Agrippa's Daughter (24 page)

Most of her meetings with Shimeon took place at the House of Shlomo in Tiberias. On her own part, she would have had him to the palace, paraded him there, flaunted him there—or anywhere else that was hers—but he was not a man to be paraded or flaunted. He did not come to her; she came to him. He would come and he would go. His profession took him to many places; he would be gone a day, a week, or a month, and then a messenger would come to the palace from the House of Shlomo, with word that the Queen Berenice was expected. Never did old Gideon Benharmish, head of the house, allow the respect due to her to falter. The old man, like the crucified grain engrosser, was an Israelite without blood or rank or ancient family, and for all his wealth and power, he bowed low to Berenice when she entered his house, addressing her as Queen Berenice Basagrippa Hacohen, honoring both her bloodlines in the most formal of formal greetings, and said: “Peace be upon you and your House and all your ancestors, may they dwell in peace alongside of the Almighty.” He had a manner more courtly than many a prince, even though in all likelihood he came from Samaritan blood, and the doors of his house were not only open, but frequently entered.

In the large, open dining room and patio of the House of Shlomo, a room that extended down to the lake in broad marble steps and was furnished exquisitely, one was likely to find the most interesting as well as the most important people of the Middle Eastern world. It might be the high priest of Jerusalem, passing through Galilee, the proconsul of Syria, the alabarch of Antioch, or Rabbi Barlazen or Rabbi Ish Kernel, or the shriveled Indian philosopher, Budikka, who had come from the Ganges to spend his last years in Caesarea, waiting for a wise king on a white horse to ride by and tell him the secret of eternity, or Mika Benyosha, who preached the gospel of the Rabbi Joshua, who had been crucified outside of Jerusalem a decade and a half past, or a Greek teacher-philosopher or architect or engineer, or a Babylonian seer, or a Phoenician sea captain to enthrall all present with the wonders of Africa or the British Isles, or any one of a hundred Jews who commanded the far-flung trade routes of the whole known world and had their clerks and account books in places as far separated as Ireland and China. Or it might be any one of a number of people of Galilee, as, for example, Shimeon of the House of Hillel or Agrippa of the House of Herod or his sister Berenice.

It might well be Shimeon and Berenice, for they were together there more and more, until no one questioned the relationship between them; and even Berenice’s brother, the young King Agrippa, accepted the fact that his beloved and wonderful sister—as he saw her—had finally given her heart to a man.

But in so far as Berenice herself was concerned, it was her whole life and being. She was twenty-three years old now, a late age for a woman to taste love for the first time; and in those days even later. She did not simply fall in love; she became a creature of love; she lived for it. She bowed her head to emotional storms that ripped her through and through, as if she were staked out as a lightning rod in some vast electrical storm. She lay awake and wept out nights, but her superb health masked it, and she glowed with a beauty that was breath-taking. People who saw her for the first time would gaze entranced, forgotten of courtesy—and yet she was impervious to this. She had created a new world, in the center of which was Shimeon Bengamaliel. She listened to all he said, forcing herself to comprehend and accept; she bound herself in iron bands of control, holding in check her imperious nature, her violent temper; and even more than that, she fought the battle with her own terror of men and of sex.

She won her battle. It came when she was out on the lake with Shimeon, he paddling a flat wooden skiff and herself sprawled on a floor of cushions and a mat, her face on a level with his foot, touching his foot, spelling out sinews and toes with her fingernail. Then he put the paddle aside and lay down next to her, his dark eyes so close that she could see her own reflection in them—and then he made love to her. She was afraid. She lay there, her wild green eyes hooded with terror, stiff, uncomprehending, unresponding—yet holding herself while his hands and his voice softened her, so that it appeared to her that she melted little by little, melted under some kind of dark sun, until the flame entered her and she was burning and writhing and screaming her pain and agony and fierce joy—and then dissolving onto a long, gentle, and endless incline. Not only had this never happened before, but not in her wildest dreams had she ever believed that such a thing could happen—yes, to animals and to people like Gabo, her slave, and to the whores and concubines of the court—but not to Berenice—

Night fell, and she threw off her clothes and slipped over the side of the boat into the water. Shimeon could not swim—a thing that amazed her—and she said she would teach him, but he shook his head, staring puzzled and with wonder at this long-limbed, tawny woman, whose coppery skin flashed with the joy and ease of one born to the water—

“Help me in!” she cried. She was shameless. She curled naked at the bottom of the boat, while he looked at her in amazement. “Do you still love me, Shimeon?” she asked him. “When I am no queen—but like this, and wanton? You’re ashamed, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“You’re like a big, stupid trained bear. Laugh. Laugh at me. Oh, you’re so much the Jew!”

“You’re the most beautiful woman on earth,” he replied finally. “You’re not real, and I think you are part devil, but I would cut out my heart for you.”

“What a thing to say!” she cried, laughing at him. “Like your entire family, you are probably very wise but not at all clever—and I have absolutely no use for your heart if you cut it out.”

“And if it stays here?”

“Then I want it for myself—forever.”

Such a thing had to be talked about. It was too rare, too juicy with fascination, too improbable to be avoided; and from Phrygia to Alexandria, through that half of the world which was a domain of Jewish lands, Jewish cities, Jewish enclaves, and Gentiles who noted every move that the Jews made—all through that area the romance between Shimeon Bengamaliel and Berenice Basagrippa was observed and dwelt upon. The she-devil, the whore-of-Babylon, had ensnared the scion of the House of Saints; and since the House of Hillel was a little less than wholly admired by Jewish wealth and nobility, it was an unexpected but welcome opportunity to undercut what the Hillelites stood for. In the synagogues of Galilee where the House of Shammai dominated, Zealot preachers made the most of this union of so-called goodness with the devil.

“Be ye warned!” they cried out.

But the bread that Berenice gave away was real, and the taste of it lingered. Her brother Agrippa was thankful for the process of the bread when he called her in to him and asked her,

“How long do you expect to continue with this, Berenice?”

“Forever.”

“Come now,” Agrippa smiled. “There is no forever—which you know as well as I do.”

“I love him, brother. He’s the only man I ever loved—yes, yourself, as they say, but you are my brother whatever they say. He is a man and my lover.”

“He is also from Hillel—a physician without a shekel to his name.”

This kind of talk bored Berenice. She endured it because her brother was king, but her mind was a wall against far more powerful men than her brother, and she reminded him that by now he should know her well enough to forego such arguments.

“Still he’s a pauper,” Agrippa insisted, feeling that this was basic, and that since the House of Herod had not yet produced anyone indifferent to money, it was unlikely that Berenice would be the first.

“I have enough money for both of us,” Berenice shrugged.

“And you intend to marry him?”

“If he will have me,” Berenice said.

Yet, to her profound annoyance, Shimeon raised some of the same arguments: pointing out to her that she was rich almost beyond one’s ability to comprehend. They were at the House of Shlomo then—seven weeks had passed since the incident in the boat—and Shimeon told Berenice that he was going away.

“Where?” she asked.

“To Ezion Geber.”

“Why?”

“Because I must go,” he said simply. “The plague is there, and the physicians who were there are dead.”

“And if you are dead?”

He shrugged. “That’s my life. I chose it.”

“And my life? What is my life, Shimeon Bengamaliel? Did I choose it? Or did the Almighty say to me, Bitch—be born on earth and let earth be cursed with you!”

“No, don’t talk like that,” he begged her.

“Why? Because I blaspheme?”

“Against yourself, my beloved.”

“How dare you call me that now!” she cried. “Beloved!” Her eyes flashed scorn and rage. “By what right?”

“I love you—or does that mean nothing?” Shimeon demanded.

“Love? Such love is worthless!”

“What then?” he demanded desperately. “What can you ask of me? I am a pauper. I have the clothes on my back and the surgeon’s tools in my bag, and there is all that I have in the world. Even the great House of Hillel is not ours in your sense. We don’t own it—we occupy it—if God wills it. So how do you measure yourself against me? You have a palace in Chalcis, a palace in Tiberias, a great palace in Caesarea—and I have even heard that the palace of the Hasmoneans in Jerusalem is yours, left to you by your grandmother. You have a villa here on the lake that you never set foot in, a villa on the Waters of Merom, a villa on the sea at Tyre—and a villa in Rome too, I am told. They say that half the property in Chalcis is yours, the ironworks outside of Chalcis, over a thousand slaves, a farm of horses near Meggido, and twelve plantations of olive trees and perhaps ten hundred talents of gold and silver to satisfy your whims—”

“What are you?” she demanded scornfully. “A clerk? I had heard told that you are a physician—but I find that you have more skill in the counting of money and the keeping of books than a battery of Egyptian scribes.” She said this and watched his face redden, and as he shook his head, so desperately and dumbly, she almost pitied him.

“You are richer than Claudius Germanicus, who is Emperor of Rome, and you mock me and sneer at me—”

“Then what is it, physician?” she spat out at him. “Do you know as little about women as I do about men?”

Finally he took her in his arms—when she had reached the point of doubt that caused her to wonder whether she had gone too far and provoked him out of her reach. Because all through it, she was saying to herself, “I will not live without him, but neither will he die without me. We will do both together.”

Many years later, Berenice was to remember this vow of hers.

A most unusual meeting was held by King Agrippa in his palace at Tiberias. For one thing, Gamaliel Benhillel, the old man, the father, the son of the saintly Hillel himself and the patriarch of the house—and thus, in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Jews, the patriarch of all Jewry—this Gamaliel came to Agrippa’s house, the House of Herod and discussed the union of Shimeon and Berenice. The king and the patriarch sat with Gideon Benharmish, Anat Beradin, Joseph Bendavid, and Oman Bensimon—all of them except Agrippa men of their declining years with long memories and the strange consciousness that finally saint and devil were joined, the House of Hillel to the House of Herod, which had already been joined to the House of David and the House of Mattathias, so that one out of this union would carry not only the blood of kings and wise men, but could style himself
Hacohen,
out of a bloodline that led without break—as they calculated such things—to Moses the prophet and beloved of the Almighty and to Aaron his brother. It was a strange occasion, an awesome occasion, and a quiet one—for while the step proposed by the two lovers was almost mysterious in its significance it was also ominous in its political implications. Would it make an unhealable rift between the Jews of Judea in the South and those of Galilee in the North? Would the Jews of the South, who so revered the House of Hillel, curse Agrippa in that he had fostered this? Would the Zealots, who feared and hated the House of Hillel, curse Agrippa for selling their birthright? And how would the Romans react?

“It is very complicated,” Agrippa sighed, and thus caused Beradin to remark,

“You will find, my dear boy, that nothing pertaining to Jewish politics or philosophy is ever simple and nothing so uncomplicated that a sage can unravel it.”

Yet with all the talk, doubt, and discussion, they could not set aside the will of two strong-willed people. They could only make of the marriage, for the time being, a sort of secret—a secret that many would know but would nevertheless hide in itself.

Thus the marriage took place very quietly at the House of Hillel, with no more than half a hundred people present, including the slaves of the house. Standing next to her brother, Berenice had to reflect on how strange this was, compared to the somber dignity of the alabarch’s household in Alexandria, where death had come before her, or to the wild splendor of the festivities at Chalcis, when Herod of Chalcis took her in marriage. But that was of no consequence, and those incidents were buried so deeply, so vaguely in her memory that they might indeed never have happened. Now it was her own father-in-law, the rabbi and patriarch, who said,

“Thus the Almighty wills it, that the two of flesh become the one of flesh, the two of thought become the one of thought, the two of blood become the one of blood, for the blood is the life and the life is unto Yaweh, the Lord God of Hosts.” The very ancient ceremony was in a sing-song Aramaic. “Where is the contract?” the old man asked.

The contract was brought. Berenice stood with her back to Shimeon’s back; she could feel his firm buttocks pressed against her, and she began to tremble with desire for him. Three veils covered her face, and her breath was hot and heavy under the cloth.

“Oh, give the dowry,” chanted Agrippa, feeling foolish that he should be speaking the words of an old man. “Give me comfort for my last years. Give me bread for my hungry days. Give me shelter from the hot sun. Give me a black goatskin tent to shelter me.”