The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

  vengeance, ignoring my curiosity in silence until I too was slashing branches from a felled log with

  similarly punitive blows.

  Father had seemed more preoccupied that summer than he had been previously, constantly distracted from his work, shading his eyes with his hand to look down the caravan road. I knew that Yehoshua had also noticed father’s absence of mind, and during our mid-day food break after the bearded stranger had ridden away, pulled father aside under the shade of a broad oak where they shared a cool flagon of water. I sat down on the grass behind them, remaining quiet.

  “Father, I know you do not fear the publican,” Yehoshua said, “but are concerned for the safety of our home and family.”

  My father’s ire at his son’s aggressive behavior at Aunt Elizabeth’s home had tempered with time. “It is not your fault. I might have done the same given your youth and size.”

  “It was a rash act, bred of the blind sin of my anger.”

  “I have seen that stranger in Sepphoris,” father said. “Is he not named Judah, the Galilean?”

  “I sent him away.”

  “To what end did he seek you out?”

  Yehoshua hesitated, then seemed resigned to the truth. “He heard of my altercation with the

  publican and tried to enlist me in his cause. Which I refused.”

  Father became agitated. “Sicarii?”

  “Zealots14 at any rate. He has offered us protection from retribution by the Romans.”

  Father shook his head in disagreement, apprehensive for our family, yet apparently bemused, unable to suggest alternative action.

  The words popped out of my mouth before I could stop them. “What are Sicarii?”

  Yehoshua turned toward me, annoyed at the reminder of my presence and interruption.

  “None of your concern.”

  Father seemed resigned to our plight. “He might as well know in order to avoid them if they

  approach again.”

  “Judah is thought to lead a group of peasant rebels against the Romans, extreme religious Zealots, some of which are called Sicarii,” Yehoshua told me, “or Daggermen. They disrupt public gatherings and attempt to instill fear among Romans, sympathetic Pharisees and others who support their rule.”

  “Why are they called Daggermen?”

  “Because one of their methods of revolt is to infiltrate vast numbers of people assembled to hear proclamations or other Roman sponsored events. They pull a dagger from beneath their robes and stab Roman sympathizers to death if possible, then mingle with the crowd and flee.”

  “Murderers!” father exclaimed.

  Yehoshua acknowledged the word with a grim nod, continuing his explanation. “Sometimes a reckless few will storm the home of a Roman administrator or wealthy Jewish apologist for their rule, kill the male family members and set fire to the house.”

  I was mesmerized, excited by the boldness of retribution against our military oppressors, while also appalled, thinking of the potential danger to Vespasian’s family that had been so kind to me.

  Father said, “Such behavior is contrary to our tradition and the very laws of our religion

  we are trying to preserve and obey.”

  I had never heard this subject discussed in our family before, much less known of a gang of brigands who would offer to thwart revenge on our family by the Romans for Yehoshua wounding the publican. “What will we do if the tax collector returns with soldiers?”

  “They will be opposed.”

  “Oh, yes,” father said derisively, “then descend upon us with an entire cohort15.”

  We sat together resting against a tree in silence for several moments. “We all wish to be

  free from the oppression of the Romans and their minions,” father said. “But we are powerless to become so.”

  “Possibly,” Yehoshua said. “We are not powerless to act.”

  Father left us to return to his shop. The disturbed expression on Yehoshua’s countenance suddenly vanished as Rebekah came into view through the dappled sunlight and saplings at the crest of a hill to the east, her long coarse hair of black curls gathered by a red ribbon lay upon her shoulder, the curves of her woman/child’s body defined by the plaited leather belt around her ankle-length robe swinging from her hips. Her radiant smile beamed at Yehoshua from the distance, black eyes fixed upon his, their love an almost tactile emotion between them as she approached to lean into his embrace, their lips brushing quickly, then stepping apart in deference to my intrusive presence.

  “Good day, Shimon,” she said, handing me a packet of food from the satchel she carried without taking her eyes from her betrothed. “I broiled the fat rabbit you shot yesterday and saved the juices for you to dip your bread.”

  I accepted the midday repast, setting out beyond a copse of birch to eat my meal while brother and Rebekah arranged a canvas on which to recline and consume their own. I had never observed the intimate relationship between a loving couple, so the caring affection that was clearly evident between these two was not only surprising, but disturbing. My mother and father were always cordial and polite to one another, engaging in minor differences of opinions, of course, but never adversaries. Nor did they ever demonstrate the consuming love I realized existed between my brother and his wife to be. Were the cooled embers of my parents’ existence the result of familiarity, bearing and providing for children, hard work and the burden of poverty over the years? Or had their own fathers and mothers betrothed them, strangers before their wedding, compelled to

  cohabit at the will of their mortal parents and the laws of Yahweh? Perhaps their disparity in age,

  which was never discussed or adequately explained, caused a certain distance between them.

  Neither did other husbands and wives I saw together in town, around their homes, at synagogue or other gatherings demonstrate public affection toward one another that I could discern. In fact, I often noticed animosity between older husbands and wives, which was decidedly not the case with my parents. Perhaps that is the best most of us can hope for in marriage: a calm, friendly bond with minimal friction.

  I finished my meal, lay back in the soft grass and closed my eyes against the rays of the sun penetrating the leaves and branches overhead. Tanya was the first girl who had ever quickened my blood beyond my interest in touching their soft, alluring teats. She presented a challenge of mind that I had never found in any of the Jewish girls I had known. Many had greater beauty, but for some inexplicable reason, none possessed the physical attraction of that provocative, nubile Roman temptress. Our meeting in the woods recalled the seductive half-woman, half-bird sirens of Greek mythology who lured sailors to their death from a rocky island. Like those doomed seamen, I felt equally compelled to pursue a course to an impossible goal. In my fantasy, I conjured up a dream in which my lovely Roman goddess and I would leave our respective antagonistic worlds to live together in some remote land in connubial bliss. For my own part, the ways of women learned that

  summer were the beginnings of a lifelong effort to understand the mind, moods and convolutions of the opposite sex.

  My assigned chores during the months of Av and Elul16 involved harvesting trees suitable for father

  to make furnishings for Yehoshua’s new home, while my brother alternated his days between finishing construction on it and working on commissioned projects in Sepphoris.

  Tanya soon found me out at my usual work site deep in the forest off the rutted path that led

  from Nazarat to the paved Roman road to the city, feigning surprise at discovering me where we spoke on the first instance of our sylvan meetings. As was her wont, she began by accusing me of cutting down beautiful shade trees under which it was her habit to lie. She often took her midday meal nearby and read poetry on a tightly rolled parchment.

  One noonday after stretching out against a boulder at the edge of my work site, she opened her packet of food and proceeded to eat. I could not fell trees in that immediate area for fe
ar of them falling on her, and she refused to be run out of her chosen place. Therefore, I boldly fetched my own meal and sat on a stump to join in her repast.

  “Has that food been prepared under your foolish dietary laws?” she asked.

  “Everything we eat is kosher.”

  Her knowing smile withheld a secret. “Not everything.”

  “You know not of what you speak.”

  “The meals you ate in our home with Vespasian for the last year or so?”

  I became uncomfortable, sensing what was coming. “He assured me that food was kosher.”

  She threw her head back, erupting in fulsome laughter. “You suspected nothing from my devious brother?”

  I had, and could think of no response.

  “Here,” she offered me a wedge of bread stuffed with roasted lamb and the cheese of a goat. “If eating forbidden food with Vespasian for all those months did not damn you to perdition, this certainly will not.”

  “You are a beautiful demon.”

  Again she laughed, bit into the food, and washed it down with watered wine. “My father

  thinks the laws of your religion are ridiculous.”

  “Vespasian is of the same notion. And you?”

  “I agree with the Greek contention that your ritual of circumcision is a barbaric desecration of the male body.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “How do you know?”

  She tilted her head to one side, her expression confrontational. “True?”

  Tanya busied herself with collecting the remnants of her half-eaten meal which she threw under a bush, then sat immobile for a moment staring at me across a short distance of fallen leaves and pine needles from previous seasons. “Show it to me.”

  “What?”

  “Show me your circumcision.”

  “You are daft!”

  “Is it so horrible?”

  “No.”

  “Then prove it.”

  At my age of thirteen, this was the first girl I had engaged in prolonged conversation outside my family. The first Roman woman I had known. If I walked away refusing her challenge, I would not only surrender my own self-respect, but leave her with a tale of defeat to relate about my religion. If I did acquiesce to her outrageous provocation, however, I would break the sacred Torah law of purity.

  We sat there unmoving for an immeasurable time, each testing the will of the other in silence. Just the thought of lifting my tunic to part my loincloth and expose my member to this infuriating girl was bringing it erect unbidden, making my entire body feverish, my hands and

  brow moist with perspiration.

  Tanya finally crawled to my side, kneeling next to me with a nervous giggle, gazing down at

  my lap, apparently unsure of the wisdom in what she had begun, but too proud to give it up.

  “It appears that your phallus wishes to show itself in spite of your laws.”

  “Tanya....”

  “Perhaps your law would only be bent if I took a look for myself.”

  She gazed in my eyes in which she must have seen my anguished confusion. Kneeling beside me, lifted my tunic and my organ sprung from its restraint without prompting.

  “Oh! By the great god Jupiter!”

  “Tanya, please!”

  Her eyes were wide, fixed on my penis. She spoke without removing them from my full erection, pushing my garment up to my waist. “Circumcision is quite beautiful,” she whispered, then raised her eyes to mine with an impish grin. “You are not such a small boy after all, Shimon.”

  I had never before felt the sensation I experienced at that moment, a combination of ache, euphoria, submission and helplessness, my voice hoarse and weak. “Tanya....”

  She looked into my eyes, her own face flushed with excitement and daring. “May I touch it?”

  “Oh, God, yes, please!”

  Her small fist enclosed me without hesitation in the same way I myself had begun to relieve

  similar, yet far lesser tension in the dark of night during my false trips to urinate in the trench beyond our house. After an all-too-brief period of firm, but gentle strokes of delicious ecstasy, I spurted high in the air to the gleeful laughter of my wondrous conspirator and my own groans of indescribable, delirious rapture.

  Our meetings became frequent after that illicit rendezvous. Tanya’s disregard of my

  crippled leg, her insatiable curiosity matching my own, the exploration and mutual stimulation of our young bodies became our avid pastime, resulting in our purity laws being at first completely forgotten, then ignored. Her knowledge of seemingly inexhaustible variations on Plato’s ‘beast with two backs’--derived, so she claimed, from surreptitious readings of certain Greek writings, provided a boundless variety of sexual pleasures that often climaxed with hilarious laughter.

  Between copulations, Tanya began probing my mind, displaying an intelligence and education that was leagues beyond what I had observed in any Jewish women of my acquaintance. Our post-coital conversations led us into discussions of the philosophies of Aristophanes, Socrates, and Aristotle, whereby I seemed to gain some modicum of respect from that often ill-tempered female, not the least exemplified by her cessation of calling me ‘stupid boy.’

  One of her more esoteric areas of knowledge was gleaned from her purported interest in becoming a surgeon. Tanya had been discharging a monthly issue of blood for a few years, which to my horror, she claimed, engaging in sex during that period made her free from the worry of pregnancy. What little I knew about the mysteries of the feminine body at that time included the paramount prohibition of the Torah regarding any contact whatsoever with a woman during menstruation, much less the impure abomination of intercourse. As in most other things regarding our brief relationship, however, Tanya prevailed. Particularly when she introduced me to the extremely acceptable substitution of the Greek method of intercourse during her maximum flow of uncleanness, the ecstatic substitution of fellatio and her reciprocal pleasure in cunnilingus. It was a rare meeting, therefore, when we did not give one another sexual pleasure one way or another, particularly toward the end of that memorable summer when we knew Tanya, her mother, and Vespasian would return to Rome.

  Although the temporary nature of our relationship had been clear from the very beginning, I was saddened during our final meeting in the forest at that summer’s end. Tanya seemed intent on storing up on her orgasms, still focused on her own pleasure as always. She never indicated a dram of affection for me, strenuously hushing my timid professions of love during my elation of copulation. Afterward, she invariably dismissed my declarations as not only impractical for a poor Jew to harbor amorous feelings for a wealthy citizen of Rome, but impossible even if she had

  returned the emotion, which she avowed she did not.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Nazarat, Galilée

  3766 Tishri (CE 20 September)

  Unlike most other couples whose marriage is arranged by their parents, it had always been assumed that Yehoshua and Rebekah would wed, since they have had eyes for one another from the time she began to bloom at the age of eleven and he in his fourteenth year. Although the traditional period between betrothal and mistitha17 was twelve months, so that a couple unknown to one another could become familiar, it could be shortened to a single month in circumstances such as my brother’s concern regarding possible retribution from Roman soldiers for his encounter with the tax collector..

  Shortly after summer solstice, Yehoshua spoke about the matter to Father, who offered Rebekah’s father an initial mohar18, which they negotiated and debated almost to the first month of harvest. The marriage contract was then quickly drawn up specifying the final agreed price of sixty-five shekels19. Although not an outrageous amount, more I believe, than Father could afford,

  especially considering the five-day wedding feast he would soon provide for half the town and

  surrounding villages. After signing their agreement on Wednesday, the betrothal day specified for a previously unwed gi
rl, and under a full moon for luck, the two male parents drank shechar20 to their future grandsons, the heat of their prior haggling banished from memory.

  Although the tradition of mattan21 was waning, several days before the ceremony, Yehoshua presented Rebekah with the gift of an intricately carved wooden necklace depicting the signal events of the Torah, from Moses’ stone tablets to the sign of the Maccabees, a string of mahogany beads linked together with the strong tightly woven cord of a fisherman’s net.

  The mistitha took place in Cheshvan22, when the heat of summer was behind us, the entire Galilee bathed in comfortable sunshine and cool nights, farmers relaxed with their harvest in, the vintage complete. My sisters having been so exuberant extending invitations to Yehoshua’s and Rebekah’s wedding that every relative, friend, and neighbor in Nazarat, even some of father’s customers from Sepphoris and people unknown to us from surrounding villages were all primed to celebrate the happy bonding of the two lovers.

  That occasion of Yehoshua’s marriage to Rebekah was a joyous event for all, but caused me no small degree of consternation. The common acknowledgement of religious support for both timing and sanction of their wedding followed by Tanya’s insouciant departure the previous month

  had left a gaping hole in my young life and a deep wound in my heart. My interest in other girls was nil, and the vocal reinforcement of our marriage laws and customs by relatives and neighbors made me wonder if I could ever fulfill Torah requirements in regard to that binding coupling when my own time came in the not too distant future.

  I pondered the intent of the admonition in Genesis which was unmistakable: “Increase and multiply.” Some rabbinical sage had added his own interpretation of that command with the observance that, “A bachelor is not truly a man at all.” During my religious studies, Rabbi Moshe

  claimed the most suitable age for a man to wed was the eighteenth year of his life, and that Yahweh cursed a man unwed at twenty.

  The evening before my brother was to marry, he donned his finest tunic of beige linen and blue mantel to join a group of his friends in a procession led by me (whom he had designated to remain at his side throughout the festivities) in my lopsided gait to fetch his betrothed from her father’s home. Little Rebekah was dressed in an elegant, flowing white robe trimmed in bright yellow, the traditional bridal veil, and leather round23, attempting to assume the role of the woman she would never become, as she climbed into our litter amid her own giggles and those of her pubescent bridesmaids. Our procession increased in number as we walked through the imminent dusk, lighting the way with lanterns and torches through the narrow streets of Nazarat Illit until the entourage included almost the entire village, singing wedding songs, rejoicing with the happy couple to gather en masse outside our house for the Scripture blessings of my parents on the nuptial of Rebekah and Yehoshua, which was echoed by the crowd, adding their sentiments for a fruitful, happy life together. James blessed the nuptial pair with a special incantation composed from several pertinent Torah passages personalized from our priestly brother to Yehoshua and Rebekah, then led the people in marriage hymns familiar to all.