by Paulo Barata
Year 45
In the midst of all this, I was struck with the most fateful and calamitous affliction that can happen to any family. Even today, after so many long and countless years, it is still almost unbearable to recall those dreadful days. Long days, days of opposites, days of hope, of fear and dread.
Yeshua, my son, had always been a precocious and curious youth, and our staying in Caesarea had freed him from the constraints of the rigid education he had received from his grandfather Simon. In this freer environment, he diligently applied himself to the study of languages, philosophy and the sciences, in collusion with his companion and friend Alexander, the son of my secretary Ioanis.
He was as stubborn as a scholar, according to Ioanis, and this was not said in praise but in reprimand for some chore that he had failed to do at the emporium, or when the two of them escaped to the agora or the gymnasium to listen to some visiting orator. Often, Ioanis even suggested that I should pack him off to Alexandria to be locked in that big library of theirs until he was fed up with philosophical trifle. But that would never happen.
Though I was very aware of these peccadilloes, I was the last to discourage him. I believed that I had more than enough time to mold him to the needs and the vicissitudes of life. Let them be, I would say to a frustrated Ioanis, and in time they will learn just as we all had to do.
But despite all this too obvious verve, I only became aware of his more introspective nature when, during a dinner, he abruptly claimed that we Judaeans were in general unappreciative and intolerant of free thinking, and even disdainful of the importance of logic and reason. We were, in his opinion, constrained by too many laws that limited our intellectual growth, and we had not evolved much culturally, specially when compared with the achievements of the Greeks or even of the Romans. Portentous thoughts indeed !
Even Ruth, who had never ceased from spoiling him shamelessly, was stunned with these statements.
“But what is this now?” she asked “Do not be disrespectful, child!”
“Mother, how many times have I asked you not to call me a child? I’m almost nineteen. I could even be married by now.”
“You know that you will always be my child" she said it tenderly.
She did it on purpose, of course, knowing all too well how much it flustered him.
“Father, don’t you agree with me?" casting her a final stare of indifference.
“Your father always agrees with you. That doesn’t mean that you have any right in saying those things.”
“Father? Say something, please" he pleaded wistfully.
“Let your father eat his meal in peace.”
“Ruth, let him speak. What is it, Yeshua?”
“Father, you are always speaking of Antioch, how beautiful the city is, how courteous the people are, and you even mentioned that the Judaeans there are more tolerant to other religions and cults. A city where everyone is accepted for what they are, and that is why it is one of the largest in the world. And we don’t even need to go so far. Even here in Caesarea everyone is more relaxed and tolerant than in Jerusalem. I’m sure that you agree with me, otherwise I very much doubt that we would be living here.”
“So, what’s your point?” I questioned him.
“Am I wrong?”
“Eat, child. Why don’t the both of you discuss this later, up in the terrace, since your father allows you such liberties. In my time…”
“Mother, in your time you couldn’t even speak at the table. Grandfather wouldn’t allow it. We all know that.”
Few things are worse for a woman than to be reminded that her time had passed.
“But tell me,” I interrupted what I knew could become a long winded rant between mother and son, “is this something you picked up in the gymnasium? With your Greek friends? Or is this your own opinion?”
“Ahasver, really! And since when does the boy have such opinions?” she added indignantly.
“Mother!”
“Yes, I know. I know nothing!” she interrupted him abruptly, “Just because the other day you were talking about one of those Greeks that I thought was a friend of your father.”
“Who was this?" I asked curiously.
“I was talking to Alexander about the suicide of Socrates, and mother got all upset about it. She thought it was someone else.”
“Imagine that, Ahasver, he was all upset because I didn’t know who this Socrates was.”
“Ruth, but I have spoken of him before, a great philosopher…”
“How can I remember all of them, there are so many" she quickly flared.
“I see, I wonder if you actually listen to me sometimes" I complained jokingly.
“Patera?” Yeshua went on, now in koine knowing that Ruth could hardly understand it.
“No, no… I have told you. If you want to go on with this talk, you wait until we finish dinner, and then you and your father can talk for as long as you want up there. And, by the way, Yeshua, it is most disrespectful speaking in that language at this table. I’ll not have it!”
Partly because of my own enthusiasm for Greek culture in general, I had encourgaed Yeshua to enroll in the local public gymnasium, funded by the Greek community. This gymnasium, besides being a place where physical activities were encouraged, was also a school for the teaching of medicine, astronomy, rhetoric, oratory and philosophy. And usually, the three of us would sit in the late afternoons on the terrace and discuss what they had learned on the day - by the three of us, I refer to Alexander, not to Ruth.
She very rarely joined in, alleging that she had not received such proper learning that allowed her to participate in our discussions, or, as she would mockingly claim, she was not as sophisticated as us, and at the same time criticized us for being too Greek, so much so that Aramaic was now seldom spoken in the house. Of course, invariably I was the guilty one, by not keeping them sufficiently occupied with the emporium, or for allowing for this useless chatter when there so many other things that they could be busy with.
And when these discussions turned to religion, those were even less tolerated by Ruth, bitterly complaining that the pagans at the gymnasium were corruptors of the faith of the young and the innocent. I had a different position altogether. I had always thought that the religious beliefs of the Greeks and the Romans were so ludicrous, and such a farce, that nobody in their perfect mind could ever believe in so many gods, demigods and divine bastards that they had gathered over the centuries. On the contrary, I actually believed that the more the Greeks exalted their religion, the more sensible and believable was our own ideology.