The Source: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Beruriah came in with the night meal—a frugal offering of beans and bread and olives—and Yigal ceremoniously served the little children, then watched them severely in the dim light lest they begin to eat before their elders. This was a game he had always played with his children, and hungry though they were they enjoyed participating in it, watching his sharp eyes as they passed from child to child, half smiling, half stern, while his skilled hands continued serving the meager portions. But this evening he was not to finish, for a messenger came running with a summons to the wall. Fearing some catastrophe Yigal put down the crushed olives and left his home, his prayer shawl still about his shoulders.

  At the foot of the wall, illuminated by flares held by his Roman generals, stood Vespasian, a great solid man with a warrior’s stern insistence upon ending this siege. “Yigal, worker at the olive press, I have swallowed my pride and I ask you again: Will you throw open your gates?”

  “Never,” Yigal replied.

  “For the last time, will you accept an honorable peace?”

  “This is a town of God,” Yigal replied from the darkness of the wall, “and there can be no honorable peace with the gods you bring from Rome.”

  “Do you intend, then, to sacrifice the people of this town?”

  “We are with God, and He will save us,” Yigal answered, and for the last time the determined Roman veteran and the obdurate Jew faced each other at the wall of King David. They were of about the same age, each a dedicated man, each honorable and a man to trust—when the time came for Vespasian to die he would say quietly, “A Roman emperor should die standing on his feet, ready to face all enemies,” and in this defiant posture he would meet death, of ten successive emperors from Tiberius to Domitian the only one to escape assassination or forced suicide. But between him and Yigal there could be no conciliation.

  “When I next face you, Yigal of the olive press, the meeting will be terrible,” and Vespasian was gone.

  On the nineteenth day of the siege a fearful thing happened and on the nineteenth night began a sequence of events which, involving as they did Josephus and Rab Naaman, would be remembered in history. Both occurrences were protested by Yigal, but he was helpless to prevent either. On the morning of this critical day General Josephus ordered his professional soldiers to drag out the tuns of olive oil that Yigal had provided, and a large fire was started in the forum between the roofless Augusteana and the wrecked Greek temple. When Yigal saw the fire and realized what was intended he asked Josephus if this was necessary, and the young general nodded.

  “But this has been an honorable war,” Yigal protested.

  Josephus turned from the fire to reply, “You wanted the war. Don’t come crying when I take steps to win it.”

  “Will this cruel step accomplish anything?”

  “It may very well drive Vespasian from the walls.”

  “It may also …”

  Josephus became angry and left the fires where the oil was being heated. “Yigal,” he said with some bitterness, “you know that if the Romans ever take this town you are immediately dead. You’ve known this for some time, so why are you now cowardly?”

  “For myself I ceased to fear twenty-seven years ago,” Yigal replied, “when I faced General Petronius with no weapons, and since that day I have never feared to die. You and I are dead, Josephus, but if we fight honorably the Romans may spare our women and children. If you proceed with your present plans they will have just cause to slay not only you and me, but the children as well.”

  At Yigal’s suggestion that he, Josephus, might also die as the result of what was about to happen, the young general blanched. He caught his breath, as if it were indecent for Yigal to suggest such a possibility. Impatiently he dismissed Yigal and told his men, “Stoke up the fires. And get those ladders ready.”

  Yigal, banished from the scene, hurried to the home of old Naaman to enlist his aid in protest against what Josephus intended, but he found the bearded old scholar lost in contemplation of his holy books and nothing could summon him back to this world. “Rab Naaman,” Yigal begged, “a terrible thing is about to be done, and only your authority can stop it.”

  “The question, Yigal,” said the spiritual leader, “is no longer Makor, but that of the entire Jewish nation. How can we survive? Hotheads like you and Josephus insisted upon war, and now we shall be swept away. The synagogue will be destroyed and our children will be led off in cages to be slaves among the heathens. I am not concerned with what General Josephus does or does not do at this moment. I am concerned only with the Jewish people, for what we do in these next months and years may be final.”

  In vain Yigal tried to summon the old man to a serious discussion of the burning oil, but the scholar would speak only of the years ahead. “We survived Babylon because of great Jews like Ezekiel and Rimmon of this town. And also because the Persians rescued us. Who will rescue us this time, for there are no longer any Persians? When we leave Makor this time we leave forever, and the lives of our children and their children’s children for all generations will be spent in alien lands.” The old man, terrified by this vision, caught at Yigal’s arm and cried, “How shall we survive?” The olive worker had no chance to reply, for at the wall there was a shouting, and the Jews of Makor cheered as if the victory was theirs, so that Yigal had to leave the old scholar; he knew that his people by their actions at that moment were assuring not victory, but a terrible defeat.

  To six different positions on the wall, wherever the Romans had moved up a tower, the men of Josephus had carried tubs of bubbling oil and small buckets for ladling it out. Protected by bowmen they waited on the walls until a Roman soldier in full armor came within reach, and then with surprising skill they drenched him with the boiling oil and shouted with glee as the ghastly stuff crept in beneath his armor, scalding and burning as it went. The Roman, trapped in his gear, could do nothing to escape the punishment, so that no matter where on the tower he stood he had to clutch with both hands at his burning prison, trying vainly to tear away the hides and metal that covered him. Meanwhile the oil kept burning into his skin, and he would lose his balance and fall shrieking onto the glacis, where he would roll down the sloping side and die in an agony of scalding blisters and consuming burns.

  The most hideous part of this death was that it occurred in the midst of the man’s companions at the foot of the wall. They had to watch as the screaming body rolled amongst them, like a flattened ball used in some brutal game, and at their very feet the writhing man would beg for rescue while his companions were powerless to help. Once or twice kindly friends tried throwing water on the tortured man, but this helped only to spread the oil and deepen the suffering. One soldier from Gaul, watching helpless while his tent companion twisted in mortal pain on the ground, drove a spear through his friend’s neck, killing him mercifully.

  It was at this point that Vespasian came to a portion of the wall where six Roman soldiers lay dying in their harness, screaming for death to release them from the unbearable anguish, and he knelt at the head of one who had served Rome well and passed his fingers over the man’s scalded forehead. Oil, he said to himself as he studied his fingers, rubbing them together as his soldier died. Olive oil. Turning to Trajan he said, “When we occupy this town I want the maximum number of prisoners taken alive.”

  That night Josephus started his digging. He convened a meeting attended by Yigal, Naaman and his professional lieutenants. Baldly, and in few words, he announced, “It’s absolutely essential that the Romans do not capture me. I am needed in Jotapata and in Jerusalem. I do not want to leave Makor at this crucial point, but the welfare of the Jews demands that I go … to more important duties elsewhere.”

  Yigal did not protest, for he had always known that Josephus was an important man, but when the general of the Galilean forces explained how he proposed to escape, Yigal was appalled. “I’ve had my engineer study the situation,” the young general said, “and he thinks that it would be quite safe for us t
o dig a small upward tunnel leading from the well to some point outside the walls, in the wadi where the Romans do not guard.”

  “You would endanger this whole town in order to rescue yourself?” Yigal asked incredulously.

  “There would be no danger. We’d penetrate the last bit of earth at night,” Josephus explained, “then cover the scar with care, and no one would ever know.”

  “But if a Roman sentry should happen …”

  “We’ve studied the area for some nights,” Josephus began, but Yigal did not listen, for he realized that the brilliant young man had decided upon the use of scalding olive oil at the same time that he was planning his own escape. To save himself Josephus was willing to imperil the entire frontier of the Jewish nation, and Yigal could not understand such behavior. He listened to no more of the intricate plan—how the dirt would not be brought into the town lest it cause panic among the citizens, who might falsely deduce that they were being betrayed—but the final detail of the scheme shocked him back into reality.

  “I’ve decided to take with me,” Josephus was explaining, “only two people. My trusted soldier Marcus, and Naaman.”

  There was discussion of this, and as Josephus had anticipated, the rescue of the old scholar made the plan palatable to those whose cooperation was required. “Jews always need the leadership of wise men,” Josephus argued, and as he spoke, Yigal gained the impression that the brash young man, so conceited in other matters, truly loved the Jewish religion and the constructive work of leaders like Rab Naaman. Josephus was honestly proposing to rescue the old man because he knew that Naaman was needed if Judaism was to survive.

  Finally Naaman himself spoke. “Yigal, brother of my youth, I will see that the scarred earth is hidden so that my town will be safe.” The old man scuffed his feet about, as if he had well visualized the problem, and Yigal wondered: Did he too know of this plan when I tried to protest against the oil?

  Yigal was not to find an answer to that subtle question, for that night the diggers began their small tunnel leading upward from the well. Within a few feet they came upon that powerful crisscross of monoliths that the Hoopoe had sunk in the earth more than a thousand years before, and these they by-passed with a lateral cut; and finally, when Vespasian and Titus and Trajan were bearing down with all their power upon the doomed town, the moonless night came when a puncture could be made.

  Josephus had given orders that no unusual number of men must be on the walls that night, but Yigal felt that he must satisfy himself as to the escape of the three, so at dusk he put on his prayer shawl and conducted his usual evening prayers at home, playing with his hungry grandchildren till their bedtime. He smiled at his children and watched his wife approvingly as she cleared the table on which food was becoming increasingly scarce. Toward midnight he walked casually to a small house near the well shaft, where a few men were assembled, and there he was finally joined by General Josephus and Rab Naaman, now a bent old man whose bleary eyes could see far into the future. Led by the soldier Marcus the two charismatic Jews moved to the well shaft, where Naaman gave Yigal his blessing: “Somehow God will save this town and His beloved Jews.” Soldiers helped the old man down into the tunnel.

  Then Josephus, at the threshold of that scintillating career which would bedazzle Rome—he would betray the Jews of Galilee and would hide with forty survivors from Jotapata in a cave and enter with them into a suicide compact, manipulating the straws so that he could die last, and when all but one lay about him with their throats cut, he would flee; he would surrender to Vespasian, and at the moment when the Romans were to kill him he would astound that general by shouting like an ancient prophet that he foresaw Vespasian as emperor of Rome, and Titus, too; as a result he would be informally adopted by Vespasian and would take his name, under which he would help the Romans crush the Jews in Jerusalem and destroy the nation; in Rome he would live in a house of Vespasian’s as an honorary citizen of the empire with a pension; he would be the personal confidant of three emperors in a row—Vespasian, Titus, Domitian—and he would outlive them all; under their patronage he would write extraordinary books that vilified the Jews and extolled the Romans, but at the same time he would write notable apologetics on behalf of Judaism, so that much of what we know of the Jews during a period of four hundred years comes from his gifted pen; and he would die at last, having described himself repeatedly as trustworthy, brilliant, devoted, and heroic beyond the norm—it was this young general who stood at the edge of the well and extended his hand to Yigal, saying, “I shall rouse the countryside. My diversions will pull Vespasian elsewhere and Makor will never fall.” He kissed Yigal good-bye and said to the men he was betraying, “Do not weep for me. I am a brave soldier and I will take the risk of the tunnel.” Then he fled down the hole.

  From the wall, hidden so that Roman sentries could not see him, Yigal watched the dark places in the wadi, not knowing where the earth would heave upward, and after some time, in the moonless night, he saw three figures loom out of the earth. He could not differentiate them one from the other, except that the slowest-moving one stayed at the hole, kicking at the earth and trying to mask the marks, but one of the others dragged him away, so that they could make good their escape.

  “O God!” Yigal whispered to himself. “They have not closed the hole.” In anguish he waited till dawn, when in the rising light he could see the betrayal. Even from the wall he could see the telltale mound of earth and the dark circle of the opening. “The Romans will find it within the hour,” he groaned, and he knew that when they did they would follow it down to the well, which would then be lost to the town.

  Quickly Yigal summoned all available women and sent them down to fetch extra water, so that all cisterns would be filled and home receptacles too, but that day the Romans did not discover the escape route. Each morning Yigal would walk upon the wall, trying not to stare at the gaping wound in the earth, and each day he would thank God that no Roman had so far spotted it. Once more General Josephus had been proved right: had Rab Naaman lingered at the hole to efface the marks he might have betrayed the entire party; for Josephus had guessed that the Romans would not see such an obvious thing as an open hole.

  Now came the last days of the Roman siege. When he was satisfied that the Jews were out of olive oil Vespasian brought his towers back to the walls, and his monstrous ballistas began a systematic bombardment of the town, killing many Jews who tried to protect the battlements. Now there was no calling back and forth between Roman and Jew; there was only the harsh, hard work of assaulters who were determined to knock down tall piles of stone and the resourceful tricks of defenders who were obliged to repulse them. But each day the inevitable end came closer.

  With Josephus and Rab Naaman gone, the defense of the town fell wholly on Yigal’s shoulders, and although several faint-hearted Jews came to him advising capitulation, he said, “The life of man is determined when he first places his trust in God. We have been dead ever since we offered our lives to halt Petronius from bringing in his statues of Caligula. What happens in the next weeks can be of no consequence, for if we are dead we have died faithful to our covenant with God.” He would suffer no talk of surrender, and one man who persisted was tied up at Yigal’s command. With a grave dignity that few men attain this average little man, who didn’t own as much as one square of land, kept alive the spirit of his town, serving as general and priest and counselor alike.

  Each night he prayed with his large family, looking upon his many grandchildren with a love that not even he had imagined possible. “We are the chosen of God,” he said, and if he had been asked why he persisted in the defense of Makor, he would have replied, “Because no man can understand the kind of work God will allot him in this life, but whatever it is, he had better perform it faithfully.”

  On the day when it became apparent to all that the town must collapse with the next sunrise, Yigal gathered his family for the last time to discuss with them what a good Jew should be: “You children
may live your lives as slaves in some far country,” he said with little outward emotion, “and it may be difficult for you to remain Jews. But if you remember only two things it will be easy to be faithful. There is but one God. He has no assistants, no separations, no form, no personality. He is God, one and alone. The second thing never to forget is that God has chosen Israel for special duties and responsibilities. Perform them well.” He hesitated and his voice broke. “Perform them well.”

  Placing the prayer shawl about his shoulders he leaned back and closed his eyes and in a low voice began to recite that gracious litany of the ordinary Jewish household, the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs in which the Jewish husband recalls the good life he has known with his wife:

  “When one finds a worthy wife,

  Her value is far beyond that of pearls.

  The heart of her husband is confident about her

  And he does not lack gain.

  She does good and not evil for him

  All the days of her life …

  She rises while it is still night,

  Giving food to her household