Great Lion of God Read online

  Saul was nothing but eyes as he entered the holy city of his fathers, and he forgot the onerous and distasteful presence of his kinsmen and their jovial comments to each other. He even forgot his kinsman, the Roman Aulus, and the standard and fasces of Rome. He was but a seeing vessel and he sat stiffly in the car of Simon ben Shebua and watched everything, his heart seemingly enflamed and obviously throbbing. He could hardly breathe. The air of the city was dense and hot and dusty, with a thousand disturbing odors, and there was no breeze to lift the scent of latrines, foliage, stone, dry earth and the pervasive aromatic smell as of pepper and spice and iron, and cheese. And from every street came the clanging rattle and beat of chariots, horses and cars.

  As Jerusalem was a city on a hill it rose in terraces, one above the other, a city of marble and yellow stone, of domes and porticoes and spires, of neat and narrow cobbled roads, of alleys and cypresses and palms and tamarisk and karob trees, of Roman aqueducts, of marketplaces and twisting vistas, of gardens and villas and crowded tenements and of fountains. The earth was terra-cotta; what paths could be seen were of gravel. Everywhere were walls of saffron stone, except for Roman and Greek houses which now affected the “open” appearance advocated among Roman architects.

  Jerusalem was mainly a heaped rising city of flat roofs, despite the domes and spires, and so crowded that it was boasted that a man could walk for miles on those roofs without touching ground. It was on these that the multitudinous families gathered of an evening after the heat of the day. Some of the roofs bore earth, carried up in basket after basket, and here little palm trees had been planted, and flowers, and sometimes vegetables. Many had striped awnings for protection against the sun.

  Saul saw it all, in the spurting red glare of torches thrust into walls and the light of huge lanterns illuminating every street corner. He also saw the Roman patrols. He saw the crowds, emerging into what coolness might be expected after night advanced, and he heard cymbals and laughter and music and the dull roaring of any living city, magnified here. But, like Hillel, he also felt the brooding darkness and heaviness of the city though unlike Hillel he did not wonder why. He was certain he knew. He was also certain that here was the heart of Creation, the very center of God’s being, and all else was irrelevant. Jerusalem would remain, though nations would vanish through the and be known no more. He felt this with a passionate certitude and an avenging joy.

  Chapter 8

  THOUGH Shebua ben Abraham had built his awesome Greco-Roman house on one of Jerusalem’s more secluded and quiet streets, and though his children had been born there and his wife had been ostensible mistress, he adhered to the Roman fashion and referred to it as “the house of my son’s wife, Clodia Flavius.” For Shebua was now a widower, his meek wife having died just before the death of his daughter, Deborah. He had paid a literal fortune for that building of white marble and gleaming columns and colonnades and statues, and expansive gardens, the porticoes decorated with fine murals and friezes, the atrium a court in itself, and every room full of scented air like the fragrance of fern and fresh fountains. It was guarded by a wall of white stone and with gates of iron, standing in the midst of fig trees and karobs and sycamores and palms and pines, with exotic flowers in large Chinese pots scattered everywhere, and with red paths neatly bordered with square or rectangular or round beds of many-colored plants and blossoms. From its rise on the tiered city it had a view of the whole countryside and the lavender hills and the meadows and pastures and, in the distance, little crowded Bethlehem. It was a commanding house, a true “insula,” and was highly admired even by languid and amused Greeks. Herod was often an esteemed visitor, and high Roman officials, for Shebua was known for his urbanity, his elegance, his learning and his delicacy both of mind and table and taste.

  The Pharisees abhorred him. He not only had a multitude of slaves but he never freed them, according to the Law. He had two concubines in fine quarters, and not even the dark cold disapproval of Clodia could force him to dismiss them. One was an Arabian beauty of serpentine charm, the other a delicious Nubian. “After all,” he would Say, was not the Queen of Sheba black as night and as lovely as the moon?” The Pharisees not only disagreed that the Queen of Sheba “black as night” but they despised Shebua as a renegade from his religion and his race, and hated him as a Sadducee and therefore an oppressor of his people. All the members of the great court, the Sanhedrin, were his friends, and he observed, humorously, two or three of the solemn Holy Days, but he believed in nothing, and especially not in the stern God of his Fathers, nor in the coming of the Messias.

  He was a gentleman, an epicure, an exquisite, and in his soul—he believed—a true Greek. He had visited Athens scores of times and his true allegiance, he would often say, was to the Parthenon where beauty soared in stone and Phidias walked at midnight, and Socrates strolled amid the columns. He loved to go to the theaters in Athens and in Jerusalem, where he helped to pay for the presentations of the more glorious of the Greek plays, and was a friend and patron of actors and gladiators and athletes. His discrimination was superb, and even he often marveled at it gently. He was also deeply fond of the Romans, though he was inclined—when among Greek friends—to laugh at them softly and agree that they felt inferior to the Greeks in the matter of art and taste and nuances of thought. But he would waggle a translucent finger at his Greek visitors and say. “However, do not call them a nation of grocers, my friends! They are far more than that! Consider what they have done with the arch and all their other works of science, and the law and order they have brought to the world under the Pax Romana. These are no mean accomplishments.” He had the reputation of being a very cosmopolitan man indeed. Like Plato, whom he quoted frequently, he “found no message in fields and trees.”

  He had many farms, many investments, many accounts in the banks and the stock market, many interests in mercantile affairs and in ships. Once Clodia had asked him with a sour smile why he did not live in Greece, which he adored, and he had answered her as if she were a child (though he feared her Roman soul), “My dear daughter, I owe it to my people to help in their enlightenment and to wean them from the contemplation of their God and to reverse their refusal to join the world, and to make them part of Humanity. Are we not one?”

  “No,” Clodia had said, with firmness. “We are all human beings, but we are not one in the manner of which you speak, Shebua.”

  Shebua affectionately insisted, though he did not like the cold eye Clodia had fixed on him, nor her narrowed mouth, “There is no longer room in this world for insular and provincial attitudes, nor nationalistic fervors, my dear. Men are part of me, and I am part of all other men.”

  “So it would seem, unfortunately,” said Clodia, whom Shebua deeply disliked.

  He persisted, with indulgence. “We shall never have any peace nor tranquillity until we bow before a universal government, my daughter, the government of the world under one standard, under one ruler. That is the dream of ages. It was the dream of Plato.”

  Then Clodia astonished him. He had not thought her very erudite. She said, “I remember what Aristotle said: I love Plato, but I love truth more.’ Plato was a fool. He never knew mankind. His Republic was not a noble dream. It was a dream of the cruel elite and the slavery of humanity. Hence, living men will always refute him, for men in their hearts love freedom.”

  In spite of his sweet smile of tender derision Shebua suddenly remembered the shout of Moses: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, unto the inhabitants thereof!” Then he immediately thought, “If Plato was a fool, as this poor woman has said, then Moses was mad. Liberty—for all men. Absurd.”

  But among friends, he seriously upheld the ideal of liberty for mankind. However, “mankind” to him was a theory, an abstraction, a poetic idea, and had nothing to do with the masses he saw in the various cities he visited. They smelled, and Shebua ben Abraham disliked smells. He scented himself, Clodia would think, like a male whore. All his reflections were as remote from reality as his
financial affairs were as strongly rooted in reality. He thought of himself as a poet, serene, tranquil, judicious, discreet and polished.

  He had had no influence with his sons, except for David, and his daughter had reverenced him. The plump and sleek Simon thought his father foolish; Joseph, the hard merchant, considered him not I quite intelligent. It was only David who admired and emulated him. All his sons were Sadducees, certainly, like himself. But they thought his dissertations, except for David, shallow and irrelevant. However, held his money in the most pious regard and admitted among themselves that Shebua could make ten shekels grow where one had been planted in spite of his absurdity. And sometimes, when he gazed at them thoughtfully they became afraid of him though they did not know why. Despite his smiles and ease and manners and elegances and air of tolerance, they occasionally suspected him of implacable ruthlessness, and in this, they were quite correct.

  This was the man who greeted the entourage from Joppa with magnanimity, reserved affection, and solicitude, meeting them in the atrium which was lighted with many Alexandrine and Egyptian lamps, all filled with aromatic oil, some scented with jasmine and roses. He wore a white toga in the Roman fashion, his tunic underneath belted with a gold girdle, jeweled armlets on his arms, many glittering rings on his fingers, his sandals inlaid with gems. He spoke in perfect Greek, with the intonations and mellifluousness of a scholar, and statues as stately as he stood all about him in carved niches.

  He embraced Hillel first, and let a tear come into his eye. “My dear Hillel,” he said, “this is both a joyful and a sad occasion. But let us not repine too much. You appear well, for all your tribulations.”

  Hillel had always detested him, in spite of his own kind and gentle nature. He said, “My tribulations come from God and so I do not reject them, knowing, in humility that God, blessed be His Name, has His reasons, which are full of lovingkindness.”

  He felt this in his heart. Nevertheless, he knew it would annoy Shebua, who looked at him with sudden sharper reserve and said, “Ah, yes. We can do nothing but accept. All else is childish.” He sighed. “Deborah was my only daughter. As Rachel was to her father, so was she to me.” He thought that would please or at least divert Hillel. One must concede exceptions for these pious Jews, especially Pharisees who could make themselves disconcertingly dangerous. In an odd way, he was never sure about Hillel. The family of Borush was very distinguished and many of them had been members of the Sanhedrin, and their name was notable, so Shebua could not understand the unaffected simplicity of Hillel. He had half persuaded himself it was the pretense of an assured man, and Shebua ben Abraham was not such a man.

  Saul had been acutely observing his grandfather, whom he had never seen before. Shebua stood tall over Hillel, and was very lean and graceful, with long thin white hands and a long thin white face and a similar neck. He had a delicate nose, slender and attenuated, with tremulous nostrils, and his mouth was also delicate and almost invariably sweetly smiling. Friends had often informed him that he resembled one of the more patrician Greek scholars of antiquity, and this was not entirely flattery. His expression was amiable, patient, honeyed and sympathetic, conveying the message that not only was Shebua a gentleman of refinement but a man who was loving in the extreme, and full of sensibility, not to mention subtlety. One did not think of the great stern patriarchs when looking upon Shebua; one thought of scholarship and intellect and cosmopolitan worldliness. His brow was like marble, his thin hair pale and silken over his long skull.

  It was only when one looked into his unusually large and almost completely colorless eyes that one saw the glaucous nature of Shebua ben Abraham, the glacial weighing and measuring of all who encountered him, the cold indifference to the spirits, sufferings, pain and torment of others, and the gigantic self-absorption and selfishness. But few discerned all this. He had an undeserved reputation for benign tenderness for every man.

  He puts my teeth on edge, thought Saul, and his own teeth clenched hard together. He did not know that Clodia Flavius, wife of David, often made this remark to her husband.

  Now the bright but pallid eye of Shebua fell on his grandson, Saul ben Hillel. While ostensibly greeting Hillel he had seen Saul obliquely and had said to himself, What an ugly youth, barbarian in his appearance, a veritable Vandal! He had heard from David that Saul was not similar to a beautiful statue and was not an Adonis in the eyes of his dead mother, and Deborah, in her letters to her father, had often complained that her son did not resemble his parents and was even ugly. Though she had not been intelligent she had a facile gift for words and had described Saul regularly, and minutely, so I Shebua was not too startled. But he felt an immediate aversion for that flaming red hair, so puissant and leonine, that breadth of shoulder, and those metallic blue eyes, and the bowed legs discernible even under the long brown tunic. The feet, in heavy leather sandals, stood firm and stalwart on the gleaming white floor of the atrium, and to Shebua they were the feet of a wrestler or a pugilist.

  Shebua had no beard to kiss, so Saul suffered the perfumed embrace of Shebua in silence. (He was scented with sandalwood.) His young body stiffened; only long training in courtesy kept him from drawing away his cheeks from Shebua’s cool kisses.

  Then, with his hands on Saul’s shoulders, Shebua held his grandson off from him and his whole face expressed affection and pride. “My beloved Deborah’s only son!” he exclaimed and again a soft tear appeared at the corner of his eyes. “Welcome to this house, Saul ben Hillel, and may you be joyful in the land of your fathers!”

  Hypocrite, thought young Saul and his face was stiff. Shebua, who Was very intuitive, felt the youth’s repugnance and his thoughts, and the pale eyes narrowed to icy slits. But he continued to smile as with love and admiration. He patted Saul’s shoulder, then turned graciously to view his granddaughter, Sephorah, and for once his smile was genuine as well as sweet. He not only thought her beautiful and nubile; he also thought she had inherited his own Grecian appearance. He embraced her, and sighed. He had loved his daughter, Deborah. Sephorah was more wonderful in appearance than Deborah had been and as Shebua cherished beauty—he admitted this, himself—he was inclined to instant appreciation and affection for the girl. His grandson, Ezekiel, was lucky; there was also a fine dowry.

  He murmured in the words of Homer, as he had murmured to the dead Deborah, “‘Daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair!’” Sephorah suppressed a chuckle. She was certain her grandfather was a mountebank but was amused rather than revolted at the thought. She considered it very discourteous of Saul to stand there and glare so straightly at Shebua as if about to challenge him.

  Shebua entered genially and gently into an affable exchange of greetings with Aulus Platonius, for the Roman was not only a Roman officer but of a sturdy and wealthy family. Aulus, as an “old” Roman, thought Shebua effete and wearisome and rarely encountered him willingly, and to Aulus it was not strange that Shebua was the intimate of both Herod Antipas and the Procurator of Israel, Pontius Pilate. Both were depraved men, though Pilate was the more cruel and intelligent. He had only lately arrived in Israel, and Aulus deplored him. He was not of the fiber and the soul of Aulus’ patriotic, sober and industrious fathers. Pilate hated the Jews because he had been sent here, on a matter of discipline, by Caesar Tiberius, and because the Jews were not subservient to the Romans and refused to bow before them and were incalcitrant. He was beginning to make it difficult for his officers and underlings to marry Jewish women, out of pure malice. He often rallied Aulus on his Hannah and once or twice had even tweaked the centurion’s beard and said, “What! Are you becoming a Jew, my Aulus, and have you been circumcised?” Only military training had kept Aulus from expressing his hatred, for to him, as to most soldiers, the decadent men of modern Rome were an affront to the gods, an insult to the history of his nation.

  The overseer of the hall entered the atrium, bowed to Shebua and announced that the Lady Clodia awaited the Lady Sephorah in the quarters of the women
. Shebua smiled deprecatingly at his lovely granddaughter, spread his hands in apology and resignation, and said, “My son’s wife, the noble Clodia Flavius, is mistress of her house and one dares not oppose her! So you must retire, my Sephorah, my beautiful one, for refreshment and rest after your long journey.”

  Sephorah bowed to him, to her father, then, drawing her filmy veil lover her face she bowed to her uncles, to Aulus, but pretended, as was proper, that she did not see her bridegroom who was lingering in the background, half hidden by a column, overcome with his shyness and the marvel of his fate that he was to have one so wondrous as his wife. Then Sephorah demurely winked at her brother, kissed her father’s cheek in a marvelous imitation of a timid daughter, and departed with her maidens for the women’s quarters.