The Roman sotk-2

by Mika Waltari

  My father’s freedmen were troubled by the arrival of the men, but they could not leave without offending my father. At first Barnabas and Paul behaved politely, speaking in turn and relating that the elders of their assembly had had a vision, according to which they were to set out on a journey to preach the good tidings, first to the Jews and then to the heathens. They had been to Jerusalem, too, with money for the holy men there, and their supporters had sealed their authority by the striking of hands. They had since preached God’s word with such power that even the sick had been cured. In one of the inland cities, Barnabas had been taken for Jupiter in human form and Paul for Mercury, so that the priest of the city had sought to have garlanded oxen sacrificed to them. They had only just been able to prevent such an ungodly demonstration. After that, the Jews had taken Paul from the city and stoned him and then, out of fear of the authorities, they had fled the place in the belief that Paul was dead. But he had come to life again.

  “What are you possessed by, then,” the freedmen asked in wonder, “that you are not content to live like ordinary mortals, but expose yourselves to danger in order to bear witness to the son of God and the forgiveness of sins?”

  Barbus burst out laughing at the thought that anyone had taken these two Jews for gods. My father reproached him and, putting both his hands to his head, said to Barnabas and Paul, “I have acquainted myself with your way, and I have tried to reconcile Jew with Jew for ill* wiln» of my own position among the city fathers. I should like to believe lliut you speak (he truth, but the spirit does not seem to reconcile you among yourselves. On the contrary, you quarrel among yourselves find one says one thing and another another. The holy ones in Jerusalem sold all their possessions and waited for your king to return. They have already waited for more than sixteen years, the money has gone and they live on alms. What do you say to this?”

  Paul assured him that he for his part had never taught anyone to cease honest labor and divide his possessions among the poor. Barnabas also said that each person should do as the spirit moved him. After the holy ones in Jerusalem had begun to be persecuted and murdered, many people had fled to foreign lands, to Antioch too, setting up in business and practicing trades, and successfully, some more so and some less so.

  Barnabas and Paul went on speaking until finally the freedmen were annoyed.

  “Now that’s enough about your god,” they said. “We wish you no harm, but what is it you want of our master, pushing your way into his house late at night and disturbing him? He has enough troubles of his own.”

  They related that their activities had stirred up bad blood amongst the Jews in Antioch, so that even the Pharisees and Sadducees had combined against them and the Christians. The Jews were conducting a lively campaign of conversion for the temple in Jerusalem and had collected rich gifts from the pious. But the Christian Jewish sect was tempting the newly converted over to its side by promising them forgiveness of their sins and maintaining that they need no longer follow the Jewish laws. For this reason the Jews were now bringing an action against the Christians in the city court. Barnabas and Paul intended to leave Antioch before this, but they feared that the council would have them followed and brought back before the court.

  My father was pleased to be able to calm their fears.

  “By various means,” he said, “I have managed to ensure that the city council does not interfere with Jewish internal matters of belief. The Jews themselves should settle disputes among their sects. Legally, we regard the Christian sect as one of the many Jewish ones, despite the fact that it demands neither circumcision nor complete obedience to the law of Moses. So the police in the city are duty bound to protect the Christians if other Jews attempt violence against them. In the same way, it is our duty to protect the other Jews if the Christians make trouble for them.”

  Barnabas was deeply troubled.

  “Both of us are Jews,” he said, “but circumcision is a seal on true Judaism. So the Jews of Antioch have claimed that although uncir-cumcised Christians are not legally Jews, they can be tried for violation and abuse of the Jewish faith.”

  But my father was a stubborn man when he had something firmly in his head, and he said, “As far as I know, the only difference between Christian and Jew is that the Christians, both circumcised and uncir-cumcised, believe that the Jewish Messiah, or Christ, has already taken human form in Jesus of Nazareth, that he has risen from the dead, and that sooner or later he will return to found the kingdom of a thousand years. The Jews do not believe this, but are still waiting for their Messiah. But from a legal point of view, there is no difference, whether they believe that the Messiah has come or that he will come. The main thing is that they believe in a Messiah. The city of Antioch is neither. willing nor even competent to decide whether the Messiah has come or not. So the Jews and the Christians must settle the matter in peace among themselves, without persecuting each other.”

  “So it has been and so it would still be,” said Paul passionately, “if the circumcised Christians weren’t so cowardly, like Cephas for instance, who first ate together with the uncircumcised but then withdrew from them because he was more afraid of the holy men in Jerusalem than of God. I told him straight out what I thought about his cowardice, but the damage was done and now the circumcised eat more and more frequently by themselves and the uncircumcised do the same. So the latter can no longer be called Jews, even legally. No, amongst us there are neither Jews nor Greeks, neither freedmen nor slaves, but we are all of us Christians.”

  My father remarked that it would be unwise to put forward this argument to the court, since by it the Christians would lose an irreplaceable advantage and protection. It would be more rational for them to admit that they were Jews and benefit from all the political advantages of Judaism, even if they did show little respect for circumcision and the Jewish laws.

  But he did not succeed in convincing these two Jews. They had their own unshakable belief that a Jew was a Jew and all others heathens, but a heathen could become Christian and in the same way a Jew could also become a Christian and then there was no difference between them, but they were one with Christ. Nevertheless, a Jew as a Christian continued to be a Jew, but a baptized heathen could become a Jew only by circumcision, and this was neither necessary nor even desirable any longer, for the whole world must know that a Christian did not need to be a Jew.

  My father said bitterly that this was a philosophy that was beyond his comprehension. In his day, he himself had been humbly willing to become a subject of the kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, but then he was not received because he was not a Jew. The leaders of the Nazareth sect had even forbidden him to talk about their king. As far as he could see, he would be wisest to continue to wait for the affairs of the kingdom to be clarified so that they would also be comprehensible to simpler minds. Clearly it was providence that was now sending him to Rome, for such unpleasantness was to be expected in Antioch from both Jews and Christians that even the best mediators could no longer offer a solution.

  But he promised to suggest to the city council that the Christians should not be tried for having violated the Jewish faith, since they by receiving the baptism, devised by the Jews, and by admitting a Jewish Messiah as their king, in any case de facto if not also literally de. jure, in some way or other were Jews. If the council admitted this standpoint, then the matter could at least be postponed and the Jews’ action set aside for a time.

  With this Barnabas and Paul were satisfied, and indeed they could hardly be otherwise. My father assured them that his sympathies in any case lay more with the Christians than with the Jews. The freedmen on their part implored my father to ask to be allowed to resign from the city council without delay, for he had enough to do with his own affairs. But my father quite rightly replied that just at this moment it was impossible for him to do so, for a public application for resignation would make everyone believe that he in fact regarded me as guilty of sacrilege.

  The freedmen began seriously to
fear that my father’s obvious sympathies with the Christians would make the people suspect that he had perhaps encouraged me, his son, with the view in mind of violating the girls’ innocent rites. For both Christians and Jews felt an equally implacable aversion to idols, holy sacrifices and hereditary rites.

  “The Christians who have been baptized and then have drunk blood with their fellow believers,” said the freedmen, “pull down and burn their household idols and destroy their expensive fortunetelling books instead of selling them for a reasonable price to people who could still use them. This impetuous intolerance makes them dangerous.

  You, our good patient master, should have no more to do with them, or things might go badly for your son.”

  In all honor to my father, it must be said that after the visit from the two Jews, he no longer pressed me to go and listen to their teachings. After disagreeing with other Jews, they also began quarreling between themselves, and they left Antioch in different directions. The faithful Jews calmed down after their departure, for the moderate Jews avoided open and public conflict and kept themselves to themselves in their own secret society.

  At my father’s suggestion, the city fathers refused to allow the Jews’ complaint against Paul and Barnabas, and proclaimed that the Jews themselves must settle their own disagreements. With the help of some determination, it was also easier to hand over the dispute concerning me and my friends to be solved by the oracle in Daphne. Our parents paid heavy fines and we ourselves underwent purification ceremonies in the groves of Daphne for three days and three nights. The parents of the girls we had violated no longer dared press us with proposals of. marriage. But in connection with the purification ceremonies, we were forced to make a certain promise to the Moon Goddess, but this I could not tell my father, nor did he ask me about it.

  My father, contrary to his usual habit, went with me to the amphitheater, where we seven youths were allowed to occupy the place of honor behind the city authorities at the next performance. Our lion had undergone a slimming course and was skillfully spurred on to conduct itself in the arena far better than we had dared to hope. With little difficulty it tore apart a malefactor who had been condemned to be thrown to the beasts of prey; then bit the first gladiator in the knee, and fell while fighting fearlessly to the end. The crowd roared with delight and honored the lion and ourselves by rising to its feet and applauding. I think my father was proud of me, although he said nothing.

  Several days later, we said good-bye to the tearful servants and traveled to the port of Seleucia. There we boarded a ship, my father and I, with Barbus following, to sail to Naples and from there to Rome.

  Book II

  Rome

  If I could but describe what it feels like to arrive in Rome, at fifteen years of age, when one has known since childhood that all one’s blood ties are united with those sacred hills and valleys. For me, it felt as if the very ground shook beneath my feet as it welcomed its son, as if every furrowed stone in the streets had repeated eight hundred years of history for my ears. Even the muddy Tiber was so sacred to me that I felt faint at the sight of it.

  I was perhaps exhausted by the excitement and lack of sleep on our long journey, but it all felt to me as if I were delightfully intoxicated, but more sweedy than with wine. This was the city of my forefathers and my city too, which ruled over the whole of the civilized world as far distant as Parthia and Germany.

  Barbus sniffed the air eagerly as we made our way to the house of my father’s aunt, Manilia Laelius.

  “For more than forty years I have missed the smell of Rome,” he said. “It’s a smell one never forgets and one notices it most in the town of Subura, just at this time of the evening when the smell of cooking and hot sausages blends with the natural smells of the narrow streets. It’s a mixture of garlic, cooking oil, spices, sweat and incense from the temples, but most of all a kind of basic smell which one can only call the smell of Rome, for I have never met it anywhere else. But in forty years the mixture seems to have changed, or perhaps my nose has grown old. Only with an effort can I regain the unforgettable smell of my childhood and youth.”

  We arrived at the city on foot, for vehicles are forbidden in Rome in the daytime. Otherwise, communication would become impossible because of the overcrowding. For my sake, and perhaps also for his own, my father chose a roundabout route across the forum to Palatine, so that we had Palatine hill on our left and the Capitoline in front of us. Then we took the old Etruscan road to get up to Palatine, alongside the great circus. My head swung from side to side as my father patiently enumerated the temples and buildings, and Barbus gaped in wonder at the vast new apartments on the forum which had not been there in his dau. My father was sweating and breathing heavily as he walked. I thought compassionately that he was an old man although he was not yet fifty.

  But my father did not stop to draw breath until we came to the round temple of Vesta. Through the opening in its roof rose the thin spiral of smoke from the sacred fire of Rome, and my father promised that the next day, if I wished, I could go with Barbus to look at the cave where the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus and which the god Augustus had preserved as a spectacle for the whole world. The sacred tree of the wolf-brothers still grew in front of the cave.

  “For me,” said my father, “the smell of Rome is an unforgettable scent of roses and salves, of clean linen and scrubbed stone floors, a smell which cannot be found elsewhere in the world, for the smell and soil of Rome itself has its own contribution to make. But the very thought of this smell makes me so melancholy that I can hardly bear to walk through these memorable streets once again. Let us not stop then, so that I shall not be too moved and lose the self-control which I have practiced for over fifteen years.”

  But Barbus objected pitifully.

  “Experience of a lifetime has taught me,” he said, “that a few gulps of wine are enough for my mind and for the whole of my being to take in smells and noises more clearly. Nothing has ever tasted so good in my mouth as the small spiced sausages one can get sizzling hot in Rome. Let us at least stop long enough to taste some.”

  My father was forced to laugh. We stopped at the market and went into a small inn which was so old that its floor lay well below street level. Both Barbus and I eagerly sniffed the air.

  “Blessed be Hercules!” cried Barbus in delight. “A bit of the old days is left of Rome after all. I remember this place, even if in my memory it was considerably larger and more spacious than it is now. Take a deep breath, Minutus, you who are younger than. I. Perhaps you can smell the smell of fish and mud, of reeds and manure, of sweaty bodies and the incense shops of the circus.”

  He rinsed his mouth, spat out an offering on to the floor, and then stuffed his mouth with sausage, chewing and smacking his lips, his head to one side. Finally he said, “Something old and forgotten is in fact returning to my mind. But perhaps my mouth has also grown too old, for I can no longer feel the same sensual bliss as before with sausage in my mouth and a goblet of wine in my hand.”

  The tears rose in his old eyes and he sighed.

  “I am indeed like a ghost from the past,” he said, “now that the centenary is to be celebrated. I don’t know a single person here, neither a relation nor a protector. A new generation has replaced mine and it knows nothing of the past, so the spiced sausage has lost its flavor and the wine is diluted. I had hoped to come across an old comrade-inarms among the Emperor’s Praetors, or at least in the Fire Brigade of Rome, but now I wonder whether we’d even recognize each other. Woe to the conquered. I am like Priam in the ruins of Troy.”

  The innkeeper hurried up, his face shining with grease, and asked what the matter was. He assured us that in his house one could find horsemen from the circus, officials of the State archives, actors, and architects who were putting Rome’s sights in order for the centenary festivities. One could even make acquaintance with nice little she-wolves beneath his roof. But Barbus was inconsolable and replied gloomily that he could
not consider a she-wolf, for even that would certainly not feel the same as before.

  Afterwards we walked up the hill of Aventine and my father said with a sigh that we should not have turned off into the inn after all, for the garlic sausage had given him a stomachache which not even the wine could allay. He was feeling pressure in his chest and was filled with evil forebodings, which grew worse at the sight of a crow flying past on our left.

  In among the new and old apartment blocks, we wandered past several ancient temples which looked sunk into the ground beside the large buildings. On the other side of the hill, my father at last found the Manilianus family property. Compared with our house in Antioch, it was quite a small and neglected building which had at some time had an additional story built on to it to provide more space. But it was surrounded by a wall and a wild garden. When my father saw my contemptuous expression, he said sternly that the plot and the garden alone bore witness to the age and nobility of the house.

  The bearers had long since arrived from the Capua gate with our luggage and Aunt Laelia was expecting us. First she let my father pay the bearers and then she came down the steps and along the garden path between the laurel bushes. She was a tall thin woman and had carefully rouged her lined cheeks and darkened her eyes. She was also wanting a ring on her finger and a copper chain around her neck. Her hands trembled as she came to meet us, her cries of joy carefully controlled.