Great Lion of God (60 page)

“Then I bethought myself of Jesu of Nazareth. I do not know what seized my mind! It was like a sure madness, a vehemence, a passion, and I could not explain it. But I ran from the house and sought Him, and He was entering the Temple with His followers, and I rushed upon Him, crying, ‘Lord, Holy One of Israel, a child is dead in my master’s house, and only You can restore Him!’”

Cephalus shook his head in dazed wonder. “I am not a man of courage, of impulse, of exuberant youth, a man of enthusiasm. Had I been told a few days before that I would have thrown myself from this house, racing like a boy, for a stranger, to implore Him, I should have said that the very thought was madness! Yet, I did this.

“He—He halted. His followers rebuked me, saying, ‘Why do you disturb and halt the Master, slave? Begone, lest we drive you away!’ But He looked down at my face and my shaking hands, and He said, ‘Let no man turn from Me any who seek Me,’ and He gestured that He would follow me.” Cephalus bowed his head. “And He entered the house with me, and I led Him to the chamber of the child, and though He had not asked the name of the boy He gazed upon him, as he lay on his coverlet on the floor with the mourners weeping about him, and He said, ‘I say to you, Amos ben Ezekiel, arise!’”

Cephalus raised his head and his hands in an attitude of awe and absolute adoration. “And the child opened his eyes, and they were still filmed with death, and he murmured—and he lived! But there was no happiness on his face, that he had been restored, and I turned to Jesu the Nazarene, and His own Face was sad and full of repining. Then, with no word more He left the chamber and the house.

“Lord,” said Cephalus, “that is all.”

During this recital Saul had kept glancing at his kinsmen, and to his disgust he saw their moved faces and the tears in their eyes. Then he turned implacably to Cephalus.

“Fear no punishment, but I abjure you in the Name of God to tell the truth, slave. I will grant that your hand was healed, for I know my kinsmen do not lie. But you were healed through the belief in your own mind, that you would be healed, and by no miracle of Yeshua of Nazareth. He did not even know you had touched him! Yet, what you believed was some miracle from a holy one transported your mind, making it a prey to fantasies and ecstasies. This is not uncommon for those in the throes of religious ecstasy—especially among the simple and unlearned.

“You yearned to make your hero celebrated, to have him perform some marvel, some wonder, in order to justify your adoration. This, too, is not uncommon. Zeal is very powerful. So, you reflected. And then you gave my nephew, all trusting in you, a servant of this house, a potion, a sweetmeat, or a fruit, or a little wine, which contained a drug which induces a trance, or a somnolent state, a dormant condition closely resembling death. The child fell ill. He appeared to die. It even deceived his physicians. When he was laid upon the floor to receive the anointing and the spices and the oils and his grave-clothes, you ran from this house and sought him you call Jesu of Nazareth, and finding him you brought him here, where he apparently arrived just as my nephew was awakening. He saw the boy’s condition, and seized his opportunity.”

Saul smiled a most ugly smile, and his eyes glinted. He spread out his hands. “That is the story, the true one. Cephalus, if you have any gratitude to your lord, Shebua ben Abraham, who rescued you and freed you and gave you shelter and kindness in his house, tell the truth. You will not be punished. We shall feel affection for you that you so loved that man, though he is nothing but a vagabond. Devotion is very moving. But it must not becloud truth. For a lie is a dishonor even in a servant.”

Cephalus had listened to this in absolute bewilderment, staring at Saul as at a basilisk. Then he stammered, “Lord, I gave the child no drug, for whence would I receive it? I have not spoken to him nor approached him since he was an infant, for I am a humble man, and not pleasing of countenance, and I shrank from speech with others. Nor, lord, did I ask another to give the child any harmful potion, for who in this house would do such a thing? Lord, I swear to this with all my soul, and by the love I bear Jesu of Nazareth.”

Saul exclaimed, in his sudden frightening fury, “I do not believe you! You are lying, and you seek to deceive, for that is the way of the base-born, the low, the degraded, the slave! You would make yourself important in this house, and honored as the recipient of some divine mercy, as a man apart, for your slave’s heart longs to be distinguished! Get from my sight, rascal, lest I kick you for the dog you are!”

But Cephalus looked at Shebua ben Abraham, not in terror, but in beseeching, and Shebua said, “Go, Cephalus, and we thank you.”

These words made Saul gasp, even in his stupendous rage, for Shebua had spoke to the old servant as one speaks to a brother. Incredulous, he saw the Greek bow and leave the atrium, and he was alone again with his kinsmen.

He looked at their greatly moved and strangely tranquil faces, and he shouted, “Is it possible that you believe this foul nonsense, this insult to the rational intelligence of a man, this affront to decency, this outrage against God, Himself?”

“We believe,” said Shebua for his son and his grandson. And David said, the elegant Sadducee, “We believe.” For the first time Ezekiel spoke, in his modest and uncertain voice, “I believe.”

And again Saul heard the loathed words, “Why it is that we believe we do not know, but we know that He is the Messias, the Holy One of Israel, blessed be His Name.”

“He is dead!” Saul almost roared. “His body was stolen away, to make a lie a verity!”

“He was dead, and the darkness came and the Veil in the Temple, over the Holy of Holies, was rent, and the earth thundered and shook and terror was on the earth. And in three days He rose from the dead, and there are those who have seen Him.”

Saul groaned in his anguish of rage and revulsion, and without speaking again he turned and left his grandfather’s house. They called to him, but he refused to hear them. They implored, but he ran from them.

And he was filled with an overpowering hatred.

Chapter 28

S
AUL
sat before Joseph of Arimathaea in a condition of wild and frustrated passion and wrath, so fierce that it was almost malignancy. When he could speak he said in a voice that was unusually deep land hoarse with repugnance and suppressed violence:

“Forgive me. You have been my friend, Joseph of Arimathaea, and I have been grateful, for I know I do not possess the graciousness land ease of other men and you have shown me patience and kindness and, often, peace. Why this was I do not know. I was content and happy that you accepted me for what I was, for others do not, alas. I trusted you above all other men except Rabban Gamaliel—I trusted you above my father, may he rest in peace.

“I thought that not only were you a pious Jew and a Pharisee but above self-deception, though I had detected a certain—trustfulness—toward him whom the Greeks call John the Baptist, though we know him as Jochanan ben Zachary. I believed you loved his removal from and rebellion against the Roman oppressor of our country, and therefore were indulgent in the face of his excesses and zeal. It is true that you spoke of the Messias as imminent, but do we not all hope that? You frequently spoke in mysterious riddles, but that is the way of older Jews, and I could bear with it, though I am a pragmatic man. I knew you loved and adored the Lord our God as deeply as any man could, and would defend His honor and His Name to the very death.

“Yet now, in this house, today, you tell me to my face that Yeshua of Nazareth, vagabond, wandering ragged rabbi, deceiver, vainglorious madman, fraud, liar and blasphemer, an unlearned Galilean, whom none knew until three years ago, is the Messias, the Holy One of Israel! You tell me that you have known it from the beginning!’ You tell me that you gave him a fine tomb ‘for what I knew would be only three short days!’ You tell me that not only did he rise from the dead—but you have seen him since his execution!

“If another man but you, Joseph of Arimathaea, had told me of this, I would have said, ‘You lie, or you are mad.’”

They sat in Joseph’s small library to which the bronze door had been closed. Joseph regarded Saul gently and silently and his large dark eyes seemed to wax and wane with an inner lambency. He was not angered. He was very calm and in repose.

He said, “Yes? And what do you say of me, Saul of Tarshish?”

The lid of Saul’s half-shut and afflicted eye visibly quivered, and there was a tight tremor about his mouth. “I do not know what to say,” he replied, “except that I know you do not lie. What then, is the answer? That you, a man of a great house in Israel, a gentleman, a man of culture and taste and learning, have been frightfully deceived and betrayed by scoundrels and mountebanks and necromancers of the basest sort. What is their object? To destroy Israel, to bring down the wrath of God upon us. Who pays them? The Romans? Infidels, heathens, Parthians? We do not know, but I am certain there is someone! They are our enemies. It could be they are enemies of all men. At the very least they are mad.”

Joseph took Saul’s goblet to refill it but with a savage gesture Saul refused more wine. He leaned forward to stare at Joseph with a bitter look.

Joseph said, “I saw Him in His first resting place, with shepherds from the hills about Him, in a manger, in a cave, in Bethlehem. I had awaited Him, as I told you, when I saw the glorious Star. I had had dreams. I saw Him with His young Mother; she was not past fourteen, a young girl in the full of her innocence and virginity. I saw Him with His young adoptive father, Joseph, a carpenter. The shepherds knew Him, for they had heard the good news from God’s own angels in the wintry hills over Bethlehem, and they had come at once, without doubt and without scorn and without fear, as all simple men approach God. It is a divine simplicity. I found them kneeling and praying about the child—Mother and her Infant, and I brought a gift, though He who made all gifts has need of none. I gazed at the Child. There was but a lantern glow in the dark of the cave, and the night was cold and black outside. He was but a child as all the sons of man are children, and yet—” Joseph paused, for the memory moved him almost beyond bearing. “I knew at once who He was. I had no doubt, no misgiving, no second thought, no hesitation. And I prostrated myself before Him, the Holy One of Sion, the Holy One of Israel.”

Joseph gazed as at some far distance and his eyes filled with tears. He murmured, “As He has said, Himself, ‘Blessed are those who see and believe, but more blessed are those who do not see yet believe.’ Before I had seen Him I had believed. When I saw Him, the belief was confirmed instantly. I knew where He was during His childhood. I saw Him before He was Bar Mitzvah, in the Temple, a boy questioning the wise men, and answering them. I know where he was for the years wrapped in mystery, but I am not permitted to say—I know where He went after His Ascension, a place as yet unknown to men, for He has said, ‘I have sheep you know not of.’ I knew when He resumed His trade as a carpenter to support Himself and His Mother. There was not an hour that I was not conscious of Him. Saul of Tarshish, that is all I dare tell you. But the Promise of the ages has been fulfilled. The Lamb of God has saved His people from their sins and has turned death into eternal life, blessed be His Name.”

Saul was so horrified, so enraged at this—which he considered the foulest of blasphemies—and so afraid before Joseph’s words for fear of God’s instant punishment—that he sprang to his feet abruptly, and the chair fell back from him and crashed to the marble floor. He put his hands over his ears. “My God, my God!” he cried, “that these ears have heard so monstrous a story, even from you, Joseph of Arimathaea! May God forgive me that I have listened, but may God not forgive those who have so evilly deceived and confused you! I shall avenge you, my nephew, Amos ben Ezekiel, my sister, my unfortunate kinsmen, and all those of my countrymen who have been so wronged by a dead dissembler and hypocrite and madman and rogue! I shall destroy his followers, as they have sought to destroy us and to defame God, and invite His vengeance upon us.”

Saul lifted his hand and swore the most solemn and terrible oath he had ever uttered, and then he said, “From this day hence he, the dead malefactor, has no greater enemy than I, nor have his wretched disciples!”

Joseph waited in silence, and then in a voice both mournful and gentle he said, “Saul ben Hillel, I know this: One day He will have no greater friend than you.”

With a cry of smothered agony and despair Saul flung himself out of that house into the warm late summer wind and sea-burdened rain. He pulled his hood over his head and wrapped himself tightly in his plain cloak. He hurried through the streets but had no destination. He had thought a thousand times of going to see Rabban Gamaliel but for some reason even he could not understand he shrank from the thought. The celebrated Nasi of the Temple—would he not confirm Saul’s horror and rage against the blasphemers? Would he not denounce that miserable man, Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth? Why, then, this almost cringing reluctance to go to the Rabban, who could offer him consolation and a glimpse of sanity, and soothe his pain and fury? He did not know.

Instead, Saul went to the house of the High Priest, Caiphas, who had induced Pontius Pilate, after much argumentative exhaustion and imploring, to order the execution of Yeshua the Nazarene on the charge of inciting the people to rebellion against Rome. It was a long distance to that house, through the gray rain and wind and the throngs hurrying into shelters and to their homes. Camels were squealing as they were tugged vigorously in the narrow streets; asses complained, and boys whipped. Saul dodged through the marketplaces, through the growing darkness. He reached the house of the High Priest. It was in truth a palace, surrounded by high walls and guards, and it shone in the twilight—wet and white—like alabaster. The gardens were pungent with freshly aroused fragrances and the trees lashed and clattered in the wind.

The guards were instantly suspicious and contemptuous of this wild man at the gates, with his wet red hair clinging to his brow and cheeks and neck, his unprepossessing if powerful face, and his workman’s clothing. But he said to them imperiously, “Tell your lord that Saul of Tarshish, grandson of his friend, Shebua ben Abraham, desires to see him on a matter of much importance!”