Agrippa's Daughter (45 page)

“I understand that,” Berenice said. “Where I am not myself involved, I can be as clear about matters as you are. But where I am involved—”

Then she admitted to herself that she was involved—otherwise, why did she remain here at the House of Hillel? Jews there were in a dozen cities who would have sheltered Berenice and risked their lives and their houses to do so; but she remained here a few miles from Tiberias, and all too constantly her thoughts turned to the boyish, open face of the emperor’s son. She grasped at her own soul and tore it to shreds in guilt and despair. How long was it since Shimeon’s body had been flung from the walls of Jerusalem? Hardly five months—yet her thoughts could dwell again and again on a man twelve years younger than she was. Yet for her Shimeon had been dead far longer than five months—or had he been? Or had she deserted him?

She sat with Deborah one day, and her sister-in-law reminded her of how much she could do in this awful moment if she did command the love of Titus. Berenice said, “That’s a fraud, and I will not have it.” “Because,” said Deborah, “you see any course you take hurting Shimeon—yet Shimeon is dead and beyond hurt.” “No,” Berenice argued, “I see in myself the same chaos that is outside of myself, a world without reason or meaning.”

Her brother-in-law tried to help her, but specified that it was not easy to be with Hillel. “It makes for doubt and we live with doubt. If you want certainties, Berenice, you must go elsewhere.”

“Can you live always with doubt?” Berenice wondered.

“How else?” Hillel asked her. “If you read the Scriptures—particularly in Kings—you will see that in the old days our ancestors created a structure of reason by reversing cause and effect. If a king’s army was destroyed, it meant that he was wicked and thus God judged him. If a city fell, it satisfied some bloodthirsty whim of the Almighty. But we’ve gone beyond that. Hillel went beyond it, and we cannot go back. Jerusalem fell because men did wrong—and it’s no affair of ours to try to fit it into some tremendous scheme of things. Now men are captive. A Roman loves you—and I think you yourself are intrigued by him—and because of this many poor and suffering people who would otherwise die may live. Your conscience is a bit of a luxury too—if the truth be told. All conscience is. Guilt is a great lever for evil and a poor guide for conduct. Do you remember that Hillel said, ‘If a stranger is hungry, feed him to satisfy his hunger and not your pride.’ It is one thing for dignity to be proud, but when virtue is proud it becomes almost indecent.”

Titus came alone to the House of Hillel. Early one morning, he came alone on horseback, turned his horse over to the slaves at the stable, and then stood in the shade of the mighty terebinth tree, looking curiously around him.

From inside the house, Berenice saw him, but waited, and watched her brother-in-law, Hillel, go to greet him, and then children gathered around to stare at this man so curiously attired in a tunic of white and gold, with high white boots buckled in gold and a cloak of pale yellow over his shoulders. But then her patience broke; she could wait no longer; she went to meet him, and he held out his hand to her quite easily and naturally and said,

“So here I am, Berenice. I came unbidden. Shall I go away?”

“Then I would really know shame,” Berenice smiled, “for you would be the first one ever turned away from the House of Hillel, and for this my brother here would never forgive me—although he forgives me in all else.” There were disclaimers and protestations then and bits of embarrassed sentiment. Deborah could not stand aloof, and she was presented to Titus. “How strange,” Berenice thought, “that the conqueror of Jerusalem should stand here and chat with us—the blood still wet on his hands.” But she was thinking, she realized, in clichés and platitudes. There was no evidence of villainy about Titus. Young, strong, handsome, and healthy—it was almost impossible not to like him, and Berenice recalled the stories she had heard about him, his scrupulous sense of justice, his innate decency, and the manner in which his legionaries adored him.

A slave brought cold white wine, and Titus drained a goblet Hillel poured for him. “Your wine is the best wine in the world,” he told them. “But I suppose you know that.”

“We Jews have too much that is best—or that we believe is best. It invites envy and hatred. We permit people to admire what is ours, but we are loathe to admire what is another’s.”

“I think the commander would like to see our place here,” Berenice said, “so if I may take him away, I promise to bring him back when the tables are set up.” The others agreed, and as Berenice led Titus away, she specified a rescue from philosophy. “Unless you came here for that?”

Titus shook his head.

“Well, here in the House of Hillel we are more like Greeks than we like to admit. We talk a great deal, but we never answer questions. We only enlarge upon them.”

“And this is the House of Hillel,” Titus said. They were at the gate to the enclosure now, and he stared at the rambling country villa with its great live oak. “A Galilean farmhouse. You know—that is hard for me to understand, Berenice. The House of Hillel is something that encompasses the world. I can remember as a young man in Rome, evenings when the conversation held for hours on the subject of the House of Hillel—bitter arguments, devotion, dedication, hatred; yes, and young Romans swearing that there was no other way to live but the way of Hillel, and through so many years the House of Hillel wherever you went, in Greece, in Africa—yes, in Spain too—and here—this.”

“What did you expect?” Berenice asked him. “Some great palace—some incredible mausoleum?”

“I hardly know.”

As they stood there at the gate, children ran past them to take their places under the terebinth tree, for the school to begin. More and more children, until almost a hundred of them sat cross-legged upon the ground.

“That,” Berenice said, “is the House of Hillel—an old farmhouse and a place to teach children. There is the whole mystery.”

She led him through the gate now, and they walked on the dirt road that led up the hillside out of the valley.

“Is it a religion?” Titus asked.

“No—we are Jews. We have no need for any other religion.”

“Then what is it—only a school? But no school is the life basis for people—and when you say you are Jews—believe me, Berenice, I did not want the Temple to burn. I tried to save it—and yet it went up in flames, whether by the hands of Romans or Zealots, I don’t know. But it burned, and now Yaweh is dead. Seen or unseen, He is dead, and His Temple is no more. So what do you mean when you say that you are Jews? That you have no need for any other religion? All people need the gods.”

“Perhaps. But our God never lived in the Temple—not in the sense that you mean.”

“You supported the Temple.”

“Yes—because it was an old thing, and we are a very old people.”

“And what was Hillel? One of your prophets?”

“No, only a man. A teacher. What we call a rabbi.”

“And what did he teach?”

“Ah,” she smiled, “everything at once. If it’s there, the Roman must know about it.”

“How beautiful you are when you smile,” Titus said. “Always, with every movement and motion of yours, there is beauty, as if the essence of your being was to create it—but when you smile—”

“You talk well of such things.”

“Not because I have had practice, believe me,” he said, almost with annoyance.

“Ah, now—and why does that hurt, Titus Flavius? You are a great and powerful figure, and you are young and good to look on, and yet it hurts you if an old Jewish woman suspects that you have spoken to others of beauty and love.”

“An old Jewish woman—is that how you see yourself, Berenice?”

“No,” she admitted. “That’s a pose. I looked at myself in my mirror today. I looked at my face and my body—and the age is within me, if not on the surface—”

“Do you always answer truthfully?” he broke in.

“You asked me what we teach. We teach that.”

“And what else?”

“To love thy neighbor as thyself.”

“Yes, yes,” Titus agreed. “I heard that. I heard it in Rome and in other places, and it’s remarkably persuasive for a piece of nonsense, and it travels.”

“Then what I believe is nonsense?”

“No—no, I don’t mean that, and you know it, Berenice. I mean that these are impractical things. Your House of Hillel can survive in a world where Roman legions maintain law and order and stability—but not by loving our neighbors. By teaching them a decent respect for order—”

“We could argue that forever, Titus Flavius.”

“Yes, I suppose so. And your creed is not to fight—ever?”

“Our creed is no rigid creed, and we are not an order from which we expel people. We try to teach an act of civilization—I know of no other way to put it. Some of us will not kill under any circumstances; others feel differently. Myself—”

“You are a woman, Berenice, and therefore this does not become your problem.”

“No? And yet I took two lives once—snuffed them out with as little compunction as you put out a candle. Shall I tell you? I haven’t spoken of these things in years.”

“Only if you wish—”

“I don’t know why I should want to, any more than I know why I desire you to understand me—ourselves, our ways—or what that farmhouse down there in the valley means, what it means to a people like ourselves who just saw our city die and our Temple die; and we remember how Isaiah wept, and he said, If I should forget thee, O Zion, may my right hand lose its cunning. Now we are all weeping, for something is over and finished. I had a palace there on the Mountain of Zion, and every morning I would awaken in the moment before dawn, and dress and hurry outside to the plaza, so that I could see the sun rise over Jerusalem and see the Holy Temple turn to gold and look down at the wonderful shadows of the Judean hills—you have seen how they are etched out in burning contrasts of black and yellow—and my whole being would throb with joy because I was a part of this ancient and holy city and all its somber grandeur and breath-taking beauty—and now it is gone, perhaps forever gone, not your doing, Titus Flavius, but you and myself part of its death—and what is left to the Jews but this villa we call the House of Hillel, and this must be all things to us now, our temple and way of life and our hope too. Do you understand me?”

“I am trying to,” Titus nodded.

“I wonder sometimes how much I comprehend, who I am, or what—and then I talk like this, because it is not very often I find someone to talk to—the desire of course, I mean to talk—and a long time ago, the Emperor Claudius had my father murdered. He believed, and with some reason, that my father plotted against him. My brother, Agrippa, and I knew who had killed my father, but we picked some poor hapless priest whom we disliked and he was put to death for a crime he never committed. And again, a few weeks after this, a soldier tried to make love to me. Poor boy, he was only enamored of me and blundering with the excitement of touching a royal princess, and he did no more than that, only to touch me, and then I had him beaten to death. This defined my life; this was the being and morality of the House of Herod, where Agrippa and I had been raised, and I remember it, the bleakness of infamy, the awful boredom and depression of wickedness, the hopelessness of cruelty and the utter emptiness of a life devoid of love. That is the whole history of the Herods and perhaps of the Julians, too, and it’s nothing to live for; so such houses make a process of dying their existence—do you know what I am trying to say, Titus Flavius?”

“I think so—in part. Tell me, Berenice, what did the House of Hillel give you then?”

“Life.”

“We all live.”

“But to taste its sweetness, there is a privilege.”

“My father is emperor,” Titus said thoughtfully, “but the only sweetness I have tasted in this life is the sight of you.”

“Ah—no. Surely more than that.”

“Are you happy now?” Titus asked her.

“Happy? What a strange question to ask me. My husband lies buried a few paces from here, you know how he died. Our holy city in ruins—my people weeping—”

“You don’t weep. I saw no weeping at the House of Hillel.”

“We teach a way of love—not sorrow.”

“And you love? Now?”

“Yes,” Berenice replied.

“Whom?”

“Many people and the memory of many people. A great many people. It is something you learn, and then you live a little better, a little easier.”

“Do you love me?” Titus asked her.

“I don’t know. It must be said that Titus destroyed Jerusalem. What else can be said?” They stood facing each other now, and Berenice reached out and touched his face—and then her hand fell. Titus moved not at all. “You are very gentle,” Berenice whispered. “I prayed to the Almighty that He would let me know about you.”

“Perhaps He will,” Titus answered her.

They stood on the hillside above the farmhouse in the little cemetery where Shimeon lay buried, and Berenice watched the Roman. In all things, he was tentative. He looked at the grave and asked her what kind of a man Shimeon was.

“Tall and slow. He spoke slowly and moved slowly. You had to know him, otherwise he would appear slow-witted, because he was tender and gentle, the way you are. But he was not like you—he could not command, God help him. He would not have taken Jerusalem. He would have left it, had he been in your place.”

“But he would have been a Roman,” Titus reminded her. “Had he been in my place—he would have thought as I do. And why did they kill him, Berenice?”

“You saved that question, Titus Flavius,” Berenice said. “What will you do to me with that question?”

“I could never do you harm. But neither is it easy to do you good. I would have to understand you first, and you would have to understand me. Do you know why they killed him?”

Berenice nodded, tears welling into her eyes in spite of her efforts to remain cold and objective. “I know why they killed him. He became tired of death—too quickly. How I pleaded with him not to remain there in Jerusalem! But he had become proud. In all his life, he had never been proud in this way—because he was a simple man, a plain man, what we call an Israelite, which means one out of the common mass, without noble ancestors or bloodline. Do you see?”