by Fast, Howard
“Where are the people?” Berenice asked Bargiora, knowing what the answer must be.
“People? What people?”
“A hundred and fifty thousand people lived here in the Upper City,” Berenice said.
“Oh? That may be—and I will tell you that a good many still live here. They stay tight in their holes—just as a half a million more in the Lower City prefer the darkness of their bolted chambers to the good light of day.”
“Tell me, Bargiora—how many have died here in the city?”
“It’s war and people die.”
“How many have you murdered?”
“Now, damn you to hell, Berenice—I will not be spolcen to that way—not out of that sneering, aristocratic manner of yours. We have proved here that the aristocrat dies as easily as the common Israelite.”
“But the aristocrats got out of the city, didn’t they, and you’ve been practicing the way of death on others—on common Israelites and common Jebusites. How many, Bargiora? And how many are left?”
“More left than I can count, I tell you that. I have been most patient and most tolerant, my lady—”
“No,” said Berenice, “you don’t know the meaning of patience or tolerance. You need me, Bargiora—you need me a great deal, don’t you?”
The Palace of Herod was the prison, a great, looming, ugly pile of a building, tasteless, a long veranda of square pillars, a kind of parody of the Grecian style. Half the building had been destroyed in the inner-city fighting, but the fortress part of it, built out of mighty blocks of red stone, was untouched. How many memories it recalled to Berenice! When her father had been king he had held court in this building, which his grandfather had erected, and again from the steps of this building, Gessius Florus had directed the attack against the children, the slaughter in the plaza. There was nothing gentle or beautiful about this building—it was of the nature of the city, a city without parks or green places, a city of stone wherein for a thousand years one fortress had been built upon another, as if it had somehow been foredoomed to die as it was now dying, and forewarned of its impending doom.
“Here,” Bargiora said, pointing to it, “the Romans made their praetorium—but we drove them out just as we drove out the sniveling descendants of your great-grandfather, who built the place—”
“You didn’t drive me out,” Berenice said, “and when I left Jerusalem, I had never heard of the name Bargiora. And if you would know something about my husband, he is no aristocrat and never needed to boast a bloodline; for he was out of the blood of Hillel the Good, and that is something you would hardly understand.”
“I understand Hillel—which is simply another word for cowardice and treason—and believe me, my lady, when we have driven out the Romans, we will go up into Galilee and scourge it of Hillel as you scourge a house of rats. So now, close your trap and come with me. Your husband is in there.”
It took all his control to hide his fury now as he led Berenice into the building, his soldiers around him and other soldiers lighting the way with flaming torches. Berenice saw that all effort to maintain the building had been abandoned; it had not even been primitively cleaned for months and months. Filth and rubbish lay everywhere; the glass windows were smashed and the decorations had been torn down, whether by Jews or Romans she did not know. They went down two flights of stairs into the sub-cellar, where the dungeon was—and then along a passage where the air was thick and sickening with the smell of human defecation. There were the doors of the prison cells, and from behind each door the pleading and whimpering of lost souls. With each step it was more difficult for Berenice to control herself, and when at last they stopped in front of a door, put the key in the lock, and opened the door, she was numb with the effort of beating her body and mind into submission. The cell was black until the glare of the torches lit it, and then, by the light of the torches, she saw a man sitting on a wooden bench, covering his eyes with his hands to protect them from the light. He was naked except for a filthy loincloth; his body was covered with scabies and running sores; his hair was long, white, and tangled in a mass of lice, dirt, and excrement—as was his beard; and he muttered inanely against the light, “—blinding me with it—take it away. Or is the sun rising? That would be something, the sun rising in here—” Other words that were meaningless to Berenice, and as he muttered, spittle drooled from his lips.
Berenice realized that a person dies more than once, and that the dying is more awful than death. The man on the bench was Shimeon; she knew immediately, and inside her something died, and because it was dead she did not scream or weep or whimper or plead but simply went over to him, placing herself between his face and the light of the torches and raised his face to her, whispering to him, “Shimeon, my beloved, my heart—Shimeon, I am with you now.”
He uncovered his face, which was scarred from beating and covered with open sores, and he looked at her with eyes that saw nothing.
“Shimeon?”
“I am hungry,” he said.
From behind her, Bargiora said harshly, “Bring him food—bring him bread and wine and raisins. The best!”
Berenice pushed his hair aside, bent and kissed him. “It will be all right, my beloved.”
“What is my name?” he asked her. “What is the name you called me?”
“You are Shimeon, the nashi—who is prince over Israel, who is prince of all the Jews in all the world, wherever they may be. And this they know. They know—”
Shimeon giggled foolishly, stared at his hands, flexed his fingers.
“Enough!” Bargiora said, and two of his soldiers pulled Berenice back. The moment she ceased to be a shield against the light, the naked man on the bench covered his eyes again—and then mercifully darkness covered all of him.
Outside, in the warm sunshine of the Mountain of Zion, as the Upper City was called, with the cool wind blowing from the sea, Bargiora said to Berenice, “Are you satisfied that he is Shimeon the nashi?”
“He is my husband,” Berenice said.
“Believe me, you are a strange one, Queen Berenice—or do the stones weep more easily than you do?”
“I want to talk about why you brought me here, Shimeon Bargiora. Nothing else concerns me. My life is what I believe, and in the House of Hillel there is no vengeance. Vengeance is to the Almighty—and God help you, Bargiora when He evens the score!”
“I make no apologies to you or God.”
“What do you want of me?”
“No—it’s what you want of me,” Bargiora said. “You want your husband, don’t you? He lives. A month of good food, rest, and sunshine, and these months in Jerusalem will pass out of his mind. Life is easy for the rich, and they say you are the richest woman in the world. No one looks good in a prison cell, but cleaned up—”
“You have no shame,” Berenice whispered.
“We are not here to discuss shame or pride or loyalty. I could have some arguments on that score. We are here to discuss your husband’s life. Do you want him to live?”
“Yes.”
“Any price?”
“Any price you ask,” Berenice agreed. “But what is gold to you? You have the temple treasury—more gold than any man on earth owns. What can I pay you?”
“Not gold. I want life—for my men and for myself because I lead them.”
“Can I give you life?” Berenice asked bleakly.
“I think you can, lady. It is no secret that Titus is enamored of you—and I would guess that he is enamored, as all Romans are, of the House of Hillel, which carries no sword or spear to annoy them. Does he want the grandson of Hillel to die? Does he want your hatred? And does he want Jerusalem—as it is or battered into rubble and burned as a pyre? Because if he comes to take this city from us, we will fight him on every street and on every wall and he will pay a price he doesn’t dream of—if he ever takes the city. And he knows that.”
“What do you want?”
“I want his sacred word that he will give me safe condu
ct out of this city—myself and ten thousand of my men. In return, I will open the gates of the city to him.”
“Ten thousand,” Berenice wondered. “What ten thousand? There must be thirty or forty thousand men on the walls of this city. Do you mean ten thousand Sicarii?”
“Sicarii! Sicarii! I hate that word—it’s your word, a rotten, lying, Roman word! Who are the Sicarii? Men too devout to abandon their God? Men who believe in the sacredness of the Temple? Men who pray morning, noon, and night, making the Law a sign as frontlets between their eyes? Men who would die before they sullied the purity and holiness of Jewish blood with the filthy blood of pagans! These are what you call the Sicarii!”
“And if Titus allows you to leave the city, you will release my husband?”
“Let Titus give me his word, and I will release the nashi.”
“You will take his word?”
“I will take your word—and I will wait one day, no more. Our food is going. One day.”
Berenice sat on a chair in that high and spacious tent that was the praetorium of Titus Flavius. With Roman thoroughness, the legionaries had laid down a hewn-rock and mortar pavement to make a great square in the middle of the enormous camp, and in the center of this square was the commander’s tent, striped gold and white, and on one side an altar of worship in a black tent, on the other a court of justice in a red tent. The room in Titus’ pavilion where Berenice sat was thirty feet by twelve and held a table, three chairs, a couch, standards, weapons. Titus himself paced back and forth, talking softly and with an intensity that verged on desperation:
“What do you ask me? Don’t believe that I haven’t thought to myself that one day you would come and ask me to help you. To do anything for you—so I could say this is concrete. This is real. I am not an empty-headed and emotional Italian who has fallen madly in love with an older woman—because it is fashionable. A boy wants an older woman. Before God, I am no boy! I am thirty years old—and I have seen all that a man can see in thirty years and retain his sanity. And three years of that damned city—three years of that city, so that there is no night I don’t dream of it and wake up shuddering and sweating. Do you think I am not human? Do you measure us all by scum like Gessius Florus? I wanted you to come and demand—Titus, do this for me! And then you come with the impossible.”
“And you have no guilt?” Berenice demanded. “No responsibility? Don’t talk of casting gifts at my feet. I am not asking for gifts. In a way I am simply asking for justice. You can sneer at Gessius Florus, but he was your puppet. Your own. Why did you send him here? And before him, Fadus. Tiberius Julius. Cumanus. Felix. Festus. Albinus. All of them your procurators—and they have torn our hearts out and twisted our souls out of shape—”
He stopped pacing, turned to Berenice, his hands stretched out: “What do you expect? There are procurators—men who give up their home and country and language and city, for money! Only for that. The quick road to riches, and most often they are scum. I admit it. But I was not responsible—nor my father. We did not appoint these men. Listen to me—do you know what Rome is? I mean in the sense of order as opposed to anarchy? In the sense of law as opposed to greed and fanaticism?” He flung an arm in the direction of Jerusalem. “Think about what is happening in that city! Think of what has happened there over the past three years! In the name of what? Freedom? What kind of freedom, that makes Jew kill Jew in this bloody and indescribable fratricide? In that city alone, more Jews have been murdered by Jews than all the lives taken by every rotten and gold-hungry procurator we have sent here in a hundred years. And is it only Jerusalem—or a whole world willing to put itself to death? Our way isn’t perfect. We are faced with governing the whole world, and we don’t know how. I admit that. But we have imposed a system of law and order, and we are in motion, and we cannot stop, and we cannot let go. We have a tiger by the tail, but we also have the strength to tame that tiger. Right or wrong—I can’t decide that. I was given something here that neither of us made—”
“My husband is Hillel’s grandson. He is also the prince-elect of all Israel. Released, free of those madmen in Jerusalem, he can raise up Israel to a new future. We don’t threaten Rome. Our kingdom is Hillel’s kingdom—”
Titus shook his head. “I know what Hillel teaches, and I know what Shammai teaches—and in the end Shammai always wins, doesn’t he? Shammai has the sword in his hand, and by all the gods that be, the sword is deeply persuasive. I have heard of a sect that preaches not unlike your Hillelites. They have a prophet called Joshua, and they put aside the sword, but I see no talent among them except for death—because the sword defines the truth.”
“No!” Berenice cried.
“My dear, my dear,” Titus said softly, coming over to her now, “ask me something that is possible. That city was half for Hillel and half for Shammai—and where are the Hillel people today? Dead—or like your husband. And now you ask me to let Bargiora and ten thousand of his Sicarii march out of those gates to freedom. How can I without betraying my father, Rome—and every soldier in my army? And what of the Zealots left in the city? Will they surrender if the Sicarii go? I think not, and I will still have to reduce the city. But while I am doing so, Bargiora and his army will go up to Galilee, and I tell you that if they ever enter Tiberias, they will kill every man, woman, and child in that city. They don’t fight Rome, Berenice—that is why they want safe conduct out of the city. They fight Hillel—face it. Face it. And then tell me, am I not right?”
Berenice looked at him, and wondered how it felt to be a Roman and to know so easily and surely what is right and what is wrong. For herself, she only knew that she had failed—her life had failed and her beliefs had failed. She had loved a man and failed at that too.
They waited until the full shape of the sun rose above the Judean hills on the following day, and then they threw Shimeon’s body over the wall of the city. Titus sent a hundred men to bring the body to Berenice, but they were driven back by a storm of arrows and rocks—none of them killed, sheltered as they were by their heavy wooden shields, but willing enough to go back; and, watching them, Berenice found herself asking herself coldly enough, “Why should they die for a Jew’s body?”
She stood by the gate of the Roman wall, watching, and Titus stood next to her, and then she said, “I am going to my husband.”
“No—I forbid you—” Titus began. Berenice looked at him coldly, and he bit off his words. She walked past the panting legionaries who had run out to the Jewish wall and back, and they turned away, not to meet her glance. But she cared nothing about whether their cowardice shamed them or not—they had no reality to her at this moment, these small, dark men, with their rank smell of sweat-soaked leather and their scatological Latin patois. The only reality in her existence was that broken body at the foot of the city wall, and she walked to it now, not deigning even to glance up at the men on the wall. The shouting and catcalling that had marked the abortive Roman attempt died away now, and an almost palpable silence settled over the no-man’s-land between the two walls.
Berenice was dry—dry, with her heart tight and shriveled; and this sense of dryness, this feeling of dryness more profound than grief and beyond grief pervaded her. She knelt above Shimeon, who lay on his face, and she turned his body over. He was not the weight he had been once—the body had starved for so long—yet he was heavy with the added heaviness of death. Cut, bruised, his limbs broken, his skull smashed—still there was in his death-being what Berenice knew and loved, and suddenly all the memories came crashing upon her, her first meeting with him as he tore down the blinds in her room, their strange courtship, his missions to the sick, his gentleness with the sick—as he said to Berenice once, “A sick person is like a child, helpless, defenseless—and it gives me a sense of the father that is the truest thing in my life, and I suppose that is why I can live contentedly with no children of my own.”
More and more memories; they threatened to explode her, to tear her into tiny shreds, to smash he
r mind into chaos and blindness; and she said to herself deliberately and coldly, “No, Berenice—you are past indulgence, and these memories are the purest indulgence. There are many things that must be done before you can afford to scream your way into madness, and first you must bring Shimeon home.”
Home meant Galilee; she had already decided that; and now she knelt by the body and tried to raise it—and failed and let go. She stood up, looking up at the walls, and cried out:
“What are you up there? Are you Jews? This is the body of your nashi, and I will bear him home to Galilee if I must do so on my own back. Is there no Jew with courage enough to help me?”
At first there was no response. Then Berenice heard them shouting on the other side of the wall, and then a scream of pain and the clash of iron on iron—and then a moment later a postern opened and three men dashed through and stood panting outside the wall. Berenice looked up, and there was Bargiora above her and his men all along the wall. They stood with arrow and javelin poised—waiting his order.
The three men approached her, dirty, skinny men, girded with swords and some rusty plate armor. They didn’t look like much, and they didn’t speak, but lifted Shimeon’s body up in their arms.
“If we take this to the Romans, Queen,” one of them said, “they will kill us.”
“They won’t.”
“That’s your judgment, lady,” said another. “We will help you, but give us a fair chance to live.”