Holy Smoke

by Frederick Ramsay

  “I do not see how a dead man in your temple can possibly cause any trouble for the empire. Explain.”

  “I set you a hypothetical case. Suppose there is a group preparing to fall on your men—”

  “Pah!”

  “Let me finish, please. But, the day before this attack, all of your legionnaires fall deathly ill, are incapacitated, and lose their will to fight. What then?”

  “How does it happen they fall ill, Jew?”

  “I can think of many ways that might be. We have a powerful Lord who has answered our prayers in the past. A plague on the Pharaoh, locusts, the first born struck down. Why wouldn’t he help his people now?”

  “Why? Because for decades that is exactly what you people have been praying for and he has remained silent. It seems he is done with you.”

  “You may hope so, but I said I could think of other ways. We could poison your well.”

  “It is guarded night and day.”

  “Good, then you will not accuse us of rebellion when your troops lay down their arms because they have become incapacitated by their own hand.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “If I am right in this, if my investigation is on the right path, the means of your destruction could be at hand and we have nothing to do with it, although it might conceivably be the work of the Lord. I must not think that, however. Perhaps that is the meaning of the mustard plants…”

  “You are not making any sense, Rabbi. What mustard plants? What agency do you speak?”

  “Sorry, the mustard is something else…only a dream. No, there is something in the culture…I do not know what, exactly, but I can guess, and it has the power to destroy your soldiers.”

  “Really? Then it begs the question.”

  “The question?”

  “If you are correct, why would you stop it? Do you not wish for us to be destroyed?”

  “May I speak frankly?”

  “With caution, yes.”

  “I do hope for your eventual destruction. That should not surprise you, but I am not so foolish as to believe that when the effects of this scourge are let loose you will not promptly root it out and then find someone to blame for it other than those responsible, which would be your own people. And, if past practice is precedent, that someone will be us. We suffer enough at your hands. We do not need more. So, it is in the best interests of the Nation to protect you from yourself, and may Ha Shem forgive me.”

  Chapter XXXIX

  Loukas met Gamaliel at his doorstep. Gamaliel appeared distracted. Without knowing what was on his friend’s mind, he gestured for him to enter.

  “Benyamin,” he bawled, “we need refreshment. Wait here Loukas, I have just come from the presence of the prefect and I am in need of a trip to my mikvah and some prayer time.”

  “It was that bad? You have had dealings with him before. Why was this any different?”

  “He reminded me why I dislike the Romans so much, why we continue to suffer at their hands, and he gave me a momentary, but painful moment when I doubted the Lord and his love for his people. Benyamin will attend to you. I will be back in a moment.”

  It had been a seriously depressing meeting. Gamaliel rarely succumbed to depression. He trusted in the Lord and anticipated that his Kingdom on earth, the Nation, would be restored. Surely Elohim would do a mighty act and lift this awful burden with which Rome had saddled them for so long. Too many of his acquaintances, some very close to him, had given up hope. Almost all despaired at the Lord’s silence. They yearned for a Messiah, for a new Moses to deliver them out of this new bondage. And now this arrogant Roman had shaken his confidence anew. Would no one stand for the Lord? Even the high priest, the man entrusted with the soul of the Nation, had been reduced to pandering to the prefect. To save the people, he would claim. To save his position, more like. Gamaliel did not like himself when he plummeted into these dark places. Prayer and a trip to the mikvah, then to find out what Loukas had been up to. Could he really restore sight to the blind? Now that would be a sign, wouldn’t it?

  ***

  Somewhat refreshed and cheered, he rejoined Loukas after his moment in the bath and prayer.

  “So, I must know, can you make the blind see? Is the age spoken of by Isaiah upon us? Tell me.”

  “I do not know about Isaiah. I have read the scroll and can make no sense of it as it stands. It will take a sharper mind than mine to unravel that book. But to answer your question, yes I can and I did. Your friend Jacob has his sight. It is not perfect but it is functional. He rests in my house with soothing cloths on each eye. They must heal.”

  “It is a miracle?”

  “It is a procedure.”

  “A procedure? That is all you will ascribe to a thing that allows the blind to see? Where is your faith?”

  “My faith, good friend, is in the accumulated wisdom of the Lord’s creatures. Miracles, in my experience, are the work of men dedicated to solving problems. I learn from such men, they learn from me. The wisdom accumulates and then miracles occur.”

  “I give up on you, Loukas. I try to turn you from your unbelief and you spurn my efforts. Very well, how did you restore the old man’s sight if it wasn’t a miracle?’

  “It is called couching. I do not know why it is called that, so don’t ask. You take a needle, not too sharp, and insert it in the eye just so. Then you push at the clouded part until it falls away. Then, the person sees.”

  “That’s all? This can restore sight to the blind? There will be no more blindness?”

  “No, that is overreaching. It only works on this particular variety of blindness—the kind Jacob had. The other kinds are intractable as far as I know.”

  “Nevertheless, it is a wonderful thing you did. The Lord will be pleased.”

  “You think? Then he must thank the Indian physician who taught me how to do this procedure. Do you think Elohim will? The man who taught me is not of the faith.”

  Gamaliel rolled his eyes. “As I said, I am finished with you.”

  “Tell me what the famous Roman said to you that put you in such a state.”

  Gamaliel recounted his meeting with the Roman prefect and the implicit connection between the high priest, the palace, and the local ruling governor. As he finished, a loud pounding on his door announced a new episode in what had already been a busy day.

  “Benyamin, see who that is.”

  His servant entered the room. “It is a messenger from the high priest. He says you have been summoned.”

  “Does he, indeed? Loukas, this is what Caiaphas does when he thinks he is the voice of Ha Shem. He becomes imperious. He mimics our oppressors. Benyamin, tell the messenger to tell the high priest that the rabban of the Sanhedrin declines the invitation.”

  Loukas’ eyes popped wide. “Can you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Snub the high priest like that.”

  “It seems I just did. Benyamin, you may tell him that I am not in the mood for lectures about what or where my duty lies with respect to the Nation, Rome, the high priest, or anyone else with a problem they think falls on my head. If Caiaphas needs to speak to me, he can call on me here.”

  “He will not be pleased to hear your message.”

  “No, but it pleases me to send it. I have had enough bullying for one day. I wish to celebrate Loukas the physician’s great accomplishment. Benyamin, send the messenger away and bring us some wine and food.”

  ***

  Across Jerusalem in the part of it that had come to be called the Upper City, the object of Gamaliel’s current anger seated himself with his family to eat his evening meal. He always ate and retired early, believing that mornings should start promptly at the first hour as it was the best, indeed the only, time to start one’s day. Neither his children nor h
is wife were as enthusiastic about that declaration, a fact he ascribed as coming from the darker area of their souls.

  He received Gamaliel’s response just as he finished thanking the Lord for the blessings bestowed on him and his family, and especially for the food which seemed to overflow the table.

  Whatever appetite he might have had, and if it were any normal day it would have been prodigious, quickly disappeared. He left the table and stormed out into the courtyard, yelling for his attendants. They, in turn, had to leave their evening meal, which they scheduled early to coincide with that of their master. He formed them up in two columns and with himself in the center, gave the order to march to the rabban’s house.

  It took a quarter of an hour to form up and another quarter to make the trip across to the lower city to Gamaliel’s home. In all, counting the time the messenger had spent returning from Gamaliel’s house with the unwelcome response, the calling of the guard to the court yard, and the subsequent march east, something just less than an hour had elapsed from a rejection by Gamaliel to an intended confrontation by Caiaphas.

  It was during that brief span that Loukas came to appreciate Gamaliel’s instinct and cunning. By the time an angry high priest arrived and had his guards bang on the rabban’s door, both he and the physician were comfortably ensconced in a shop three streets away with wine, various fruits, and a wheel of cheese. The shopkeeper owed the rabban a favor.

  In the meantime, Benyamin, with great trepidation, announced to the high priest that the rabban of the Sanhedrin would call on the high priest in the morning at the third hour. Then he closed the door.

  Chapter XL

  “I told you how I spent the day, Rabban, and you filled me in on the mind of the prefect. Now, can we please return to the basics of this business? You said something about having seen the killer. We spent time with the blind kohen. When he spoke to you, and for the life of me I cannot remember what he said, you became excited and seemed eager to do something. What happened this afternoon at the Temple?”

  “If I did not already know it, I had reaffirmed for me that things are not always what they seem. I am sure there is a bit of wisdom in scripture to remind us of that, but at the moment, with the prefect’s admonitions and the high priest’s demands still ringing in my ears, my mind refuses to go there. But didn’t you hear what Jacob said?”

  “I was too occupied with estimating the condition of his eyes. I am sorry but it is an occupational hazard. I see the disease before I see the man.”

  “Very well, the meat of the nut is this. Jacob believed, when I probed his memory, that among the newly arrived kohanim, this new cohort of priests that had only just arrived, that there was one who apparently did not belong. In the confusion of assuming their new duties, he went unnoticed. Later, with all the excitement, he was forgotten. Do you see what that means?”

  “An imposter was in the Holy Place from the outset?”

  “Yes, and more than that. He had access to the Temple, the guards, the routine, everything. Who would question a priest as he moved about the inner courts?”

  “No one, probably. Didn’t Yehudah say he thought he saw a man who looked like a priest in the Street of—”

  “Exactly. Can it be that our killer is able to insert himself everywhere and anywhere? And yes, Yehudah’s observation was what gave me the idea to talk to Jacob.”

  “So, bringing a corpse to the Holy of Holies could have been easier than we assumed.”

  “That and more, if we consider all of our dead men are connected. He could move about the city unnoticed as well.”

  “You mean disguised as a priest.”

  “Not just as a priest. No, a kohen wandering aimlessly about the city would be noticed.”

  “How…no, why, then?”

  “We see things, Loukas, and we assume they are what they appear because they meet a set of learned expectations or what they signify. You reminded me that I said I had seen our killer.”

  “Yes, that’s right. What did you mean?”

  “I meant that if he dresses as a Pharisee might, you know, in a dark tunic and cloak, wouldn’t we glance his way and say, just another Pharisee? If he, like you, wears the distinctive garb of a Greek, we think, he’s a Greek. People always mistake you for one. You said as much when we interviewed the apothecaries.”

  “That is true. I am usually taken to be Greek, gentile at least. So?”

  “So, our blind man, Jacob, sniffs the air and declares it to be Holy Smoke. He cannot see the smoke but he recognizes the aroma, so he says that is what it is. Suppose he had caught a whiff of the smoke from the burning apothecary’s shop. He might have said the same. It would be an assumption based on his past familiarity with the scent, you see? But is it? We ascribe virtues and substance to things and to people because we need to have things in their place. We create taxonomies of the things in our life because we yearn to have an orderly existence.”

  “Yes, that is so, but why—?”

  “We say the smoke from the sacrifices spirals heavenward to Elohim carrying our prayers. It is a comforting image. But in the end it is only smoke and only holy because we say it is. In the same way, a man is a seller of trinkets if he looks the part and we say so. But while the smoke stays smoke, appearances can deceive. How a person looks does not make him what he wishes us to believe he is. Our killer is in our midst. He has been tracking us, I am sure of it. Remember, I said that I thought one of the men who followed either us or the other man—we’ll never know which for sure—looked familiar. He must have been the man I saw in the street the other night who ignored Shabbat. Was he the priest in the temple? Was he who knows how many other persons who have crossed our path over the past few days?”

  “I see. Wait, do you believe the man you describe is Ali bin Selah? Is that why you had me sack my servant and why you were short with him when he popped up the other day?”

  “It is a possibility, but I am not prepared to say one way or the other, only that I worry about him because he appeared at your home as someone else after he’d announced his intention to leave the city. I thought that suspicious on its face. Then as the evidence piled up…well, it seemed prudent to act on the suspicion. If I am mistaken about him, and I sincerely hope I am for your sake, I will offer profuse apologies.”

  “Give them to him, not to me. I appreciate your concern for my safety. I am sorry I snapped at you this morning.”

  Gamaliel waved the apology off. He filled their cups. “The problem we now face is which way to turn. Do we attack this hul gil mystery and let the death in the temple go, or do we concentrate on the dead man and let others better equipped deal with that exotic mixture?”

  “I have no advice for you as I do not know what you mean when you speak of hul gil as a mystery to be solved.”

  Gamaliel smiled. “For a man who can restore sight to the blind, you are singularly sightless yourself when it comes to certain critical areas. Very well, I will tell you what I believe to be the problem with hul gil, but I must add the caveat that I could be very, very wrong.”

  Gamaliel then laid out what he suspected, and the dilemma he faced in bringing his suspicions to Pilate. Loukas listened with a physician’s ears, nodding now and then. They had consumed the contents of the pot of wine, half the fruit, and the entire wheel of cheese by the time Gamaliel finished.

  Loukas stood and turned to his friend. “If you will allow it, I think I would like to use your mikvah.”

  He sounded and looked very sad, like an important part of his life had been crushed, or a close friend had died.

  Chapter XLI

  Whatever plans Gamaliel might have had for the morning were swept aside by the arrival of Caiaphas. There could be no avoiding him this time. With his attendants in his wake, he marched into Gamaliel’s house like a conquering army, like David against the Philistines, like Julius
, the first Caesar, into Rome.

  “Rabban,” he said in a voice just shy of a bellow, “we will talk, now.” The high priest glared first at Gamaliel and then at Loukas. He held his gaze on the latter.

  “It is perfectly fine. Loukas and I have no secrets. What you say to me you may say in his presence. What is it we are to discuss?”

  “Blasphemy, Rabban, blasphemy. Oh, you will excuse him as usual. You will say he is but a harmless, well-meaning country rabbi. It is shameless how you relieved the prefect’s concerns and leave me alone to deal with this…this…this blasphemer.”

  “Am I correct in thinking you’re referring to Yeshua ben Josef? What has he done now?”

  “He dishonors Shabbat. I told you before; he healed a cripple on Shabbat. It is unacceptable, as you know full well. This time he must be stopped. It is your—”

  “We are back to that? He healed the crippled man on Shabbat. Surely one could argue that—”

  “You could argue—you did argue. You spend your days arguing and picking at the Law, but the Sanhedrin does not wish you to argue, it wishes you to rule.”

  “The entire Sanhedrin has met and come to that resolve? Why was I not there? We could have avoided this—”

  “No, the core of the…the leadership was. I need a response from you immediately.”

  “I see. As a point of reference, how would you define blasphemy, Loukas?”

  “This conversation is completely out of my area. If you ask me how to treat a congested chest, the ague, set a broken leg, any of a hundred different sorts and conditions, I would have an opinion, but diseases of the spirit, theological disputations? You’ll not get a word from me.”

  “High Priest, then. How would you define it?”

  “You know perfectly well what is meant by it. An offense against Elohim.”

  “Any offense? All offenses? What sort of offenses? You say he breached Shabbat because he healed the cripple, is that the gist of your complaint?”

  “It is.”