“I pray not,” said Lucanus, seriously. “Surely He was a man of peace. In time His followers will understand that.”
“No,” said Antipas. “You do not know the Jews.”
Then Phillip spoke. “Nor do you,” he said, quietly. “You have not been a friend to your people. You have been an enemy.”
A great silence fell about the table. All sat like statues. Antipas looked only at his brother, and Lucanus and Pilate looked only at them. Then, after a long moment or two, Antipas said softly, “Phillip, dare you speak to me so?”
“Yes, I dare,” said Phillip in as soft a voice. “You are a little, vicious man. I say this to your face. You have no stature, no honesty, no dignity, no presence. This is the end.” He gazed at his half brother with detestation.
Antipas burst into a thin shout of laughter, thrusting his beard up into the air. “Oho!” he cried. “He has not forgiven me for taking his wife, Herodias! You have insulted me in the presence of my friend, but I forgive your lack of manners. You have called me ‘little’. If you had been of greater stature I could not have taken your wife from you. Who, then, is the larger man?” His eyes danced malignantly and with mockery on Phillip.
Phillip’s lips were white, but he spoke in a low voice. “I bear you no malice for Herodias. Had I loved her, and had she loved me, there would have been no possibility of your seduction of her. I am not debased, for no one can debase another man without his own consent. You speak of manners. It is you who lack them.”
Lucanus was embarrassed. He was not accustomed to such raw quarrelings and insults, especially not among kinsmen.
Then Pilate intervened, speaking pleasantly. “You erred, Antipas, when you sought a crown. Never seek a crown from a Caesar. You are in his bad graces. It was only today that I received a letter from him suggesting that you discreetly remove yourself. Caesars do not often suggest; they command. Will you wait for a command?”
Antipas turned as white as death, and his reddish beard became prominent against the ghastly hue of his flesh. “You are jesting,” he whispered.
“No,” said Pilate, still pleasantly. “Caesar looks with graciousness on your brother.” He sipped some wine, while Antipas clutched the edge of the table and leaned towards him, gasping. “I called you here tonight to tell you, and Phillip. You have your Herodias; you have your enormous wealth. I suggest, however, that you leave Judea. It will be more agreeable for everyone.”
Lucanus almost pitied the frantic Antipas, and averted his eyes. The humiliation should not have been before a stranger such as himself.
“I shall call upon Agrippa,” said Antipas, in a shrill and choking voice.
“Do not, I advise you. It will not be looked upon with favor.”
“I thought you were my friend, Pontius.”
“It is as your friend that I give you this message. Were I your enemy I should have sent you a peremptory command and removed you publicly, before the sneering faces of your people.”
Antipas swung upon his brother, and his hand leaped to his dagger. Phillip stared at him with haughty disdain. “You have done this!” cried Antipas. “You have betrayed me, you have plotted against me, out of revenge!”
“I suggest,” said Pilate, “that no harm come to Phillip. In truth, I have designated my chief officer, Plotius, to guard Phillip’s house, in case you are indiscreet enough to violate the wishes of Tiberius and cause Phillip to have an — accident.”
Lucanus stood up. He said coldly, “I am weary. I must implore your generosity, Pilate, and ask you to excuse me.”
Antipas turned his rage upon him. He pointed a finger at Lucanus, and it shook. “It was you who, using Caesar’s ring, not only induced Pilate to lift the proscription against the Christians, but to suggest my exile in order to protect your ragged friends!”
Pilate lifted an admonishing hand. “No one betrayed you, Antipas, neither your brother nor myself. Let us have done with these accusations.”
He crooked a finger at a slave and ordered a litter for Lucanus. The Greek bowed to those at the table and left the house.
“I also suggest,” said Pilate to Antipas, “that no harm come to Lucanus. He is under Tiberius’ protection, and you know what a bloody man he has become.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Lucanus told his friends, Hilell and Arieh, of what had taken place in Pilate’s house. They listened with profound interest, then Hilell said with joy, “Let us thank God that Herod Antipas is to be removed!”
“Nevertheless, Pilate should not have humiliated him before me.”
“He is an inscrutable man, and had his reasons.” Hilell then went on to say that Mary, the Mother of Christ, had returned to her people for a visit in Nazareth. There had been a death among her relatives. “I will visit her there,” said Lucanus. Hilell remarked it was a considerable journey. “However,” he said, “you will be able to see Galilee, where He first taught. It is a beautiful spot! But there is a little town there, called Tiberias, built by Herod in honor of Caesar. The Jews regard it as an abomination, and will not visit it. Nor would the Christ. He spoke on a mount nearby, in the synagogue, which is plain and humble, as are the people. But there is no hurry. Remain with us until Leah and Arieh are married.”
“I must be about my business,” said Lucanus, regretfully.
“Then we will wait until you return.”
When he was alone that night, Lucanus wrote what he had heard from Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas about Jesus. His Gospel was growing. He put nothing in it of his own opinions, but only the information which had been imparted to him. Sometimes an overwhelming longing came to him. If only he had seen the Christ himself, if only he had been able to speak with Him and look in His marvelous eyes! I should not have deserted Him when His followers forsook him in fear, he thought.
The next morning, early, he went in a litter to the house of James and John without the gates. Hilell had sent a message to the two young brothers, who had agreed, somewhat sullenly, to receive Lucanus. Hilell had written them that but for Lucanus the proscription against them would have remained. Once beyond the gates, and descending the hill of Sion, Lucanus looked back through the hot and smarting dust. Though it was early in the morning, the yellow walls of Jerusalem glared in a terrible light; a dazzling and bleak incandescence illuminated the stones of the walls and the rolling, stony mountains. Even the cultivated hills lay in starkness, fold on fold of bitter desolation.
The clustered houses outside the walls climbed the mountains, yellowish gray and burning in the light. Most of them were poor, with little patches of dusty gardens, palms, pines, olive and fruit trees panting about them. Never had Lucanus seen so parched a land, so dry, so dusty. The servants who carried the litter began to gasp when they ascended one of the hills, and they finally stopped with relief before a little yellowish house poorer than all the others. A young man stood on the steps, with a gloomy expression, waiting in silence, his brow dark. He must have made a remark, for he was joined by another young man with a very narrow pale face, fierce black eyebrows, a full but hard mouth, and a mass of chestnut curls flowing over his high head. The first man was clothed in a gray garment over which he had thrown a dark green robe; the second wore a dull yellow robe. Both appeared to be very poor. They said nothing as Lucanus alighted from the litter; they merely stood and gazed down at him. “I am Lucanus, a physician, guest of Hilell ben Hamram,” said Lucanus, trying to smile in the face of the combined formidable stare the others had fixed on him. “You expect me?”
The two looked at each other. The older man’s face was not as narrow as his brother’s, but he had a long, thin nose, a beard, dark hair, and a thinner mouth. He had less of the younger man’s air of indomitable fanaticism and frozen wildness. He said in Aramaic, slurred by the Galilean accent, “We expect you.” They gave Lucanus no other greeting. “I am James, son of Zebedee of Capharnaum, and this is my brother, John,” and James indicated the younger man with the intimidating face and large vengeful
eyes which had the fixity of the ecstatic temperament. “Sons of the thunderstorm!” How well that description fitted them! Lucanus felt their intense hostility, and their reluctance even to speak to him, and their passionate suspicion.
“I am a Christian,” he said, walking towards them, and hoping to soften them. But they did not answer him. With a movement of his head James indicated that Lucanus was to follow them, and they led him, in silence, to the rear of the little, miserable house, where the walls cast some shade in the violent light. There was no garden here, only yellow dust and stones; two wooden benches stood there near the wall of the house. The brothers sat down on one of the benches and resumed their scrutiny of Lucanus, and he sat on the other bench. He sighed; these men were going to be difficult. He was the stranger, the uncircumcised, the unclean. If they had any wine or bread they were going to offer him none, nor even thank him for rescuing them.
He had thought to tell them of Keptah, of the Chaldeans, of the Babylonians, of Joseph ben Gamliel, of the Greeks and their Unknown God, and all the prophecies which had come down from the ages, not only from Jews but from the others. But he knew at once that not only would they not understand, but they would be incredulous and more resentful than ever. Looking at them gravely, he wondered how these, who had walked with God, could be so inhospitable, so without charity for the stranger, so hard and fierce.
Under their combined and inimical stare Lucanus spoke with hesitation of the Gospel he was writing. He told them that in his travels he had heard much of the Messias. He wished only for them to tell him of what they knew themselves, so he could continue his work. “I never saw Him, but I have loved Him for many years,” he said, gently.
John spoke for the first time, in a peremptory voice: “We will tell you what we have seen with our eyes.” He drew a deep breath, and the coldly savage ecstasy of his eyes became more concentrated. “But you will not understand. Did you know Him? Did you hear Him? Without that you can know nothing.”
Yes, thought Lucanus, you knew Him and heard Him, but His gentleness and love are not in you, nor His charity. You will make good evangelists, but there will be little mercy or tenderness or kindness in what you say or do.
James said in a pent voice, “If only He had struck down this city when it dared to reject Him! Why did He not bring down the fury of heaven upon it?”
Lucanus made no reply. He rested his hands on his knees and waited. The brothers exchanged another glance; they were not twins, but it was apparent that they were inseparable and conversed with each other with eloquent glances and had little need of speech. The terrible heat penetrated even to this dusty shade; Lucanus wiped his forehead and face with his kerchief. The others resumed their staring at him, and now for the first time curiosity appeared on their fervid faces. Lucanus’ calm, his gravity, the beauty of his countenance, the serene blue of his eyes, had begun to impress them, and to mitigate some of their natural enmity for the stranger.
It was John, the younger, who started to speak, in short and reluctant sentences. But after a little he was seized with uncontrollable rapture; his eyes took on a vivid and inner light, and he gazed at the fiery sky. His voice became eloquent. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God! Blessed is His Name! In Him was life; and the life was the light of men!”
John spoke of Christ’s miracles, His teachings, of John the Baptist. When he was speaking of the wild and vehement John the Baptist, his voice took on an emphatic and lyrical quality. Here was one he could truly understand! Here was one who spoke of wrath and the vengeance of God on the unbelievers, of judgment to come, of appalling divulgences. Here was one who warned, who did not speak of mercy! The passionate denizen from the desert, the eater of wild honey and locusts, the half-naked bearded cryer before the Lord, was close to the heart of John. He clenched his thin hands on his knees; he shuddered with delight and joy. “I have had great Revelations!” he cried, beating his knees with his fists. “Of the Day of Judgment, of the frightful things which will take place, of the steaming pits of hell into which evil souls shall fall like snowflakes, of avenging seraphim and cherubim, of the good and the wicked which will be eternally divided, of the anger of God and the forever condemned! I shall write of these things myself!”
“Yes, yes,” said Lucanus, soothingly. “But I have come to learn of His words, and His miracles.” He did not like the awful gleaming in the eyes of the young John.
John’s distended nostrils quivered. He was seeing the most dreadful visions with his inner eye, and he rejoiced in them vengefully. He started at Lucanus’ voice, and looked at him blindly. James said, “Our visitor has asked of God’s words and miracles among men. We were witnesses. Continue.”
So John, whose gestures became more eloquent, more driving, told Lucanus what he wished to know. Time went by, breathless with heat and acrid dust, and Lucanus listened with all his soul. John’s voice took on triumphant trumpet notes and jubilation. Whereas others, in speaking of the Christ, talked with love and tender joy, John spoke with rising exaltation and power. Sometimes he could not contain himself: he rose and paced feverishly, his narrow face blazing. He appeared to grow in stature and strength, walking from sharp purple shade to sharper brilliance of light, so his features were alternately darkened and illuminated, his hands at one moment shadowy and the next like hands of flame. In spite of himself Lucanus was fascinated, both by the strangeness of the young evangelist and the stories he related. Sometimes James broke in, when John, weary, stopped for a moment to clarify a parable or a story, and John would stare at him impatiently with a welling eye. During pauses Lucanus wrote rapidly with his stylus, so that all would be accurate. Once or twice he thought, This man would only dismay the thoughtful, the gentle, the compassionate. But he will be like a pillar of fearful fire to the languid, the faded, the selfish, the indifferent, the skeptical, the apathetic, and to those who are capable of excitement by visions and scorn the precise. He will be a terror to the materialistic. He appeals to passions, and can arouse passions even in the most complacent. When John related what he had seen and heard, it was not with the wonder and happiness and sorrow expressed by others to Lucanus. He told his story with a furious air of defiance, as if challenging incredulity and ready to smite it.
He told of the crucifixion, without the grief and fear and sadness of Priscus, but with rage and agony, and his vengeful face became even more vengeful. Sometimes James moved uneasily, not in disagreement with his brother, but at the sight of his glaring eye and the tone of his voice. And sometimes John would regard Lucanus with a fierceness that indicated he almost believed that Lucanus himself had driven the nails into the sacred flesh. I stand condemned as the evil Gentile who destroyed the Body of the Christ, he reflected, and it is apparent that he believes that I am utterly consigned to his simmering hell.
Noon wheeled in intolerable light over the little poor house, and the shade shortened. Now John was exhausted; he fell on the bench and covered his sweating face with his hands and sobbed aloud. He muttered, over and over, “The Day of Eternal Judgment! I have seen it in my soul; my soul trembles with fear and yet is exalted!”
Two goats came around the side of the house, searching for coolness and more thistles and dry grass. James went into the house and brought out a bronze pail and milked the inquisitive animals. He took the pail back into the house and returned outside again with three earthenware cups and a plate of dark bread and a little cheese. He put these beside him on the bench and looked kindly at his brother. “Let us rest, and eat,” he said.
“A day is approaching when there will be no more drinking and eating,” said John, and his voice shook. Nevertheless, he dropped his hands; his pale face was mottled by the desperate pressure of his fingers. He looked at the three cups foaming with warm goat’s milk, and his mouth opened as if to protest. He was not as yet prepared to eat and drink easily with the Gentile, or to accept his presence with equanimity. But James took one of the cups and gave it to
Lucanus, and presented the pewter plate of bread and cheese. Lucanus smiled at him gratefully, and James’ face took on an uncertain sheepishness. “You will understand that my brother’s soul is still unreconciled to events,” he said. John frowned implacably. In silence he took a cup also, but refused the food. “It is commanded of us that we must bring the tidings to all the nations of the world,” he said, as if in dissent.
“I am one of the ‘nations of the world’,” said Lucanus, both with pity and with some vexation for this proud and stricken and ecstatic man. John drank gloomily. His thoughts had already left Lucanus; it was as if he conversed now only with himself, and inwardly prayed with mounting fervor. But James looked at Lucanus with more and more uncertainty, as if his opinion of him was changing, and he regretted his former inhospitality. He said, finally, “Do not think we are ungrateful for what you have done for us.”
John lifted his head and said, scornfully, “The Lord would not have permitted us long to be persecuted!”
Lucanus made no comment. His litter arrived for him, and he rose to go, thanking James for the good milk and the refreshment. James rose and followed him to the front of the house, but John remained on his bench, his head bowed and his breast heaving. When Lucanus entered the rich litter and lifted his hand in farewell James hesitated, then lifted his own hand awkwardly in a salute and turned away quickly. Lucanus felt more pity for the brothers. They had been exhorted to perform a gigantic task among the strangers; their spirits dreaded it, yet they must obey.
Dear and Glorious Physician Page 71