by Fast, Howard
She won her battle. It came when she was out on the lake with Shimeon, he paddling a flat wooden skiff and herself sprawled on a floor of cushions and a mat, her face on a level with his foot, touching his foot, spelling out sinews and toes with her fingernail. Then he put the paddle aside and lay down next to her, his dark eyes so close that she could see her own reflection in them—and then he made love to her. She was afraid. She lay there, her wild green eyes hooded with terror, stiff, uncomprehending, unresponding—yet holding herself while his hands and his voice softened her, so that it appeared to her that she melted little by little, melted under some kind of dark sun, until the flame entered her and she was burning and writhing and screaming her pain and agony and fierce joy—and then dissolving onto a long, gentle, and endless incline. Not only had this never happened before, but not in her wildest dreams had she ever believed that such a thing could happen—yes, to animals and to people like Gabo, her slave, and to the whores and concubines of the court—but not to Berenice—
Night fell, and she threw off her clothes and slipped over the side of the boat into the water. Shimeon could not swim—a thing that amazed her—and she said she would teach him, but he shook his head, staring puzzled and with wonder at this long-limbed, tawny woman, whose coppery skin flashed with the joy and ease of one born to the water—
“Help me in!” she cried. She was shameless. She curled naked at the bottom of the boat, while he looked at her in amazement. “Do you still love me, Shimeon?” she asked him. “When I am no queen—but like this, and wanton? You’re ashamed, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“You’re like a big, stupid trained bear. Laugh. Laugh at me. Oh, you’re so much the Jew!”
“You’re the most beautiful woman on earth,” he replied finally. “You’re not real, and I think you are part devil, but I would cut out my heart for you.”
“What a thing to say!” she cried, laughing at him. “Like your entire family, you are probably very wise but not at all clever—and I have absolutely no use for your heart if you cut it out.”
“And if it stays here?”
“Then I want it for myself—forever.”
Such a thing had to be talked about. It was too rare, too juicy with fascination, too improbable to be avoided; and from Phrygia to Alexandria, through that half of the world which was a domain of Jewish lands, Jewish cities, Jewish enclaves, and Gentiles who noted every move that the Jews made—all through that area the romance between Shimeon Bengamaliel and Berenice Basagrippa was observed and dwelt upon. The she-devil, the whore-of-Babylon, had ensnared the scion of the House of Saints; and since the House of Hillel was a little less than wholly admired by Jewish wealth and nobility, it was an unexpected but welcome opportunity to undercut what the Hillelites stood for. In the synagogues of Galilee where the House of Shammai dominated, Zealot preachers made the most of this union of so-called goodness with the devil.
“Be ye warned!” they cried out.
But the bread that Berenice gave away was real, and the taste of it lingered. Her brother Agrippa was thankful for the process of the bread when he called her in to him and asked her,
“How long do you expect to continue with this, Berenice?”
“Forever.”
“Come now,” Agrippa smiled. “There is no forever—which you know as well as I do.”
“I love him, brother. He’s the only man I ever loved—yes, yourself, as they say, but you are my brother whatever they say. He is a man and my lover.”
“He is also from Hillel—a physician without a shekel to his name.”
This kind of talk bored Berenice. She endured it because her brother was king, but her mind was a wall against far more powerful men than her brother, and she reminded him that by now he should know her well enough to forego such arguments.
“Still he’s a pauper,” Agrippa insisted, feeling that this was basic, and that since the House of Herod had not yet produced anyone indifferent to money, it was unlikely that Berenice would be the first.
“I have enough money for both of us,” Berenice shrugged.
“And you intend to marry him?”
“If he will have me,” Berenice said.
Yet, to her profound annoyance, Shimeon raised some of the same arguments: pointing out to her that she was rich almost beyond one’s ability to comprehend. They were at the House of Shlomo then—seven weeks had passed since the incident in the boat—and Shimeon told Berenice that he was going away.
“Where?” she asked.
“To Ezion Geber.”
“Why?”
“Because I must go,” he said simply. “The plague is there, and the physicians who were there are dead.”
“And if you are dead?”
He shrugged. “That’s my life. I chose it.”
“And my life? What is my life, Shimeon Bengamaliel? Did I choose it? Or did the Almighty say to me, Bitch—be born on earth and let earth be cursed with you!”
“No, don’t talk like that,” he begged her.
“Why? Because I blaspheme?”
“Against yourself, my beloved.”
“How dare you call me that now!” she cried. “Beloved!” Her eyes flashed scorn and rage. “By what right?”
“I love you—or does that mean nothing?” Shimeon demanded.
“Love? Such love is worthless!”
“What then?” he demanded desperately. “What can you ask of me? I am a pauper. I have the clothes on my back and the surgeon’s tools in my bag, and there is all that I have in the world. Even the great House of Hillel is not ours in your sense. We don’t own it—we occupy it—if God wills it. So how do you measure yourself against me? You have a palace in Chalcis, a palace in Tiberias, a great palace in Caesarea—and I have even heard that the palace of the Hasmoneans in Jerusalem is yours, left to you by your grandmother. You have a villa here on the lake that you never set foot in, a villa on the Waters of Merom, a villa on the sea at Tyre—and a villa in Rome too, I am told. They say that half the property in Chalcis is yours, the ironworks outside of Chalcis, over a thousand slaves, a farm of horses near Meggido, and twelve plantations of olive trees and perhaps ten hundred talents of gold and silver to satisfy your whims—”
“What are you?” she demanded scornfully. “A clerk? I had heard told that you are a physician—but I find that you have more skill in the counting of money and the keeping of books than a battery of Egyptian scribes.” She said this and watched his face redden, and as he shook his head, so desperately and dumbly, she almost pitied him.
“You are richer than Claudius Germanicus, who is Emperor of Rome, and you mock me and sneer at me—”
“Then what is it, physician?” she spat out at him. “Do you know as little about women as I do about men?”
Finally he took her in his arms—when she had reached the point of doubt that caused her to wonder whether she had gone too far and provoked him out of her reach. Because all through it, she was saying to herself, “I will not live without him, but neither will he die without me. We will do both together.”
Many years later, Berenice was to remember this vow of hers.
A most unusual meeting was held by King Agrippa in his palace at Tiberias. For one thing, Gamaliel Benhillel, the old man, the father, the son of the saintly Hillel himself and the patriarch of the house—and thus, in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Jews, the patriarch of all Jewry—this Gamaliel came to Agrippa’s house, the House of Herod and discussed the union of Shimeon and Berenice. The king and the patriarch sat with Gideon Benharmish, Anat Beradin, Joseph Bendavid, and Oman Bensimon—all of them except Agrippa men of their declining years with long memories and the strange consciousness that finally saint and devil were joined, the House of Hillel to the House of Herod, which had already been joined to the House of David and the House of Mattathias, so that one out of this union would carry not only the blood of kings and wise men, but could style himself Hacohen, out of a bloodline that led witho
ut break—as they calculated such things—to Moses the prophet and beloved of the Almighty and to Aaron his brother. It was a strange occasion, an awesome occasion, and a quiet one—for while the step proposed by the two lovers was almost mysterious in its significance it was also ominous in its political implications. Would it make an unhealable rift between the Jews of Judea in the South and those of Galilee in the North? Would the Jews of the South, who so revered the House of Hillel, curse Agrippa in that he had fostered this? Would the Zealots, who feared and hated the House of Hillel, curse Agrippa for selling their birthright? And how would the Romans react?
“It is very complicated,” Agrippa sighed, and thus caused Beradin to remark,
“You will find, my dear boy, that nothing pertaining to Jewish politics or philosophy is ever simple and nothing so uncomplicated that a sage can unravel it.”
Yet with all the talk, doubt, and discussion, they could not set aside the will of two strong-willed people. They could only make of the marriage, for the time being, a sort of secret—a secret that many would know but would nevertheless hide in itself.
Thus the marriage took place very quietly at the House of Hillel, with no more than half a hundred people present, including the slaves of the house. Standing next to her brother, Berenice had to reflect on how strange this was, compared to the somber dignity of the alabarch’s household in Alexandria, where death had come before her, or to the wild splendor of the festivities at Chalcis, when Herod of Chalcis took her in marriage. But that was of no consequence, and those incidents were buried so deeply, so vaguely in her memory that they might indeed never have happened. Now it was her own father-in-law, the rabbi and patriarch, who said,
“Thus the Almighty wills it, that the two of flesh become the one of flesh, the two of thought become the one of thought, the two of blood become the one of blood, for the blood is the life and the life is unto Yaweh, the Lord God of Hosts.” The very ancient ceremony was in a sing-song Aramaic. “Where is the contract?” the old man asked.
The contract was brought. Berenice stood with her back to Shimeon’s back; she could feel his firm buttocks pressed against her, and she began to tremble with desire for him. Three veils covered her face, and her breath was hot and heavy under the cloth.
“Oh, give the dowry,” chanted Agrippa, feeling foolish that he should be speaking the words of an old man. “Give me comfort for my last years. Give me bread for my hungry days. Give me shelter from the hot sun. Give me a black goatskin tent to shelter me.”
“Give him the dowry!” cried the Cohen or priest, who stood by in the name of his line.
“Thou takest what is best his, the doe of his flock, the virgin ewe, the unopened passage, the sweetness of the crotch, the host for thy manhood, the host for the parts where the covenant is reckoned.”
This section was in Hebrew, and Berenice began to fidget with irritation and impatience. Why all this nonsense about virginity? They were no longer in the desert, and neither was one old, grizzled, dirty sheik trading wives and dowries with another. She was hot. She wanted it over with.
“My dowry is little,” Shimeon said.
“Mine is in fullness,” said Agrippa.
Then Agrippa knelt and put his name on the contract, which was stretched out on the floor, a long scroll of parchment covered with archaic Hebrew. Then the patriarch knelt and put his name to it. It was rolled up. Berenice was escorted out to the bath, where she would be washed again, and Shimeon held out a great silver goblet for the wine to be poured. The goblet was passed around, and each man present drank from it, the women having gone away with Berenice to the bath. The old patriarch wept in joy, and he went to Agrippa and kissed him upon the mouth.
“Be blessed in your stewardship, my son,” he said. “Israel has a king both good and gentle, and my house is blessed with such a queen as we have not known since the days of Esther.”
Then lamps were lit on the tables under the terebinth tree, and the feasting began. Berenice watched from the window of the bride’s room—where she waited for Shimeon Bengamaliel, her husband.
Berenice had not been to Jerusalem since the death of her father, seven years before; and this time it was not to go into the city and focus upon herself the attention and delay and gossip consequent to her recent marriage, but only because the city lay on the road from Tiberias to Ezion Geber. She had been to Jerusalem as a child, and Shimeon had been there many times; and Shimeon could comprehend why she liked it so little. Jerusalem was a cold city. Unlike Tiberias or Caesarea, it had no parks, no groves of trees, no places where travelers could sit in the shade of growing things, no fountains, no gardens with shrubs and sculpture. It was a city of brick and stone, of flat slab and cobbled pavement. The great houses of the city sheltered themselves behind blank walls; they hid their warmth behind expressionless faces; they were defenses against hate and bloodletting, even as the city was in itself a series of defenses—perhaps the mightiest combination of natural and man-made defenses in all the ancient world, tier upon tier of wall and fortress mounting up to the height where the Temple itself stood, a tall, hard-edged building, whose sheer walls elicited awe rather than admiration.
Approaching the city from the west, so that they might go around it to the southern suburb where their destination, the House of Hakedron, stood, Berenice and Shimeon passed through the Valley of Hinnom. In other cities forms of garbage collection and disposal had been set up by Berenice’s father, Agrippa I, but such was the enormous size of Jerusalem and so quick its rate of growth and expansion and so violently independent its groupings, tribes, classes, and priestly sects, that no successful means of garbage disposal had ever been inaugurated. Instead, filth, refuse, and garbage were dumped into the Valley of Hinnom. Each day, thousands of animals and birds were brought to the Temple by pious Jews and offered to the priests for sacrifice. The animals were slaughtered and gutted, and there flowed from the Temple to the Valley of Hinnom an unending stream of baskets filled with the entrails of these offerings. The meat was sold by the priests—and eaten by them too—but when one or another of twenty-one ancient totemic taboos appeared in the entrails, the meat was discarded, as were the haunches of certain animals, the heads and feet of the birds, the feet of the animals with cloven hoofs, and the skins of those animals sold as meat without offering. All of this was dumped in Hinnom, as was the garbage of the city, the dead and unclean animals of the city, the night soil of much of the poorer population, and all too frequently the body of some poor devil dead of violence or disease and too forgotten or poor to have anyone who would purchase burial.
The road through this valley to the south suburb cut a considerable distance off the journey, and Berenice and Shimeon decided to go this way in spite of the horror of the place, which was frequently called Gehenna—so that they might reach shelter before sundown. Berenice, Shimeon, the huge Adam Benur, who accompanied them as armor-bearer and servant, and Gabo—all covered mouths and noses with cloths saturated in perfume; but smell was only part of this place. There were human creatures prowling in the mounds of flesh and garbage, wild dogs and jackals, hundreds of black vultures—and robbers and killers, the cast-out and excommunicated of the city. Mostly, as a result of the prevailing wind, the frightful odor was not smelled in Jerusalem; but there were times when the wind changed and covered the city with a hot effusion of horror. Now, for half an hour, Berenice and her party rode through this horror, and the only word spoken was by Shimeon, who said in a sort of desperation,
“Still, this high place above us is holy.”
They rode quickly there, and soon they had turned to the south of the city, where the air became sweet and the city hung in the last golden sunlight like an unreal thing, like a dream. The House of Hakedron, where they would stay the night, had its gate open, awaiting them, and they turned into the courtyard weary and relieved. Slaves, alert and waiting for them, seized their horses, helped them to dismount, and brought them foaming goblets of icy-cold wine and water—and b
eyond the slaves, at the door to the house itself, their hosts waited.
The head of the house was a strange and very old man, who called himself Ba’as Hacohen. He was enormously rich and powerful—as he would perforce have to be to maintain his great residence outside of and unprotected by the walls of Jerusalem—in a land where every kind of bandit and thief abounded—Jebusites, the decadent remnants of the ancients who had once occupied the city; Zealots, bitter, resentful as they hunted Romans and Egyptians; and the dreaded and terrible Sicarii, a murder-sect of the Zealots whom even the Zealots feared, conscienceless men who were professional assassins, who solved all problems with murder, and who, armed with Roman short-swords that they concealed under their dirty jackets, struck swiftly and silently. Along with these, the Edomites, Arab half-Jews, bitter and dispossessed, who would periodically raid out of the badlands to the south. No, life to the south of Jerusalem was not relished by ordinary people, but Ba’as Hacohen was far from ordinary.
For one thing, it was said that he was well over a hundred years old; and this was something that Berenice could believe, seeing the incredible network of wrinkles that covered his face, his skin like dried and ancient parchment; and to lend proof to his claim, there were four generations of his descendants waiting with him to greet the travelers. A thousand legends were told about this man, the Ba’as Adon, that he had once been high priest in the Temple, that he had been a captain of captains under Herod the Great, that once, dying, they brought him to Hillel the Good, who made a strange pact with the prophet Elijah, that the Ba’as Hacohen would live a year of atonement for every wrong he had done—but this of course was nonsense, legends, old wives’ tales. He was a great priestly prince, the Ba’as Adon, with much wealth in gold and silver and diamonds. The tale was told that he had ransacked the temple treasury once, carrying away his vast wealth under the wing and protection of Herod, or perhaps under Herod’s father, Antipater, which would have made him well over a hundred years; but the plain truth was that he had once held leases to copper mines near Elat and a monopoly of the tin trade with the Tyreans, who brought the tin from Cornwall in far-away Britain, and that shrewdly conducting this and other trade, he had piled up wealth in good measure. At one point in his life, while the Sage Hillel still lived, the Ba’as Adon had been converted to support of the House of Hillel, and in this he had never wavered. Now he received the grandson of his beloved teacher and rabbi as a guest in his house for the first time—and no effort was spared to make the occasion memorable.