Source

by James A. Michener

  The fat dyer began to sweat and asked, “Paltiel, were you at the execution today?”

  “I stood two cubits from the old man, and before he died he looked at me with one eye. He looked into my very heart, and I am determined.”

  Jehubabel thought: At how many others did the old man look today? To Paltiel he said, “Then you are committed?”

  “Aren’t you?” the little farmer asked. “The old man looked at you, also.”

  “You saw?”

  “Jehubabel, he looked at us all.”

  The trembling dyer’s whole inclination was to tell Paltiel to be gone, but the small man could not be dismissed, so Jehubabel said, “Wait here,” and he walked dumbly to his home where his wife had supper waiting; but he went past her to an inner room, where he took from a chest a small cloth in which he kept a sharpened knife, and this knife he placed on the floor, sitting before it and staring at it, wondering what to do. And after a while his wife came to call him to supper, but when she saw the knife she lost her appetite and sat on the floor beside him.

  “It is a terrible thing you contemplate,” she said.

  They remained silent for some minutes, staring at the knife, grasping for any solution to the problem of which they had become an unwilling part, and Jehubabel quoted evasively, “‘The thoughts of the righteous are right: but the counsels of the wicked are deceit.’” To this impeccable statement his wife nodded, and he felt encouraged to add, “‘A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.’” She smiled wanly, as if to thank him for his confidence, but refrained from saying anything that might help guide him, so he added, “‘The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.’”

  Having insulated themselves with these comforting saws, Jehubabel and his wife were about to dismiss the temptation and put away the knife when Jehubabel saw, looming out of the darkness, the monitoring eye of the dead man, and he cried, “A man already dead mustn’t tell us what to do.” His wife asked what he was saying, but a knocking came at the door and the urgent voice of Paltiel: “Jehubabel, we are waiting!”

  In despair the spiritual leader of the Jews looked at his wife, then threw himself full length on the floor, crying, “Adonai, Adonai, what shall I do?” No instructions came from YHWH and he confided to his wife, “I don’t know what to do. Tarphon suspects my complicity. I saw him smiling at me. If his soldiers catch me in this act I shall be lashed to death.” He shuddered, for he could feel the lead-tipped thongs as they cut into his body.

  Then came a rush of hope. He sat up and caught his wife’s hands. “Tarphon assured me that Antiochus was a sensible man. He sings and dances like any Greek. Wants people to love him. Now, when you see that great stone head in the temple you mustn’t think …”

  “Jehubabel!” came the ghostly voice of Paltiel, summoning him to inescapable reality.

  And so in that inner room, Jehubabel, one of the first persons in world history to do so, had to face the mystery of the Jew: “Why does he seek out martyrdom? An insignificant man like Paltiel? Why does he combat the empire?” And Jehubabel felt it wrong that vital decisions should be forced by the eye of a dead martyr and the voice of a man willing to become one.

  “Jehubabel!” came the demanding voice. “Must I, alone, sanctify my son? Tell me now if you are afraid.” And to the listening couple the voice outside had become the voice of Adonai.

  Slowly, driven by forces which he did not comprehend but which would rule Judaism for the ensuing centuries, Jehubabel picked up the knife, wrapped it in its cloth and tucked it in his belt. “I must go,” he told his wife. “The old man is looking at me.” And she accompanied him to the door, where she gave him her blessing, for in his final agony the old man had looked at her, too.

  The sweating, dumpy man and the scrawny little farmer hurried past the synagogue and down a dark alley which led toward the main gate, but halfway along that passageway they stopped to dodge quickly into a small house, occupied by Paltiel, and there four Jews were gathered with an eight-day-old baby boy who had been prepared for circumcision. As if it were a routine ritual Jehubabel asked, “Are we prepared to enter into the covenant of Abraham?” but when the assembled Jews gave their routine replies he looked at them with quivering eyes and asked passionately, “Neighbors, are we aware of what this means?” And upon interrogation he found that the old man had looked at each face in that room, handing on a commitment that would never die. Each man knew what was involved and was prepared for the consequences.

  Jehubabel, trembling with the gravity of what he was doing, stood aside to utter a short prayer, after which he presented his sharp knife and circumcised the infant, who began to howl at the unaccustomed pain, but little Paltiel jammed a wine-soaked cloth into the child’s mouth and the crying ceased. “His name is Itzhak,” the farmer said, “for Itzhak was the son of Abraham who was offered as a sacrifice to …” Here the father reached a difficult impasse. He was not allowed to speak the name YHWH; indeed, he did not know how the sacred name was pronounced, for it had been some centuries since the word had been spoken in Makor. But since any deity must be referred to in some manner the custom had grown up of calling YHWH by the arbitrary Hebrew word Adonai, which would later be translated into other languages as Lord. When the vowel indications for Adonai were added to the letters YHWH, a curious symbol developed which German scholars many centuries later would mistakenly read as Jehovah, a word that had never existed and that had never in any way been applied to the austere Hebrew deity. Thus the greatest of gods was called YHWH, which had no pronunciation; he was known to ordinary Jews as Adonai, which was purely arbitrary; and he would conquer the world as Jehovah, a name which had never belonged to him or to anything else. Perhaps only this vague and contradictory nomenclature could indicate the wonder of the concept involved, or explain why a group of Jews in Makor were willing to risk being flayed alive because of their devotion to the god who had sustained them.

  Paltiel, the man with few sheep, who was taking the greatest risk—for the Greeks could examine his son at any time and see proof of guilt—held his son aloft and said, “He is Itzhak, who was offered as a sacrifice to Adonai. But he lived. Tonight all of us offer our lives to Adonai, and may we also live.”

  One by one the conspirators, aware that their lives were forfeit if the child Itzhak were inspected by Greek officials, slipped out of the house, but as Jehubabel picked his way back to the synagogue he heard boisterous voices coming along the main street and he thought it might be a group of soldiers who would question him, and he hid. But the noisy ones were the seven athletes in their blue capes returning from an evening at Tarphon’s palace, and they marched toward the synagogue to bid his son Benjamin good night. In the fraternity of athletes they brought him to his door, making him swear that he would be at the gymnasium early next day. An ordinary father seeing how welcome his son was among the boys whose fathers ran the town would have felt pride in his acceptance, but Jehubabel, watching from the shadows as his Greek son called farewell to his Greek friends, felt only shame that the boy should have drifted so far from the spirit that had driven Paltiel to the circumcision of his son.

  His apprehension regarding Benjamin increased when Governor Tarphon traveled to Ptolemais, where work had accumulated regarding the seaport, leaving Melissa in the palace along the northern wall, for there Benjamin went in Tarphon’s absence, and it became clear to Jehubabel that an evil relationship had developed between his son and the gymnasiarch’s beautiful Greek wife. For several painful days Jehubabel lingered in narrow streets between the temple of Zeus and the palace, and from his hiding place spied upon the boy’s movements. What he saw convinced him that his blue-cloaked son was betraying his benefactor.

  On the third night of watching, Jehubabel waited for some hours until Benjamin left the commodious house, his blue cloak over his arm as he headed for the gymnasium, but when the boy approach
ed, Jehubabel stepped suddenly before him, saying in Aramaic, “You shall not go to the gymnasium. You shall come home with me.”

  “The others expect me,” his son replied in the Koine.

  “Your mother expects you,” Jehubabel muttered under his breath, and he dragged his son toward the temple of Zeus and then eastward along the main street, whose opulent shops exemplified for him the temptations into which the Jews of Makor had fallen.

  At their home Jehubabel sat the bewildered boy on a bench and summoned his mother. Together the two older Jews challenged their son with having betrayed Governor Tarphon, who had so often befriended the family. “There is the dog that bites his keeper’s hand, and there is the young man who seduces the wife of his guardian,” Jehubabel said sententiously, while his son continued to look perplexed.

  “Can a man take the fire of adultery into his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” Jehubabel asked, but still his words made no impression on the boy.

  “Her house is the way to hell, leading you down to chambers of death,” the fat face with the beard mumbled, but Menelaus, his ear attuned to the subtleties of Greek thought, could not understand what his garrulous father was trying to say.

  “Drink waters out of your own cistern and running waters out of your own well. Let them be yours only, and do not share them with strangers,” the pudgy moralist intoned, and Menelaus grew fidgety, which annoyed his father.

  “‘Train up a child in the way he should go:’” Jehubabel said with great earnestness, “‘and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ We warned you that the lips of a strange woman drop sweetness like a honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil.”

  “Father, you’re talking nonsense,” Menelaus said, using the Koine.

  Jehubabel was stunned. He had been offering his son the profoundest wisdom he knew and the boy mocked him. He felt that he had to make some powerful statement that would clear the young man’s head and force him to see the grievous wrong of adultery, but instead all he could think of was the ancient summary of the Jews: “What son curses his father, his lamp shall be put out in darkness.” To Jehubabel, trained in the ways of Judaism, the sentence had frightening implications, but to Menelaus it was words only.

  “I didn’t curse you, Father. I said you were talking nonsense, and you are. Now what is it you’re trying to say?”

  Jehubabel drew away from his insolent son. “I am warning you that adultery with the wife of Governor Tarphon …”

  Menelaus began laughing, easily and frankly. “Is that what’s frightened you?” he asked. Then, pointing with his hands, he said in broken phrases, “That I go … Melissa’s house … and Tarphon is in Ptolemais?” He laughed again and said, “Father, Governor Tarphon asked me to do this. Many of us go to Melissa’s. We sit and listen to her read.”

  Jehubabel sat down heavily, “You do what?” he quavered.

  “Or we talk.”

  “About what?”

  Menelaus was momentarily baffled. On this day Melissa had talked about a play in Athens, a philosopher from Antioch, and the day when a tame bear had chased her in Rhodes. “Well, we talk about many things.”

  His son’s hesitancy satisfied Jehubabel, who could see Tarphon’s palace only as a pit into which his son had stumbled in his sexual debauchery. Ponderously he said, “Stolen waters are sweet, Benjamin, and the bread you eat in secret is pleasant, but death is there.” To Jehubabel it was tantamount to malediction, but to Menelaus it was quite irrelevant.

  Once more the boy tried to explain: “We seven are like the sons of Tarphon, and Melissa cares for us. When we talk with her she tells us what to do.”

  “You have entered the house of evil, and the servants have closed the doors,” Jehubabel said, and Menelaus looked at him in bewildered silence. The boy knew that he would not be able to explain to his father, so without speaking further the young athlete picked up a few articles of clothing and left. When Jehubabel asked where he was going, Menelaus said, “To the governor’s. Long ago he asked me to live with him, and now I shall do so.” And he was not seen again in the house by the synagogue.

  When Tarphon returned from Ptolemais he was required to do two things which displeased him. On orders from Antiochus Epiphanes he announced that all Jewish households must be searched for male children, and if any under the age of six months was found to have been circumcised, that child’s parents would be flayed alive. When the order was given he summoned Jehubabel to the gymnasium and said, “I trust you have not broken the law.”

  The bearded dyer looked at Tarphon in silence, for he was praying that the farmer Paltiel might somehow hide his son, but Tarphon interpreted the Jew’s refusal to speak as animosity stemming from the fact that Menelaus had moved to the palace. “Believe me, Jehubabel, when your son is champion of the empire you’ll thank me for taking over his training.” But Jehubabel continued to pray, and Paltiel succeeded in hiding his son Itzhak among his sheep, and that day the Jews were spared.

  When the soldiers reported to the gymnasium that no circumcisions had taken place, Jehubabel regained his composure; it was Tarphon who sat down heavily in a chair, and the Jew realized how eager the governor had been to find no guilt. “We want no further executions in this town,” Tarphon said. Then he rose and clasped Jehubabel about the shoulder. “Thank you, old friend, for having spared us all.”

  When the pudgy, long-robed Jew left the gymnasium—the most un-athletic-looking person who ever did so—Tarphon undressed and went to the wrestling room, where he asked Menelaus to fight against him, and as they moved about, grappling for holds, Tarphon had to explain the second bit of unpleasant business, but first he encouraged the young man by saying, after a vigorous sequence of thrusts and grabs, “In Ptolemais I met a group of wrestlers from Tyre. Claimed to be champions of the north.”

  Casually Menelaus asked, “You wrestle against them?”

  “Yes.”

  Menelaus was breathing heavily. “Did you defeat them?”

  “Easily.”

  Tarphon watched Menelaus carefully, and what he saw reassured him. A slight quiver came to the young man’s lips and the governor knew what he was thinking: If Tarphon can defeat them, and I can defeat Tarphon, it means that I could be champion.

  But Menelaus was cautious. Hesitating lest he offend his patron, he inquired, “Were they really champions?”

  “They claimed to be. Said they were certain winners at Antioch.”

  Tarphon was pleased with what happened next. Menelaus smiled. It was the relaxed smile of a young man who senses victory ahead. It showed neither arrogance nor conceit, but rather the anticipation of a contest in which there was reasonable chance for success. Men who had never played games would not have recognized this smile, but anyone who, like the gymnasiarch, had engaged in athletic contests most of his life would observe it with respect, because it was from such self-confidence that victory was built. At that moment Menelaus was very much a Greek and he said quietly, “I am eager to compete at Antioch.”

  “And I want to take you there,” Tarphon answered. “But in Ptolemais I heard bad news to go with the good.”

  Menelaus stopped smiling. “What was it?” he asked, and again Tarphon was impressed with his sober willingness to face reality. He’s an authentic Greek, Tarphon thought.

  Slowly Tarphon tried to explain the ugly facts: “For a Jew to win at Antioch would be extremely popular. I know the emperor would like to see one of your people capture a major trophy. It would … I mean it would prove that in the empire we do not discriminate against any man … that we can all become good Greeks if we try. Now I’ll grant there have been minor differences between Antiochus and the Jews … take even your own father …”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  Tarphon brushed the sweat from his forehead and continued, “I’m saying that we all want you to go to Antioch … and to win.”

  “I also,” Menelaus replied, preparing himself for bad news.

 
“But Antiochus has decreed that no contestant may stand naked before him who is circumcised. It would be offensive to the spirit of the games.”

  In the steamy room there was silence, and the two athletes were forced to look down at the visible proof of Menelaus’ covenant with YHWH. In his first days in the gymnasium Menelaus had been conspicuous because of this sign, and other boys had taunted him, for he was the only Jew who came to the place, and he had fought alone; but with his later victories had come self-respect, and the other athletes now looked upon his circumcision with the impersonal interest they might have directed toward a boy who had lost a toe. To them Menelaus was three things: a Greek, a champion, a circumcised Jew—and the first two outweighed the last. But the Seleucid capital of Antioch had seen no Jewish athletes, and there the fact of circumcision would be scandalous as a profanation of the human temple. Menelaus understood all this even more clearly than Tarphon and it was he who suggested the solution: “In Ptolemais isn’t there a doctor who can cover the sign?”

  “There is, but it’s terribly painful.”

  “If I were able to bear the pain?”

  “Then it could be done.”

  Cautiously Menelaus weighed the choices growing out of what the governor had just said, and he could not decide between them. Tarphon, appreciating the boy’s perplexities—for who would reject the essence of his inherited religion?—did not press him to speak at that moment. Instead, he found Menelaus a strigil and the two athletes sat on benches and scraped themselves, after which they went to the baths, where slaves immersed them in tepid water, then massaged them with scented oil and dipped them into very hot water, from which they came out exhausted and relaxed. This was the finest moment of the day, when the fruits of vigorous exercise were found in cleanliness and the expulsion of irrelevant worries. It might almost have been called “the Greek moment,” for it so perfectly epitomized the Greek ideal; and in this period of unusual mental clarity before he fell asleep on the padded benches, Menelaus faced up to the full implication of what he had been discussing with the gymnasiarch.