by Fast, Howard
She could not hear him; he could not hear her—so great was the shriek of horror and terror that rose over the plaza.
“On one’s knees!” he shouted.
Weeping, she fell to her knees and embraced his legs. Behind the vendors’ carts, hundreds of people who had taken shelter watched this. Weeping themselves, they saw the woman they considered their queen and the queen of all Israel kneel and embrace the legs of the procurator and beg him for mercy.
Florus tasted it and rolled it on his tongue. He tasted it long and with pleasure. Casper Ventix, the young centurion had paused to watch. The second maniple was now killing—without passion, without zest, simply killing whatever was alive and in its way, killing as a machine kills.
“Centurion!” Florus shouted.
Ventix walked toward him slowly.
“Move when I call you!”
“I hear you, Procurator.”
“Where’s the Tubicen?”
“There—Procurator.” He pointed to the other end of the portico, where a man leaned on a five-foot-long trumpet.
“Have him sound the recall.”
“I hear and obey, Procurator,” he said, his voice lazy and buried in insolence—and just as slowly and lazily, he walked across the portico to where the Tubicen stood. A moment later, the recall echoed across the plaza.
Berenice rose. “Thank you, Procurator,” she said.
“Time enough later for payment,” Florus nodded, grinning. He was vastly pleased with himself. His was not the kind of mind that measures the future or weighs the consequences. He had revenged himself and turned the scream of Jewish mockery back upon itself and humbled a woman who despised him. He felt a sense of achievement.
Looking back, remembering, Berenice always had difficulty in piecing together that day—as did others; for it was an infamous day, a day of separation between past and future, a day when a furious sickness was born, if such hatred be a sickness. Joseph Benmattathias was in the Temple when the worst of this day took place. Being beyond question of priestly blood, he had certain privileges he was never loathe to exercise, and while the Great Sanhedrin debated in one room of the Temple, he made notes of their arguments and conclusions in another room, putting together bits of information, surmise, and gossip that was brought to him by the Levites. This was essential to his being; and he could no more refrain from the narration of existence than he could from breathing. If he had been a Greek, he would have already styled himself a historian, but among the Jews—who unreasonably demand that a historian be divinely inspired—he gave himself no titles and contented himself with an endless search for the actuality of event. People knew this; it was of his nature; and he questioned Berenice very carefully afterward, pointing out that such horror must be provoked. He strained himself to be objective and neutral.
“I saw so little,” Berenice replied. “I was pleading with Florus.”
“I know, I know. We all know. And he heeded you.”
“Did he? Or was he tired of the bloodshed—or afraid?”
“Oh, he heeded you. No question of that. He sounded the recall, and when the troops returned to barracks, he went with them. He will never again walk alone in the streets of Jerusalem—or with much less than a legion around him. But what did you do then?”
“I walked across the plaza,” Berenice told Joseph, frowning, trying to think beyond the stillness of the place. “It wasn’t still,” she said, “because people were screaming with pain. But it seems like stillness when I think about it.”
“Only the dead and wounded were there then?”
“In the center of the plaza,” Berenice said. “There were unwounded people—Jews I mean—at the sides, at the street openings, on the staircases, by the villas—but not in the center. There were only the dead and the dying, and they were like heaps of cloth, all over, all over—so many—”
Some things she would never forget. She would never forget that. She would see things far more horrible, far more terrible—but different. At her feet were three little children, two girls and a boy, their bellies split, their guts on the pavement. She walked, and the blood covered her toes—the pool of blood an inch deep and growing where there was a timeworn depression in the plaza, and the bodies lay here and there and everywhere. The Roman troops had been marvelously efficient, a mother dead with her child clutched in her arms, and then the child dispatched with a sword-thrust, as if life of any kind was an affront to the clockwork soldiers who had marched out of the portico, and in another place was a pile of bodies, seventeen in all, piled one on the other—and how had that happened? The wounded pleaded with her—
Shimeon found her kneeling by the side of a twelve-year-old boy, holding an artery together so that the flicker of life she had discovered in him should not go out. With needle and thread he sewed together the boy’s wound—and then as he went on, working with the other physicians, Berenice remained with him, helping, holding flesh together for him to stitch, tearing all of her overdress into bandages and much of her underdress, for the blood that covered her from head to foot was cloak enough for modesty. The plaza was full now. The evening shadows were lengthening, the looming Temple casting its darkness upon them, and men with torches lit the plaza so that the doctors could work and so that mothers and fathers could find their children among the dead—and so that whimpering children could find their mothers and fathers. Death played no favorites here. The rich and noble ladies who were of the bloodlines of David and Mattathias and Aaron and Herod had died alongside of the common Israelites and Jebusites of the city—and within sight of their own villas.
When the bodies were counted, the toll was as follows: of grown men, fifty-nine, of grown women, one hundred and fourteen, of boy children, two hundred and six, and of girl children, three hundred and nineteen. This is aside from those who died later.
There was no quarter, no street in Jerusalem where there was not weeping that night. Washing the blood from her aching and tired limbs, Berenice heard the weeping, and Joseph Benmattathias heard it, too, where he was making his own notes on what had happened.
It was nighttime, and Shimeon and Caleb Barhoreb and Phineas Hacohen and the former high priest, Hanan Hacohen, had gone to meet with the Procurator Gessius Florus as a deputation from the Great Sanhedrin. He had summoned them, and they had decided that the wisest course would be to meet with him and speak with him. Hour by hour the excitement and rage and frustration of the people grew—and how it would burst forth and what would be the result of such an explosion no one could say; but it seemed to Shimeon and others—men who kept their heads and tried to weigh consequences—that if Florus could be persuaded to leave Jerusalem with his legionaries and go back to Caesarea for a while, the Sanhedrin might quiet the city and bring order and common sense as a means of dealing with the future.
Meanwhile, at her table and in the light of two smoking lamps, Berenice wrote a letter to her brother, Agrippa, who was in Alexandria at the invitation of the Jewish community there, undergoing a tiresome round of ceremonial dinners and receptions. She had set down all the events of this day and the day before, and now she wrote:
“—So now we sit in a city of grief, yet you must not think me cruel or inured to suffering if I say to you, my brother, that I wish this were it and this Rome’s price from us. We are a people not unused to death and tragedy, and at this moment—or so I feel—such a price, bitter though it is, would not be too much. But the price is never ours to post, is it? And what happened today, if I read the signs aright, is only the beginning. Still, it is not yet Rome against Israel, but Israel with its own dagger in its heart—the House of Hillel facing the House of Shammai. I am terribly afraid of events that cannot be reversed, of action taken that cannot be ever put right, of words said that cannot ever be recalled—and in the end of a series of events that will inexorably lead to war with Rome and to the destruction of all that we are and all that is Israel.
“There is a man here in Jerusalem now, my brother, named Me
nahem Benjudah Hacohen—a Galilean whom you may have heard about—who is the leader of the dreaded Sicarii. They say that three thousand of these fanatical killers are in the city now—and who is to deny the rumor? There is no way of distinguishing them or identifying them, but those in Jerusalem who are identified with the House of Hillel are terribly nervous. What has happened to us that we should raise up in our own hearts such a breed as these Sicarii? Menahem himself I have met. He came all unbidden to my reception, tall, thin, with icy-cold blue eyes that burned with hate, and dressed all in the pale blue of Levi, as if proclaiming his priestly blood.
“I am told that in an argument at the reception in honor of Shimeon—he was voted nashi, and I must pass so lightly over so great an event—this Menahem took my part against a Roman officer. Why, I do not know, unless anything that includes hatred of Rome concerns him. Whether this had anything to do with what happened today, I do not know; but as I said before, this is a city of fear—and not fear of the Romans. What happened today was ghastly beyond belief, but it was also a piece of the monumental idiocy that has guided these procurators for so many years now. Florus destroyed himself today. He may not yet be aware of that, but it is a fact. So it is not Rome that the people fear at this moment, but the forces that Rome is unleashing. It is even said that each of the Sicarii has been instructed to select a victim—or else that Menahem has assigned victims from his list. You cannot fight this. One of these assassins stands beside you; he strikes with his knife—and it is done. Nor will the House of Shammai utter one word in condemnation of them. There are over twenty Zealots in the Great Sanhedrin, but Shimeon tells me that under no circumstances will they denounce the Sicarii. In fact, the whole party of the Zealots are rather proud of the Sicarii—a kind of twisted, unstated pride which they voice only to each other, as, for example—‘Murderous swine, killers, devils out of hell, but they do the job they do, those Sicarii. They’ve put the fear of God into the Romans. You may argue with their methods, but you have to admit that they get results.’
“So it is that the ultimate negation of all the teachings of Hillel the Good has arisen among us—and may even take control of all the destinies of Israel, if such half-wits as Florus pursue the course on which they have embarked; and it is even doubtful than when this horror we have spawned is released, Rome will be needed—and if needed, it will not be to begin but only to complete our destruction.
“I cannot tell you how I feel or what is happening inside of me. What I saw and went through today would have been as much as a Jew should be asked to endure—yet the background is even worse. Do you remember what I was, brother, in those days before I first laid eyes upon the House of Hillel? That was sixteen years ago, and Israel has been gentle enough to forget and they made a saint of me because they had suffered too long and too much under the just and implacable shadow of Yaweh. They wanted a woman of flesh and blood, a mother image, a Demeter who was not a blasphemy, an Esther who was not a legend, an Ashtarte who was not a whore—all these things they wanted, and I was none of them, but I existed and they chose me; and for sixteen years they have reverenced me—or perhaps what they made me a symbol of. And of course they forgot. But I did not forget. I shall never forget that cruel, cold, warped and unhappy creature that was Berenice. I shall never forget the pain of a shrunken soul, the fear of a child who could not love—and shall I forget that Hillel washed me clean and gave me a rebirth, a second life. Am I the only one who learned the secret of love from the House of Hillel, the secret of understanding, of peace, of charity—or are there not thousands of Jews who were shaped by the teachings of this saintly man? All of my existence is predicated on this—that thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, that this is the whole Torah, the soul and being of the Torah. Thus I married my husband. Thus I lived with him and became one with him. Thus I try to atone for the past in the way that Hillel taught, by doing what I can to ease the pain of this earth.
“And now it is to be swept away, destroyed, and replaced by that easy and invidious doctrine—the doctrine of kill. Kill what you do not like. Kill what shrinks your pride. Kill what has hurt you. Kill and kill and kill—and all wrongs will be righted, all sores healed. Is that the Roman doctrine—man’s doctrine—our doctrine? I don’t know, but oh, my brother, you are needed here. Now. Come here. I don’t know what you can do, yet whatever you can do must be done. So come to us here at Jerusalem.”
Berenice rarely slept until Shimeon came to bed with her, and nights without him were for the most part nights of sleeplessness. Now she lay in the dark until she heard his step, and she realized that simply from the sound of his step she knew of his whole being, whether his spirit was high or low, whether he was in a condition of hope or despondency and whether he came to her with love or without love. Now, as softly as he walked, his step was a step of dejection. She called to him quietly, “My love—Shimeon?”
He sat down beside her. “It would have been better if we had children, Berenice—”
Her voice choked. “You never reproached me before—I saw those children today, God help me.”
“I don’t reproach you.”
“The Almighty makes a womb fruitful or barren—”
“My beloved, you misunderstand me,” he said to her, stroking her hair and brow gently. “It is not out of want or need or desire that I spoke but out of a fullness, too much—too much. Our love for each other is too much—”
“How can love be too much?”
“How? Don’t you know? We are like one soul in two bodies. For fifteen years we have never been away from each other. Tell me, my beloved—what will be with you if I am slain?”
“I won’t talk about that,” Berenice answered with annoyance. “There is enough real grief and no need to imagine more. Tell me what passed with Florus.”
“What should pass with a madman?”
“Always the Jew,” she smiled. “Always the answer that is a question. Why is Florus a madman?”
“When the gods visit a madman—”
“And I will quote Euripides to you, but another time. What did Florus say?—may he be damned and cursed for eternity!”
“No sorrow, no apology, no shame. His manhood stiffened like an erect penis, and suddenly you have the feeling that under his round little belly is a weapon of pride and eagerness. You know what makes the Roman soldier so feared, Berenice? When he is attacked, he goes back and down on one knee, raising that huge wooden shield of his. He is a very little man, by and large. You will recall reading in Caesar’s stories of the wars in Gaul how the barbarians always referred to the legionaries as ‘the little men.’ True with them, with us, with others—little men. He raises his shield, and the barbarian towers over him with spear or ax or sword. And then with that short Spanish sword of his, the legionary thrusts up into the barbarian’s groin—into his penis and gonads—there is the death wound of the Roman, from underneath with a tiny knife, into the manhood—so on a battlefield where Rome has conquered, the men lie apparently unwounded, except those cut down from behind, and Rome has the satisfaction of making a eunuch of the world. War is an orgy for Rome, and Florus was trembling with sex; he smelled sex; the room stank with the smell of his emission—that whole, monstrous slaughter of the innocents had been a sexual debauch for him, and he could not tear himself loose from it. Twice, just the memory aroused him to a point where he had to excuse himself, to come back stinking even higher of his sex—”
“No, no,” Berenice cried. “A man is a man—”
“You should know better!”
“What will he do?”
“Already he has sent to Caesarea for two more cohorts of troops—a thousand men. They will be here in three days, I imagine, and he wants honor done to them. He wants them to be greeted by cheering, loving Jews. He wants flowers strewn in their path. He wants five hundred virgins appointed to embrace them—”
“Yes, he’s lost his senses—”
“God help us!”
“What did you tell
him?”
“We mollified him. We told him we would attempt to satisfy his demands. In other words, we lied to him. He was itching for defiance. His testicles had tasted blood, and he wanted nothing so much as an excuse to pick up the slaughter where he left off.”
With Shimeon and a dozen other members of the Great Sanhedrin, Berenice went up to the temple elevation, to the Court of the Nokri, where they would have a clear and uninterrupted view of the Antipatris Road, along which the two cohorts would march to enter Jerusalem at the Damascus Gate. It was a day like so many days in Jerusalem, cool, crisp and clear, the air as brittle as crystal and as sweet as wine, and the visibility so perfect that not only the Mediterranean but miles of Israel in every direction were visible. On a day like this, it was very easy for Berenice to comprehend why her ancestors had believed that God dwelt in the High Places—and Yaweh here in this ancient High Place that was hallowed by a thousand years of unbroken history. She had that singularly Jewish feeling of a memory that went back to a beginning before the beginning—a feeling that always filled her with emotion and even a sense of fear.
All over the city, men, women, and children had chosen places where the view was unobstructed—not to watch the Roman cohorts enter, but because the city was filled with hate and resistance to the notion of a thousand more legionaries to buttress the occupation forces. From her vantage point so high, Berenice could see them—on the city walls, on the outer Wall of Herod, on the second wall, on the Akra and perched over the Fish Gate, on roof tops and packed onto the terraces of the Maccabean Palace, with children everywhere, sitting on tower tops, on ornaments, in the embrasures of the First Wall and even on the temple walls—where they perched in defiance of the curses and warnings the Levite temple guards flung at them. Outside the city, on either side of the Antipatris Road, stood the delegation of Jews who had gone to bid the cohorts welcome; but they were not virgins. Far from it—as Berenice could see even from her vantage point—they were all men, tall, lean men who in the very manner of stance and walk proclaimed the party they belonged to.