by Jay Parini
“You’ll attend this school one day,” my father said. “I have already written to Gamaliel about you.”
This startled and impressed me. My father had, on his own, taken my intellect seriously. He would put me on this path as best he could. Of course, he could send me to a school like this because he could afford such a luxury, which fed his own feelings of importance in the Jewish community. He would proudly tell his friends in Tarsus that young Paul sat at the feet of the grandson of Hillel. In his mind, I would take my place in this tradition, a scholar of the Hebrew scriptures, perhaps as a great rabbi. He nonetheless insisted that I learn to stitch and fold tents like any one of his workers. I had nimble fingers, taking to these tasks eagerly, and my affinity for this work pleased my father.
It was lucky for me that my father had so many projects in his business to oversee that I could escape his surveillance. Tarsus was a splendid playground, as pagan temples could be found in every quarter, all of them seething with the devotees of strange gods, and this spiritual frenzy appealed to me. The worshippers of the god Mithras, for example, caught my attention, as they met in underground vaults and sacrificed bulls, bathing in their blood, which became for them a redemptive gesture that helped them to purify their souls. I knew one boy, Fabian, the son of a Roman guard, who had contacts with this group, and once I stepped beside him into a cave at the outskirts of the city.
They huddled together in the dark, which only a handful of large candles illumined. Most of them wore long white robes, although one of them, a kind of high priest, had purple robes and a diadem of flowers. He held a scepter in the air, chanting in a language unfamiliar to my ears. They had lifted a living bull to a makeshift platform, and one of the votaries slit its throat. One by one the worshippers stepped beneath it, allowing the stream of blood to cover them. The women among them trilled their tongues, and the men sang together, accompanied by a hollow drum. I had never heard such peculiar music.
Fabian had said, “We must all be washed in the blood of the bull.”
I had no wish to do anything of the sort and stepped away with my back to the cave wall.
“These people, they are worse than mad,” my father said, when I asked what he knew about the Mithras cult. “Stay far away from them, son. Do you hear me?”
Often I felt like a thief in my own house, scarcely welcome, taking what was not mine; and yet some of my happiest days unfolded in Tarsus. I loved to see the mountains in the northern distance, the peaks with snowy scalps lifting through the tree line in early spring. I dreamed of climbing those peaks, rising in a snowfield, white as the sun, all radiance and dissolving into light. I longed to get out of this world, my life, my body: to rise and rise.
I was, in fact, a dreamy child, one who loved to sit by the harbor in the early morning, watching merchant ships depart for Cyprus or the farthest ends of the earth. Memories of that quayside lingered. I once, for instance, saw a lightly bearded young man kissing an older sailor, and the image unsettled me. It’s odd how certain recollections will stick, while others—more significant—just fall away. I would shelter under a tarpaulin, listening to the talk of sailors, absorbing tales of adventure, of foreign tribes and customs, exotic sea creatures, of unlikely and miraculous landscapes with vistas of snow or sand. These travelers had been to Spain and Arabia, to Athens and Macedonia, to Alexandria and countless seedy ports along the Black Sea.
Everyone talked of Rome, of course: the center of the world. And I dreamed of going there one day.
The odor of spices—cloves and coriander, nutmeg and cinnamon—lifted from dockside stalls, and the quayside itself churned with prostitutes, girls and young men as well, who seemed inoffensive to me. I didn’t know for certain, not yet, what they offered for a fee. Yet I understood only too well that my father wouldn’t approve of their behavior, and heard him talking to one of his assistants about the “vile creatures” who approached sailors and visitors, taking money for “the use of their filthy bodies.”
I often thought about that phrase: the use of their filthy bodies.
“Your body is God’s temple,” my father told me, quoting the Tohorot.
He was always quoting something, usually getting it wrong. But I never forgot many of these sayings. And he would remind me of our status.
“We’re Roman citizens,” he said, as if I might forget. “Your grandfather purchased our citizenship at a very dear price. So we may appeal to the emperor when it’s necessary, and they know this, the authorities. Never be afraid of them. Ask to speak to the emperor yourself if you should find yourself in trouble. You have every right.”
This sounded improbable, as the Son of God in Rome (as Tiberius fashioned himself) probably had better ways to occupy himself than listening to the complaints of minor subjects from the provinces; but my father never let go of this. He was himself an emperor in his world: an iron-fisted man, a man of commercial influence, a godlike figure who didn’t allow fools room for their foolishness.
He was a lonely man as well, especially after the death of my mother, and I rarely saw him with friends. We never met for meals with neighbors, as others did. It would be difficult even to call our little household a family, in fact. It was just my father and me, with a sister who lived far away and rarely saw us, and three slaves.
I did, however, have my friend Simon, whose father worked closely with mine as a shipping agent and might have been considered a friend since they very occasionally dined together, though nobody thought of them as equals. I know my father didn’t. But that didn’t matter, and I grew fond of Simon, an orange-haired boy with gray-green eyes. He caught everyone’s attention, as nobody looked quite like him in Tarsus.
My father whispered that Simon must have slave blood in him, “possibly Egyptian,” though I had never seen a slave with orange hair or green eyes. He was taller than me by a good measure: I doubt that the top of my head ever reached his chin. Strong and lean, from the age of ten or eleven he spoke with the authority of a man, in resolute tones, with a knowledge of the world around him. I had never observed such confidence in a boy.
We both liked swimming and knew the good places along the banks of the Cydnus, some miles above the city. My father had taken me to a rock pool in this river when I was five or six, teaching me to feel comfortable in the water as we played in the shallows. I never felt closer to him, not before or after. In the course of my instruction, I discovered that after a while I didn’t need his big hand under my back. I could float by myself and would seek out places to swim on my own. The gift of swimming was perhaps his most precious offering.
One swimming hole beneath a waterfall near Tarsus became a favorite place of escape for Simon and me. The waterfall crashed into an icy pool below the river, fanning out in ripples, obscuring the sharp blades of rock that sometimes flashed below the surface. My father would never approve of my swimming in this place, nor would Simon’s father. But we didn’t care what they said. It was enough that they couldn’t see us, and that both had better things to do than worry about where their sons went to swim.
Indifference to children is also a grant of freedom.
On hot summer mornings Simon and I walked there together. Unlike me, Simon was a fine diver, an arrow shot into the stream between its rocky blades. I would follow in his path, but nervously, jumping feetfirst, as I sensed the danger. But danger was part of the thrill of this activity, part of us now.
I was beginning to learn to live with peril, even to crave it.
By the edge of the pool were gray rocks, warmer than the water below or beside them. We crawled onto them like lizards after paddling in the swift gurgle of the stream, and would lie in the sun, letting pearly beads of water evaporate from our skin, saying nothing, needing to say nothing, just listening to the water tumble below us, fizzing and churning.
I loved its hoarse voice, its throaty rumble.
Simon himself
had none of my scholarly or religious instincts, and he wondered politely about my devotion to reading the scriptures or my interest in Greek poets. Once in a while I allowed myself to think aloud in his company about philosophical matters, as if testing the waters. But he would bat away these ruminations.
“Do you care nothing for this earth?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“This world, the earth, a running stream. Not the clouds!”
It was an odd thing for him to ask me, and I quoted from David: The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.
This drew an approving grin, and I can still see the happy opening in Simon’s face, his brilliant white teeth with uneven spaces between them. With his smile, he blessed and welcomed me, even when I went overboard in conversation. He didn’t mind if I was silly with philosophical affectations and quotations, as long as (like him) I took pleasure in the cool stream and the hot stones where we lay. I think friendship itself was everything to Simon.
One day at the far end of summer, when it was too hot to breathe and one could not sit anywhere comfortably, Simon and I hiked out to this waterfall, our secret place. I had turned fifteen that summer and felt like a man, with a silky beard darkening my cheeks. I let my hair grow to a fashionable length, and wore only the finest linen tunics and leather sandals with glass-studded straps, an affectation that annoyed my father, who once said, “I’ve seen girls in those slippers.”
The remark stung, and it hurts to recall it. How could he humiliate me like that? But my father clung to every convention and had no tolerance for youthful attempts to separate oneself, to express uniqueness.
As Simon and I approached the waterfall, I began to speak about the existence of the soul, its name and nature, or the possibility that our bodies might one day inhabit a different form, something quite unlike what we understood as human. The soul itself, I said, was possibly like a bird, high in the heavens, and in its soaring left these passing shadows on the ground, these bodily traces of its existence.
These ideas had come to me in a dream and troubled me. My friend Fabian had mentioned that the votaries of Mithras believed in the divine re-creation of life in some cosmic realm, and this had excited me. I wished that the Hebrew scriptures had talked more explicitly about such things, the shape of the life that lay beyond us, whatever glistened at the horizon, beyond the edge of every visible thing.
Simon let me ramble. But then he sighed loudly.
“I think I’m boring you,” I said.
“It’s a little sad for me to see you troubled,” he replied, as we approached the cliff above the rock pool. “You should know, I don’t really mind what you say. You’re interested in these notions.”
“But I’m dull,” I said.
“Or mad,” he said. Then he laughed, and it pleased me that he would laugh and not simply shrug or turn away from me.
We stood for a while in silence on the bluff above the pool, taking in the beauty of the place, the churned-up freshness of the air, the crackling water, a wistful breeze. I watched a large and colorful bird hover, then drop into the river, rise with a fish in its mouth. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, and the salt of perspiration ran into my mouth as I tilted my head upward. Quite literally, I seemed to be melting away and drinking myself.
I watched as Simon slipped from his clothes and plunged headfirst into the water below. Many times I had watched him arrowing through the air like this, always so agile, unafraid of diving from a height.
Now I leaned over the cliff, slightly dizzy. The sun blinded me, and I had to shade my eyes, expecting a shout. He would usually draw me into the water within minutes, forcing me to abandon my fears.
I called out, “Simon!”
When his head didn’t break the water within moments, and no voice called from below, I was only confused, not frightened. He had probably come up in a different place, farther downstream than usual.
I shouted again, but his name hung in the air, unanswered, as the sun tucked itself behind a cloud as if ashamed of something.
And then the day darkened.
Sick with fear, I jumped, and was sucked through the air in the downward draft, breaking the hard glass of the water with a slap that stung the soles of my feet. My heels dug into the sandy bottom, stirred to a muddy cloud. When I opened my eyes, it was impossible to see: the water opaque, a hail of bubbles and swirling sand. Lifting my head above the surface, I scanned the river and its banks without seeing him.
“Simon!”
I must have called his name a dozen times but recall only a blur, the watery fizz, an upturned sky, and sharp black ledges covered with moss. I saw a mass of scudding clouds, an innocent bird that had strayed into this terrible scene without knowing what it had happened upon by chance.
I climbed onto nearby rocks to scan the pool, hoping that Simon had come up in some unexpected place or, perhaps, lay quietly under a ledge. It was like him to play games with me, although this was a step too far.
The waterfall thundered in my ears, and my whole body shook. Could it be suddenly so cold?
I called again and again for Simon, but with a faint voice now.
After a timeless time of searching the shoreline, I saw him at last, in the distance, the unmistakable orange hair, in a pale wad of reeds. I didn’t understand at first, or dare to understand, what this could mean, even as I approached. I waded slowly into the shallows, talking to myself, praying. I could hear my voice, oddly removed from my body, calling out, “No, no, no…”
I lifted Simon to a bank of dry grass nearby. A wide gash in his forehead explained what had happened only too well. He had caught the left side of his head on a buried rock blade, and it had sliced away a part of his skull. I could see into the cavity itself, its tangle of blood and gristle and soft sponge.
I knelt over Simon’s limp body, putting my face against his chest. And held him for a long time, my maimed dear friend.
I whispered his name to myself, letting it hang in the air above us as his bloody head lay against my chest.
I wanted him back again. Back, back, back.
But he was not coming back, not in the same way.
Ever.
Chapter Three
PAUL
I recall one horrific day on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
“Help me,” a voice cried.
A man quivered on a cross with pain, hung by the wrists.
I had seen crucifixions before, especially near Jerusalem. Crosses were a common sight on dusty roads leading into the countryside of Judea or anywhere in the empire, with miserable creatures strung up, fly-bitten, bruised, dying, or dead: thieves and runaway slaves, rebels and bandits, adversaries of empire beside those falsely accused. This serial ordeal of milestones along any Roman road warned us, Jew and Greek alike, to behave as they told us.
“Help, sir!”
“I can’t do anything,” I said, though his black eyes caught me on their hooks. What had he done? Steal a handful of nuts, a loaf of bread? Prayed too loudly? Thrown a stone at a Roman soldier? It took very little to condemn a Jew to death in Palestine. And I should have known better than to pause beneath a cross or to engage with a dying man. The consequences for assisting a wretch in these circumstances would be horrific. I might hang next to him before long. The law was the law.
On the other hand, I saw no soldiers in sight, nor anyone else.
I found a suitable stone, about the size of a hammer’s head. With an energy that appalled me, I lifted it twice, hitting him squarely on each of his kneecaps, which crumpled under my blows like eggshells. He sighed, a mixture of anguish and relief, staring ahead in fixed agony.
“It works,” a friend had explained to me. “You speed them on their way by breaking both knees. There is no better solution.”
I watched in agony as the poor man quickly proved
unable to support himself with his legs, so all weight shifted to his upper body. Within minutes, the shoulders slid from their sockets. His elbows and wrists gave way, elongating the arms. He sighed again, his mouth distorting, his eyes bulging. With his rib cage lifting, the wretch gulped for air, in a state of protracted inhalation. Suffocation came quickly. Within less than fifteen minutes, he was dead.
We all suffered with this Roman bit in our teeth, and I myself could take no pride in my Roman citizenship.
This was especially so in Jerusalem, with the imperial guards in the streets and sprawling military encampments at the edge of the city to the southwest. The camps swarmed with boisterous troops who spoke a rude dialect of Latin that few of us understood. The officers rode tall war horses through the markets, taking whatever pleased them without paying. I’d seen any number of protesters cut down brutally with a sword, their bodies left for the buzzards, since it was dangerous to reclaim the corpses. And the Antonia Fortress, which had held Jesus briefly on the night before his crucifixion, bulged with Jews who had, for any number of reasons, dared to resist Rome, even in small ways (like spitting in the path of a soldier or refusing to nod in respect when a centurion passed).
It had never been like this under Herod the Great, who had rebuilt the Temple almost by himself. But under Herod Antipas, one of his measly and self-serving sons, a Jew could be arrested for anything: stealing a handful of dates or figs, even praying in public. Almost any gesture of defiance could offend the empire, appear treasonous, and lead to imprisonment. Public trials had become sideshows. A simple word from above (and one could never tell who spoke on behalf of Rome) could send a man to his death by crucifixion or beheading—the latter reserved for Roman citizens like myself, though I had witnessed beheadings with a dull blade, a sight not worth calling to mind.