My Glorious Brothers

by Howard Fast

  And then, Lysias, the new warden, came with the elephants. I will tell you of the elephants, those great and terrible beasts that no one of us had ever seen before, but first I must explain why we had to go against them with only three thousand men. The best of our men, two thousand, among whom were the battle-scarred veterans of Modin and Goumad—these we had to leave at the Temple, to stand endless guard over the Acra, where month after month the Jewish traitors and the Greeks maintained themselves, defying us to batter down their huge walls. Jonathan and John remained there in command. Another thousand men garrisoned the fortress of Beth Zur, for the Bedouins were growing bold, now that the mercenaries had been swept from the land, and again and again, they came from the desert, camel-mounted, to raid our villages. For Judas to find additional men to patrol the borders of Judea—against the numberless bands of mercenaries who between masters would seek for booty among the Jews; against the Philistines in the West, a bastard, corrupted people; and against the minor Greek satraps, who had broken away after the death of Antiochus, and who could keep neither their hands nor their eyes off the treasure chest of Judea—was a constant and heartbreaking task, for once the Greeks were smashed, it was not easy to persuade men from their farms and their families. It was against this that he had to—and did—raise an army to stop four separate invasions; but when they came with the elephants, that was an additional terror.

  ***

  We heard only rumors of the struggle for power that went on in the court of the dead Antiochus. The dead madman left an idiot son, to whom they fed perversions, drugs and women, and animals too, for these practices were common in Antioch, and in Damascus. And meanwhile Philippus, the King’s regent, fought for power against Lysias, a Greek sailor, who through shrewdness, deceit, and wholesale murder had climbed high in Syrian power. Knowing that the conquest of Judea might well tip the balance, Lysias hit upon the idea of the elephant troops, and he dispatched his messengers, loaded down with gold and jewels, all the way to the valley of the Indus, where they hired two hundred of the great beasts, along with drivers and archers to man the castles upon their backs. It was the Greek’s idea that if our hills were a fortress, he would invade them with a new kind of fortress, and once and for all crush the power of the Maccabee and his followers. Thus he came down the coastal road with the elephants and ten thousand mercenaries to back them up, and they swung inland through the Vale of Eshcol to come upon us through the broad Southern passes.

  All during their journey South, we had reports of these new, monstrous, ungainly beasts that lumbered along like living castles, carrying wooden walls upon their backs with slits for arrows; and as the rumors spread through Judea, the elephants grew in size and fearsomeness. It was the quality of the unknown, looming over us like devils, and people who through years of warfare against awful odds had feared nothing mortal now trembled at the thought of these moving mountains.

  Not knowing at first which route the elephants would take, Judas concentrated what forces he could muster at Bethlehem, from where he sent out scouts. The first rumor was to the effect of the main attack being upon Beth Zur, and Judas and Eleazar set off with two thousand men in that direction. The other thousand, under my command, moved toward the deep pass near Beth Zechariah. We had marched for only an hour or two when we heard the ominous rumble of the elephant troops, a sound like no other sound I had known. The men tensed and paled, and already I could see uncertainty and fear running like cold water through the ranks. Ruben, the smith, was with me, Ruben of Modin, who in a hundred encounters had never shown fear or hesitation; but now, at this new and unknown sound, the blood left his face and the spring went from his step. “They are beasts,” I told him. “God made them and man can slay them.” “And if they are not beasts?” “Then you are a fool—and a coward!”

  Seizing my arm in an iron grip, he cried, “No man ever called me a coward, Simon ben Mattathias!”

  “I call you that, damn you!”

  “And why do you curse me, Simon?”

  “Because we have fought too long to be afraid now. I want you to take half the men and bar the pass and hold it the way we held it so many times! Hold it against hell itself, until Judas can come to us! But if you leave it before the Maccabee arrives, God help you!”

  “I’ll hold it, Simon…” And then I sent our fleetest runner after Judas and Eleazar.

  At a quick trot, I led our thousand to the neck of the valley, the northern end where it narrowed to perhaps twenty yards, and while Ruben and his men worked madly to erect some sort of a barricade out of stones and fallen trees, I led my five hundred up the slope, where they could take vantage points for their arrows. We had hardly time; we were still clambering up the slope when the first of the great beasts became visible, moving up the valley at an ominous and inevitable pace, slowly, yet the more terribly for that. Three abreast, the elephants moved, and truly there seemed no end of them. On the head of each, the driver sat, and behind him there was a box of heavy wood, slit all over for the archers. All naked were the drivers, thin, brown men, who sat with crossed legs, dangling a long stick, pointed and with a hook just below the point, and occasionally they hooked or prodded the beasts they drove. Adam ben Lazar was my lieutenant there, and I told him to kill the drivers first, but I wondered whether it would stop or divert the beasts. Now, more than a hundred of them were in sight, and we could see the gleaming spears and helmets of the mercenaries who marched behind them. The frightening rumble of their feet filled the whole valley and mixed itself with the shrill shouting of their drivers, while from beyond them the hoarse cries of the mercenaries sounded heady with triumph.

  Let me try to tell what happened as it happened; tell it I must, and other things too, for all the pain in the telling. I do not blame Ruben; how shall I blame you, Ruben, my comrade who rests now with my glorious brothers in that past that belongs to all men? Nothing he knew Ruben feared, and time was to prove that, but our little cedar arrows that fell like rain only enraged the great beasts. We killed the drivers, but the elephants came on. We feathered the wooden boxes on their backs, yet they came on—onto the barricade, smashing it under their feet, and Ruben and his men broke and ran, and it was the first time in years that a Greek saw the backs of Jews in combat.

  I ran to help them, and for all their fear, my men followed. We sped along the ridge, leaping down the hillside, yet it was not I who stopped those who fled, but my brothers and their two thousand, pouring into the valley, with Eleazar at their head, Eleazar and his mighty hammer, Eleazar, the splendor of battle, the one man I knew who never feared, never doubted, never mocked, the simple, brave, wonderful Eleazar—and behind him came the eight black Africans who remained of the original twelve, the eight soft-voiced men who loved my brother and had fought beside him through these years.

  I was close enough then to hear Eleazar cry, “And are you afraid? Of what? Are beasts born that cannot be slain?”

  In that mad rush of the elephants, the men behind Judas halted in fear and wonder; but Eleazar leaped ahead and alone he met one elephant that had outpaced the others. Such a sight was never seen before then or since, for Eleazar’s great body arched, the hammer swung back over his head, and then it met the elephant with a crushing thud that sounded above the screaming and shouting. And the elephant, skull crushed, went down on its knees, rolled over and died. But already Eleazar and his black men were surrounded by the beasts. They fought with their spears and Eleazar fought with his hammer until a blow from an elephant’s tusk tore it from his grasp. It was not as long as it takes here in the telling. He was dead before Judas and I could reach his side. They were shooting arrows from the boxes, and there were already two arrows in his body, when he seized the spear of a fallen African, ran under one of the great beasts and thrust the whole length of the spear into his bowels. The stampede of elephants came on; nothing could have stopped it then; and in the valley bottom, crushed under hundreds of pounding fe
et, lay my brother Eleazar and his black comrades.

  We scattered. We clawed up the slopes, and always I tried to keep near Judas—and perhaps I wept as Judas was weeping. I don’t know; I don’t remember. I know only that Eleazar was dead…

  By nightfall, we had gathered together eighteen hundred of our men—and we retreated northward. For the first time, the Maccabee had been smashed in battle.

  I walked in the night, sometimes alone, sometimes in the press of my men, and I didn’t care, so much was the heart out of us. In the beginning, it was only important that I keep near Judas; but as the night wore on, a cloudy, sullen night, I wrapped myself in loneliness, in bitterness, in bereavement—and I separated myself from Judas. I let him go past me and lose himself. Not so much anger as a burning, corroding frustration and fear gripped me. All men were human, but Judas was something else. His tears were a lie; his grief was no grief; his soul was lost and he was like a sword that has only one purpose and one destiny.

  Hatred came, slowly; the old awful black hatred of my brother—that was compounded out of such a welter of things, such a complex of things, such a mystery of things, being old and bitter and insatiable, and sunk into that ancient, ancient tale of how Cain slew Abel. And who had slain Eleazar? And who would slay the rest of us, one by one, without peace and without end and without surcease? Eleazar was dead, but already for Judas there were only the men, the army, the struggle, the resistance that had squeezed the last ounce of mercy out of him.

  Now, moving slowly through that despairing and unholy night, dragging my feet, careless of hope or tomorrow or anything but the pit of death and destruction into which I felt myself sinking, I recalled how it had been when Judas came back to Modin and stood over the body of the lovely and splendid woman I had loved, how he stood there at first without saying a word, without sign or evidence of grief—and then spoke only of vengeance.

  Who had slain her, he would say…

  “Thy brother’s keeper,” the Adon, the old man had said to me. “And thou, Simon, thou art thy brother’s keeper, thou and no other.”

  But Judas, whose hands were already so red with blood, so wet and red with blood, could think only of reddening them more—and vengeance was his, not the Lord God’s, not the people’s, but his and only his…

  I was standing still, moving no more. What was the use of moving? Where were we going? The old man was dead, Eleazar was dead—and how long now for the others? Why go? Why flee? I sank to the ground, and here and there, near by, other men were giving up the flight, the purpose—the drive that had driven us so long; and then I heard the voice of my brother in the night.

  Let him seek me then. I damned him. I stretched out there on the ground, my face in my hands, and his voice came: “Simon! Simon!”

  As the devil seeks a man.

  “Simon!”

  Without end, for he was the Maccabee—without end.

  “Simon!”

  “God’s curse on you, go and leave me!”

  “Simon!”

  I lifted my face, and he was above me, peering at me through the dark. “Simon?” he asked.

  “What do you want?”

  “Get up,” he said. “Get up, Simon ben Mattathias.”

  I rose and stood before him.

  “Are you wounded that you lie in the night?” he asked quietly. “Or is it fear—the damned fear that was always in your heart?”

  My knife was out—and one arm at his throat, and still he didn’t move but looked at me coolly. Then I hurled the knife into the darkness and covered my face with my hands.

  “Why didn’t you kill me?” Judas demanded. “For the rotten black hatred in you.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I will not leave you alone. Where are your men?”

  “Where is Eleazar?”

  “He is dead,” Judas said evenly. “Strong he was, but you are stronger, Simon ben Mattathias. Only your heart is not like his. For victory—you’re good for victory, but God help Israel if it should depend on you in defeat!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Why? Because you can’t bear the truth? Where was the sword of Simon when Eleazar died? Where was it?”

  The long moments dragged by while we stood there, and finally, finally and at long last, I asked my brother, “What shall I do?”

  “Gather your men,” he said without emotion. “Eleazar is dead, and we are full of grief. But the enemy is not grieved. Gather your men, Simon.”

  In the early morning, we sat around a fire, Judas on one side of me, Ruben on the other, and all around us lay our men, some asleep, some awake and trying to comprehend what had been; and Ruben wept the way a child weeps, telling us, “He was your brother, but he was my child, my child, and I betrayed him—and I ran when he stood, and I turned my back to them when he turned his face to them, and why am I alive when he lies dead there in the valley?”

  “Peace,” I said to him. “For the love of God, stop!” For I felt that if I had to listen to any more of Ruben’s grief, I would surely go mad. But Judas said, softly and gently:

  “Let him get it out of him, Simon, Simon—let him get it out of him, otherwise it will swell up like a cancer inside of him and destroy him.”

  “I taught him the forge,” Ruben wept. “I taught him the secrets of metal, the ancient secrets, and he burned as pure as the iron when it turns blue with the flame. God gave me no son, but he gave me Eleazar, and I betrayed him, I slew him. May my hands rot and fall off! May my heart turn into lead! May I be accursed forever and forever!” He wrapped his face in his cloak, and he rocked back and forth, moaning and sobbing…

  ***

  In a way it was the end. There was reprieve, yet in a way it was the end of all my glorious brothers, the sons of Mattathias, who had become like heroes of old to Israel. For the first time, we could not turn and fight. In the old days, with five hundred men Judas would have turned and faced the enemy and laughed at their numbers, and cut at them and harried them and made every valley a hell and every pass a slaughterhouse; but the men left to us would not face the elephants, and there was no other way for it but to go back to Jerusalem and join our brothers behind the walls Judas had erected to defend the Temple Mount.

  With Eleazar’s death, something had happened to Judas, something had broken inside of him, and when I said to him, “What have we to do with fighting behind walls?” he answered me, “My brothers are there.” “And we will be there—and will Lysias have to seek us?” “And shall I make war again?” Judas asked hopelessly. “The people are in their villages. Shall I tell them to burn their homes and go to Ephraim? Will they listen to me again?”

  “You are the Maccabee,” I told him. “Judas, my brother Judas, heed me—you are the Maccabee, and the people will listen.”

  For a long while, he was silent, and then he shook his head. “No, Simon—no. I am not like you, and you are like my father, the Adon; but I am not like him and not like you—and I will go to my brothers at Jerusalem. If you would make war from the wilderness, then take the men, and I will go alone to Jerusalem and fight with my brothers.”

  “You are the Maccabee,” I said.

  And the next day, we joined Jonathan and John at the Temple and told them of Eleazar’s death…

  Judas called a council, and Ragesh came, and Samuel ben Zebulun, and Enoch ben Samuel of Alexandria, and twenty other Adons and Rabbis, some of them men who had sat at our first council so long ago, and even as we came together, the elephant troops were entering the city. It was a grim and worried group of old men who faced the four of us and listened to Judas’s short and bitter account of our defeat.

  “Thus it was,” he finished; “and my brother Eleazar is dead and many other Jews too, so I came back here to defend the Temple. The walls of the Temple are strong, and if it is your will, I will die here.
Or—I will go away to Ephraim and fight the old war. I do not think that the elephants are invincible. My brother Eleazar slew one with a single blow of his hammer. These are beasts that God made, and man can kill them. We must learn how.” He finished, and below the Temple we could hear the cries of the mercenaries in the city streets. But the city was empty and broken, and how much more destruction could they wreak upon what was already a tomb?

  “What does Simon think?” Samuel ben Zebulun asked, and I looked curiously at this proud and angry old man of the South.

  “You ask a son of Mattathias?” I said.

  “I ask you, Simon.”

  “I am not the Maccabee,” I told them. “I am not an Adon or a Rabbi. I am Simon, the least of the sons of Mattathias, and I judged in Ephraim. This is not the wilderness—this is Jerusalem.”

  “And what will you do?” Ragesh asked dryly.

  “I will follow my brother Judas.”

  Ragesh shrugged. “And there will be war and more war—and war without end.”

  “I have never known anything else,” I said. “And yet I have not bent my knee.”

  “You are a proud man,” Ragesh said. “Would you put yourself before Israel?”

  Jonathan answered him, angrily, almost wildly. “Did my brother Eleazar put himself before Israel? Did my father? Do we walk about in silks, with gold and diamonds?” Judas gripped his arm; tears rolled down the boy’s cheeks as he stood there, taut and trembling.

  “So I am scolded by children,” Ragesh said softly.

  “And am I a child?” Jonathan cried. “When I was fourteen I had the bow in my hand, and when I was fifteen I killed my first man. I know you, old man!”