Testament

by Nino Ricci

  Zekaryah, because he did not teach the boy, did not notice anything remarkable in him, and indeed, as I had report, there were few who emerged from Zekaryah’s lessons with any semblance of learning. Then once Yeshua returned home from him with his legs covered in welts. When I pressed him, he confessed that Zekaryah had beaten him because he had dared to lay his hands on the Torah. Thus I understood that the reading he had learned under Tryphon had no outlet, and felt ashamed that I had taken him from him. I would even have procured for him then a copy of the holy scriptures, had I thought it possible for a woman to do such a thing. But instead I went out into the city to a market near the Museum where they sold every manner of manuscript, and there I purchased some crumbling scrolls for Yeshua of I knew not what, making him conceal them in an empty water jar in our courtyard so that no one should wonder at them. It was only later that it occurred to me they would be in Latin or Greek, and hence foreign to him. But he seemed to make his way through them, and so must have learned the rudiments of those scripts in his brief time with Tryphon.

  Then, when he had been with Zekaryah for a year, he came to me and said, with contempt, it seemed to me, You waste your money in sending me to him. But because of his tone I felt hardened towards him.

  You say so because you are wilful and don’t know how to be a Jew, I said.

  But he answered me, It’s you who say I’m a Jew, and I struck him then, in anger, I imagined, though in fact because of my fear that he had somehow seen through to the truth.

  The following day he did not go to his lesson. I did not give much thought to the matter, considering it merely a moment of childish pride. But after three days he still had not gone, nor had he exchanged any word with me, but only sat in our courtyard playing listlessly with some of his brothers or scrawling letters in the earth with a stick. Even this I would have borne except that it seemed he had ceased to take his meals—I did not notice at first, because he had always moved like a shadow among us, but then I saw how he held himself back at our supper. He was not yet eight then, and I believed that like any child he must weaken and seek my sympathy. But day after day he stayed in the courtyard, until the other children began to avoid him, not knowing what to make of him there, and day after day he seemed to grow more rigid in his fast. He would sit with us at our supper, so that Yehoceph should not remark on him, but his hand would not go to the bowl.

  I grew frightened then, wondering at his wilfulness, for there seemed something monstrous in it. Also I saw how powerless I was in the face of it—it appeared he had understood by then that Yehoceph had no say in the raising of him, and so that it was only a woman against him in the end.

  When a week had gone by and still he had not given up his fast, I went to him and said, You shall not return to Zekaryah.

  Then what teacher will I have, he said at once.

  I had given no thought to the matter and was surprised, after the week we had endured, that it would be the thing uppermost in his mind.

  If you wish another teacher, we’ll search for one.

  There’s one that I know, he said. A Greek.

  Surely he said this to spite me, so that I might have it on my lips to say, But you are a Jew, and choke on the words.

  How can you know these things when you’re a child, I said.

  From Tryphon.

  And I had the sense he had somehow managed the entire contest between us so that it should lead exactly to this moment, that he should put Tryphon’s name, and my guilt, before me, and so have his way.

  The following day I went to discharge him from Zekaryah, who appeared happy to be rid of him.

  He’s full of pride and undisciplined, he said to me. You would best apprentice him to a trade or no good will come of him.

  I could have struck him at this, the fool, so much did my anger rise.

  I will be seeking another teacher for him, I said, at which he was silenced.

  So it was that my own defiance came to the aid of Yeshua’s cause, since I could not bear that he should end up again with some ignorant Jew who whipped him at the sign of any intelligence.

  You shall have your teacher, I said to him, which however he seemed simply to accept as his due.

  The man went by the name Artimidorus. It was Yeshua who led me to him, taking me to a quarter inside the Neapolis that I had not seen before, ramshackle and poor, the streets a maze of narrow lanes so that I did not know how Yeshua could remember his way among them. Even still when we came to the house I was certain he was mistaken, for I could not believe that a teacher and a Greek could live in such poverty and filth, or that Yeshua, knowing this, would have brought me to him. The house was merely a mess of tiny rooms, each with its own family, it seemed, and in the courtyard the stink of an open latrine and of animals who wandered freely amidst the ragged infants there. It was to the smallest and, it appeared, the most squalid room that Yeshua led me, with the merest opening to let in air and light.

  I was ready to turn then and retreat from the place, but Yeshua held his ground.

  It is Artimidorus, he said, pulling aside a bit of tattered curtain that covered the door.

  Then the man was there before us, stooping out through the doorway and blinking at the light. I had never seen the like of him, wretched and lank and black as charred wood, an Ethiopian, with just a rag for a cloak that he had draped haphazardly around himself to cover his nakedness. Yet he held himself with a dignity.

  My young Yeshua, he said, in Aramaic, which disarmed me.

  Perhaps we have mistaken our way, I said. We are searching for Artimidorus the teacher.

  So you have found him.

  He did nothing then in the way of welcoming us, which somehow made it seem that I was the one who was mistaken in my perception of him. In my confusion I did not turn and leave him as I might have, but said, I wish a teacher for my son.

  I think it’s your son who wishes the teacher, he said.

  He turned then to wash himself as if he had finished with me, though nothing had been settled.

  You may leave him with me now if you wish, he said finally.

  I was at a loss. I had imagined Yeshua would lead me to some palace and the teacher demand a king’s ransom, and I should be forced on that account to deny him. But this man defied every expectation.

  You have not told me your fee, I said.

  What was the sum you paid his last teacher.

  I named it, a denarius each month.

  Then I shall have the same, Artimidorus said.

  So it appeared I had contracted with him, against my better judgement. Yet I saw from Yeshua’s look that he was determined to stay with him.

  But how shall I pay you.

  How was it with his former teacher.

  I was made to pay a month in advance, I said.

  Then so it shall be with me.

  Yet he did not come to me then to take his fee but kept on with his private affairs, rummaging through a sack he had taken from his house to pull a scrap of hardened bread from it, a crust of which he broke off for Yeshua and the rest kept for himself. In the end, I was the one who had practically to force the payment on him. But when he had taken my coins he did not put them away for safekeeping but did the strangest thing, crossing the courtyard and handing them over to one of the children there. The child, an infant, not understanding their value, immediately scattered them on the ground.

  In an instant the child’s mother had scrambled from her house to collect them, glancing fearfully at Artimidorus, who however paid her no mind.

  In the future, Artimidorus said, you may give the fee directly to your son, so that he might purchase some texts with it.

  I did not know what possessed me to abandon Yeshua to this man, who might well have been mad and could have intended I knew not what. But I had understood at least this in him, that he cared nothing for the thoughts of this world, and it was that that drew me to him, and made me imagine Yeshua safe with him. At any rate, since he showed no interest in hi
s fee, I could not have kept Yeshua from him even had I wished to, for I was certain he would have left me rather than be barred again from following his own inclinations.

  Even so, it fell out that he was as good as lost to me once he’d been taken on by Artimidorus, since he was often many days away from his bed now, accompanying Artimidorus on his wanderings. For as I soon learned, Artimidorus had no home, so that it was a miracle we’d found him that day as we had, but rather wandered from place to place, sleeping in whatever hovel was offered to him. For this reason he was in fact quite well known, being seen in every quarter, though he was seldom among the other scholars and teachers at the Museum, whom he mocked. There were many who indeed took him for a madman, because he said all manner of things and hurled insults even at the highest officials. But there were also others, I was told, who considered him a brilliant teacher.

  From Yeshua himself, however, I learned almost nothing of Artimidorus. If I should ask, What philosophy does he teach, or, Does he turn you from our God, he answered always in the briefest way, and the least instructive. Of his philosophy, he said only that he taught contempt for worldly glory, and of the Jewish god, he said that they did not speak of him, either for good or ill.

  What then does he say of the gods, I asked him.

  He says nothing, since he says we cannot know them.

  I was uncertain what to make of this, and whether to be afraid for him. But the truth was I myself did not know what to teach him, since what had seemed certain in Judea was less so in Alexandria, where there was every manner of belief even among the Jews and where even in our own assembly houses I had seen the worship of the gods of the Romans and the Egyptians.

  I was not able to learn a good deal more about Artimidorus from the talk of the street, for though everyone had some story to tell of his insolence, there were few who could make any sense of his teachings. It was said that one day he preached defiance of the Romans, the next acquiescence, or that he refused the alms of the rich in the morning and in the evening ate in their homes. When it became known that one of the boys who followed him was a Jew, it was put to him whether the Jews should have equal rights, and he said then that as the Jews themselves chose to set their race apart, it should not surprise them that others did. But when he was asked who found the greatest favour in the eyes of the gods, he named the Jews, because for the sake of their god they would suffer any persecution.

  The thing, however, that I could not fathom about Artimidorus was that Yeshua had chosen him, and could see wisdom in him, though only a child of eight, when so many others could not. Yet often it seemed a kind of thraldom in which Artimidorus held him, through that same power that I myself had been drawn to, the great indifference he had to men’s opinions. So it was that one minute he might call white, black, and in the next reverse himself, because it did not matter to him the rules others lived by, and it was the spectre of this freedom, I thought, that drew Yeshua to him, that one might be slave to no one’s judgement and remake oneself at one’s whim. Except in so doing, as it seemed to me, one must also renounce all the things of this world, and so risk gaining freedom only at the cost of every other good.

  I spoke with Artimidorus only once again after our first meeting, passing him by chance when I had gone to the market outside our quarter to sell the rugs I made then. It happened that he was alone, and had seated himself on the pavement and drawn a circle around himself in chalk. The purpose for this was not clear, except that it had the effect of keeping people from him, for they instinctively would not cross into the circle, which seemed to please him.

  I greeted him, but when he did not reply I said, I am the boy Yeshua’s mother.

  I know it, he said, but it did not seem reason enough to greet you.

  I knew it was his manner to speak in this way and yet I was very affected by what he said, as if he had somehow taken Yeshua away from me in that moment or erased any claim I had to him. Many years later, when Yeshua had truly renounced me, I would have cause to remember this instant and see the future laid out in it.

  As it happened, however, I had Yeshua back to me not long afterwards, for that winter Artimidorus fell ill and died one night in the streets. Yeshua, because he had been home that night on account of the cold, at once blamed himself for his teacher’s death, since he had not been by his side to save him.

  I said to him, Surely he did not mind losing his life, when he seemed so little to value it.

  But Yeshua replied coldly, You don’t know what you say, and would neither share his grief with me nor relinquish it, retreating into black silence.

  I could not, however, suppress a secret relief at Artimidorus’s death, not only at having Yeshua returned to me but that he had been saved the life that Artimidorus offered him, of homelessness and renunciation and even of threat, for because he was outspoken Artimidorus had had many enemies. In the hope that Yeshua would cleave to me and be my son again, I remade his place for him in our home, asking nothing of him and treating him with the deference and respect due to an eldest. To the others, by now, he was nearly a stranger, as much from the look of him and his manner as from his absence from us. Yet, for my sake, they showed him what warmth they were able to and hid their discomfort.

  We might have gone on in this way, and Yeshua found his place among us again, for he was still a child, had not the infant I was nursing then died. The infant, a girl—as it fell out the last child I was to bear to Yehoceph, for afterwards I did not allow him to come to me again—was some ten weeks when Yeshua returned to us, and healthy and strong. Indeed all of my children had been so at birth, and I had lost only one of them, a boy, Hosheah, at six months, to a plague that had gone through the city. But the girl had shown no sign of illness. So it was a horror to us to wake and find her dead, with no mark on her of any sort, as if a devil had taken her.

  A darkness came into the house then. Yehoceph said, There is a curse on us, and we all understood him to mean Yeshua, though he would not say it. And because of the manner of the girl’s death, I could not bring myself to contradict him.

  In later years, as I looked back on the thing, it seemed foolishness and superstition that we should have blamed the boy. But in those days there was never a time when we felt safe from God’s judgement, when we believed that the sin that marked me would escape punishment. Even Yeshua, I was certain, felt in some manner the weight of this retribution that hung over us, and his place in it, and much of his defiance of us must surely have been born of his own shame. Thus there seemed a complicity among us that this death be our expiation, and that Yeshua take it upon himself like the scapegoat.

  So it was that after the child had been buried and our mourning had ended, I awoke one day to find that Yeshua had gone. He was just past ten years old then. I did not expect that I should see him again.

  In the time after Yeshua left me I began to travel more freely in the city, expanding my work and taking commissions in every quarter. It was not that I had any true need of money then, and indeed I might have stayed in my home and looked to my children rather than wandering the streets like a common peddler. But a restlessness had overtaken me, and I could not sit still then in the small world that had been circumscribed for me, with my husband who came home at dusk and my sons who resembled him. For with Yeshua gone I felt sometimes like a stranger in my home, as if all my children, whom I loved, were yet not quite my own.

  Thus, with the excuse of my work, I wandered to many places I had not seen before, and learned every face of the city. In those days Alexandria was a place of extraordinary beauty, for which it was justly renowned, but also of putrescence, which I saw with my own eyes. There were children there who were stolen from the streets and then used in the most vicious manner, and also women and men so enslaved to their lusts they would seek any means to indulge them. Then it was a place where there was not only every sort of idolatry and belief but also every kind of person, Romans and Gauls and Armenians, priests and great princes and greater thieves
.

  I thought at first that it was only for Yeshua’s sake that I ranged so widely, that I might find him and make amends, for it was my intention then to turn over the inheritance I had set aside for him so that he might make the life that he chose and not be a beggar in the street. But as it fell out, the city was not so large as I had imagined it, nor was it so difficult to find my son. Only a matter of weeks passed after his departure from us before I received some news of him, from a woman of the quarter who had seen him, and afterwards I myself had many sightings of him, though I seldom spoke to him at any length. The first time I did so I did not offer him his inheritance as I had resolved but rather proposed to apprentice him in the trade of his choice, which caused me some bitterness, for I remembered the words of Zekaryah.

  Yeshua said, There is no trade I am suited for.

  Then you will be a vagrant in the street.

  I am no vagrant now, he said, for I have taken myself to another teacher.

  I did not know why I did not simply offer him his freedom then, and give over the money intended for him. That he was a child, surely, was my excuse, and so would unwisely squander what he had or renounce it as he had learned from Artimidorus, and be left with nothing. But it was something more than that. Perhaps it was that seeing him alive and within my reach, I was loath to give him his independence, hoping I might still find the way to bind him to me again. Or perhaps it was simply that I feared his refusal of me, for then I should truly have no power over him, and no reason more even to search him out.

  With some bit of spite I asked after his teacher, believing he had spoken of one only out of pride, and if, like Artimidorus, he required no fee.

  I keep his house for him, Yeshua said.

  Then you are his slave.

  And you are your husband’s, he said to me, and he is slave to his foreman.

  My anger rose then and I could not bring myself to answer him. So it was that though I had the means to save him—and as I learned I had been right to think that he lied to me, and lived in the street—I could not find the way to let him make use of them, or to move past his enmity and gain his trust. Or not enmity, perhaps, but just the habit we had fallen to, for I knew that he did not hate me but only held himself hard to me, against what threat not one or the other of us could have said.