by Shlomo Kalo
They entered the centre of the city like a victory parade, hearing cries of approbation and applause from the spectators. All were dusty: the uniforms of the soldiers had turned grey and the clothes of the exiles were caked with dust, as were the manes of the horses and the canopies of the wagons. By contrast, the garb of the citizens of the capital was of startling cleanness, elegance even, and there was no shortage of scarlets and blues and purples, especially among the young women who left their houses to greet the newcomers, with candid smiles and cries of “Hurrah!”
“They have no shame!” Mishael exclaimed, and Azariah answered him:
“They say that the girls of Babylon aren’t looking for Chaldean husbands, and that’s by royal decree; the king wants to improve the Chaldean strain!”
“How can you improve such an inferior strain?” queried Matthew, winking at Adoniah who answered him:
“They’re so stupid and so ignorant that any outsider marrying into them can’t help but improve their racial stock!”
“And the Lord has commanded us not to consort with Gentiles,” Uziel commented.
“Rather to wipe them off the face of the earth,” Gabriel said by way of corroboration.
“And what’s your opinion?” – Hananiah asked, turning to Daniel. He answered him:
“The verses you are quoting only tell us to erase from our minds all thoughts that are worthless and idolatrous, so that no trace or relic is left of them. He who purifies his mind from all things of a ‘gentile’ nature, from all worthless and idolatrous thoughts, such as thoughts of malice, avarice, adultery and deceit – such a man is fit to approach God and rejoice in Him and love Him with all his heart and all his might, and all his soul and all his intellect!”
“Your interpretations are bizarre!” Adoniah protested. “What I was taught by my master and teacher, Hananiel the priest – was that we are to put all Gentiles to the sword and destroy them, and burn down their homes and burn their crops too!”
“Only one who gives no thought to God could interpret the Scriptures in such a heinous fashion!” he retorted.
“Anyway, we can agree that modesty is not the outstanding quality of the young ladies of Babylon!” interjected Mishael, anxious to put a stop to the argument between Daniel and Adoniah while it could still be controlled.
They all sat in silence, watching the scene outside.
Dense ranks of girls stretched along both sides of the street, in flimsy clothing that concealed little and revealed a great deal, shouting “Hurrah!” and waving hands and coloured handkerchiefs, their bare arms gleaming. The wagon rolled on over the rough paving stones, as to their left appeared the solid foundations of the tallest tower in the world.
Not waiting to be asked, one of the Chaldean horsemen leaned towards them and explained:
“This is the Holy Ziggurat, the ‘Tower of Babel’ in your language, the only one of its kind anywhere in the world!” – the horseman’s voice expressed a combination of pride, superiority and reverential awe. “That blue dome, overlooking vast spaces on the face of the earth,” he added portentously – “is nothing other than the temple of Marduk, the bravest of all the gods, and the most valiant, conqueror of the world!”
Azariah could not let this go unchallenged:
“You Chaldeans, you’re very good at building and at waging war – two kinds of fleeting illusion. We Jews, on the other hand, are distinguished by our faith in one God who has neither form nor body, who is in all and all is in Him, from whom everything comes and to whom everything belongs! The Jews will yet have the privilege of seeing the collapse of great buildings however impressive they may be, and the fall of powerful kings however wise and valiant they may be, and the ruin of mighty kingdoms, which have subjugated and enslaved other kingdoms by brute force of arms!”
The face of the Chaldean horseman turned dark with fury:
“Your tongue is a two-edged sword, contemptible Jewish slave!” – he hissed through his teeth. “If Or-Nego were not standing by you, guaranteeing your protection, your life would be worth nothing more than one of these cobblestones under my horse’s hooves!”
“Or-Nego is not my defender, and I’m not the protégé of any Chaldean officer,” Azariah retorted, his face pale: “The Lord my God is my deliverer and defender, and I am under His protection. My life is in His hands and He will do with it as He sees fit.”
The Chaldean horseman could no longer control his rage. He took his whip, leather thongs studded with beads of lead, waved it high above his head and brought it down with great force, a vicious blow aimed at Azariah’s exposed face.
The thongs of the whip whistled through the air, missed their mark, struck the canopy of the wagon and bounced back, with the sheer force of the impact – into the face of the infuriated Chaldean. The Jewish driver who had been a witness to the whole spectacle, brought the wagon to a halt – an unconscious, reflex action. The youths exchanged nervous glances. Daniel took his stand between the Chaldean horseman and Azariah:
“Ride on!” he commanded him. The clear, authoritative voice left the soldier no margin of doubt, and he spurred his horse and sped away along the column without pausing to consider what he was doing. The Jewish driver recovered his wits and not saying a word, set the wagon in motion again.
The column advanced. A few minutes later the horseman returned, and silently took his place alongside the wagon, looking to neither left nor right. On his fleshy cheek was a thin strip of dried blood.
Uziel asked Daniel:
“How could the horseman fail to hit Azariah?”
And he answered him:
“Neither whip nor sword can prevail over a son of God!”
The column passed through the inner wall by the gate dedicated to the god Marduk. A large proportion of the exiles had been brought here and they were separated and assigned to their work-places according to profession: workers in metals – to join the metal-workers, workers in wood – to join the woodworkers, with the same applying to tailors and building labourers.
Six wagons, half of them covered, continued to roll along the long, paved thoroughfare, and with them – some three dozen exiles on foot and almost the entire strength of the Chaldean army, riding before the wagons and behind them.
The House Of Or-Nego
The column approached a line of low buildings, built mostly of clay, enclosed by a low wall, crude and blackened. An order was given and the Chaldean horsemen, besides a handful of officers accompanying Or-Nego, turned to their right, passed through a wide open gate and were swallowed up among the low buildings.
“Those must be their barracks,” Hananiah deduced correctly.
The walking exiles and the three open wagons also left the scene at this point. Or-Nego ordered the drivers of the three remaining wagons to continue on their way. Shortly after this they caught a glimpse, somewhere, at the edge of the fortified sector, like an extension to the lofty outer wall – of the ornate buildings of the royal compound.
“That’s our destination!” – Matthew remarked, pointing to the buildings with the high walls, and façade of white marble still gleaming in the rays of the evening sun. But before they reached the palace, Or-Nego gave another order and the convoy halted before a spacious house three storeys high, painted red, with an iron gate and stone-built walls enclosing a substantial courtyard with garden and lawns.
As soon as the column had stopped, the iron gate was opened and some three dozen retainers and maidservants came out to meet them, neatly attired and faces expressing restrained delight bordering on reverence. And they approached the exiles remaining in the wagons and the Chaldean soldiers, greeting them with silent bows and helping them to dismount from the horses and the wagons. The wagons and the beasts were conducted to the stables, while the people stood in the large courtyard and waited. Or-Nego approached them and said with a faint smile:
“I shall be glad to entertain you for a while in my house!”
And his hospitality was warm and
lavish indeed. Tables were set out, and on the softly textured cloths of pink and white were laid all kinds of delicacies, wines and liquor and mead and aromatic cordials mixed with water. The chairs were high and upholstered in deerskin and the guests, worn out by the endless rigours of the journey, were grateful for the opportunity to relax in comfort.
A girl some twelve years of age came and sat beside him, looking at him with wise and perceptive eyes, soft as velvet. The skin of the girl’s face was the colour of alabaster, strangely offsetting the depth of her gaze.
“Who are you?” he asked her.
And she answered him:
“I am Adelain, the daughter of Or-Nego, commander of the army!” – she smiled gently and without looking away from his eyes she asked: “And who are you?”
“Daniel, son of Naimel, minister at the court of Judah.”
“And where is your father?” the girl went on to ask.
“He fell in battle, fighting the Chaldeans.”
“Oh!” the girl sighed softly. “I am so sorry! These wars and conquests bring nothing but grief and pain… to everyone!” She paused, and in a bid to change the subject she asked:
“You’re not eating meat – is that a commandment of your God?”
“Yes,” he answered her briefly.
“Not all of your companions are following your example!” she commented.
“It’s not one of those commandments in the ‘rather-die-than-transgress-it’ class, and anyway, it’s been relaxed over the years since my compatriots were incapable of upholding it. If they were to uphold it with joy and gladness and other people were to follow in their footsteps, there would be no more quarrels and disputes, battles and wars, no more grief and pain and destruction.” His words were spoken softly, but with the full weight of earnestness.
She gave some thought to what he had said, poured into his cup a drink of honey mixed with water, poured some for herself and observed:
“So if mankind stops murdering animals, he won’t murder members of his own species, is that it?”
He nodded in assent.
...One spring they found on the wooded summit of a hill behind the Mount of Olives, a wounded deer. A hunter had shot an arrow into his foreleg and injured him, but the deer had hidden from him so successfully that the hunter did not find him and returned home empty-handed.
The two of them ran to him, and the animal made no effort to escape or elude their grasp. He extracted the arrow carefully, and she removed the kerchief from her head, folded it over lengthways into a long strip and bandaged the bleeding wound. The eyes of the young deer expressed the full depth of searing pain and helplessness. He held the deer and caressed him, while Nejeen was treating him and binding his wound. Once the wound was bandaged, the deer seemed to recover his spirits, putting out his tongue and licking her hand and his.
“They have a soul, animals do, a beautiful soul that the Creator implants in them!” said Adelain.
He nodded again, and said:
“That is a fact that people ignore.”
…And again there came to his mind the pale face of that other girl, and her eyes with their deep shade of blue, she sitting beside the wounded deer and asking:
“Do you believe that in the beginning all creatures ate only vegetables, as it’s written in the Book of Genesis?”
“I believe it absolutely!” he answered her in a decisive voice, looking into her eyes which shone with a kind of luminous purity not of this world, eyes into which he never tired of gazing, sinking into their limpid and unfathomable depths, all tenderness and delight and freedom. It was then that he became aware of the futility of speech and conversation, all utterly superfluous. Language was merely a human device, invented in the Garden of Eden when mankind first sinned and needed words for the making of excuses. God is to be addressed with love and not in words.
He was afraid at first that she would break that holy silence in which he was sinking to the depths of her heart by way of her radiant eyes, bathing in her joy-inspiring light, a light disclosing the meaning of words such as “God”, “eternity”, “freedom”, “love”. But soon he understood that she, too, was sinking in the depths of his eyes and discovering, one after the other, treasures of freedom, eternity and love, and this holiness in the silence was no less dear to her than it was to him, and in fact, in the measureless depths that their eyes revealed in one another they had ceased to be “she” and “he” and become one in Him – the very essence of love.
Are these not longings? – he asked himself, taking heart and holding the wise gaze of Adelain, daughter of Or-Nego. And besides this gaze he sensed another, directed towards him from the other side of the table and watching him closely, not without a measure of satisfaction – the eyes of Or-Nego.
The look in Adelain’s eyes was deep and, it could be said, wise beyond her years. But in comparison with her! Can anything be imagined that even resembles her? Is a mountain stream to be compared with the sea, can the light of an oil lamp compete with the light of the sun in all its splendour?
He smiled. A discreet smile, meant for himself alone. He can look into the eyes of Adelain, daughter of Or-Nego, look into them as long as he pleases, in any way that he pleases and with as much intensity as he pleases, he can appreciate their depth, their beauty, their surprising, submissive tenderness – compared with her eyes these are the eyes of a precocious child, clever perhaps, but nothing more.
He was still looking into these eyes when for a brief instant a flame of strange light was ignited in them, flaring up and growing and the next moment – wavering and recoiling, as if the eyes had picked up something, some inkling, of what was going on in his heart. Had they picked up everything? He didn’t know. He never would know.
Deep in the recesses of his soul he saw the light, the other light, the living light that gives life to the one whose heart is wide open to it, and he longed for it earnestly, with all his heart and might, at all times and always.
In vain Adelain tried to catch his eye. He was far away, travelling distances beyond measure, soaring to heights never before scaled, diving to depths never before plumbed. She abandoned the attempt. Sorrow was etched on the alabaster face and there was pain in her heart, and besides these – wonderment and reverence such as she had never experienced.
She did not dare disrupt the chain of his thoughts, and she waited patiently, hoping that soon he would once again give his attention to his surroundings. And so it was: his eyes seemed to have returned to him, glancing about the room as if just this moment he had entered and taken his seat among the convivial diners, eating and drinking with gusto, laughing aloud and regaling one another with stories of battles and wars, talking of a king who triumphed, and the future of the world under his sway.
When his glance rested on her he smiled, his eyes cleansed and their light gentle. And she, without thinking of what she was doing, suddenly leaned towards him and kissed the back of his hand. He pulled his hand away, astonished.
“There’s no harm in this!” she assured him in a deep, adult voice: “It’s our custom to kiss the hand of a saintly person as a mark of respect.”
He had no answer to give to this. He took up his full goblet and thirstily drank the light liquid, flavoured with honey newly taken from the comb.
…The injured deer they carried to the courtyard of her house, and she continued tending him until the wound had healed, and then she asked what was the right thing to do: to keep him at home, although captivity was not to his taste and he had already tried to jump the high wall of the courtyard in a bid for freedom – or return him to the forest, where another hunter might be waiting for him with bow and arrow, ready to inflict a more lethal wound this time. And he answered her that the will of God should be done, and she asked what was the will of God, and he answered her – to trust in Him and not try to take His place. And so the deer was set free. And for a long time after this, whenever they were strolling among the pine trees on the hill behind the Mount o
f Olives, they would encounter the deer which in the meantime had grown to adulthood. And the deer would approach them and take from their hands the vegetation that they had picked for him, expressing his gratitude by licking their hands.
The Royal Palace
The three covered wagons, with their occupants, continued on their way towards the royal palace.
The gates giving access to the palace were broad, and their posts and lintels, like the gates themselves, were overlaid with blue marble and tablets of gold. The setting sun lit up the gold and the blue, which reflected the full intensity of its dazzling glare, and for a brief moment it seemed it was about to rise again before the gaping eyes of the exiles.
A heavy guard was posted on both sides of the main gate, and behind the guard stood two rows of musicians: pluckers of the cithara and horn-blowers, players of the lyre and of the viol known as sabka in the Chaldean tongue, the double flute or somphonia and the dulcimer or psantarin.
As the wagons advanced, they were surrounded by a retinue of soldiers who had marked the occasion by polishing their armour, burnishing their helmets and weaponry and even adding embellishments to the harness of their horses – and then the air was torn apart by a deafening, nerve-jangling fanfare of trumpets.
The young men looked up in surprise and alarm, and saw on the wall above the lofty gate a line of trumpeters, who had just now raised their instruments to their lips, emitting that terrifying sound. The trumpeters wore blue and gold livery, matching the gates of the palace admirably. From the brass trumpets hung standards of glossy tapestry, each showing three reclining lions embroidered in gold on a blue base. And before the youths had recovered their wits, the blare of the trumpets still resounding in their ears, this cacophony was supplemented by the no less strident sounds of the remainder of the orchestra: cithara, horn, lyre, viol, dulcimer and double flute.