The Roman (29 page)

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After the court session he again invited us to a meal, but he was distrait and sunk in thought. Afterwards he took me to one side. �I know that man the Jews wished to accuse,� he said confidentially. �He has lived in Corinth for a year and earns his living honestly as a tentmaker. His name is Paul. They say he has changed his name to hide his past and taken a new name from a former governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus. His teaching made a deep impression on Sergius in his day and Sergius is by no means simple, although he did try predicting by the stars and letting a magician live with him. So Paul is not an insignificant man. I thought his piercing eyes looked right through me into another world as he stood before me so fearlessly.� �He�s the worst troublemaker among the Jews,� I said without thinking. �In Antioch in my childhood, he tried to drag my good father into the intrigues of the Jews.� �You must have been much too young at the time to understand his teachings,� Gallio remarked considerately. �Before he came to Corinth, he is said to have preached in the market in Athens. The Athenians took the trouble to listen to him and even said he might do so again. You can hardly be wiser than they. �In fact,� he went on, �I�d very much like to ask him here in secret sometime to find out properly about his teaching. But that might give rise to gossip and offend the rich Jews of Corinth. I have to keep myself strictly impartial. As far as I can make out, he has founded some kind of synagogue of his own alongside the Jewish synagogue, and he is pleasingly different from them in that he instructs anyone who cares to come, and also prefers Greeks to Jews.� Gallio had obviously thought a great deal on these matters for he continued to speak of them. �In Rome I did not believe that foolish story about the runaway slave called Christus,� he said. �We live in a time when all the ground beneath our thoughts is giving way. I cannot talk about the gods. In their traditional forms, they are only images which can amuse simple souls. But the teachers of wisdom cannot make man good or give him peace of mind either. We�ve seen this in the Stoics and the Epicureans. Perhaps this wretched Jew has really found some divine secret. Why else should his teaching provoke so much quarreling, hatred and envy among the Jews?�

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I need hardly repeat any more of Gallio�s broodings. But finally 1w gave me an order. �Go and find out about that man�s teaching, Minutus,� he said. �You�ve the best qualifications to do so, as you�ve known him since your childhood in Antioch. And also you are in general acquainted with the Jehovah of the Jews and their laws and customs. Your father is said to have been very successful in Antioch as a mediator between the Jews and the city council.� I seemed to have fallen into a trap and it was useless to object, for Gallio turned a deaf ear to all my protests. �You must overcome your prejudices,� he said. �You must be honest if you are to seek the truth, insofar as your duty permits you. You�ve plenty of time. There are worse ways of passing it than studying the wisdom of this Jewish savior of the world.� �But what if he gets me into his power with his magic?� I asked bitterly. But Gallio did not even consider my question worth answering. An order is an order. I had to carry it out to the best of my ability. It might be quite important to Gallio to be absolutely clear on what such a dangerous and influential rabble rouser preached. On the day of Saturn, I dressed in simple Greek clothes, found the Jews� synagogue and went into the building next door. It was not a real synagogue but an inoffensive cloth dealer�s house which he had given up to the assembly Paul had founded. The reception room on the upper floor was full of simple people waiting with joyful expectation in their eyes. They greeted each other in a friendly way and I too was welcomed and no one asked my name. Most of them were craftsmen, small traders or trusted slaves, but there were also some old women wearing silver ornaments. Judging by their clothes, only a few of them were Jews. Paul arrived with several disciples. He was greeted with cries of homage as a messenger of the true God, and some women wept with joy when they saw him. He spoke in a loud, piercing voice and was so carried away with the conviction of his own words that it was like a hot wind blowing through the sweating crowd of listeners. His voice alone pierced me to the marrow. I tried to listen attentively and make some notes on a wax tablet, for at the begin- fling he referred to the Jewish holy scripts, showing by quoting

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from them that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified in Jerusalem, in fact was the Messiah or Christus the prophets had predicted. It was interesting that he quite openly referred to his own past. He was undoubtedly a gifted man, for he said he had studied in the renowned philosophy school in his home town, Tarsus, and later in Jerusalem with famous teachers. In his youth he had soon been elected to the highest Jewish council. He said that he had been a passionate adherent to the laws, and a persecutor of the disciples of Jesus. He had even guarded the clothes of the stoners and in that way taken part in the first illegal execution of a member of the assembly of the poor. He had hunted, bound and dragged to court several followers of the new way and finally at his own request had been given authority to arrest the adherents of Nazareth who had fled from persecution to Damascus. But on the way to Damascus he had seen such an unearthly light that he had been blinded. Jesus himself had appeared to him, and since then he had changed. In Damascus, a man who had acknowledged Jesus, a certain Ananias, had laid his hands on him and given him back his sight, for Jesus of Nazareth wished to show him how much he must suffer to proclaim the name of Christ. And suffered he had. Many a time he had been flogged. Once he had been nearly stoned to death. He bore scars of Christ on his body, he said. All this the listeners had heard many times before, but they listened just as attentively and occasionally cried out with joy. Paul told them to look around and with their own eyes confirm that there were not many wise, powerful or important people among them. This he considered showed that God had chosen what on, earth is simple and despised, to shame the wise men. God chose the foolish and the weak instead of the wise men, for he transformed the wisdom of the world into foolishness. He also spoke on the searching of the spirit and they who run races. And he talked of love, more impressively, I thought, than I have ever heard anyone else speak. Man should love his neighbor as himself, yes, to the extent that whatever he did for the good of another without love was of no benefit to him. He maintained explicitly that even if a person distributed all his possessions for the good of the poor and gave his own body for burning without feeling real love, then he was still nothing.

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This pronouncement pierced my mind to the depths. Gallio too had said that wisdom alone did not make man good. I began to brood on this and no longer listened carefully to his words which went over my head like the rustling of a stormy wind. He was undoubtedly talking in a state of ecstasy and went from one subject to another as the spirit put the words into his mouth. Bit he seemed to know what he was saying. In this he was different from the Christians I had met in Rome where one said one thing and another another. Everything I had heard before was as child�s prattle compared to Paul�s powerful eloquence. I tried to separate the main points in his teaching and I noted down several matters to dispute with him later in the Greek way. But it was difficult, for he whirled from one thing to another as if borne by a wind. Even if within me I disagreed with him, I had to admit he was not an insignificant man. Finally everyone who was not baptized was dismissed, thus leaving his inner circle. Some people begged Paul to baptize them and lay his hands on their heads, but he refused firmly and told them to be baptized by their own teachers who had been given the gift of grace to do so. When he had first come to Corinth, he had made the mistake of baptizing some people, but had then heard them boasting that they had been baptized in the name of Paul and at the same time had shared in his spirit. Such twisted teaching he had no wish to spread, for he knew himself to be nothing. Sunk in my thoughts, I walked home and shut myself in my room. Naturally I did not believe what Paul had said. In fact I thought out how I could argue against him. But as a person and a human being, he aroused my interest. I was forced to admit that he must have experienced something inexplicable, as this experience had so completely changed his life. It was also to his credit that he did not strive for the favors and gifts of important and wealthy people, as the itinerant Isis priests and other visionaries usually did. The lowest slave, even a simpleminded person, seemed to be the same to him, if not more important, than a noble and wise man. Seneca taught that slaves too were human beings, but Seneca had no desire to mix with slaves because of this. He chose other society. I noticed in the end that whichever way I thought, I tried to find arguments against Paul rather than for him. There was a

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powerful spirit speaking in him, for I could not stand to one side and think coldly and clearly about his demented superstition and then with a laugh repeat it to Gallio. Reason told me that I could not feel such deep and obvious hostility to Paul�s absolute confidence if his thoughts had not made an impression on me. I tired of brooding and was again filled with a desire to drink from my mother�s old wooden goblet which my father valued so highly and which I had not touched for so long. I found it in my chest, poured some wine into it and drank. My room was nearly dark, but I lit no lamps. Suddenly it was as if my thoughts had lost all their foundations and all their roots. The rational philosophy of today denies man all hope. Man can choose a reasonable life of pleasure or a strictly disciplined life aimed at serving the State and the common good. An epidemic, a falling tile, or a hole in the ground can by chance put an end to man�s life. The wise man commits suicide if his life becomes intolerable. Plants, stones, animals and people are nothing but a blind meaningless game of atoms. It is as reasonable to be an evil man as a good one. Gods, sacrifices, omens, are only State- approved superstitions which satisfy women and simple people. There are of course men like Simon the magician and the Druids who, by developing certain spiritual sources, can put a man into a deathlike sleep or control weaker wills. But that power is within themselves and does not come from without. I am convinced of this, although the Druid himself may believe he has walked in the underworld and seen visions there. The wise man can with his words and by his own life set an example to others and by a deliberate death show that life and death are but trifles. But I do not think that a life of wisdom of this kind is much to strive for. As I sat in the darkness, my thoughts lost their foothold and in a strange way I experienced my mother�s merciful presence as I held the smooth goblet in my hand. I thought, too, of my father, who seriously believed that the king of the Jews had risen from the dead after crucifixion and said he had seen him when he and my mother had journeyed together in Galilee, Ever since I was a boy, I had been afraid he would disgrace himself in the company of decent people by expressing these lunatic sentiments. But what did the views of decent people or superiors matter

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to me if life was still without meaning? Of course it seems very grand to serve a kingdom whose aim is to create worldwide peace and give the world Roman law and order. But then, are good roads, fine aqueducts, mighty bridges and permanent stone houses an aim in life? Why am I alive, I, Minutus Lausus Manilianus, and why do I exist? I asked myself this and I am still asking this, here at this watering place where they are curing the disease of my blood, and to pass the time I am writing down my life for your sake, my son�you who have just received your man-toga. The next day I humbled myself and went to find Paul in the tentmakers� alley to talk to him alone. He was, after all, a Roman citizen and not just a Jew. The elder of the guild knew at once whom I meant and laughed loudly. �You mean the learned Jew, do you?� he said. �The one who has abandoned his laws and is preaching a new faith, threatening the Jews that blood will come on their heads, and wishing that they�d not only get themselves circumcised but gelded too. A good man and a good craftsman. He doesn�t need much encouragement. He can preach at the loom if he wants to. I�ve had many a good laugh at his expense. His reputation brings us new customers, too. Do you want a new tent or a rainproof cloak?� As soon as I could get away from him, I went on down the dusty alley strewn with goat-hair and came to an open workshop where, to my surprise, I found the broken-nosed Aquila from Rome sitting beside Paul. His wife Prisca recognized me at once and gave a cry of pleasure, telling Paul my name and how I had once come to the assistance of the Christians in the fighting with the faithful Jews in Rome. �But that�s all over now,� Prisca went on hurriedly. �We very much regret the blind assurance which made us boast so. Now we�ve learned to turn the other cheek and pray for those who insult us.� She chattered on as before and her husband was just as silent as before, not even stopping his monotonous work to greet me. I asked them about their flight and how they were managing in Corinth. They could not complain, but Prisca wept at the thought of the dead she had left behind in the ditches on the roadside as they had left Rome. �But they received the immortal palm,� she said. �And they did

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not die with a curse on their lips but praised Jesus, who has saved them from their sins.� I did not answer, for she was but a silly woman who had done great harm to both her kin and the faithful Jews. But I turned respectfully to Paul. �I heard you preaching yesterday,� I said. �I have to render a thorough account of your way. So I have some counterarguments which I should like to discuss with you. We can�t do that here. Would you care to come to my house this evening for a meal? As far as I can make out, you have nothing to hide in your teaching nor does it prevent you from eating with a Roman.� To my surprise, Paul was not at all impressed by my invitation. With his worn expression and piercing eyes, he looked at me and said briefly that God�s wisdom reversed all arguments and made them foolish. He was not called to dispute but to bear witness for Jesus Christ, because of the revelation he had experienced. �But I�ve heard that you have spoken in the marketplace in Athens,� I protested. �You can�t have escaped disputes with the Athenians.� It seemed as if Paul did not particularly wish to be reminded of his appearance in Athens. He had probably been made to look foolish there. But he said that some people believed him, among them one of the judges at the city court. Whether they had really been convinced by this alien speaker or whether they had not wished to offend him out of sensitivity, I did not inquire. �But you could at least answer a few simple questions,� I said, �and presumably you have to eat like everyone else. I promise not to disturb your trend of thought with rhetorical objections. I shan�t dispute, but just listen.� Aquila and Prisca both urged him to accept my invitation and told him they knew nothing evil of me. During the confusion in Rome, I had accidentally taken part in the Christian love-feast. My father helped the poor and behaved like a godly man. Neither do I think Paul had any political suspicions of me. When I returned home, I arranged for the evening meal and looked around my house. In a strange way all my things looked alien to me. Hierex too, seemed alien to me, although I seemed to know him. What did I know of the doorkeeper and the cook?