The Artifact (34 page)

assisting Father in his carpentry trade. With the children of the Sepphoris merchant’s grown,

mother became the maidservant of the mistress of their elegant city mansion, to which she

continued to walk ten miles each day under the hot sun, in freezing cold, pregnant or nursing, with her daughters, and me tagging behind until I, too, was able to work beside Father and Yehoshua.

Nazarat, Palestine

3762
Shevat
(CE 16 February)

When I barely had nine years, a different but equally significant incident occurred in my own youth.

As a lowly apprentice to father, I spent much of my time fetching and dragging fallen branches and tree limbs from the forest, sawing lumber, drilling and pounding pegs and nails. Just as most boys between five and ten years, I was required to take formal lessons in religion at the local synagogue that were also oral, as reading and writing were thought to be unnecessary skills for peasant children.

One evening, when James had been studying in Jerusalem for most of the past five years, my older brother had come home for one his rare visits, on this occasion to celebrate the sixteenth anniversary of his birth. The entire family was seated at table for supper served by mother and our sisters as James answered our interminable questions about life in the capital city, the overwhelming Roman presence there, his studies and daily experiences. Toward the end of the meal James began to inquire into my days spent on my religious studies, working with father, and other activities with friends in the village and nearby
Natzerat Illit
⁶
. I was at first reticent with this eldest brother, who to my eyes had become a tall, black-bearded stranger with curling tietze, slender to the point of asceticism, with a kind and humorous attitude I found at first inappropriate to his eventual priesthood and disconcerting.

“So your lessons with Rabbi Benjamin go well?” he asked me.

I cast a glance at mother, then Sarah, who was more apt to get me in trouble than any of my

sisters. “I find some of the teachings dull. Others are difficult to understand.”

Sahara and Mary were scrubbing our bowls in a washtub behind me and giggled together at

my answer.

“Understanding is often not as important as knowledge,” James said.

Even then I was prone to a contentious nature. “How can I know the meaning without understanding the ideas behind the scriptures?”

“The words in the scriptures are truth,” he told me with his indulgent smile for the benefit of our parents, who had heard my complaints before, but were unable to satisfy them. I did not wish to bicker with this holy man before the entire family, so I tried to divert the polemic from myself to a common adversary. “I have heard that Romans think our laws deny us pleasure.”

“Pleasure may be the goal of pagans,” James said. “Yahweh requires a certain amount of sacrifice before admission to His Kingdom.”

“Romans kids believe their gods will transport them to nirvana after death. Is that the same place or will I not see them after the Messiah comes?”

James laugh was surprisingly full and deep for a man whose robe seemed to hang from knobby bones. “Perhaps you have been listening to pagan falsehoods with ears that should hear only the truth of the Torah.”

“I have told him that,” Yehoshua said, who at only two years my senior seemed to take a mischievous joy in precipitating upon me whatever embarrassment he could devise. “The Roman boys are wild and undisciplined. They are not a good influence on an impressionable young Jew.”

“Maybe I can influence
them
.” I regretted the comment as soon as it had flown from my mouth. All three girls burst out in incredulous laughter.

James glanced at our sisters with raised eyebrows, then at me. “Perhaps you will tell me

about your Roman acquaintances. Do they not shun you or ridicule your leg?”

My mother had always encouraged the family to accept my twisted limb, never to pity or

make excuses for me because of it, nor avoid reference to it whenever appropriate. Since birth, no one in the family has ever made a negative remark in my hearing regarding the shriveled appendage. I have not been treated so kindly by others.

“They have not teased him lately,” Yehoshua interposed with a capricious grin.

“Oh?” James looked from second to youngest brother.

Our parents exchanged an anxious glance that recognized an agreement to allow their progeny to engage in exploratory discourse from which we might arrive at knowledge with more lasting impact than lessons arbitrated by adults.

“Shimon has learned to run and play almost as well as the other boys,” Yehoshua explained, “after father made the stout leather sandal and wooden brace to aid his walking stick.”

Sarah said, “Jewish boys make sport of it.”

“So he started going off by himself,” Yehoshua continued. “He made a slingshot and has become quite the marksman, even bringing pigeon and quail home for stew.”

Rifka leaned over the table to clear the serving dishes. “Then some Roman kids stumbled onto his hunting ground.”

James looked at me. “What happened?”

Our sisters Mary and Rifka joined Sarah giggling behind Mother’s chair with their singsong encouragement. “Go on, Shimon, tell it all.”

I looked around the table at my entire family, whose expressions and verbal chiding

demanded that I proceed. My big mouth was getting me into trouble again. “They threw stones, so I threw them back.”

Yehoshua needled me on. “Tell it, like you told me.”

They were not going to give me peace until I gave them all the details, so I thought there might be less fuss if I got it over with.

“Half a dozen boys came racing over a hill in their short togas, then gave up their race as they approached me. A big kid spoke to the others in Latin: ‘
Subsisto! Vultus a foetidus claudus Jew!
’
⁷
”

“I did not understand what he said, but began to walk away to avoid trouble. Looking over my shoulder to see if they followed, I saw a second boy pointing at my brace. He spoke Latin also, but I could sense the meaning. ‘
Is postuto ut brace ambulo.’
⁸
”

“‘
Liquidus! Liquidus! Liquidus
!’
⁹
” several of them chanted. The leader continued harassing me in poor Aramaic. ‘I wonder if he can walk without it....’”

“I started to trot away but it was too late. They were upon me. They wrestled me to the ground, unbuckled my brace, then backed off a few paces, the bully swinging it around over his head. I struggled to my feet and hobbled toward him to retrieve the device, but he kept backing

away, swinging it high in the air.

“‘Give it back, you filthy pagan,’ I yelled. When the Aramaic-speaker translated my words to Latin for his companions, they stopped taunting me and stood their ground with mean looks.

Another boy made a gesture with his hands that was also quite clear. “
Vado in, permissum

nos velox.”’
^10
.

“‘Run,’ the bully ordered in Aramaic, swinging the brace at me. I knew they would only

come after me if I did try to run, so I stood there forcing them to make the next move.”

“Was that the day you came home all cuts and bruises,” mother asked, “claiming that you

fell into a wadi?”

“Please, let him finish,” James injected. Although only sixteen years of age, he could not only read and write, but according to our local rabbis, was becoming an accomplished religious scholar. “I wish to hear it.”

Father deferred to his holy son with obvious reluctance. “Speak the rest, then.”

I drew a deep breath and tried to complete the embarrassing recitation quickly. “When I refused to run, they beat me to the ground. They kicked me with their hard leather scandals and pushed me over an embankment.” I looked down at my fingers twisting in my lap, remembering the tears of humiliation the Roman boys had forced from my eyes. “I scrambled out of the wadi, and found my brace hanging from the limb of a tree. I came home.”

“Not directly,” Yehoshua reminded me.

Sometimes I did not know if my older brother was trying to get me into trouble with adults, or liked to show everyone what a resourceful brat I was despite my handicap.

I cast him an angry look that I hoped father did not notice. “So I was not the meek Jew that

tradition demands!”

“The Kid,” as Yehoshua was wont to call me, “climbed the tree, put on his brace, and

followed the Romans.”

The hands of Mother and sisters flew to their mouths with indrawn breaths. Father scowled

at me.

Yehoshua displayed infrequent humor under ordinary circumstances, but he seemed to relish

goading me. “Our little brother caught sight of his tormentors at the crest of the hill. He unwound his sling from his waist and dug into the pouch of stones he is forever collecting to hunt small game.”

Father rose up from the table and walked outside to sit under the awning as the setting sun began to throw long shadows across the dusty yard, still within hearing of our discourse.

Mother herded the girls to the counter where they prepare our food, but Yehoshua seemed more than content with James as our audience of one. He leaned forward over the table toward our pious brother.

“Shimon fit a good size stone into the sling, whirled it around in the air and let fly smack at the back of the head of the big bully.” He cast an innocent look at me. “Is that the way it was, Kid?”

“You talk too much,” I told him. “Some day it will really get you into trouble.”

Yehoshua continued undeterred. “Then he whipped another dozen or so stones at the Roman boys until they scattered down the slope and across the field, practically every one of them holding a bleeding cut delivered by our young marksman, here.”

The expression on James’ face was unreadable. “You retold the Latin words they spoke, but you do not understand their meaning. Is this true, Shimon?” He had all but ignored Yehoshua’s provocative account of my aggression.

everyone relate what they have heard and seen?”

“In general terms. But not as the Latin term
verbatim,
which means ‘word for word’.”

I shrugged off a trait I had possessed since I could talk and was now second nature to me. “When I wish to recall an event, conversation or written words that I know, they appear behind my eyes as I originally heard and saw them. Like... a painting that moves and speaks.”

“This is a rare gift, Shimon,” James advised me. “You must sharpen and use it well.”

Yehoshua sat back, crossing thick forearms upon his rough singlet with that faint grin of accomplishment or pride, I could never determine.

I was certain that my parents would chastise me for the tale my brothers had urged me to relate, but neither father nor mother spoke a word of it to me thereafter, perhaps at the intercession of Yehoshua, who might have felt guilt for his part in the telling. Or because of the serious conversation I observed between father and James on the night before he left us to return to Jerusalem.

At fourteen years, Yehoshua was wide of shoulder, taller than most grown men, with a broad chest and limbs of prominent sinews. When lifting or running, the muscles of his arms and legs bulged like stout hemp rope under his taut skin darkened by the sun. Others claimed he was reserved and serious, but were also charmed by his easy manner and the shy smile which infrequently lit his countenance. To my mind, he was everything I wished to be--strong, handsome, and gentle. In my ninth year, he was my model and conscience, albeit occasional adversary to the scrawny, crippled, red-haired runt I perceived myself to be.

James, as it happened, was my mentor and confidant. The caring elder brother who seemed to gaze down into the very depths of my being, unwavering in his love, accepting of my nascent flaws of character even as he attempted to bring me back to a straighter path with his good humor and sense of reality.

Early the next morning, before he departed Nazarat for Jerusalem to resume his education for the priesthood, James took me to Sepphoris to introduce me to the elderly Rabbi who had taught at the Temple during the first year of James’ studies. At that time Rabbi Moshe was well into retirement, performing only the simplest of duties for the synagogue priests who ministered to the population of the city. Although initially reluctant to assume the task of tutor to a single, apparently average boy, my satisfactory answers to his preliminary examination of my state of knowledge, plus the small fee offered by my brother finally persuaded the old man to accept me as his student.

My tutoring took place in the Sepphoris synagogue at the convenience of Rabbi Moshe, which required me to leave my duties at father’s shop at irregular times during the week. The resulting erratic schedule gave me a freedom of which I took full advantage, sometimes dallying among the merchant stalls in that magnificent urban center, engaging in games with boys I met there, or more often hobbling out on brace and stick to explore the far reaches of the forest off the road back to our home.

By early afternoon one summer day, I had bagged a few quail which I stuffed in my back pack, then stopped beneath a shade tree to rest and eat a midday meal of bread and cheese. No sooner had I spread out my lunch, than I heard the whinny of a horse coming from beyond a steep