Birthright

by Alan Gold

  So when somebody knocked aggressively on his door in the middle of the night and shouted out in a language he barely understood, “Open, in the name of the procurator,” he was quite unprepared.

  Abram jumped out of bed and opened the door to find a huge, burly centurion standing there, dressed in the regalia of the Roman army, his breast badge showing that he was a member of the Legion XVII Alexandrianus.

  Without any introduction, the centurion commanded, “You’re the doctor from Syria Palaestina. You will come with me immediately.”

  Not wanting to indicate that he was aware such a command might be made, Abram spluttered, “What . . . why . . . I’m a doctor . . . who demands I come . . . who are you?”

  The centurion eyed him coldly. “Don’t ask me any questions. Just get dressed, bring any instruments you use to cure people, and come with me. Now!”

  Within a minute, Abram was marching in the middle of a phalanx of men toward the upper part of the city. They were the only people on the road, as the curfew forbade anybody to be on the streets late at night, after the city bells had been rung. When they reached the residence of the procurator, Abram was overwhelmed by its size, grandeur, and opulence. His whole life had been spent in villages and large towns; he had been forbidden, like all Jews, to enter Jerusalem except on the one day, the ninth day of the month of Ab, when Jews were allowed to grieve for their history. His only view of Jerusalem had been from deep in its bowels, when as a boy he and his beloved Ruth had burrowed to the top of the tunnel to return the seal.

  He’d never allowed himself to enter Jerusalem, so the first truly major city he’d entered had been Alexandria, and in the few days he’d been there, he’d explored little more than the port area. As he was marched through the streets, he was amazed by the city’s size and complexity, no more so than when they ascended a hill and the procurator’s palace came into view. Abram looked at the enormity of the home where Gaius Lucius Septimus lived in a manner beyond the Israelite’s belief.

  They entered through a fortified and guarded stone-and-iron gate. The walls of the vast villa were painted in reds and yellows, blues and greens, and adorned by parrots and lions and tigers and elephants. Columns held up balustrades and walkways built seemingly in the air, where servants sauntered into and out of rooms. Fountains played the music of waterfalls, and when he looked inside the enormous basins, he saw fish swimming in them.

  And the floor. This was no rush matting or earth floor; this floor was a mosaic pattern of the faces of men and women, of courtesans and governors. He felt uncomfortable walking across such graven images, but he was forced to follow the patrol who had escorted him from his lodgings.

  A servant led him upstairs to a series of corridors and rooms, where he entered a sumptuously furnished antechamber. A man was seated at a desk, writing on a vellum scroll. He looked up as Abram was escorted into the room. The middle-aged man, gray, gaunt, suspicious, eyed him up and down; it was obvious that Abram’s attire didn’t suit his new surroundings.

  “Have you searched him?” the man asked.

  The centurion shook his head and apologized. “He’s a doctor. I didn’t think it necessary.”

  “Fool! He’s about to enter the private chambers of the procurator. Search him for any weapons in the folds of his . . . his . . . whatever that thing is that he’s wearing.”

  The centurion crudely felt every part of Abram’s body for knives, swords, or any other weapon he might have been concealing. It upset and angered Abram, who winced when the centurion felt his private parts.

  “Might I remind you, whoever you are, that I’ve been dragged from my bed for reasons that haven’t been explained to me. Now, why am I here, and what do you want with me?”

  “You’re here,” said the man, who still hadn’t told him who he was, “because His Excellency, Gaius Lucius Septimus, has commanded you to be here. That’s all you need to know. In a moment, I’ll take you into the procurator’s quarters. You’ll address him as ‘Your Excellency.’ You’ll answer his questions simply and explicitly. You’ll ask no questions of him unless given permission by him. And you’ll initiate no conversation or engage in any unnecessary talk. Is that understood?”

  Abram nodded. The seated man stood and almost apologetically knocked on an interconnecting door. A muffled response was heard, and the door was opened. If Abram had been surprised by the opulence of the public parts of the palace, when he entered Gaius Lucius Septimus’s personal apartments, he was breathless. Deep reds, blues, and yellows were the dominant colors. The huge room was full of a type of furniture Abram had never seen: armchairs made of beautifully carved wood and leather; divans of deep crimson plush; intricate wooden chests of the blackest wood, inlaid with ivory and alabaster; tables large and small covered in sophisticated marquetry where the craftsman had used wood and gold leaf to create sculptures of birds and bears, foxes and lions. And in the middle of the room was a huge bed with some sort of translucent curtain around it, joined to the ceiling by a canopy.

  Seated at his desk, reading from scrolls, was Gaius Lucius Septimus, the procurator and governor of all Egypt, one of the most important men in the world.

  The man who’d brought him into the private quarters saluted, his arm rigidly outstretched, his palm facing down, and said, “Excellency, the doctor, Abram the Jew from Syria Palaestina.”

  He retreated and closed the door behind him, leaving Abram standing there while Gaius Lucius continued to read his scrolls, ignoring the doctor. Abram felt increasingly uncomfortable. Eventually, the procurator glanced up and spoke to him.

  “Do you know why you’ve been commanded here?”

  “No, Excellency.”

  “A century ago, one of the greatest of all of the Romans suffered from the same malady as that which causes me to be ill from time to time. But because he was the leader of all the Roman Empire, he tried to keep it secret, to hide it from the world, for fear that it would show him to be weak. I have no such fear. I’ve been informed by the doctors in Rome that my malady is not uncommon and tends to strike powerful men of great intelligence. It is called the falling sickness. Have you heard of it?”

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  “It is an inconvenience for me. It strikes, often without warning, and it lays me in my bed, sometimes for days. I feel weak and listless afterward. So I want to be cured. But the Roman doctors have not been able to prevent it from happening, despite the foul medicines they’ve prescribed. And word has reached my ear that you have had success in Syria Palaestina in curing this disease. Is that true?”

  “No, Excellency.”

  Gaius Lucius looked at him sharply. “No?”

  “No and yes. I have no proof that the falling disease can be cured. But I have prevented its recurrence for years in some people, such that since I treated them, it has not made its return.

  “I might have cured some people, but others have merely had their disease made less frequent. Those who had the falling sickness every week found after my treatment that the incidents occurred only after months, sometimes six or more. But I was unable to prevent their malady from recurring altogether. While many of my patients who have not had any fits or episodes claim they’re cured, I can make no such claim. Their fits, Excellency, may recur in them at some stage.”

  He stopped talking. It was a risk to admit such a doubt, but the moment he saw him, Abram realized that such a man would prefer truth to the sycophancy to which he would normally be subjected.

  The procurator nodded. “If you can delay the onset of these fits for weeks, or better, months, then I will be satisfied.”

  “And my fee?”

  The procurator looked at Abram in astonishment. “I do not discuss such things. You’ll talk about that with my amanuensis.”

  But the doctor shook his head. “No, Excellency. I don’t like your man, and I don’t think he likes me. I’d rather we discussed my fee between us. I have to live, and I’m not prepared to—”

  “You da
re say these things to me?” Gaius Lucius said in astonishment. Nobody had spoken to him in this way for years.

  “You want me to cure you?”

  Another risk, but like the first, this one paid off. The procurator smiled. “You’ll be well paid for your skills. Now, what medicines do I have to take?”

  “None,” said the doctor. He remained silent, looking at the procurator.

  “None?”

  “None. You have to understand that what ails you is an agency of your body being out of alignment. The disease from which you suffer is called by the Greeks ‘epilepsia,’ from their word epi, which in Latin means ‘from’ and lepsis, which in your language, Excellency, means ‘seizure.’ The great Hippocrates examined it carefully. Before him, it was called the sacred disease because it was thought to have been sent to us by the gods, so people sacrificed animals and sought expiation.

  “But Hippocrates said that its cause was that the humors of the body were out of orientation, and the remedy I dispense is to put the humors back in order.”

  “Humors?” asked the procurator.

  Abram nodded. “Hippocrates taught that our bodies have four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Each has its own complexion. Blood is hot and dry; phlegm is cold and wet; black bile is cold and dry; and yellow bile is hot and dry. In a person who isn’t sick, each of these humors keeps the others under control, but no one is the master of all. In your language, none would be considered primus inter pares. Each is the equal of the others, and all act in harmony. But if illness causes one or more to take prominence, then the body loses its orientation, and the disease takes hold.

  “In your case, Excellency, the black bile, which is usually cold, becomes heated when its normal dry condition becomes clogged with bodily fluids. Perhaps you’ve eaten something unusual or drunk too much wine; or something that you’ve eaten or drunk was afflicted by rot. Whatever it was, it has adversely affected your black bile, which heats and causes the foam to come out of your mouth when you fall to the floor.”

  The procurator was staring at him in amazement. “Where did you acquire this knowledge?” he asked. “Why didn’t my Roman doctors tell me such things? How do you know so much, Jew?”

  “I am a student of the great Hippocrates. And also of the physician to your own emperor Commodus, one Aelius Claudius Galenus, who is known for his writings on anatomy as Galen of Pergamon. It is these men, and great doctors like them, from whom I have acquired my knowledge. And, of course, by practice and observation of medicines on my own patients.”

  “I’ve heard of this Galen,” the procurator said softly. “Wasn’t he banished from Rome?”

  “Yes, Excellency, but only because of the jealousy of the other doctors who saw him undermining their faith in the curative powers of their gods. But when the Great Plague broke out in Rome, killing two thousand people a day, your emperor’s predecessor, Marcus Aurelius, summoned him back, and today he is the greatest physician after Hippocrates.”

  “So you have learned much from these men,” said Gaius Lucius. “Now what do they suggest to cure me of this epi . . . whatever you call it.”

  “Epilepsia. We have to get your humors back into alignment. As I said, the normally cold black bile in your body is now hot, and the heat must be taken out of it. We do that by removing from your body some of the heat that is causing your black bile to become warm. This new and unaccustomed warmth causes an excess of saliva in your mouth and throat, and because there is a surfeit of it, the saliva heats, which is why it bubbles out of the mouth when you have a fit. The fit itself is caused by black bile flooding the cavities in your brain. You lose consciousness after the fit, until the black bile slowly ebbs away and you recover.

  “So to drain some of the heat out of your body, we have to cool you by plunging your naked body into cold water, or drain some of the heat by bleeding you. I prefer bleeding. I do it by putting leeches on your wrists and neck, or by making an incision in your leg and letting the blood drain out. I usually take a bottle full. You will need complete bed rest for two or three days afterward.”

  “And that’s all?” said the procurator. “The doctors in Rome prescribed wild mushrooms from caverns in the hill, and insisted that I put the flesh of a weasel on my leg until it rotted and stank. I did as they suggested, and the stench caused me to lose some friends. But when I took it off, I had maggots in my skin where the meat had been, and a week afterward I suffered an attack of the epi . . . whatever you call it. I had the doctors flogged for being liars and thieves.”

  “So, Excellency, do you want me to proceed with this treatment?”

  “Certainly,” he said abruptly.

  “Then may I suggest that before we bleed you, we begin with a cold bath. I’d prefer to watch your signs and assess the success of cooling the body before I take blood away from you. Can you arrange a body of cold water?” Abram already knew what the answer would be.

  “There are fountains downstairs. I don’t mind bathing with the fish. Is that suitable?”

  “Ah, but is the water cold? This is Alexandria, and the temperature might have heated the water.”

  The procurator smiled. “For the fish not to die from overheating in the little lake, I’ve created the fountains to keep the water cool. And I have a man whose job it is to feed the water regularly, day and night, from the deep wells beneath the city. This ensures that the water is always cool. But is it cool enough for me to reverse the heating of these humors?”

  “Oh yes, Procurator. Certainly. You go downstairs and bathe for as long as you can stand the cold temperature. When you can’t stand it any longer, continue to stay in for the same amount of time. It will not be pleasant, but the longer you can bear it, the more effective the treatment. Then return here, and I’ll examine your signs and, if necessary, bleed you. With your permission, I’ll remain here and look at the room to ensure that nothing here is causing your humors to be aroused.”

  The procurator left his office; Abram was completely alone. His heart thumping, he walked cautiously around the huge room, looking at the tops of tables, of desks, on the arms of the chairs, on the floor, behind some wall hangings. He looked everywhere, and he knew that time was his enemy. He had no idea how long the procurator would be downstairs in the atrium of the building.

  Then he looked on the procurator’s desk. Hidden under a pile of scrolls, pushed to the back of the surface, was a disc made of silver. He picked it up and saw that it had Egyptian hieroglyphics on it. He had no idea what they meant, but it fitted the description that Didia had given him two days earlier. Was it too easy? No, it must be the amulet. It was of momentary interest to the procurator, so it was just another object on his desk in which he’d lost interest, but to Didia, it was the life and death of her beautiful son. And he doubted that the procurator would miss it.

  He prayed to Yahweh to forgive his theft and to keep him safe until his son had been returned to him. He slipped the disc into his bag of instruments and concoctions and waited for the return of the procurator. He realized that his face was flushed and his heart pounding. A man of Gaius Lucius’s skill at judging people would immediately realize that he was looking at a man with guilt written all over his face. Abram dried his brow on his tunic, took deep breaths, and forced himself to think about his beloved wife, Ruth.

  By the time Gaius Lucius returned, wet and blue with cold, and looked anxiously at Abram, the Israelite doctor had calmed down. He smiled at the procurator and felt confident that he and his beloved Jonathan would live long enough to leave the city of Alexandria and return to the country of their birth.

  Palestine

  1947

  MUSTAFA’S VILLAGE APPEARED nestled in the fold of one of the hills as they rounded a bend in the track. It was a small village, and Mustafa told Shalman that it was called Ras Abu Yussuf. Shalman knew that he’d journeyed only about ten or twelve miles northeast of Jerusalem, yet from the looks of it, the village appeared hardly changed since medieval ti
mes.

  “Tell me about your village,” said Shalman.

  “What’s to tell? It’s a village. My father’s father’s father was here and many more before that.”

  They rode on until they reached the edge of the village. Shalman’s head was thumping mercilessly, and he was seeing double. He prayed that he didn’t have some form of clot under his skull, putting pressure on his brain.

  As they entered Ras Abu Yussuf, one, then three, and then a few dozen villagers came out of their houses to look at Mustafa leading Shalman astride his donkey. Shalman attempted a smile at the villagers, but they didn’t smile back. They just looked at him in silence, recognizing from his clothes, his features, and the cut of his hair that he was either British or a Jew. Either way, he was unwelcome. Shalman felt the hostility rising in their gaze.

  An aging woman emerged from a modest home at the northern end of the main street and stood in the front doorway. As Mustafa approached, leading the donkey, the woman called out loudly so that everybody could hear her disapproval, “Mustafa, who’s this man? Is he one of us? If not, why have you brought an enemy to your father’s door?”

  Mustafa answered equally loudly, “Mother, the man has fallen and injured his head. I couldn’t leave him out there. The vultures were circling.”

  The woman looked at Shalman suspiciously. “He’s not Arab. What is he? Jew? English? Are you so stupid that you bring this into our village, to our house?”

  Shalman lifted his head, deciding he needed to try to explain himself, but the simple action left him with extreme vertigo. Shalman looked at the woman, whom he assumed was Mustafa’s mother, and blinked because there were two of her standing side by side. Then three. Then . . .

  Shalman fainted and pitched headfirst off the donkey and into the dust.

  • • •