He stopped and looked at Aristo, and now his whole countenance appeared to shatter. “Why did he not write me and call me to him? Why did not you tell me? I would have flown to him at once! O, I am indeed afflicted, that I never looked upon my father’s dying face and begged his blessing!”

  Aristo sighed. “My chariot stands without,” he said.

  Saul bent his head and wept. “No, I must walk,” and he left the shop in his slashed garments and with the ashes on his head, and that low wailing began again.

  Chapter 19

  ARISTO did not see Saul again for four weeks, for those were days of family mourning. So the Greek remained in his inn. He had no taste for Roman arenas and glad
iators and pugilists. He had lost his lust for women, except on rare occasions. He was alone in Jerusalem, which he strongly disliked for its air of brooding and ominous destiny and pent and silent violence of spirit. Even the Roman soldiers were less hearty here, and went about with gloomy faces. Aristo struck up a few conversations with their officers, and was invited to a few dinners, and entertained at his inn in return. “This Israel,” said one officer, shaking his head. “It is more than I can endure. No one can ever comprehend the Jews. Pontius Pilate, once moved to generosity and expansiveness, offered to put a statue of the Jewish God in the temple of Jupiter, so He could be honored, also, and had to withdraw the offer hastily, for all Israel vowed insurrection even if the last man among them died! How can a reasonable man understand such a people? And what a Deity they possess! He is a veritable Pluto! Without an entrancing Proserpine, of course. In truth, there is no beauty in their God, nor in His Heaven, and who would desire to go there?” He shuddered.

  “They love Him. One conjectures why,” Aristo said. “Nevertheless, you must admit that their Temple is grand and lovely, so it is possible that their God does not despise beauty.”

  Aristo attended a few Greek theaters and gloried in the spectacles. But he was growing bored when he received a letter from his friend, Telis, asking him to visit him at his house, he having returned from a mysterious journey to a small, and possibly barbarous, little Jewish town called Capharnaum. Telis mentioned that it was a poor market town of no significance. But he, Telis, had a tale to tell! Aristo must dine with him that night.

  Aristo was only too happy. He arrayed himself magnificently, as befitted a man of much land and many groves and considerable money, and he remembered that Telis had promised to introduce him I to his stockbroker who was a man of enormous talent, in Jerusalem. I So he hired a fine litter with silken curtains and rich cushions and was carried in state to Telis’ house. He understood that though the majority of men deplored the panoply of wealth—especially if they were wealthy themselves and indulged themselves in that panoply—they had a low opinion of men who dressed and lived simply. Aristo had put his most fiery large opal, surrounded by diamonds, on his right index finger, a chain of emeralds about his neck, gemmed armlets on his arms, a golden girdle about his waist, and jeweled sandals on us feet. His cloak was of cloth of gold. “I am a veritable Zeus, blazing,” he said to himself with satisfaction. He would remind Telis that he knew stockbrokers of great gifts in Tarsus, which was a seat of culture. He also had Roman stockbrokers and was invested in a ship, le had not, certainly, mentioned to Telis that he had once been a pave, and from some gestures and intonations Telis had unwittingly displayed at times Aristo suspected that Telis had himself once endured that state. Gentlemen do not recall unpleasant matters to each other. Aristo had hinted that a dear friend of his, the noble Hillel ben Borush, had left him a considerable legacy—which was quite true—and had also hinted that the legacy had been given in gratitude, which Aristo hoped was true.