by Fast, Howard
“Time for what?” Berenice asked.
“To reach the big slave dealers—to make our agreements with them and to set the whole process into motion. We talk about it glibly, but I think that the redemption of these captives will be the biggest thing that our people have ever undertaken. We are old men, we three, and soon we will go away from here, and I for one would like to make something like this to be remembered by. It would not be the worst thing a man could do.”
Titus came to Tiberias. He came with four hundred legionaries, leaving his main force at Jerusalem, where there was work to be done. A city is not turned into a graveyard easily. The dead must be buried and the living taken away. The walls must be leveled, and there were miles of walls in Jerusalem. The ashes of the Temple had to be sifted, literally mined, for the gold and silver that had melted in the flames and for the precious jewels. Certain important tokens of victory, such as the great Menorah and various significant costumes, manuscripts, and ornaments had to be catalogued and packed for transshipment to Rome—and in this the co-operation of Joseph Benmattathias was invaluable; which provided Titus with a reason for not bringing Joseph with him to Tiberias. There was also a vast amount of loot that had to be itemized and distributed—and enormous payments to be made to the chandlers who had kept the Roman army provided with food, wine, and cloth and metal during the years of war in Palestine. So great were these costs that it was questionable whether the army would have any profit to speak of after the reduction of Jerusalem. The financial situation was quite desperate, and Titus, who had no understanding of finance, no head for figures, and a mistrust of all matters relating to money, was happy to leave these matters to his aides and go on to Galilee and Berenice.
For Berenice, the beginning of this period was a sort of muted nightmare. She swore an oath to herself that she would do what was necessary, whatever had to be done. If it saved one life, she was repaid. She thought about these matters for endless hours and finally came to the conclusion that it was no privilege of hers to choose how or why. What was needed was needed.
A banquet was needed—a banquet to welcome Titus, the son of the Emperor of Rome, the conqueror of Judea and Jerusalem, the commander of the army; and for seven hours Berenice performed the role of hostess at this banquet. Then there was a water procession, ten great barges on the lake, a chorus of young girls to sing, nets of flowers trailing in the water, handsome young men to draw the oars, and a thousand torches to light their path as darkness fell. She sat beside Titus and answered his questions and spoke gently and politely. There was entertainment in the great hall of the palace. And in the streets, self-styled prophets spoke with voices, screamed of the day of judgment, and denounced Berenice as the whore of ages, her brother as the immortal enemy of God.
The display of wealth and pleasure bored Titus as much as it bored Berenice, and finally he said to her, “Berenice, you are a Jew, and an exceedingly sensitive one. Why are you doing all this?”
“Because eventually, I will make a request of you.”
“Then make it now and enough of all this. Whatever reputation we Romans have for overeating and overcelebrating and overdrinking, rest assured that there are a good many of us who find it tedious beyond description. As a matter of fact, I eat very little—only one meal a day, in the Greek manner—and mostly I am quite satisfied with a little bread, a few olives, and some wine. There is nothing that gets on my nerves more than one of these endless, wretched banquets—unless it is a display of dancing girls or some such similar idiocy. I am a very powerful man, Berenice—after my father, the most powerful in Rome—yet I sit transfixed and speared by these merciless entertainments. So go ahead and make your request, I beg you.”
“You took a great many slaves in Jerusalem.”
“Yes—almost two hundred thousand. But some are very sick, very weak, and many of these will die.”
“Where are the slaves?”
“They are being transported to Caesarea, where they will be penned.”
“I am told that perhaps half of them or more will be slain to keep the price up.”
“So I understand. I am not too familiar with these things.”
“I ask only that you order the dealers not to kill any slaves for ninety days.”
“Berenice, we have contracts with the dealers. I can’t interfere.”
“You can interfere with anything on earth,” Berenice said. “You know that.”
“You were told to make this request of me?” Titus inquired.
“Asked—not told. Asked, because people believe that you feel something for me and would not deny me so small a matter as this.”
“And what do you feel for me, Berenice?”
“It would do no good to lie, would it?”
“No.”
“Then don’t force my hand—”
“Yet you force mine.”
“Not that way,” Berenice said. “You call me a Jew—so I ask this as a Jew.”
Titus shook his head. “You amaze me—I mean, I never meet a Jew who does not fail to amaze me. All right, Berenice—not as man to woman, but as Roman to Jew, I agree. There will be no killing of prisoners for ninety days—except what is necessary as some token of punishment in Rome. We have taken Shimeon Bargiora and the men around him. They will die.”
“You would have to be an extraordinary man to allow them to live.”
“Don’t cozen me, Berenice,” he said, smiling. “I have none of your powers of forgiveness, neither do I worship your god, Hillel.”
“He is no god, only a plain man who died a good many years ago.”
“Whatever he was or is, I am not of his persuasion. I granted your request, Berenice. Now, please—no more banquets.”
He kept his word and better, for the following day there came to him a delegation from Alexandria, pleading for the right to expel the Jewish population of that city, and to seize all Jewish property—and for Roman troops to expedite the matter. Angrily, Titus replied that if the Jewish population of that or any other city was in any way molested, he would raze the city to the ground if he had to, to find those guilty and to punish them.
In spite of the very important and pressing matters that demanded his presence in Rome, Titus remained in Tiberias; and Berenice, who knew that he remained there only to see her, to be with her, left the city early one morning and returned to the House of Hillel. Her brother-in-law said to her, “This is as much your home as mine, Berenice, but when all is said and done, it is only a house in Galilee and in itself no answer. I have known you many years now—and I know you by my own judgment. You are an unusual and a great woman—and a very beautiful woman, and you cannot hide here. We are too bereft in Israel, and we have too few great people left to us.”
“I am tired,” Berenice said. “I want only to rest.”
“Yes, this is a good place to rest, but I think it is more than weariness. You know that he will follow you here.”
“When he talks to me,” Berenice said, “I don’t hear his voice. I hear a wail of pain out of the South that drowns out every noise and murmur in the universe.”
“Jerusalem is something that Titus will bear for eternity—regardless of how you judge him. Let the Almighty judge him. Do you think that it would have been any different with Jerusalem had there been no Titus? Is it a virtue when Jew kills Jew?—because I can tell you this, Bargiora’s hands are dyed redder than Titus’.”
“This is our country and they came here—”
“They are conquerors. We have played that game in the past, and there is no joy or reward out of it. There are always conquerors—for so long as the sword is the ultimate law, the world is a jungle. At least the Romans make it less of a jungle.”
“And you are ready to forgive?” Berenice demanded.
“Berenice, Berenice,” he said, “when Shimeon died, I became the head of the House of Hillel. What is our way? Do we condemn or forgive? Do we sit in judgment? Do we choose the Zealots above the Romans—because the
Zealots are Jewish? The Zealots murdered my brother, Shimeon, and believe me, I loved him deeply—yet right now eight Zealots are hidden here on our place, where we shelter them and feed them. And let me tell you this—that if the Zealots had triumphed, and fleeing Romans came to us for shelter, we would not have turned them away.”
“I understand that,” Berenice said. “Where I am not myself involved, I can be as clear about matters as you are. But where I am involved—”
Then she admitted to herself that she was involved—otherwise, why did she remain here at the House of Hillel? Jews there were in a dozen cities who would have sheltered Berenice and risked their lives and their houses to do so; but she remained here a few miles from Tiberias, and all too constantly her thoughts turned to the boyish, open face of the emperor’s son. She grasped at her own soul and tore it to shreds in guilt and despair. How long was it since Shimeon’s body had been flung from the walls of Jerusalem? Hardly five months—yet her thoughts could dwell again and again on a man twelve years younger than she was. Yet for her Shimeon had been dead far longer than five months—or had he been? Or had she deserted him?
She sat with Deborah one day, and her sister-in-law reminded her of how much she could do in this awful moment if she did command the love of Titus. Berenice said, “That’s a fraud, and I will not have it.” “Because,” said Deborah, “you see any course you take hurting Shimeon—yet Shimeon is dead and beyond hurt.” “No,” Berenice argued, “I see in myself the same chaos that is outside of myself, a world without reason or meaning.”
Her brother-in-law tried to help her, but specified that it was not easy to be with Hillel. “It makes for doubt and we live with doubt. If you want certainties, Berenice, you must go elsewhere.”
“Can you live always with doubt?” Berenice wondered.
“How else?” Hillel asked her. “If you read the Scriptures—particularly in Kings—you will see that in the old days our ancestors created a structure of reason by reversing cause and effect. If a king’s army was destroyed, it meant that he was wicked and thus God judged him. If a city fell, it satisfied some bloodthirsty whim of the Almighty. But we’ve gone beyond that. Hillel went beyond it, and we cannot go back. Jerusalem fell because men did wrong—and it’s no affair of ours to try to fit it into some tremendous scheme of things. Now men are captive. A Roman loves you—and I think you yourself are intrigued by him—and because of this many poor and suffering people who would otherwise die may live. Your conscience is a bit of a luxury too—if the truth be told. All conscience is. Guilt is a great lever for evil and a poor guide for conduct. Do you remember that Hillel said, ‘If a stranger is hungry, feed him to satisfy his hunger and not your pride.’ It is one thing for dignity to be proud, but when virtue is proud it becomes almost indecent.”
Titus came alone to the House of Hillel. Early one morning, he came alone on horseback, turned his horse over to the slaves at the stable, and then stood in the shade of the mighty terebinth tree, looking curiously around him.
From inside the house, Berenice saw him, but waited, and watched her brother-in-law, Hillel, go to greet him, and then children gathered around to stare at this man so curiously attired in a tunic of white and gold, with high white boots buckled in gold and a cloak of pale yellow over his shoulders. But then her patience broke; she could wait no longer; she went to meet him, and he held out his hand to her quite easily and naturally and said,
“So here I am, Berenice. I came unbidden. Shall I go away?”
“Then I would really know shame,” Berenice smiled, “for you would be the first one ever turned away from the House of Hillel, and for this my brother here would never forgive me—although he forgives me in all else.” There were disclaimers and protestations then and bits of embarrassed sentiment. Deborah could not stand aloof, and she was presented to Titus. “How strange,” Berenice thought, “that the conqueror of Jerusalem should stand here and chat with us—the blood still wet on his hands.” But she was thinking, she realized, in clichés and platitudes. There was no evidence of villainy about Titus. Young, strong, handsome, and healthy—it was almost impossible not to like him, and Berenice recalled the stories she had heard about him, his scrupulous sense of justice, his innate decency, and the manner in which his legionaries adored him.
A slave brought cold white wine, and Titus drained a goblet Hillel poured for him. “Your wine is the best wine in the world,” he told them. “But I suppose you know that.”
“We Jews have too much that is best—or that we believe is best. It invites envy and hatred. We permit people to admire what is ours, but we are loathe to admire what is another’s.”
“I think the commander would like to see our place here,” Berenice said, “so if I may take him away, I promise to bring him back when the tables are set up.” The others agreed, and as Berenice led Titus away, she specified a rescue from philosophy. “Unless you came here for that?”
Titus shook his head.
“Well, here in the House of Hillel we are more like Greeks than we like to admit. We talk a great deal, but we never answer questions. We only enlarge upon them.”
“And this is the House of Hillel,” Titus said. They were at the gate to the enclosure now, and he stared at the rambling country villa with its great live oak. “A Galilean farmhouse. You know—that is hard for me to understand, Berenice. The House of Hillel is something that encompasses the world. I can remember as a young man in Rome, evenings when the conversation held for hours on the subject of the House of Hillel—bitter arguments, devotion, dedication, hatred; yes, and young Romans swearing that there was no other way to live but the way of Hillel, and through so many years the House of Hillel wherever you went, in Greece, in Africa—yes, in Spain too—and here—this.”
“What did you expect?” Berenice asked him. “Some great palace—some incredible mausoleum?”
“I hardly know.”
As they stood there at the gate, children ran past them to take their places under the terebinth tree, for the school to begin. More and more children, until almost a hundred of them sat cross-legged upon the ground.
“That,” Berenice said, “is the House of Hillel—an old farmhouse and a place to teach children. There is the whole mystery.”
She led him through the gate now, and they walked on the dirt road that led up the hillside out of the valley.
“Is it a religion?” Titus asked.
“No—we are Jews. We have no need for any other religion.”
“Then what is it—only a school? But no school is the life basis for people—and when you say you are Jews—believe me, Berenice, I did not want the Temple to burn. I tried to save it—and yet it went up in flames, whether by the hands of Romans or Zealots, I don’t know. But it burned, and now Yaweh is dead. Seen or unseen, He is dead, and His Temple is no more. So what do you mean when you say that you are Jews? That you have no need for any other religion? All people need the gods.”
“Perhaps. But our God never lived in the Temple—not in the sense that you mean.”
“You supported the Temple.”
“Yes—because it was an old thing, and we are a very old people.”
“And what was Hillel? One of your prophets?”
“No, only a man. A teacher. What we call a rabbi.”
“And what did he teach?”
“Ah,” she smiled, “everything at once. If it’s there, the Roman must know about it.”
“How beautiful you are when you smile,” Titus said. “Always, with every movement and motion of yours, there is beauty, as if the essence of your being was to create it—but when you smile—”
“You talk well of such things.”
“Not because I have had practice, believe me,” he said, almost with annoyance.
“Ah, now—and why does that hurt, Titus Flavius? You are a great and powerful figure, and you are young and good to look on, and yet it hurts you if an old Jewish woman suspects that you have spoken to others of beauty and l
ove.”
“An old Jewish woman—is that how you see yourself, Berenice?”
“No,” she admitted. “That’s a pose. I looked at myself in my mirror today. I looked at my face and my body—and the age is within me, if not on the surface—”
“Do you always answer truthfully?” he broke in.
“You asked me what we teach. We teach that.”
“And what else?”
“To love thy neighbor as thyself.”
“Yes, yes,” Titus agreed. “I heard that. I heard it in Rome and in other places, and it’s remarkably persuasive for a piece of nonsense, and it travels.”
“Then what I believe is nonsense?”
“No—no, I don’t mean that, and you know it, Berenice. I mean that these are impractical things. Your House of Hillel can survive in a world where Roman legions maintain law and order and stability—but not by loving our neighbors. By teaching them a decent respect for order—”
“We could argue that forever, Titus Flavius.”
“Yes, I suppose so. And your creed is not to fight—ever?”
“Our creed is no rigid creed, and we are not an order from which we expel people. We try to teach an act of civilization—I know of no other way to put it. Some of us will not kill under any circumstances; others feel differently. Myself—”
“You are a woman, Berenice, and therefore this does not become your problem.”
“No? And yet I took two lives once—snuffed them out with as little compunction as you put out a candle. Shall I tell you? I haven’t spoken of these things in years.”
“Only if you wish—”
“I don’t know why I should want to, any more than I know why I desire you to understand me—ourselves, our ways—or what that farmhouse down there in the valley means, what it means to a people like ourselves who just saw our city die and our Temple die; and we remember how Isaiah wept, and he said, If I should forget thee, O Zion, may my right hand lose its cunning. Now we are all weeping, for something is over and finished. I had a palace there on the Mountain of Zion, and every morning I would awaken in the moment before dawn, and dress and hurry outside to the plaza, so that I could see the sun rise over Jerusalem and see the Holy Temple turn to gold and look down at the wonderful shadows of the Judean hills—you have seen how they are etched out in burning contrasts of black and yellow—and my whole being would throb with joy because I was a part of this ancient and holy city and all its somber grandeur and breath-taking beauty—and now it is gone, perhaps forever gone, not your doing, Titus Flavius, but you and myself part of its death—and what is left to the Jews but this villa we call the House of Hillel, and this must be all things to us now, our temple and way of life and our hope too. Do you understand me?”