My Glorious Brothers (19 page)

I walked in the night, sometimes alone, sometimes in the press of my men, and I didn't care, so much was the heart out of us. In the beginning, it was only important that I keep near Judas; but as the night wore on, a cloudy, sullen night, I wrapped myself in loneliness, in bitterness, in bereavement—and I separated myself from Judas. I let him go past me and lose himself. Not so much anger as a burning, corroding frustration and fear gripped me. All men were human, but Judas was something else. His tears were a lie; his grief was no grief; his soul was lost and he was like a sword that has only one purpose and one destiny.

Hatred came, slowly; the old awful black hatred of my brother—that was compounded out of such a welter of things, such a complex of things, such a mystery of things, being old and bitter and insatiable, and sunk into that ancient, ancient tale of how Cain slew Abel. And who had slain Eleazar? And who would slay the rest of us, one by one, without peace and without end and without surcease? Eleazar was dead, but already for Judas there were only the men, the army, the struggle, the resistance that had squeezed the last ounce of mercy out of him.

Now, moving slowly through that despairing and unholy night, dragging my feet, careless of hope or tomorrow or anything but the pit of death and destruction into which I felt myself sinking, I recalled how it had been when Judas came back to Modin and stood over the body of the lovely and splendid woman I had loved, how he stood there at first without saying a word, without sign or evidence of grief—and then spoke only of vengeance.

Who had slain her, he would say…

“Thy brother's keeper,” the Adon, the old man had said to me. “And thou, Simon, thou art thy brother's keeper, thou and no other.”

But Judas, whose hands were already so red with blood, so wet and red with blood, could think only of reddening them more—and vengeance was his, not the Lord God's, not the people's, but his and only his…

I was standing still, moving no more. What was the use of moving? Where were we going? The old man was dead, Eleazar was dead—and how long now for the others? Why go? Why flee? I sank to the ground, and here and there, near by, other men were giving up the flight, the purpose—the drive that had driven us so long; and then I heard the voice of my brother in the night.

Let him seek me then. I damned him. I stretched out there on the ground, my face in my hands, and his voice came: “Simon! Simon!”

As the devil seeks a man.

“Simon!”

Without end, for he was the Maccabee—without end.

“Simon!”

“God's curse on you, go and leave me!”

“Simon!”

I lifted my face, and he was above me, peering at me through the dark. “Simon?” he asked.

“What do you want?”

“Get up,” he said. “Get up, Simon ben Mattathias.”

I rose and stood before him.

“Are you wounded that you lie in the night?” he asked quietly. “Or is it fear—the damned fear that was always in your heart?”

My knife was out—and one arm at his throat, and still he didn't move but looked at me coolly. Then I hurled the knife into the darkness and covered my face with my hands.

“Why didn't you kill me?” Judas demanded. “For the rotten black hatred in you.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I will not leave you alone. Where are your men?”

“Where is Eleazar?”

“He is dead,” Judas said evenly. “Strong he was, but you are stronger, Simon ben Mattathias. Only your heart is not like his. For victory—you're good for victory, but God help Israel if it should depend on you in defeat!”

“Shut up!”

“Why? Because you can't bear the truth? Where was the sword of Simon when Eleazar died? Where was it?”

The long moments dragged by while we stood there, and finally, finally and at long last, I asked my brother, “What shall I do?”

“Gather your men,” he said without emotion. “Eleazar is dead, and we are full of grief. But the enemy is not grieved. Gather your men, Simon.”

In the early morning, we sat around a fire, Judas on one side of me, Ruben on the other, and all around us lay our men, some asleep, some awake and trying to comprehend what had been; and Ruben wept the way a child weeps, telling us, “He was your brother, but he was my child, my child, and I betrayed him—and I ran when he stood, and I turned my back to them when he turned his face to them, and why am I alive when he lies dead there in the valley?”

“Peace,” I said to him. “For the love of God, stop!” For I felt that if I had to listen to any more of Ruben's grief, I would surely go mad. But Judas said, softly and gently:

“Let him get it out of him, Simon, Simon—let him get it out of him, otherwise it will swell up like a cancer inside of him and destroy him.”

“I taught him the forge,” Ruben wept. “I taught him the secrets of metal, the ancient secrets, and he burned as pure as the iron when it turns blue with the flame. God gave me no son, but he gave me Eleazar, and I betrayed him, I slew him. May my hands rot and fall off! May my heart turn into lead! May I be accursed forever and forever!” He wrapped his face in his cloak, and he rocked back and forth, moaning and sobbing…

***

In a way it was the end. There was reprieve, yet in a way it was the end of all my glorious brothers, the sons of Mattathias, who had become like heroes of old to Israel. For the first time, we could not turn and fight. In the old days, with five hundred men Judas would have turned and faced the enemy and laughed at their numbers, and cut at them and harried them and made every valley a hell and every pass a slaughterhouse; but the men left to us would not face the elephants, and there was no other way for it but to go back to Jerusalem and join our brothers behind the walls Judas had erected to defend the Temple Mount.

With Eleazar's death, something had happened to Judas, something had broken inside of him, and when I said to him, “What have we to do with fighting behind walls?” he answered me, “My brothers are there.” “And we will be there—and will Lysias have to seek us?” “And shall I make war again?” Judas asked hopelessly. “The people are in their villages. Shall I tell them to burn their homes and go to Ephraim? Will they listen to me again?”

“You are the Maccabee,” I told him. “Judas, my brother Judas, heed me—you are the Maccabee, and the people will listen.”

For a long while, he was silent, and then he shook his head. “No, Simon—no. I am not like you, and you are like my father, the Adon; but I am not like him and not like you—and I will go to my brothers at Jerusalem. If you would make war from the wilderness, then take the men, and I will go alone to Jerusalem and fight with my brothers.”

“You are the Maccabee,” I said.

And the next day, we joined Jonathan and John at the Temple and told them of Eleazar's death…

Judas called a council, and Ragesh came, and Samuel ben Zebulun, and Enoch ben Samuel of Alexandria, and twenty other Adons and Rabbis, some of them men who had sat at our first council so long ago, and even as we came together, the elephant troops were entering the city. It was a grim and worried group of old men who faced the four of us and listened to Judas's short and bitter account of our defeat.

“Thus it was,” he finished; “and my brother Eleazar is dead and many other Jews too, so I came back here to defend the Temple. The walls of the Temple are strong, and if it is your will, I will die here. Or—I will go away to Ephraim and fight the old war. I do not think that the elephants are invincible. My brother Eleazar slew one with a single blow of his hammer. These are beasts that God made, and man can kill them. We must learn how.” He finished, and below the Temple we could hear the cries of the mercenaries in the city streets. But the city was empty and broken, and how much more destruction could they wreak upon what was already a tomb?

“What does Simon think?” Samuel ben Zebulun asked, and I looked curiously at this proud and angry old man of the South.

“You ask a son of Mattathias?” I said.

“I ask you, Simon.”

“I am not the Maccabee,” I told them. “I am not an Adon or a Rabbi. I am Simon, the least of the sons of Mattathias, and I judged in Ephraim. This is not the wilderness—this is Jerusalem.”

“And what will you do?” Ragesh asked dryly.

“I will follow my brother Judas.”

Ragesh shrugged. “And there will be war and more war—and war without end.”

“I have never known anything else,” I said. “And yet I have not bent my knee.”

“You are a proud man,” Ragesh said. “Would you put yourself before Israel?”

Jonathan answered him, angrily, almost wildly. “Did my brother Eleazar put himself before Israel? Did my father? Do we walk about in silks, with gold and diamonds?” Judas gripped his arm; tears rolled down the boy's cheeks as he stood there, taut and trembling.

“So I am scolded by children,” Ragesh said softly.

“And am I a child?” Jonathan cried. “When I was fourteen I had the bow in my hand, and when I was fifteen I killed my first man. I know you, old man!”

“Enough!” Ragesh roared.

“Enough,” Judas said.

“Be still, Jonathan, be still.”

Enoch of Alexandria rose, a white-bearded, splendid old man of seventy, tall and gentle and soft-eyed. He was one of the old Kohanim who had come back from Egypt, that he might spend the years left to him at the Temple, and now he spread his arms for silence.

“So be it, and peace. I am an old man, Judas Maccabeus, yet I do you honor and there is no man in Israel I put before you. Two things I wanted to see before I died, the holy Temple and the face of the Maccabee. I have seen both, and in neither was I disappointed. Yet I am a Jew—” He paused and sighed. “I am a Jew, my son, and our ways are not the ways of the
nokri.
Shall we kill without end? Then will we not become creatures of death instead of life? When I came through the villages, I saw that the people were at peace, building their houses again, and the grapes were heavy on the vine. What does God ask of man, but that he render justice and keep the covenant? Pride goeth, I tell you. We have driven home to the Greek well enough that the Jew is not a meek and humble creature with whom he can do his will, and now, in Antioch, one party wars against the other for power. I know that, my son, and I am old in the ways of kings and their courts. This Lysias will make peace with us, if we come to him with soft words instead of hard hearts. He would rather fight for power in Antioch and Damascus than here in Jerusalem—and if he asks tribute, we will ask peace and the right to our own ways and our own law and our own covenant with our own God. That is the best way, my son. We do not reject you. Indeed, we offer you the highest honor in all Israel, the priesthood of the Temple—”

They all looked at Judas, who stood with his arm around Jonathan. He did not answer at first, nor was there any sign of his emotions on that handsome, auburn-bearded face of his. Tall, tired, stained with the blood and dirt of the battle he had just come from, his striped cloak hanging from his great shoulders, the sword of Apollonius slung from his side, he was less and more than human. How many memories I evoke of Judas! Yet how little I can recapture him or find him or know him! The Jew was the essence of him—the making of him and the death of him; only a Jew could have listened to the old men as he listened, thinking of Eleazar, loving Eleazar as he must have loved him, remembering the hundred and more times Eleazar had fought beside him—as he said to me once, “How shall I come to harm, Simon, with that hammer on one side of me and your sword on the other?” Only a Jew could have listened, and asked finally, in a voice low with anguish:

“And all we have fought—all our battles, all our suffering and striving—all this you will place at the mercy of a Greek's word?”

Even Ragesh pitied him then, and said insinuatingly, “Not the mercy of a Greek's word, Judas, my son. There is a political balance of power now that did not exist five years ago, and this small defeat by the elephant troops does not change it We have arms and thousands of trained men, and we have taught the Greek that the Jew is not something to be laughed at. Therefore, we are in a position to bargain, to take full advantage of the delicate situation that the death of Antiochus left, and to turn it to our advantage. This is not a quick or hasty decision, Judas.”

“And if I had turned back the elephants,” Judas pleaded, “would you have spoken this way? You call me the Maccabee—is this the first battle I have fought? When no one could see hope, when we faced only death and destruction—when this very Temple was a desecration, did I not go out then with my father and my brothers and wage war for the freedom of Israel? And did I not triumph? Does one defeat wipe out every victory we have won? Why do you turn on me? Why do you turn on me? You offer me the high priesthood—did I want it? Did I fight for rewards? Look at me as I stand here—and this is all that I own in the world, the cloak on my back and the sword by my side! Is there any man who can say that he saw a son of Mattathias loot the dead? Do you think me ambitious? Go ask my brother Eleazar whose body lies back there, crushed by the feet of a hundred beasts! I want no rewards—I want only freedom for my land, and you tell me you will sell our freedom and bargain and pledge our lives to the word of a Greek!”

“Judas, Judas ben Mattathias,” Ragesh said patiently. “It is not one victory or one defeat. Even before the battle, we had met and discussed those terms we would ask from Lysias—”

“Before the battle,” Judas said. “And while I and my brothers fought, you palavered with them here, behind our backs! Ragesh, God have mercy on you, for you have sold me and you have sold my people!”

Now, indeed, I expected Ragesh to fly into a rage, but the whip of my brother's words struck him like a lash across the face, and the proud little man bent his head while his lips moved in silence.