by Shlomo Kalo
“If that is the point at issue,” he replied, a bright smile on his face, feeling lighter at heart as he saw a solution to the dilemma – “I suggest that we eat those portions of the King’s largesse which we consider the most choice – nuts and almonds and pulses, fruits and vegetables, and bread, and if after ten days we appear worse than those who eat meat and drink wine, and we are feeble in comparison to them, and our thoughts more fuddled than theirs – then we shall bow to your will and join the ranks of the meat-eaters and wine-drinkers! If on the other hand we prove to be better looking and stronger than them – then you should withdraw your objection and allow us to continue eating good food in accordance with our Law, the holy Law of God!”
Narazan sighed again, and this time his sigh was deep and emphatic. The charm of this Jewish youth was working on him – in his appearance, in the crafting of his speech and the wisdom of his words. There can be no doubt – he told himself – that his God is with him and whatever he does will be blessed. Is it for him, Narazan the master of the King’s eunuchs, to dare to defy any God? And supposing the whole business reaches the ears of the King, what then? In a hushed voice, as if imparting a secret or talking to himself, he said:
“I fear my Lord the King, who has decreed what your diet is to be! If you emerge from this more pale and haggard than the other children, my head will be forfeit!”
“The King only rules by the grace and with the consent of God!” he declared, fully aware of the momentous weight of his words: “And yet – I am asking for just ten days! If after ten days we are indeed pale and haggard, we undertake to eat meat and to drink wine, and if it is not so – we are freed from this obligation, and you will know that God is with us.”
Narazan lowered his heavy head, in its turban of purple cloth, thinking over the young man’s words, weighing them at length, and then he sighed for the third time, looked up and delivered his decision, almost in a whisper:
“Let it be as you say!” – and he turned and left the room.
From that moment on the astute waiter bothered them no more. On the contrary, he made things easier for them, putting neither meat nor wine on their table, and increasing the portions of fruits and vegetables and honey-water.
Denur-Shag
The Chaldee of literature was similar to Hebrew. And yet there were words which, while sounding like Hebrew expressions, meant something completely different, even the opposite. There was also a system of syntax, beguiling in its simplicity and acuity, but utterly alien to both Hebrew and Aramaic, and it required a great deal of effort and concentration to master it. The difference between the colloquial Chaldee that they had already picked up in the home land, and the original, written language was clearly evident.
Their studies were made easier by the teacher of Chaldee, Denur-Shag, a man forever smiling, witty and most important of all – a master of his subject, as conscientious as he was proficient. In addition to the new linguistic idioms he taught them the sciences too, including poetry and the art of rhetoric.
Denur-Shag always found a fitting way of enlivening his lessons, with pithy observations that often rendered the members of his class helpless with mirth. Thus for example, the preamble to the twenty-first statute of the Laws of Hammurabi, relating to the hire of an ox or an ass, should read: “If a man shall hire an ox…” By changing the order of the words to “If an ox man shall hire” he invented expressions such as “ox-man” or “ass-man” – creations both unexpected and contrary to logic. Banishing from his lessons all that was dry or solemn, he ensured that the “class of strangers” as this group was called, this mixture of the sons of other races, set apart from the Chaldeans – would both roar with laughter and absorb more readily the simpler rules of Chaldee syntax, learning them through the senses and growing accustomed to them without effort.
A lean man was the teacher Denur-Shag, short of build and with a large, round head, most of it bald, and kindly eyes that were often humorous, inwardly or overtly. He wore a grubby robe of coarse material, and a cloak, equally coarse and equally grubby, too big for him and trailing on the floor. On a number of occasions the teacher tripped and almost fell to the floor on account of this cloak, and yet he made no attempt to change it for one that would fit him better. His mishaps Denur-Shag took in good heart, even when one of his pupils had difficulty controlling his mirth. In such a case Denur-Shag would turn it all into a witticism, with a comment such as:
“That’s what comes of trying to fly, and forgetting you’re not a bird!”
The pupils, twenty-eight in number, members of various races and different nations: Sidonians and Parthians and Edomites and Moabites, three Egyptians and two whose nation and origin were cloaked in mystery, and two others, eyes aslant, from the distant land of Gog and Magog – sat on three long benches, pressed against three of the walls of the low but spacious room, at three long tables. The teacher’s seat was by the entrance door – a chair, and a small table beside it. The boys etched with a stylus on the soft surface of clay tablets, and sometimes used a pen on parchment scrolls.
Above the teacher’s chair, near the entrance door, was a long strip of parchment, the same hide from which the scrolls had been cut, and he used to write on it with a long splinter of wood dipped in red ink, pointing out the expressions, idioms, words or numbers that he meant to impress upon his pupils.
From the very first lesson there was a spark between him and Denur-Shag. Denur-Shag was endowed with a sharp eye for the discovery of qualities and strengths in his pupils, and he was also adept at recognising their deficiencies.
His attitude to him was exceptional – the teacher ignored him completely, although in this there was no intention to offend. From time to time he would call him to the front of the class, in order to demonstrate to the other pupils that a certain study-topic, contrary to their suppositions, was easily digestible, and he would put his questions to him. And he answered quietly and precisely, showing not only that the subject could be understood and taught, but that engagement with it could also be a pleasure.
In the first lesson, when his name was called and he rose to his feet as required, Denur-Shag stared at him, then his eyes lit up and he declared:
“See, the roles have been reversed – and he who should be the pupil of Belteshazzar is his teacher, and the one qualified to be the teacher of Denur-Shag is his pupil!”
He bowed respectfully to the teacher, and the other returned his bow. As far as most of the students were concerned, these opening words of Denur-Shag were not only enigmatic but quite meaningless. The Edomites on the neighbouring bench took it for a joke and laughed obligingly, eliciting no reaction from the teacher.
So from this time on, Denur-Shag ignored him, something accepted as natural and self-explanatory, and only rarely did he glance at the tablets on which he had inscribed his answers to the questions posed. This was a departure from his usual practice, which was to subject the tablets of his pupils to meticulous scrutiny, drawing their attention to the slightest error and insisting upon pinpoint accuracy.
In the third month of their studies, one day when lessons were over and before the second meal was served, Denur-Shag called his name: “Belteshazzar!”
He stood up from the bench, approached the diminutive man with the massive, balding head, bowed to him in conventional style and asked him:
“How can I be of service to the teacher?” – spoken in fluent Chaldee, much to the delight of his interlocutor.
“By doing me the honour of a visit to my home on a day of rest from study, meaning tomorrow!” the pedagogue replied.
He arrived at Denur-Shag’s lodging and knocked on the door, once white but now liberally encrusted with a layer of congealed dust.
The door opened and a dark-skinned slave, clearly of advanced age, standing unsteadily on spindly legs, wearing only a loincloth and a linen head-covering, inquired in a croaking voice:
“Belteshazzar?”
“Correct!” he replied.
In the middle of the room stood a heavy round table, made of polished cedar-wood, and around it three chairs of white wood, pine apparently, planed to a smooth finish.
Denur-Shag rose to meet him, shook his hand, invited him to sit in one of the white chairs and took his seat facing him. Then he clapped his hands and the elderly slave appeared and set a dish of dry dates on the table, also a jug of rose water and two large cups. The jug and the cups were made of glazed clay.
The teacher poured for his pupil and for himself, raised his cup in a gesture of benediction and drank from it.
“Denur-Shag, Sir, do you abstain from wine and meat?” he asked, having raised his cup to return his host’s benediction and taken a few sips from it.
“No, not at all,” he replied, “although I have heard it said that Belteshazzar abstains from wine and from meat. I have no questions to ask you on that subject. What I wanted to ask is – how do you find the fair city of Babylon, is it agreeable to you? Have you had much opportunity to make its acquaintance?”
“No,” he confessed and added, “walking about the streets of a city holds no fascination for me. The precincts of the palace are spacious enough for exercise, and studying occupies most of my time.”
“So you stroll in the lovely and well-tended gardens of the royal palace – alone or with a few of your companions?”
“Usually alone, because our free time does not coincide, but sometimes I will be accompanied by one or more of my friends.”
“That is a wonderful thing, adding depth to the indelible riches of the soul!” – Denur-Shag spoke with pretended, ironical pathos – “But Babylon,” he continued – “has rules of its own, rules of behaviour which should be observed. As the saying goes in ancient Chaldee: ‘To keep your life, keep them!’ – meaning, those rules of behaviour.”
“We have been told nothing at all about them,” he commented mildly.
“Nor will you be told! They are not written, these laws, not inscribed on stone or clay or parchment,” he went on to explain – “but they emanate from the soul of man, Chaldean man that is. It is the law in Babylon’s fair city, a law that is not to be transgressed, and it may be the law in other human societies too, societies of which I claim no expert knowledge – that a man who shuts himself away behind closed doors may be regarded as deranged, or arrogant, or a genius, but he will never be considered a normal and sane member of the community. Such conduct can have only one outcome,” – he scanned him with a serene, expressionless look and added: “Jealousy!”
He took a date, lifted it to his dry mouth, removed the stone and put it in the clay dish, chewed thoroughly and added: “Jealousy, as you know, stirs up all kinds of trouble… of course, it is not for me to interfere in matters that are not my concern, and yet in spite of that – I feel I have a duty, a duty as an educator.”
“Jealousy is not such a powerful force,” he replied, explaining – “It is repelled by logic, among other things.”
“Logic?” – Denur-Shag queried, as if asking himself a question. He added: “Even the definition of logic is not universally agreed! And if we try to call to mind those who are possessed of it, or who used to be, our task will be an easy one: they can be counted on the fingers of one hand – and most of them have long since crumbled into dust!”
The teacher chuckled, his playful eyes bright with good will and affection.
“Dear, highly esteemed boy,” he addressed him once more, holding up a hand to forestall any protest at the title thus awarded him – “some two dozen years ago a young man came here, full of hopes and with dreams and ambitions to spare, a scholar of literature and language, not only those of the Chaldeans, at all levels of antiquity; he was also familiar with the dialects of the Samaritans, and the Hebrews and the Egyptians, and he even knew a little of the raucous babble of that nation over the seas, which is reckoned, erroneously of course, to be the torch-bearer of human culture and wisdom and the harbinger of a glittering future.
“And this young man,” – he returned to his theme – “was received with great honour and with the respect due to him by the king of that time, and he served him loyally. But he did not prosper for long, and he soon fell into disfavour. And the big head of that dreamy youth was nearly detached from his shoulders at the hands of the functionary responsible for this, the redoubtable Makphon-Mago, who is no longer with us, since his own black head was removed by his successor, Magaphan. Anyway, as I say, the sharp sword of the former was almost laid on the neck of that eager lad because…. because... I’m sure you can guess…” Denur-Shag smiled bitterly – “he preferred to stay indoors, confined to his quarters and never venturing out among people, knowing nothing of the frustrations and irritations of their humdrum lives. Not even taking a wife. Admittedly, in this last instance, the young man eventually changed his mind, changed it quite radically in fact, and married a young peasant woman, a total illiterate, who stayed with him just long enough to bear him two daughters. Whereupon the shrewd peasant woman decided to return to her parents’ home in the village of her birth, and bring up her daughters there, rather than waste whatever years remained to her at the side of an idle, detached eccentric whose sole interest in life seemed to be staring at the heavens above and the earth beneath. And he was struck deaf and dumb when she made her justified complaints known, made them known repeatedly – in a voice so clear it could be heard from one end of the royal palace to the other. And she is still alive and well in her village, somewhere in the south of the country.
“And this young man was reckoned haughty, and all his successes in the service of the court were interpreted in this light, and were whispered in a thousand dialects and from a thousand mouths into the ears of the King, and he could no longer endure the relentless and unremitting pressure of the gossip, and like your hero of old, whose repute has come down to us, He wished in himself to die. But a king doesn’t die, he has a slave to do it for him. And were it not for the teaching post which became vacant then, and which no other living person could be found capable of occupying with even symbolic success, were it not for that – I would not be here now, enjoying a pleasant encounter over a cup of clear honey-water and fruit from the Garden of Eden…
“Yes, it is my opinion that the palm-tree was planted first in the Garden of Eden,” Denur-Shag went on to say, in an abrupt change of subject – “and there it grew and flourished. The palm-tree is wise and humble, and when it saw the fall of Adam and his bitter fate, its heart was broken beneath the solid bark and it wept and wailed, and turned to God, your God, the creator of all things, and entreated Him most earnestly to be allowed to join Adam in his exile and share his tribulations, and soothe as far as was possible the grief of his soul, and be his comforter. And the good and benevolent God gave his full consent, and the palm tree changed its abode – from the Garden of Eden with all its delights to the most remote and desolate corners of the world, where the sun beats down relentlessly and water is nowhere to be found – and there it flourishes, climbs to great heights and blooms, and digs its powerful roots deep down beneath the shifting layers of sand, finding pools of water invisible to the human eye and raising them to the surface and above, making life-giving springs and turning those corners of desolation and death into verdant oases, delightful to behold! And such is the story of the blessed palm-tree!”
And again the narrator took a dried date between two fingers, examined it closely, with tenderness and affection and even with love, blessing it and putting it slowly to his lips, with an air of intense appreciation.
He followed his example, taking a large date and consuming it with relish.
At the western window of the narrow, lofty room, overlooking the royal garden, the slender ray of an early sunset turned everything it tou
ched to gold.
“You’re supposed to be studying the principles of Chaldean mathematics now,” Denur-Shag told him after a long silence, rising to his feet.
“Never mind the principles of mathematics, I’m more interested in the words of wisdom I’ve just had the privilege of hearing! Bless you, Denur-Shag, and may you prosper in this world and in the hereafter!”
“Bless you, Belteshazzar and whatever your destiny may have in store for you, for honour or for shame, for good or for evil, might and glory or great affliction – do not let yourself be a victim, trampled down by fate, but rise above it and take control of it!”
“How can you speak of might and glory and great affliction, of honour and shame?” he asked him, astonished.
“I see it branded with a seal of fire on your smooth forehead, see it living in the depth of your fearless eyes, hear it resounding in your clear and tranquil, finely modulated voice, feel it radiating from every movement that you make!
“No, I am not a prophet,” Denur-Shag forestalled the question that he knew was coming, and added – “unlike your compatriots whose favourite hobby is prophecy. I am simply one of those unfortunates who have logic working in their brains and are still alive. Few of them are left, and becoming fewer all the time as the world is filled with conquerors and victors in war, and is split between slaves and masters, genealogies and races, peoples, tongues, nations, religions! Go in peace, Belteshazzar. Remember what you have heard here and be forever on the alert, and keep yourself in safety! And if you have no desire to do this for your own sake, do it for your admirers – for your compatriots who need you, and for certain teachers too who find themselves baffled, not knowing how to cope with a pupil who is unique in his generation, unique in his race and perhaps in all races, and these confused and weak-willed teachers cling to the hope that what their feeble hands have failed to accomplish, his young hands will yet bring to fruition. Go in peace!”
