He went off, humming. Had Lucanus been listening he would have heard that Priscus’ footsteps were not as brisk as usual, that they lagged somewhat, as if the soldier were thinking. But Lucanus did not hear. A great terror, a great hunger, a great restlessness, was upon him, and he remembered, though he tried not to remember, his awful dreams when he had been ill of the fever.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“We cannot land at Crete, Master Lucanus,” the captain of the ship said.
“Why?” asked Lucanus, with concern. “I have four patients there whom I promised to see at this time, and who have been under my care.”
“Master, it is dawn,” said the captain, significantly, “and if you will accompany me on board I will show you the reason.”
Lucanus accompanied him to the upper deck. The calm blue sea, streaked with the pink and gold of dawn, lay about them, and they stood not far from Crete, green and lighted with the first sun, bordered by a muffled halo of foam. A huge Roman man-o’-war stood close to the port, its tall white sails snapping idly in the dawn breeze, its pennants floating against the sky. About it, like little fish around a mother, was a feverish activity of small boats which appeared to be crowded densely with people about to climb aboard the man-o’-war under a shower of whips. Their wailing voices, frail and far, echoed across the water.
The captain leaned on the railing and meditatively picked his teeth. He was a rascally dark Levantine with black mustaches. “There has been an insurrection,” he said, watching with interest. “The people of this town, inspired by the young men, dared to defy Rome and demand their freedom! Is it not ridiculous that so small an island — and the whole island is boiling — should defy the might and power of Rome? What has it gained them? Their streets are heaped with young corpses; men and women and children by the multitude have been seized and enslaved, and are now being taken to Rome for sale. Puny fools! They never had a single hope. But, I have heard, while fighting they called on the Greeks, the Syrians, the Egyptians to join them in their battle for liberty! They received only expressions of sympathy, or silence. I understand they sent couriers with torches racing, for months, over the world, demanding a general uprising against the Roman tyrant. But the others preferred to issue expressions of moral approval in their courts of law — and then went off to dinner. Other countries, I have heard, hastened to assure the Roman proconsuls and the tribunes that they had no intention of joining ‘the disorder’, and wished only the opportunity to continue to exist amicably with Rome.” He laughed hoarsely.
More small boats were rushing eagerly towards the man-o’-war, loaded with rebels, as if placating. Lucanus now saw plumes of smoke rising from the town, and little darts of scarlet. He thought of the Cretans who had struck one furious blow against the Empire, praying and pleading that the subject nations join them. But they were alone, as all men who fight for freedom are alone, and the pusillanimous peoples, sobbing sentimentally for them, preferred not to be valiant. Men deserve their slavery, their subjection, their suffering, thought Lucanus, with bitterness. They are never really oppressed; they permit oppression.
But perhaps the instinctual love for freedom still lived everywhere, stifled sternly, yet still existing, if so small an island, so small a people, dared lift valorous hands against imperial Rome. Lucanus shook his head. It was always too late. He could not endure the cries and wails and screams of the enslaved men and women and children, and went below. His door opened without a knock, and the captain came in and sat down near him in a chair and stared at him. “Death,” said the captain, “is always the price a man must be prepared to pay for his dignity.”
“When he loses his dignity as man, then he is no longer a man,” said Lucanus. “The Cretans, who appear to have been crushed, have had their moment of glory. May God be with them.”
“It is evident no one else will be,” said the captain, snickering. “But they possibly do not have even the sympathy of the gods, who find men deplorable.”
The ship turned about and sailed away. At the next port Lucanus received letters from home, but none, as he had expected, from Sara bas Elazar. Priscus had joined Plotius in Jerusalem. He had written, “I find the Jews very interesting. At the present time all of Judea rings with the name of a Jewish teacher, one Jesus of Nazareth, who prefers to talk with rabble rather than join the wise men in the city. The rumor among the ebullient populace is that he is their Messias, one prophesied from the far ages who will deliver them from Rome! Is that not ridiculous? The priests despise him as a barefoot peasant. He is surrounded by followers as destitute as himself. Naturally no one of consequence takes him seriously. Some of our soldiers declare he performs miracles like a veritable god; one must discount the words of the ignorant, and our soldiers are superstitious. I like Judea; the weather is salubrious, the people of a quick countenance. Moreover, one needs not to fear to eat in their taverns, even the humblest, for everything in the way of food is scrupulously handled and clean. Last night we officers were invited to dine with Herod Antipas, who is a cautious man, and who appears, at this time, to be very troubled. I heard he was almost abstemious in his habits, which is possibly false, for he drank even more than we, and then he burst into tears and talked of one John whom he had had to put to death because of his wild rebellion which stirred the people. This happened almost two years ago, yet Herod still seems disturbed about it. The country seethes.”
Lucanus read this letter over and over, and thought of the centurion, Antonius. He shook his head. A miserable, obscure, unlettered Jewish rabbi! He laughed slightly. Was he the Unknown God, as the centurion had declared? God would surely manifest Himself in the person of a great king, a mighty wise man, a noble, a patrician! But this was certainly in accord with the mystical nature of Jews, who saw God everywhere. Then Lucanus thought of Sara, and what she had written him so many years ago about the youth who had accosted her by name, and had consoled her.
He pondered on it. He told himself that in every country there were always rumors of miracle-workers, of the swift appearance of gods clothed with light, of strange happenings. A world reduced to dull and monotonous peace under the Romans turned to myths and superstitions.
Nevertheless, a terrible unease took possession of Lucanus. He felt Judea pulling him like a resistless tide. He began to think of visiting his brother in Jerusalem, and then he recoiled inwardly. He wanted none of the disturbing mysticism of the Jews; he had had enough of men like Joseph ben Gamliel.
At the next port of call he received numerous letters, not only from home but from Sara, and from strangers in Jerusalem. And when he read Sara’s letter he became as still and cold as stone, and all emotion was numbed in him, for now he knew that Sara was dead. She had written:
When this reaches your hand, my dear beloved, my most dear Lucanus, I will have been gathered to my fathers, for I am dying. Do not be grieved; do not weep. Rejoice with me that I have had my call from God, who was never absent from me a moment in my life. Pray for me, if you will. When I left Rome I knew that death was upon me, and I was happy. I returned to Jerusalem to die among my people, to die in my home, with no regrets, no longings, no worldly desires. For I was joining my parents and others who loved me. Death is not a calamity to him who dies; it is only a calamity to those he leaves behind, for death is deliverance and joy and eternal peace and bliss.
The days of man are short and full of trouble. What is there in the world that can offer consolation? Do not sorrow. I will be with you always, and will pray for you, and our parting is brief. God be with you, and may He bring you His blessed peace. I look upon you from the skies, as you hold this letter in your hand, and I pray that you are not weeping. You will find my brother, Arieh. Before I was finally confined to my bed I saw Him whom you are seeking, and I mingled with the crowds on the street, and touched His garment, and He turned to smile at me compassionately and told me to be of good heart and that my prayers were already answered. Bring my brother home, for now I know beyond all doubt that y
ou will find him. Farewell, but only for a little while, my Lucanus. I kiss your lips and your eyes.
Lucanus was not weeping, as Sara had feared. He felt nothing at all but a great emptiness and silence in him, an abandonment of all sensation. Calmly he read the letters from strangers in Jerusalem, friends of Sara, sonorous letters assuring him that she had died without pain, that her body had been laid in the sepulcher of her fathers, that she had drawn her last breath with a peaceful smile. There were letters from lawyers who were the guardians of the wealth of Sara’s family, which they were keeping for the son of Elazar ben Solomon, who was now about twenty years old. They were skeptical men, these lawyers. Nevertheless, Sara had convinced them; they expressed confidence that Lucanus would find the son of Elazar, the brother of Sara, and return him to his people.
Lucanus put aside all the letters and poured himself a little wine. He drank slowly, vaguely wondering why no storm rose in him, why no passion of sorrow, for one he had so dearly loved. Then, as a physician, he knew he was mercifully dulled by shock. He drank more and more, until the walls of his cabin tilted. He drank again, and fell on his bed and did not awaken for twenty-four hours. When he came to himself he was violently sick, and he was grateful for his retching and aching body, for his roaring head, for, concerned with his physical misery, he could not think.
Days later, as the ship went on its way, he felt that he was moving in a hollow world. He went about his work in silence. He smiled not even a little any longer. He feared sleep; he saw the faces of all he had loved and lost in his dreams. He heard their loving voices. And he said to them, “Do not comfort me, for you are dead, and in the grave there is no remembrance.”
The dull and colorless months went by, dribbling into each other like clouded puddles. He wrote briefly to his family. A fear came on him when he saw their letters, and a trembling. He was afraid of fresh bereavement, fresh dolorous news. But Aurelia had a fine son, and was again with child. Cusa had two grandchildren. Gaius was actually contemplating marriage with a virtuous maiden of an old sound family, but very poor. “I am pleased with her,” Iris had written. “She is very learned. It was inevitable that if Gaius ever married he would marry such a maiden. It has been almost a year since you visited us, my son. I understand that in your grief for Sara you do not wish to look at our happiness, and to hear the voices of your nieces and nephews, or even your mother. But I am growing very old. Return to your home, if even only for a few days, that I may see you again.”
But Lucanus could not go home. He shrank at the thought of the living, and their faces; he dreaded their love and comfortings, and their tenderness. He could remember Rubria now without pain. But he could not remember Sara now without agony, an agony that never left him. At each port, when the ship docked, he would look among the crowds for her face. When letters arrived, he looked for one from her. He walked in his desolation; he administered; he sat in the gardens of his little houses; he read, he ate, he slept. He lived like a specter. Once, very calmly, he opened his physician’s pouch and looked at a medicine he had brewed, which, given minutely in a goblet of wine, would relieve pain, but which, taken in quantity, would swiftly kill. He held the vial in his hand until it became hot in his fingers. Then he put it away. But always he thought of it in his awful loneliness and cold despair.
He found, at one port, that he had missed his brother, Priscus, by only an hour. Priscus had left him a letter before departing for Rome for a furlough of a few weeks. Priscus had written of his anticipation to see his family, and reproached his brother for neglecting them. He sent Lucanus a message from Plotius, and then went on to write about Jesus of Nazareth, the beggarly Jewish teacher whose influence was growing in Judea. He wrote lightly, but it was apparent that he was deeply serious. “I have talked with many of those who claim he has cured them instantly, by the touch of his hand. In truth, there was a beggar here whom I knew by sight, sitting against the wall of the Temple, who had been blind by birth. At one time I gave him alms, for he had a noble face and considerable learning. Then one day I found him surrounded by many excitable people, and his eyes were open and seeing! I could not believe it, my dear Lucanus! The man was not a fraud; I swear it, yet he looked at me with open and living eyes, and when I spoke to him he ran to me and grasped my hand and cried out, ‘The Son of God opened my eyes when I implored Him!’
“Truly, my brother, I have seen this myself, and there is no doubting it. I have been told that this teacher has raised the dead, has cast out madness from men’s minds, and that all within the sound of his voice feel ecstasy and joy. He goes from town to town, from village to village, healing, it is said, and when the people speak of him it is as if they are possessed with divine rapture. Is he Apollo, appearing in the guise of a poor Jewish carpenter? Or Mercury? Or Eros? Is there some great revelation at hand? The learned men, and a caste here who call themselves the Pharisees, either laugh loudly or are angered. It outrages them that a man who possesses nothing, who is unlearned, who has no family, no personal power, no recommendations from distinguished men, can draw multitudes to him at the instant of his appearance. They are afraid that he will eventually advocate an uprising against the Romans on the part of the Jews, and here they have a legitimate fear, for his influence is stupendous among the people. In that event, if there is an uprising, there will be general bloodshed, and I dislike the thought, for I have come to admire the Jews and I visit the houses of those who do not think the presence of a Gentile, and worse, a Roman officer, is pollution. But Israel is a very small country, and is of no importance. It is only that when I am there I feel that something portentous is about to happen. Is that not strange? I return there in three months.”
Priscus wrote of Pontius Pilate, the procurator. “He is a peaceable man, but vacillating, and prefers his library and the company of his wife to banquets and politics. I like to converse with him. The Jews bore him; he declares they live with one foot in this world and with one in the next, and that their piety is incomprehensible. Herod, he despises, as a womanish fool, at once filled with Greek superstitions and with Jewish prophecy. You told me at one time that Rome had been touched too deeply by the Orient, and that she had been influenced too much by it, and that the Western mind can never comprehend the Eastern. This is true of Herod; the meeting of East and West in him has disordered his spirit and created confusion in him.
“The procurator has not been untouched by the stories of the Jewish teacher. But he is not disturbed by ominous prophecies that Jesus will incite the Jews against Rome. He said that one of his soldiers told him that when the Pharisees, who are stiff-necked merchants and lawyers and physicians and very proud, challenged Jesus to betray his real mission and asked if it were right for the Jews to honor Caesar, Jesus replied to the effect that one honors worldly law, which is Caesar’s, and honors the supernatural world, which is God’s. Is that not sophistry? But very clever, you must admit. Pontius was much amused by this story. He said this man should be a lawyer, and he would make his fortune.”
Then Priscus added some strange words: “I remember our last talk at home, and when I do I think of that miserable, barefooted Jewish teacher. The thoughts come simultaneously. And that is very odd.”
Lucanus sat with Priscus’ letter in his hands for a long time. Occasionally he shivered. His cool Greek mind reproached him, but he could not refrain from reading the letter over and over. Once or twice sweat broke out on his forehead, accompanied by a passionate yearning. Then he destroyed the letter as one destroys something which throws him into turmoil. “Superstition!” he cried aloud. “Idiotic tales!”
When he was next in Athens, Iris informed him in a letter that Priscus had returned to Jerusalem. The wife of Gaius was about to be delivered of a child. Cusa was ailing and querulous. Lucanus put aside her letter listlessly. There was another for him, in a strange hand, from a country of which he had never heard, in Africa.
Dear and beloved friend! This letter is from Ramus, who thinks of you constantly, a
nd who prays for you unceasingly.
Lucanus could not believe it. He stared at the letter incredulously, then felt the first joy he had experienced in a long time. Ramus was alive! He had not died, he had not been lost, he had not been sold into slavery. “O God!” cried Lucanus aloud, in delight. He clasped the letter to his heart, and tears filled his eyes.
The letter continued: I have only now returned to my people, with peace and happiness. After I left you — and I still pray for your forgiveness — I made my way for many toilsome months to the Land of Israel. Of my privations I will not speak, for they are as nothing now. I expected hostility, because of what I am, but everywhere, though I could not speak, I encountered kindness such as that extended to pilgrims to a holy place. I was fed and sheltered without question, and so I knew that God was protecting me. No humble home was shut to me anywhere; at each oasis I was given wine and water and food by the lonely caravans. My color was not despised. But that is the least of the marvels, and I shall not speak of them.
I arrived in Israel, and immediately sought Him for Whom I had been searching. And I found Him in the town of Nain. I dared not approach Him, for the multitude was very great, and I was a man dark of face and homeless and footsore and without money. Can I speak of Him? What words are there a man can use to speak of being in the presence of God? How did He appear to me? Like the sun? Those words do not describe Him. I followed Him, behind the multitude, waiting to approach Him nearer. I could hear His voice, though I was so distant, and it was like muted thunder, and very kind. I understood that He came often to this town, where the people are poor and oppressed by the Romans, and despised by the learned. They are miserable farmers and little merchants, and very humble.