by Mika Waltari
“Father,” I said, appalled, “you haven’t secretly gone over to the Jewish faith, after having so much to do with them, have you?”
“But Minutus,” said my father in surprise. “You have been with me at the baths and athletics. You must have seen that I don’t bear the sign of allegiance on my body. If I had, I should have been laughed out of the baths.
“I don’t deny,” he went on, “that I have read a great deal in the Jewish holy scripts in order to learn to understand them better. But in reality, I bear something of a grudge against the Jews, for it was they who crucified their king. I’ve borne a grudge against the Jews because of your mother’s painful death, yes, even against their king, who on the third day arose from the dead and founded an invisible kingdom. His Jewish pupils still believe that he will return and found a visible kingdom, but all this is very involved and unreasonable, and I cannot teach you anything about it. Your mother would have been able to do so, for as a woman she understood better than I about the affairs of the kingdom, and I still cannot understand why she had to die for my sake.”
I was beginning to doubt my father’s sanity and I thought about how he in all things behaved differently from most people.
“Then have you drunk blood with the Jews in their superstitious rites?” I said roughly.
My father looked very troubled.
“This is something you cannot understand,” he said, “for you know nothing about it.”
But he took a key and unlocked a chest, taking out a worn wooden goblet and holding it gently between his hands. He showed it to me.
“This is your mother Myrina’s goblet,” he said, “and from this goblet we together drank the wine of immortality one moonless night on a mountain in Galilee. And the goblet did not empty, although we both drank deeply from it. And the king appeared to us and spoke to every one of us, although we were more than five hundred. To your mother, he said that never again in her life need she be thirsty. But afterwards I promised his pupils that I should never try to teach anyone these things, as they considered that the kingdom belonged to the Jews and I, as a Roman, had no part in it.”
I realized that this was the enchanted goblet Timaius had said was of the Goddess of Fortune. I took it in my hand, but to my hand and my eyes it was but a worn wooden goblet, although I did feel a tenderness at the thought that my mother had handled it and prized it highly.
I looked sympathetically at my father and said, “I cannot blame you ~ for your superstition, for the magic arts of the Jews have confused the heads of wiser men than you. Without doubt the goblet has brought success and wealth to you, but I wish to say nothing about immortality, for I don’t want to hurt you. And as far as a new god is concerned, there are old gods who have died and returned, such as Osiris and Tammuz and Attis and Adonis and Dionysius, not to mention many others. But all these are but parables and tales which those initiated into the mysteries revere. Educated people no longer drink blood and I have had more than enough of mysteries, thanks to stupid girls who hang colored ribbons in the bushes.”
My father shook his head and pressed his hands together. “Oh, if only I could make you understand,” he said.
“I understand only too well, even if I am not fully grown,” I assured him. “I have, after all, learned something here in Antioch. You talk about Christ, but the new superstition is even more pernicious and shameful than the other teachings of the Jews. It’s true he was crucified, but he was by no means a king and neither did he rise from the dead. His disciples stole his body from the tomb so that they would not be ashamed before the people. It is not worth talking about him. The Jews see to all the talking and the bickering.”
My father began to argue the matter with me.
“He was truly a king,” he said. “It was even put in three languages on his cross. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. I read it with my own eyes. If you don’t believe the Jews, then you must believe the Roman governor. And his disciples did not steal his body, even if the Jews did bribe the guards to say so. I know that because I myself was there and saw it all with my own eyes. And once I met him myself, on the east shore of the lake of Galilee, after he had risen from the dead. At least, I still believe that it was he. It was he himself who led me to find your mother. She at that time was having trouble in the city of Tiberias. Admittedly, sixteen years have passed since these events, but I can still see them clearly before my eyes when you upset me by your inability to understand.”
I could not afford to make my father angry with me.
“I don’t wish to argue with you about divine matters,” I said hastily. “There is only one thing I want to know. Can you return to Rome whenever you wish? Timaius maintained that you can never return to Rome because of your past.”
My father stiffened, frowned and looked sternly at me.
“I am Marcus Mezentius Manilianus,” he said, “and I can certainly return to Rome whenever I wish. I am not an exile and Antioch is no place of banishment. You should know that yourself. But I have my own private reasons for not going to Rome. Now I should be able to do so, if forced to, now that I am elderly and no longer as receptive to influences as I was when I was younger. Other reasons you need not ask about. You would not understand them.”
I was pleased with his assurances and cried, “You spoke of a dividing of the ways and my future which I myself must choose. What were you thinking about?”
My father wiped his forehead hesitantly, weighed his words carefully and finally said, “The men here in Antioch who know the way best have nowadays begun to realize that the kingdom does not belong only to the Jews. I suspect, or to be quite honest, I know, that even uncircumcised Greeks and Syrians have been baptized and allowed to take part in their meals. This has aroused many disputes, but at the moment there is a Jew here from Cyprus whom I once met in Jerusalem. He has with him, as his helper, a Jew called Saul, from Tarsus, whom I had also seen during his time in Damascus, once when he was led into the city. He had lost his sight during a divine revelation, but later it was returned to him. He is a man worth meeting. My dearest wish is that you should seek out these men and listen to their teachings. If they can convince you, they will baptize you as a subject of the kingdom of Christ and you will be allowed to partake in their secret meals. That is, without circumcision, for you need not fear coming under the jurisdiction of Jewish law.”
I could not believe my ears.
“You really wish me to be initiated into Jewish rites?” I cried. “To worship some crucified king and a kingdom that doesn’t exist? What else can one call something one cannot see?”
“The fault is mine,” my father said impatiently, “and I am sure I am using the wrong words, as I cannot convince you. Anyhow, you would have nothing to lose by listening to what these men have to say.”
But the very thought filled me with fear.
“I’ll never let the Jews sprinkle their consecrated water over me,” I cried. “And neither will I agree to drink blood with them. Then I’d lose the last remaining shreds of my good reputation.”
Once again my father tried patiently to explain that in any case Saul was an educated man and a Jew who had been to the school of rhetoric in Tarsus, and not only slaves and craftsmen, but also many noble ladies in Antioch secretly went to listen to him. But I put my hands over my ears, stamped my foot, and cried shrilly and uncontrollably, “No, no, no!”
My father returned to his senses and said in colder tones, “The choice lies with you. The learned Emperor C laudius has no doubt calculated that next spring it will be eight bundled vents since the foundation of the city. To be sure, the god Augustus celebrated this centenary, and there are many people still alive who joined in. But another centenary feast will give us an excellent lenson for going to Rome.”
Before he even had time to finish, I had flung my arms around his neck, kissed him, cried aloud in delight and rushed round the room, for I was still but a boy. Then his freedmen began to arrive for the feast and he had to g
o out into the hall to greet them and receive their gifts. I stood beside my father as a sign that he meant to stand by me in all things. They were very pleased about this, stroked my hair, consoled me over the loss of my horse and admired my bandages.
When they were lying at table and I was sitting on a stool at my father’s feet, since I was still a minor, my father explained that the point of this meeting was a family consultation about my future.
“Let us begin by fortifying ourselves with wine. Wine loosens the tongue, and we need all the good advice we can get.”
He did not sprinkle wine onto the floor, but Barbus was not frightened by this atheism. He made an offering to the gods instead and pronounced the greeting in a loud voice. I followed his example and the freedmen too sprinkled at least a drop of wine onto the floor with their fingertips, even if they said nothing aloud. My heart swelled with love when I saw them all, for all of them had done their best to spoil me and wished that I should grow up into a man with whose reputation their reputation too would grow. They expected nothing more from my father, for they had already become used to him.
“When I had bought your freedman’s staves,” my father continued, “I let you drink of the wine of eternity from my late wife’s wooden goblet. But you never began to assemble your riches, save for the mundane things of this world, which can come to an end at any moment. Yet that is only as it should be, for I should be tormented by my satiety and my wealth and the many useless works which I do not value at all. I wish for nothing but to live quietly and humbly.”
The freedmen hurried to assure him that they too tried to live as quietly and humbly as was possible for successful businessmen. Boasting about one’s wealth only led to increases in tax and obligatory donations to the city. And none of them wished to boast about the past when they had been slaves.
“For your sake and because of the obstinacy of my son Minutus,” my father said, “I cannot go the new way, which has now been opened to the uncircumcised, both Greeks and Romans. If I admitted to being a Christian, as this way is called, as distinct from the Jewish faith, then you and all my household would be forced to follow suit, and I do not believe that any good can come of this. I cannot believe, for instance, that Barbus would participate with any spirit, no matter who laid hands on his head and blew on him. Not to speak of Minutus, who lost control of himself to the extent of screaming at the very thought of it.
“Therefore,” my father went on, “the time has come to talk about my family. What I do, I do thoroughly. Minutus and I will travel to Rome and there I shall retrieve my rank of knight in conjunction with the centenary festivities. Minutus will receive the man-toga in Rome in the presence of his family. And he will receive a horse in place of the one he has lost here.”
For me this was a surprise of which I had not even dared dream. At the most I had thought that sometime, thanks to my boldness and talents, I should be able to return to my father the honor he had lost through the Emperor’s whim. But it was not news to the freedmen. From their behavior, I realized they had long been putting pressure on my father in this direction, for they themselves had honor and benefits to gain from my father’s regaining his knighthood. They nodded now and explained that they had already been in contact with the freedmen of Emperor Claudius, who looked after important matters in the administration of the State. My father also owned property on Aventine and land in Caere, and so more than fulfilled the conditions of income demantled of the rank of knight.
My father bade them be silent and explained.
“All this is of less importance,” he said. “The essential thing is that I have at last succeeded in acquiring the necessary papers on Minutus’ ancestors. This has demantled a great deal of judicial knowledge. At first I thought I should quite simply adopt him on the day he came of age, but my counsel persuaded me that such a measure would not be favorable. In that case his legal Roman descent would have been in doubt forever.”
After unfolding a mass of papers, my father read aloud from them and explained them more thoroughly.
“The most important of these is a marriage contract between Myrina and myself, certified by the Roman authority in Damascus. This is indubitably a genuine and legal certificate, for after my wife had been made pregnant by me in Damascus, I was very happy and wanted to strengthen the position of my heir-to-be.”
After looking at the ceiling for a while, he went on:
“Investigating into Minutus’ mother’s ancestors has been much more difficult, for at the time I did not regard it as essential and so we never even talked about it together. After long investigations it has been definitely shown that her family originally stemmed from the city of
Myrina in the province of Asia, near the city of Cyme. It was my counsel who advised me to start from this city in my search, because of the similarity of name. It later turned out that her family, after losing their fortune, moved from there out to the islands, but their origins are extremely aristocratic, and to confirm this, I have had a statue of my wife placed in front of the courthouse in Myrina and also have made several donations in her memory. In fact my deputy had the whole of the courthouse rebuilt; it was not large and the city fathers themselves offered to trace back Myrina’s family to ancient times, yes, back to one of the river gods, but this I thought unnecessary. On the island of Cos, my deputy found a venerable old priest in the temple of Esculapius, who remembered Myrina’s parents very well and could confirm on oath that he was the brother of Myrina’s father. At the death of their honest but impoverished parents, the children dedicated themselves to Apollo and then left the island.”
“Oh, how I should like to meet that uncle of my mother’s,” I said eagerly, “if he is the one and only living relative on my mother’s side.”
“That won’t be necessary,” my father hastened to say. “He is a very old man with a bad memory and I have seen to it that he has a roof over his head, food and someone to lead him until he dies. All you need remember is that on your mother’s side, you are of noble Greek descent. When you are adult, you can remember the poor city of Myrina sometime with a suitable gift, so that the matter is not completely forgotten.
“I also,” he went on quickly, “belong to the Manilian family by adoption, and my name is therefore Manilianus. My foster-father, that is your legal grandfather, was the famous astronomer Manilius, who published a work on astronomy which is still studied in libraries all over the world. But you have undoubtedly wondered about your other name-Mezentius. This brings me to your real descent. The famous Maecenas, friend of the god Augustus, was a distant relative of mine and held his hand over my father’s parents, even if he did forget them in his will. He on his part was descended from the rulers of Caere, who were kings long before Aeneas fled from Troy. In this way Roman blood also runs in the former Etruscans. But legally speaking, we should count ourselves as members of the Manilianus family. In Rome it is better to keep silent about the Etruscans, for the Romans do not like to be reminded that the Etruscans once ruled over them.”
My father was speaking in such a dignified way that we all listened in silence, and only Barbus remembered to fortify himself with wine occasionally.
“My adoptive father, Manilius, was a poor man,” my father went on. “He squandered his fortune on books and research into the stars, instead of earning money by the art of divination. It was due more to the absentmindedness of the god Tiberius than to himself that he was allowed to retain his knighthood. It would take too long to relate how I spent my hungry youth as a clerk here in Antioch. The main reason for this was that I could not have a horse because of the poverty of the Manilianus family. But when I returned to Rome, I had the good fortune to win the favor of a highly placed woman whose name I shall not reveal. This experienced woman introduced me to an old and sickly but noble-minded widow. In her will, this lady left me her entire fortune so that I could confirm my right to wear the gold ring, but then I was already nearly thirty years old and was no longer interested in officia
l service. In addition, the widow’s family contested the will, yes, even made the appalling accusation that the old lady had been poisoned after drawing up the will. Justice was on my side, but owing to this wretched case and also to other matters, I left Rome and went to Alexandria to study. Even if there was much gossip in Rome at the time, I don’t think anyone any longer remembers this dispute which malevolent people started. I am telling you this to show Minutus that there is nothing shameful about it and there is nothing to stop my returning to Rome. And I think that it is best, considering what has happened, that we go there as soon as possible, as long as the good sailing season lasts. Then I shall have the whole of the winter in which to arrange my affairs before the centenary celebrations.”
We had eaten and drunk. The torches outside our house began to smolder and go out, and the oil was low in the lamps. I myself had sat as silently as I could, trying not to scratch my arms where my wounds had already begun to irritate me. In front of the house some of the beggars in Antioch had gathered, and in accordance with good Syrian custom, my father had had the leftover food shared out among them.
Just as the freedmen were breaking up, two Jews made their way in. At first they were taken for beggars and were shown to the door. But my father hurried up to meet them and greeted them respectfully.
“No, no,” he said, “I know these men and they are messengers from the highest god. Come back in, all of you, and listen to what they have to say.”
The more dignified of the two men was very upright and had a gray beard. It was revealed that he was a Jewish merchant from Cyprus named Barnabas. He or his family owned a house in Jerusalem, and my father had met him there long before I was born. The other was considerably younger. He was dressed in a thick cloak of black goatskin, was turning bald, his ears were prominent and his eyes had such a piercing expression that the freedmen avoided them and moved their fingers as if warding off his look. This was Saul, of whom my father had’told me, but he was no longer known by his real name, for he said he had changed it to Paul. This he had done out of humility, but also because his former name had a bad reputation among the followers of Christ. Paul means the insignificant one, just as does my own name, Minutus. He was not a handsome man, but in his eyes and face there was such fire that one felt no desire to quarrel with him. I realized that whatever one said to this man, nothing would influence him. Instead, he himself desired to influence others. Compared with him, old Barnabas seemed quite a reasonable man.