The Dream of Scipio

  The great events were begun three days after he had reentered Vaison by a Jew called Daniel, an utterly dissipated young man all but shunned by his community because of his criminality, violence, and cheating. He had always been so, cruel to his family, idle and insulting, so much so that he was, in effect, expelled from their midst. He was a woodworker, but of no great skill or application, and it was generally accepted that he spent much of his time in theft. When a priest went to his family’s house one day and demanded either compensation for someone he had defrauded or that Daniel leave the town, he responded by going to the church, throwing himself in front of the first priest he saw, and demanding to be baptized. He had heard that converts such as himself were greatly welcomed, showered with money and opportunity and, as he now had nothing to lose except a family that hated him and a community that wished only his absence, the prospect of such favor became irresistible.

  He was conducted to Manlius, who interviewed him and was repelled by his evidently low character; but, as the deacon pointed out, we were all sinners in the eyes of God, and Daniel’s character might change once accepted into the church. Manlius was more skeptical, but could find no reason to deny the request and, in any case, was well aware of the value of such an event, especially once stories went into circulation that his own interview had been the cause of the young Jew’s dramatic request. So Daniel was given rapid and cursory instruction in doctrine, and the following Sunday, a ceremony of some noise and grandeur was prepared for the baptism. This was the occasion of Manlius’s first sermon, in which he inflected orthodox doctrine with the teachings he had absorbed since his youth. It is not the case that he stated baldly that the life of man is but part of a journey, that the soul cannot ascend to God until it is purified and clean. The implication was there, however, and it was a conception that derived from Pythagorus, and was restated by Plato before finding its place in Christianity through the idea of Purgatory.

  His argument was far too complex for most of the congregation; rather it was a clarion call, a warning to his fellows that, although he might be a neophyte, he did not intend to abandon his beliefs through gratitude. From then on, and for the rest of his life, he delivered his sermons, arcane, erudite, and complex, knowing that his audience would not understand them but knowing also that the repeated presentation of such sophisticated ideas would indeed have an effect, if only a small one, deepening and refining the bundle of coarse superstitions that Christians called their religion.

  Even had he ventured into complete and coherent heresy, however, the congregation would have forgiven him. For Manlius spent a considerable sum of money to provide a spectacle the likes of which they had not seen for years. He had already begun rebuilding and extending the church, now he rerobed the priests and offered food in plenty and at no cost after the event. For this, they were all to parade through the streets to the now generally disused forum, led by Manlius and with the new convert, robed in white, just behind him.

  However, the route from the basilica ran alongside the street where most of the town’s Jews lived, and they were enraged by the way the church’s triumph was being so noisily proclaimed. Even so, there was little anyone could do, but Daniel’s brother, deeply shamed by his elder sibling, climbed to the top of a building and, when Daniel passed by underneath, tipped a large jar of oil over him.

  Fortunately, none hit the bishop, else the consequences would have been very much worse; had his cloak been touched, even the slightest drop staining the pure white wool, then the anger of the crowd would have been uncontrollable. But the aim was true; only the newly baptized Daniel was touched, and he shrank down with a scream, thinking that worse was about to follow.

  His fear ran through the crowd, and when one pointed up at the roof to the departing brother, they all cried out and began to give chase. It was a hopeless task; Vaison was hardly a big town anymore, but it was more than large enough to conceal one person who did not wish to be discovered. Their anger could find no outlet, and so they went to the one place where they knew Jews could be found. The synagogue was not grand, and did not in any way resemble the buildings that either Olivier or Julien would recognize. Rather, it was an ordinary house, with one larger than average room at the back, big enough to accommodate fifty or so people at one time; when there were more, on holy days, the extra would congregate in the small courtyard outside. It had been there a long time, more than a century, since the number of Jews in the town had increased enough to support it, and everyone knew where it was.

  There was no plan to what happened next; the building was set on fire because, once the crowd arrived outside its doors, no one knew what to do next. Had someone with authority managed to keep up, worked his way to the head of the crowd and taken control, there would have been no violence. But, in the absence of such a figure, leadership descended to the most brutal, and it was one of these who first picked up a stone and threw it into the building, then kicked in the door. Half a dozen charged in and only one of these took some embers from the fire glowing in the grate and used them to light the hangings.

  It was a small fire, which did little damage in itself; its main effect was to enflame the crowd, who sensed that the thin curl of smoke and little flicker gave the permission to continue. From then the destruction increased and engulfed the whole building. When the real fire, the one that reduced it to ashes, took hold, there was not a piece of furniture, hanging, or book left intact. The noise of the crowd increased to a pitch, then gave way and sank back to silence as the flames blazed, the energy of their anger transferring to the conflagration, and reducing them to mere spectators. Then they simply stood and watched what they had done, scarcely even remembering that it was they who had begun this. And after a while they began to disperse, their anger spent, their vengeance taken, and their lust satisfied.

  In terms of violence, it was not a serious business. Compare it with the orgy that convulsed Constantinople a few decades later and left fifteen thousand dead after a week of riots. Compare it to some of the coups and civil wars that had engulfed the empire in the past century. Compare it to the traditional and accepted behavior of troops taking control of a city after a siege. The violence of Vaison killed no one; even Daniel’s brother escaped unscathed, and while Jews felt obliged to stay indoors for a day or so, even they did not consider themselves under great threat. Indeed, their anger was directed not so much against the Christians who had destroyed their synagogue—even though they deeply resented the assault—as against the family that had brought this calamity upon them: the useless Daniel and his equally violent, headstrong brother. Neither of them was worth any loss.

  The importance of the incident was not the violence; many communities of all sorts had suffered very much worse. Rather, this lay in the fact that it became woven into the fabric of Christian, Gallic history, embedded in a framework of theological justification, given purpose and meaning, a past and a future, through the words and deeds—misreported and twisted though they were—of Manlius Hippomanes.

  For Manlius saw the opportunity finally to make himself the undisputed leader of the town, to put himself in a position where he commanded such love and respect that he was invulnerable. And he took it, grasped it with both hands.

  The following day he delivered his second sermon. Less considered and far more effective than his first. Little of what he said was completely new; the desirability that the Jews should throw off their blindness and recognize their own Messiah was something of a commonplace and had been for well over a century. Revulsion at the way they had murdered their own God was not new either. Disdain for—or more properly incomprehension of—Jews was also common, although it was little different in form to the bewilderment that had once greeted the unsocial, uncivil, and coarse behavior of Christians themselves. None of this was innovative; nor did passion give the words their power, for Manlius regarded Jews with no more disdain than he regarded Goths, Huns, slaves, serfs, and townsmen—anyone not of his family or rank.


  It was his logic that impressed, that finely honed skill taught to him by Sophia and which he applied to all that he said or did, reaching out to conclusions and stating them because of their rationality. The Jews were disobedient; they had disobeyed their savior, and now they disobeyed those who took their authority from the savior. Consequently, the path was clear. They were to be given three choices. They could convert, they could leave, or they could die. It was necessary for all Jews to be eliminated for the divine plan to be fulfilled, and the church, through Manlius, put its full authority behind this noble plan.

  Manlius wished to be remembered as a man of letters, the voice of reason, a philosopher. This he intended to be his immortality. But all of this was buried for nine hundred years until Olivier briefly unearthed his work, and it was then lost again until Julien discovered it in the Vatican archive. Instead, such influence as he had came through a trifle, an instinctive reponse to a political problem that he had largely forgotten about only a few months later. For in one sermon he managed to bind all the diverse elements of disapproval into a coherent polemic. He asserted not merely the right of the church to insist on conversion, but also its duty to eradicate false belief by whatever means necessary. His learning, skill, and eloquence were bent to the task of asserting the church’s right—his right—to absolute control, and he brought all his scholarship, everything he had learned, to the task of weaving the proofs necessary to back up his desires.

  Faced with such a call, the reaction was swift. Manlius achieved everything he desired, doubts about him faded away, his advocacy of the treaty with King Gundobad was accepted almost without question. Over the next week, fifty converted, a hundred and four left, and five died. The incident was recorded, passed from mouth to mouth, written about in letters, and eventually, many years later, found its way to Gregory, the saintly and able Bishop of Tours. He recorded it twice—once more or less accurately in a manuscript lost in the fifteenth century, and once less so, transferring the events and the words to Saint Avitus a century or so later, repeating the same story because the simple repetition excited in him not suspicion that his source was doubtful, but joy that the same events occurring twice confirmed the will of God. Through him, and others who borrowed his arguments and turns of phrase, the words of Manlius echoed down the centuries, becoming fainter and stronger by turns, whispering into the ears of Clement, of Olivier, of Gersonides and his servant Rebecca, and on to Julien, Bernard, Marcel, and many, many others. This was his immortality.

  He headed for the lycée that had been converted into a makeshift prison. His lycée, indeed, where he had enjoyed the triumphs of youth before he volunteered for the army in 1917. Where Bernard and he and Marcel had first met. And he understood the passion that Marcel felt at this moment, how he wanted so much to triumph at last.

  He remembered the schoolroom, probably still decorated with the same tables of the alphabet; he remembered the smell of the place, the way the paint peeled in the corridors. The maps, though, would have been changed, taken down so that Alsace and Lorraine would not be shown as French; the bust of Marianne, symbol of republican France, which used to decorate the hallway, had no doubt also vanished, removed and put into storage on Marcel’s order some three years previously. But unchanged would be the teacher’s podium, where Bernard had once taken his pen-knife to the teacher’s desk.

  Everyone had watched him do it; a crowd had gathered around, laughing and sniggering. Only Marcel had stayed at his desk, conscientiously working, doing his best as usual to keep up, making best use of his time. Had Julien been one of the crowd? He could not remember. He remembered it only as a filmgoer; the scene in black and white, the giggling children, the sudden hush and scramble as Monsieur Julot the teacher came back into the room; the suspicious look, and then the questioning.

  “What has been going on here?”

  And how had he accomplished it? How had Bernard managed to get the blame poured onto the top of Marcel’s innocent head? “Julot is a Jew,” Bernard had scratched, and the beating Marcel received was severe, not because of the vandalism, although that was serious enough, but because of the magnitude of the insult. Bernard put his arm around him afterward, said he was his best friend, made him feel better.

  “No one here of that name.” He had managed to get into the building, demanded to see the officer in charge, and explained why he was there. He had come for Julia.

  “Don’t be absurd. The préfet said she was here. I am to telephone him, and he will sign the order to have her released.”

  He shook his head again. “All the Jews were moved out this afternoon; orders of the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs.”

  Julien stared. “What?”

  The man sighed; a bored sigh of one who has to deal with complaints far too often. “There was a convoy to pick up Jews. It was short of numbers from Marseille. So . . .”

  “Who said that?”

  The man did not reply. What did it matter? It was not his concern.

  “Where has she gone? What are they doing with her?”

  Another weary shrug. “You’re asking the wrong person. I am merely in charge of guarding this place.”

  “You must know something.”

  The panic in Julien’s voice struck a chord. Some sort of human connection was made. “Look, I don’t know. All Jews are to be taken to an assembly point, then they will be transported to work camps. That’s all. Now, go away.”

  “Where is she? Please tell me.”

  He sighed. “They were all taken to the railway station,” he said impatiently. Anything to get him to go away. “And that’s where they will still be, I imagine.”

  It was quiet; he tried to block out what that meant. As he ran in he started shouting uncontrollably. “Where is the train? Where is the train?”

  The few people there paid him no attention, beyond curious looks. He ran to the platform, found a guard, and grabbed him. “Where is the train?”

  The guard pushed him off roughly, and Julien lunged forward again, then tripped and fell heavily on the concrete. “Please,” he said, panting so hard he could scarcely speak, “I beg you, tell me.”

  “What train?”

  “The one that was here. With the people on it. The convoy.”

  “The Jews, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  The guard paused, and looked down the line. Nothing here, his gesture seemed to say. “It was in the goods yard. It went ten minutes ago.”

  He looked at Julien for a moment, considered offering him some help. Then he looked at the clock; his shift was over, he was late. It had been a long day. He flicked his cigarette onto the tracks and walked away.

  Although he understood this much, it meant little to him. His universe was smaller, more petty and more circumscribed. Having buried Althieux, seen Pisano run away frightened for his life, been close when a man murdered his wife, smelled the charring of a riot, knowing that the plague threatened them all, he found he cared little for the future of Christendom, was indifferent to the power of the papacy. This was not his business. All he cared about was Rebecca and Gersonides, locked away, liable to be tortured and killed. His mind was insufficiently grand to see further than that. And indeed, he realized he was not even preoccupied with Gersonides; he felt—for now he felt only and could not think—that everything in creation, his soul and hers, the soul of all men, depended on her continuing to live.

  He walked the streets all afternoon and into the night, the only person in the entire city mindless of the plague, knowing full well that it had no power over him whatsover; that although it might one day claim him for its own, it could not do so until he had reached the decision that he knew he must make sooner or later. He could bow to the wishes of his master, obey the laws of men as they were unwritten but understood. For Ceccani had given him everything—money, encouragement, a place in the world, even something approaching friendship. In return he expected loyalty; it was a fair bargain, freely entered into and universally
recognized. No one would accept that throwing that over was justified. It was not self-interest, although the consequences of breaking the ties that bound him to Ceccani would be terrible enough. Rather it was a matter of honor, the simple fact that nothing could possibly justify what would be a breathtaking treason. Olivier was considering playing the part of Judas; a squalid little Judas betraying his master for no reason except for what the world would consider a base infatuation.

  Nor was there anyone to talk to. Pisano would have talked him out of it with a laugh, made him see the absurdity of his conundrum, ridiculed him back to sense. Althieux would have been more considered, taking the argument through countless authorities, classical and biblical, before coming to the same conclusion. But one was on the road to Italy, the other was dead.

  Olivier had only his own mind, filled with the metaphors of poetry and half-understood readings from philosophy. And the phrases of Sophia, relayed through Manlius, came back to him, hammering inside his skull. “Any amount of disgrace or infamy can be incurred if great advantage may be gained for a friend.” And again: “The action of virtue is rarely understood by those who do not understand philosophy.” Again: “Laws formulated without the understanding of philosophy must be constantly questioned, for the exercise of true virtue is often incomprehensible to the blind.”