My Glorious Brothers (24 page)

Judas came to me, stepping across the bodies of the dead, and he held out a flask of water.

“Give it to the wounded,” I managed to croak.

“No, Simon, better that the sound should drink—otherwise there will be no wounded tonight.”

I wet my lips; I could not do more than that. Ruben came to me and kissed me. “My friend, Simon, good-bye.” I shook my head. “No—good-bye,” he repeated, “and peace unto thee. I am happy. This way I would want it. It has been a good thing to live with you; it will not be hard to die with the sons of Mattathias.”

I could not think of the dead, or the end, or the past or the future; I could only think of each blessed moment of rest, and I could only desire that there should be a moment more, a moment more before they returned to the attack.

They came again. Our circle was smaller. They came again and again, and now I was only a few yards from my brothers—they who had been on the other side of the circle before. We beat them off, and they came again, and now we were a half circle against a mighty boulder, and here we would stay and here we would die.

Every motion became unendurable agony. Now I felt no pain from my wounds; now I felt nothing and heard nothing, but knew only one thing, the terrible, awful weight of my sword, and yet somehow I lifted it again and again and thrust and hacked, even as my brothers were thrusting and hacking, even as Judas fought with the long, keen weapon that he had taken from dead Apollonius so long ago. And still they came—and I knew that they would come forever, until I died, until every Jew died. Time stopped; all things stopped, except the movement of the mercenaries crawling over the piles of dead to get at us. Sometimes, there would be a pause, but always the sublime sweetness of it would go almost instantly and they would be back at us.

And then there was a pause that did not come to an end, and suddenly I was conscious of night, not twilight, not the slow change from day to evening, but night enfolding us and a driving, beating rain on my face. For a moment, I was certain I stood alone in that ghastly place of death, and I wet my mouth with rain and cried out—not words but frantic, sobbing sounds, and I kept that up until I felt hands on my face, and then I knew I lay on the ground and there was a voice in my ear, the voice of my brother Jonathan, asking me, asking me, my brother's keeper, “Simon, Simon, where is Judas?”

“I don't know—I don't know.”

Together, we crawled from body to body; there were no other living, no other living. From body to body, we crawled, and we found Judas. Black as pitch was the night, yet when he was under our hands, we knew him, and somehow we found the strength to raise him in our arms and to carry him from that hellish place.

Very slowly we moved, very slowly, and every step was pain. Sometimes we were so close to the mercenaries that we could hear their voices plainly, and then later we heard them no more—and still we went on. How long I don't know; that night had no beginning and it had no end, but sometime we found a narrow cleft in the rocks, and there we lay down with our brother and for all of the driving rain, we fell immediately into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion.

I don't know what time it was the next day when we woke. Rain still poured out of the gray skies and neither the mercenaries nor the place where we had fought were in sight.

We had no words to speak; we had no tears to shed. It was done, and Judas, our brother Judas, the Maccabee who was without peer and without reproach, was dead. Tenderly, Jonathan and I bore his body in our arms. All things were over, all things were done, yet still we walked and still we went inland in the direction of Modin and the old rooftree of Mattathias.

There are no words for me to say what I felt then, or what I thought—just as there were no words that could pass between Jonathan and me. Judas was dead…

***

So I write it, an old man, an old Jew searching in the past, in that strange and troubled land of memories. So I wrote, and now I can write no more, for it seems now that there is little purpose and less knowing in the telling of this tale.

Now night is a somber time, and though all the land lies in peace, I, Simon, the least of my glorious brothers, know no peace.

May it please the noble Senate that my mission is done; as instructed, I proceeded to the land of the Jews—or
Yehudim,
as they title themselves—and remained there three months in pursuance of my duties. During that time, I held several conversations with their chieftain, the Maccabee, as they call him, and also styled Simon the Ethnarch; and these conversations touched on many matters, including future relations between Judea and Rome. This I will deal with in the course of my report, and again in the few recommendations I humbly submit. The rest of the time was spent in a study of their land and customs and in the preparation of this report.

As ordered, I went by ship to Tyre, and there disembarked. Having no knowledge whatsoever of Jews, having neither met nor seen one prior to my arrival at Tyre, I determined to spend a few days in that city and facilitate my journey to Judea. Thereupon, I proceeded to the Jewish quarter, which is fairly large in Tyre, and made myself acquainted with these strange people for the first time.

Fortunately, I encountered no language difficulties. Aramaic is the common tongue of almost all peoples dwelling in this part of the world, and it is so close to the dialect spoken by the inhabitants of Carthage—which I mastered during the Punic Wars—that I found myself very soon speaking it as well as a native. I would recommend that all legates and ambassadors dispatched to this area be versed in the Aramaic, both to glorify the long arm of Rome and to facilitate exchange of ideas.

Aramaic is the common tongue of the Jews, as well as of the Phoenicians, the Samarians, the Syrians, the Philistines and the many other people who inhabit this area—and also the Greeks; but among the Jews, on certain occasions, they will use Hebrew, the ancient language of what they call their “holy scriptures,” a speech related to the Aramaic but hardly intelligible to me. Even children appear to be versed in both tongues, but for matters of everyday usage, I found the Aramaic to be sufficient.

With the Jews in Tyre, I had less trouble than with the local overlords. The latter were at first inclined to circumscribe my coming and going, whereupon I went to Malthus, the prince, and let him know in no uncertain terms that whatsoever my treatment was, the details would be included in my official report to the Senate. After that, the interference ceased.

The Jews, on the other hand, have a clearly defined code of conduct toward strangers, and though most of them had only heard of Rome and hardly seen a citizen before, I was received with great courtesy, nor was I barred from any part of their little community, even their holy places which they call “synagogues.” This amazed me all the more since I had already learned—during my few hours in Tyre—with what hatred and suspicion and contempt they are regarded by all the other inhabitants of the city. Nor is this hatred unique to Tyre; I found it a constant quality during the whole of my overland trip to Judea, even slaves, whose condition defies description, finding time and venom with which to hate the Jews. So consistent a manifestation as this intrigued me highly, and I think I have discovered many of the factors which contribute toward it; some of these I will enumerate and elaborate upon in the course of my report.

Of the Jews in Tyre, I will say little, since I consider it more useful to describe my first impressions of them in their native land, Judea; yet I must mention that in all ways, they keep themselves apart from all other inhabitants, neither eating the same food nor drinking the same wine. Also there is about them something shared by the Judeans, but far more noticeable in a non-Jewish land—that is a fierce and unbending pride and superiority, which is somehow mixed with incredible humility, a quality which both attracts and enrages, so that from the very first, in spite of their courtesy, I found myself repressing a desire to evidence hostility toward them.

Among them, I found and hired an old Jewish man, one Aaron ben Levi, or, in our terms, Aaron the son of Levi; and I might mention here that these people have no surnames, yet the humblest of them will trace their genealogy carefully and specifically over five or ten or even fifteen generations. That they are a very ancient people, no one can gainsay, perhaps the most ancient in all this area, and they also possess a sense of the past which is both astonishing and disturbing.

This Aaron ben Levi proved most useful as a guide and as an informant; for he had been a camel driver and caravan man all his life, except for those years when he left his calling to fight under the banner of the Maccabee; and he not only knew every road and bypath in Palestine, but proved most valuable in his memories of the Jewish wars. I also purchased a horse and saddle for seventeen shekels, both of which are noted and attested in the general accounting, as well as an ass for the old man; whereupon we journeyed southward along the main coastal highway toward Judea.

A word or two about this camel guide of mine, since many of his characteristics are typical of the Jews and will thereby prove valuable in estimating the potential of these people—as well as the necessarily great menace of them. His age was somewhere in the late sixties, but he was dry and hard and brown as a nut; he had a high, thin nose, most of his teeth, and a pair of sparkling and insolent gray eyes. Unlike most of these people, who are generally taller than any others in this part of the world, or even in Rome, he was small and bent, but his whole attitude and bearing was outrageously patrician. Though before I took him for hire he had been without work for more than a year, and thereby a charge of the community, literally a beggar, he gave every impression of doing me a great favor by accepting my food and money. Though never by word or look could he be accused of actually offending me, he somehow mixed every word and every movement with a pitying sort of contempt that indicated clearly enough that even though I was less than dirt, it was an accident of birth that made me so, and therefore I was not wholly to blame.

I recognize that these are strange impressions for a citizen of Rome and a legate of the Senate to record; but in all truth, they are so characteristic of this whole people—although varying in subtlety according to the individual—that I cannot refuse to note them.

At first, it was my intention to force him to keep his place, and to treat him as I would any chance guide, but I soon realized the futility of this and began to understand a maxim fairly common in these parts, to wit: take a Jew for a slave, and he will soon be your master. The Senate will acknowledge that I am not without experience in these matters, and as a centurian I learned to lead men and maintain their respect, but with these people, that is impossible. This Aaron ben Levi never failed to advise me upon any and all subjects under the sun; his advice was always patronizing and brooked no argument, and he consistently gave forth with that stark, somewhat sickening, proud and humble Jewish philosophy, which is compounded out of their history and their barbaric and somewhat vile religious beliefs, and embodied in what they call their “holy scrolls,” or, in their tongue, their Torah. For example, I asked him once why he, like all his people, insisted on burdening himself with his long woolen cloak, a garment that falls from head to feet and is striped all over in black and white, and instead of answering, he asked me:

“And why, Roman, do you wear a breastplate that gets so hot under our sun that it probably burns your skin?”

“It has nothing to do with your cloak.”

“On the other hand, it has everything to do with my cloak.”

“How?”

He sighed and said, “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.”

“And what, precisely, has that to do with it?” I asked.

“All or nothing, as you will,” he said rather sadly, and that was the end of it. I could either kill him or send him packing, but neither would further my purpose, which was to get to Judea and open negotiations with the Maccabee. So I swallowed my anger and took refuge in silence, a thing one is forced to do with these people. Another time I asked him about the Maccabee, the first Maccabee, who was called Judas the son of Mattathias and who was slain early in their recent wars against the Greeks.

“What sort of a man was he?” I asked.

And this old, miserable, wretched camel driver looked at me with pitying commiseration and said, “You would not understand, even if I told you in the greatest details.”

“Suppose you try to tell me.”

“Life is short and death is forever,” he smiled. “Shall a man try to do what is futile?”

It was then that I first used an expression which sooner or later, in one form or another, comes to the lips of everyone who has to do with these people, saying, “You filthy Jew!”

The reaction was quite different from what I expected, for the old man straightened up; his eyes flashed such hatred and anger as I had not seen before, and he said very softly, “The Lord God is one, Roman, and I am an old man, but I led a twenty under the Maccabee, and I have my knife and you have your sword, so let us see what a man of the Maccabee is like, even if I cannot tell you what he himself was.”

I resolved the difference without having to slay him, for I did not see that the purpose of Rome would be served in my killing an aged and rather feeble camel driver; yet it was a lesson to me in what these people are and how they must be approached. Difference is enshrined with them, and what we consider holy, they consider profane, and what we consider fine, they consider despicable. All things desirable to us are considered hateful to them, and all the tolerance we have toward the customs and the Gods of others is turned by them into a fierce intolerance. Even as they decry our pleasures, so do they blaspheme against our Gods and against the Gods of all people. Without a morality, they are also without a God, for they worship nonexistence, and their synagogues and their holy Temple in Jerusalem have no images or presence within them. Their God—if it is a God that they worship—is nowhere, and even its name, which is written, is forbidden to be spoken by any inhabitant of the land. This name is “Yahvah,” but never is it even whispered; instead they address this mysterious personage as
Adonai,
which means “my lord,” or as
Melech
Haolom,
which means “king of all lands,” or in any one of a dozen similar fashions.

At the root of this is a thing they call the
b'rit,
which may be freely translated as a covenant or agreement between themselves and their Yahvah. In a fashion, it is more this covenant they worship than the God himself, and to implement it they have a code of seventy-seven rules which they call “the Law,” though it is not judicial law as we know it, but rather the basis of this
b'rit
of theirs. Many of these are horrible and disgusting in the extreme, as for instance the law which forces the circumcision of all male children; others are senseless, such as the law which forces them to rest on the seventh day, to let the land lie fallow on the seventh year, and to free all slaves after seven years of servitude. Other laws make a fetish of washing, so that they are cleansing themselves eternally, and their law forbids them to shave, so that all the men of the land wear long hair and close-cropped beards.

This I did not learn at once, nor the other similar matters which I will go into during the course of this report, but I feel it best to state them here in relation to this camel driver and his actions; for, as I pointed out, his actions could be taken almost as an exaggerated outline of the people I was to meet. I might also say that his dress was the dress of the Judean men, sandals, white linen trousers, a short coat, a sash, and over it the long, heavy woolen cloak, which they draw up over their heads when they enter the synagogue or the Temple. Nakedness is abhorred among them although they are shapely enough, the men of great bodily strength, the women of surprising attractiveness and appeal. These women insert themselves into the life of the community in a way that is quite alien to us; they seem to show no particular respect or obedience to the men, but rather share that objectionable Jewish haughtiness in an even greater degree. The dress of the women consists of a single long, short-sleeved garment that falls almost to the ankles and is belted by a bright-colored sash at the waist. Like the men, they frequently wear a long woolen cloak, but in their case it is never striped, and their hair they wear long and usually in two heavy braids.

I go into these and other matters in such detail for two reasons: first, because I feel that this, as the first official report to the Senate concerning these people, bears a special responsibility in specifics as well as in general terms, and second because I see in the Jews a grave matter which Rome must surely face. For that reason too I shall attempt to be as objective as possible and to overcome the deep dislike for these people that I gradually assumed.

The trip from Tyre to Judea was uneventful, for the entire coastal road is under the iron hand of Simon the Ethnarch, and he will tolerate neither banditry nor interference. On the Plain of Sharon, just opposite Apollonia, I saw my first Jewish military patrol, ten men on foot—which is their usual mode of travel, since their country is very small and mountainous throughout—and it served as good example of the Jewish custom of armament and war. Their soldiers, who unlike those of all civilized people are neither professionals nor mercenaries but volunteer peasants, wear no armor. For this they have, as with most matters, two explanations; one that it would be an affront to their Yahvah to put their trust in metal rather than in what they term, in their consistently contradictory fashion, his awful goodness, and secondly that it would so impede their movements in the mountains as to outweigh any benefit that might be derived from it.

Instead of a sword, they carry long, heavy-bladed, slightly curved knives which they use with terrible effect in close combat, although their officers tend to wear Greek swords, both as a mark of victory over the invaders and in imitation of the first Maccabee, Judas ben Mattathias, who from the very beginning of his struggle used the sword as his only weapon. Their principal weapon, however, is the Jewish bow, a short, deadly weapon made of laminated ram's horn. They have a secret process for softening the horn; it is then cut into thin strips which are glued together in the desired shape. Their arrows, which are twenty-seven inches long, are made of cedar, slender and iron-tipped; and with these arrows they are most prodigal, filling the air with them, shooting one after another in such quick succession that they come down like rain, and in their narrow mountain defiles there is apparently no protection against such attack.