by Quinn, Jack
“I am not ready to leave yet.”
She took a step closer. “Let me take a look at your wound.”
“The surgeon just put a clean bandage on it.”
“I know how to replace it.”
The prospect of feeling her hands on my body was alluring, but I sought for equal footing by embarrassing her.
“Shall I remove my tunic?”
“I am not interested in your scrawny body. Just peel it down to your waist.”
I smiled at her as I did “Do you always require boys to disrobe on a first meeting?”
She approached me where I sat on the edge of the lounge, bending over my knee to unwrap the cloth that held the bandage against the wound.
“Hold still, Jew boy!”
“Are you just overcurious, or one of those ghouls who roam the empty battlefields stripping the bloody corpses of sandals and armor?”
“I am going to be a surgeon,” she said.
An uncontrolled grunt escaped my throat as she pulled the bandage away from the stitches.
“Brave swordsman,” she scoffed. “The reason that hurt is the gash is still draining. That Syrian butcher should have placed a piece of raw wool with salve on the wound and bound the cloth looser.”
I had not been paying attention to her words as I enjoyed the cool touch of her hands on my skin, and the wonderful view I had of her breasts down the neck of her robe as she leaned over me.
She stood up slowly. “Did you get a good look?”
“I....”
“You did not hear a word that I said, did you?”
“I....”
“I, I, I. You are a stupid boy! But you cannot go home with that cut leaking fluid or it might get inflamed and cause a fever that could be more difficult to cure than the wound.”
“Where did you learn this stuff?”
“A friend of mother’s,” she said as she pranced out of the room for the wool.
Tanya left me with erotic visions that prevented my concentration on Homer’s epic poem as I sat on my balcony whiling away the afternoon, gazing across the courtyard below into the hills covered by a green forest in the near distance. Vespasian came to me after dark, lit the lamp, sat on the edge of my couch and shook me out of a half sleep.
“You are a much better swordsman than you give yourself credit for,” he said.
“Hah!”
“You think faster than most and move quickly despite your leg. Your small size makes you a difficult target for bigger men.”
“Then why am I lying here while you are running around the city?”
“Because you have not developed the strength or the anger you need to prevail.”
“Anger is a transgression against man and God.”
“Then resign yourself to lying abed while I go to the city.”
Vespasian went to a small table across the room to pour diluted wine in two cups. When he returned to my side, he called a toast of friendship.
“I am going back to Rome,” he said.
“When?”
“At year’s end.”
We were silent for a time, each of us used to keeping his own thoughts in the presence of the other.
“Ours has been a strange friendship,” I said.
Vespasian laughed. “You have said it!”
“We may not see one another again.”
“Procul omen abesto.11”
Yehoshua was in rare high spirits that year, for father had agreed to his betrothal to Rebekah, despite the modest dowry afforded by her father, a peasant farmer with a small plot to the east of town. I recall her as a shy girl a year or two younger than my age, quick of mind and pretty, with curly black hair, for whom my brother had shown affection since early childhood. Their obvious happiness at a future life together infected relatives, friends and probably half of Nazarat, because it was rare that a couple matched by parents began their marriage with mutual love.
Father’s continued employment in Sepphoris consisted of various building projects, but mostly inside furnishings such as tables and chairs and cabinets, some of which could be better crafted in our shop by father and Yehoshua, then driven to the city in our ass-drawn cart when completed. We also spent a good deal of time constructing my brother’s new home beyond the hillocks at the far end of the broad meadow that stretched from our house to the edge of the forest. For my own part, father assigned me the task of harvesting lumber for those commissions in Sepphoris and the house we were building for Yehoshua, who at the end of each day would help me drag logs trimmed of their branches home behind Intak, our aging ass.
Since the forest behind father’s shop was becoming scarce of suitable trees due to our own felling and that of others, we began taking Intak in harness a greater distance to drag back the fruits of our labor, working our way to the north, beyond the crest of a hill that separated our land from that of my mother’s sister Elizabeth and several other families spread out below.
With an opportunity for a wide swath of freedom open to me again, I usually rose before
dawn, broke my fast and was deep in the forest swinging my ax shortly after sunrise. On one
occasion, after a midday meal and respite, I lay down the ax, and walked through the woods toward the meadow seeking game for my trusty slingshot. At half between noon and dusk, having bagged a rabbit and two pheasant, I was about to return to my ax to fell a few more trees before going home when I spied movement behind a copse of distant bushes. I crept silently up on my prey, hoping to add one more creature to my game bag, when my eyes discerned not an animal, but Vespasian’s younger sister, Tanya, lying on a grassy knoll in the sun, her eyes closed, the blue skirt of her short toga drawn up on her thighs.
“A pretty fawn is fine prey for the hungry hunter,” I said, standing above her.
She gave a startled shiver, but did not open her eyes. “The hunter had best not be too hungry or the brother buck of the pretty fawn will thrash him again.”
“I am flattered that you remember the sound of my voice.”
She opened her eyes, pushed her skirt down and sat up. “Your Latin pronunciation is not perfect to the practiced ear of a woman from Rome.”
“Woman? I would have thought you were a girl about my age.”
“Some girls are born women, stupid boy.” Her face took on the wanton look I had seen on the visages of the prostitutes in Sepphoris, sending unbidden blood pumping through my loins. I do not often lose my wits, but that girl/woman had been confounding from the very moment she appeared in my room in her home.
Seeking an exit from her devastating wit, I mumbled, “I must return to work.”
“From that string of game, I assumed that hunting was your work.”
“I harvest trees for my father’s carpentry shop.”
I realized from our initial encounter that Tanya took great pleasure in teasing me, which led
to my confused embarrassment. “At the edge of the meadow?”
“Where the stout oaks and maples stand,” I pointed to the direction from which I had come.”
When she stood up, absently brushing the grass from her toga, we were face-to-face, inches apart. “Well, you had better get back to kill more of those beautiful trees, had you not, Shimon?”
A sudden thrill ran through my body at the first time she had called me by name. All I could do was nod, turn, and walk away, breathing hard before I had taken three steps.
Nazarat, Palestine
3766 Tammuz (CE 20 June)
Several months later, I was attempting to maintain Yehoshua’s long strides across the meadow, he for the moment unmindful of my handicap, as the sun rose in a cloudless sky with the heat of day beginning in earnest, sweating profusely under the weight of my sack of small tools with which I would cut branches from the main trunk after Yehoshua had felled a tree. He decided to cut timber at the far side of the rocky slope that stretched from the caravan road up a long incline to a stand of trees suitable to our purpose. When we arrived there, Yeh
oshua untied the water skin from Intak and handed it to me while he unpacked his ax, saw and heavy tools. We rested briefly in a grassy shade drinking slowly with our backs against a large oak.
After our respite Yehoshua stood, shucked his robe, squirmed his shoulders through the neck hole of his shift and tucked the top of it into the plaited hemp belt around his waist. He seemed massive to me in that short skirt, curly black hairs plastered against the sinews of his dark skin already slick with perspiration. He picked up the long–handled ax without a word and swung it deep into the nearest trunk. I stood off to his left gawking as he added several more swings to the initial gash, which caused the stout poplar to lean precariously.
“Stand over there,” Yehoshua said, pointing behind him with the ax.
“I am fine right here,” I said, looking up through the high branches. “It is leaning the other
way.”
A frown closed over his face as he stared at me. I stared back as though we were locked in a contest of wills for some golden prize. Finally, he turned again to the tree, brought the heavy double blade high over his shoulder and swung at the wedged trunk with the strength of Goliath. The huge poplar shuddered for prolonged moments before it began to fall away almost imperceptibly, but swiftly gained momentum, twisting on its base, reversing the direction of its descent, accelerating by geometric proportions as it plummeted directly toward me. All I could do was stand in place, my sandals turned to boots of iron, gaping up in awe at the crashing monster rushing down upon me, its trunk cracking in the agony of its own death as it came, the sound of teeming branches bearing their mass of verdant leaves, smashing against adjacent trees, blotting out more and more of the blue sky as the enormous trunk covered in rough bark with jutting limbs descended implacably toward me.
My next sensation was being hit by an ox, catapulting through the air with tremendous force, landing in the soft grass not less than a single pace from the wide branches of the fallen tree, still reverberating on the ground where I had stood two heartbeats past.
“You are an ornery little pest,” Yehoshua said, looking at me from where he lay stretched on the ground beside me.
I raised myself up off the ground, brushing the dirt and grass off my robe. “Obstinate from birth,” I admitted.
“Aggravated by your association with Romans, I suspect.”
“Thank you, Yehoshua.”
He stood and started to say something, no doubt in admonishment, when I noticed riders and
a wagon turning off the caravan road below onto the narrow path to the isolated home of Aunt
Elizabeth.
“Look!” I said, pointing across the meadow. “The tax collector. “Are not Uncle Aecheticus and Cousin John away trading in Jerusalem?”
Although the occupying army did not maintain garrisons amid the hundred or so tiny villages and towns throughout the Galilee, the Empire assessed and collected taxes from its inhabitants on a regular basis. The publicans granted authority to do so were primarily opportunistic Jews, who if not actually sympathetic to our Roman rulers, feigned that attitude in order to bid for the position of collector and the lucrative commissions they reaped for the task.
Elizabeth was seated at her loom under the awning extending from their front door, our cousin Bielke spooling raw linen beside her. They had seen the riders also and sat motionless awaiting their arrival.
“We must run to fetch father,” I said. “The tax man will take every last dinari he can find, plus half their belongings.”
“Stay here,” Yehoshua said, picking from the ground the broad, double-bladed ax, “I will see to this.” He started running down the hill with smooth, giant strides, through the tall grass toward the house. They will thrash him, I thought, my legs moving to follow, seemingly against my will.
Even at my young age, I knew that publicans who collected taxes levied by Rome were the most visible cause of our indigence, despised by already impoverished farmers, tradesmen and peasants. I had witnessed the greed of those fellow Jews in confiscating a neighbor’s property, tools and livestock in lieu of the monetary tax. Years ago father was been beaten for his inability to pay his assessment. They had burned the home of a farmer on the outskirts of Nazarat Illit. The daughter of a destitute winemaker was raped before his eyes by soldiers enforcing the levies, then
taken away in slavery for the publican’s fee.
By the time I had reached Elizabeth’s home, Yehoshua was speaking to the collector
perched on a thick colorful rug astride his horse. A civilian assistant was seated on the driving board of a four-wheel ass-drawn cart half full of household possessions. Beside the cart, a menacing legionnaire with dull, slanted eyes sat astride a spavined cavalry gelding. The soldier was armed with a lance grasped casually by the shaft, a short sword in leather scabbard at his waist and scutum12 strapped to his back. I moved in next to my aunt and cousin who were cowering off to the side holding their veils across their lower faces.
“Then the matter is simple,” the publican said, his face flushed with anger. “If you do not pay the tax you owe, we will search your home, take the dinarii13 we find and whatever of value I deem to serve as partial payment.”
“Be on your way,” Yehoshua told him. “My uncle will pay when he returns.”
“Zakrid,” the publican said, “search the house.”
The man on the wagon dismounted and started toward the door until Yehoshua stepped before him hefting the ax in his right hand to bar the man’s progress.
The publican turned to the guard shouting, “Run him through!”
The women screamed as the burly horseman spurred his mount, charging with his spear held above his shoulder, aimed at my brother’s bare chest. Yehoshua swung the ax up to deflect the lance with such force that it spun from the guard’s hand, twirling end over end in the air to land some distance down the path behind him. In almost the same motion, Yehoshua swung the flat of the ax blade against the side of his assailant’s head as the horse trotted by, the guard toppling to earth like a sack of barley.
“Go, now,” Yehoshua told the collector, “and there will be no more trouble.”
The publican’s eyes bulged in outrage as he spurred his horse toward Yehoshua with raised
sword. My brother compressed his lips, shaking his head, stepping aside the inept thrust as he
parried the blade with his ax glinting through the air in the bright sunlight. I stood aghast as the collector’s sword dropped to the ground still clutched in the severed wrist and hand that lay in the dust like a dead fish. The horse stopped with the publican still seated slack-jawed, mouthing unintelligible epithets, his eyes bulging at the stream of blood pouring from his stump that was beginning to attract buzzing flies. I noticed also a surprised look on the flushed face of my brother. Because he refused to speak of it ever again, I will never know if he simply intended to knock the sword from the collector’s grasp in our defense or bring his ax down on the man’s arm as it happened.
The publican and his assistant had turned into statues. “Tie a rope around his arm,” Yehoshua told the assistant, “and get out of here.” Then he turned to the dazed collector. “You will pay their tax this year from your own coffers for the trouble you caused. If you ever come back here to demand your commission, they will need to tie a rope around your neck to stop the bleeding.”
The publican screamed as the driver tightened the rope around his forearm. When he had finished, Yehoshua and I helped him drag the unconscious soldier into the back of the wagon.
“Do I make myself clear?” Yehoshua asked the collector.
The publican stared at his hand on the ground with a look of horror.
“Yes, your honor,” the assistant said, touching his forelock. “I will repeat your words when he is able to comprehend them with a clear mind.” Then the man placed his employer’s hand and sword in the cart with the soldiers spear and led the unfortunate little caravan down the path.
Father could not cont
ain his own anger that evening at supper when Yehoshua confessed his actions
of that morning, but had no answer to my question regarding alternatives. My father had fifty-six
years of his age at that instance, and I realized for the first time that he looked tired, like the old man
that he was.
During those weeks following Yehoshua’s confrontation with the collector of taxes, father refused several offers of employment, concerned that the handless publican would return with legionnaires to exact punitive retribution on our family. Yehoshua also occasionally went to Aunt Elizabeth’s home to learn if our relatives had experienced subsequent visits or threats from Roman soldiers.
Despite those feared reprisals, preparations for Yehoshua’s marriage to Rebekah continued on schedule. The women of both households ran from place to place and task to task with such excitement that their feet often seemed not to touch the ground. Food was prepared according
to tradition, Sarah Rifkin and Mary designated to bustle around town from home to home of family friends inviting them to the momentous occasion; James came back from Jerusalem to officiate; I was pressed into service to provide game for the wedding feast; all in all, total chaos reigned.
In the midst of those frantic preparations, we were all cutting small trees not far from our home, father working a short distance apart from my brother and me, when I noticed a tall man with clipped beard, wearing a hooded robe of dark color standing holding the reins of his mount at the crest of an incline to the left of the meadow.
“Who could that be?” I asked Yehoshua, who was cutting branches from a straight young oak he had just felled.
Yehoshua stood up, gazed at the man in silence for several moments, then dropped his adz. “Stay here,” he said, as he walked off toward the stranger. I gazed at my brother, who had seventeen years that summer as he greeted the tall stranger with familiarity, speaking as an equal with the slightly older man, both the same height, apparently engaged in some disagreement from which Yehoshua abruptly turned and walked back to pick up his adz, resumed his work with a
