The Artifact (52 page)

I made my next statement at great risk, but thought we must place the issue before us if we were to continue any relationship. “We could be married.”

Yentl threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, Shimon! What would you do if I said ‘yes’?”

I returned her mirth. “I do not know.”

“Then relax, dear lover, because I do not intend to ruin the nicest relationship I ever had with a man by binding him with the chains of monogamy.”

I tried not to display my relief. “I intend to buy a house in the north district and attempt to bring back my old skill as a sculptor in wood.”

Whether James was aware of my occupation during the past seven years was never clear to me. When I rode down to Jerusalem, he crushed me to him, sobbing softly at my facial scar, the ever-present
pugio
and
gladius
belted at my waist for journeys beyond my home area. He asked few questions about the army story I had given mother, squeezing my hand as we sat on the Temple stairs that cool gray day amid passing strangers, gazing at the stone step below us as I repeated my lies, then diverted that awkward fabrication to his own circumstances.

“Congratulations on your elevation in the priesthood,” I said, fingering his new vestments.

He drew in a deep sigh of exasperation. “The Sanhedrin cater more and more to the will of Rome. Perhaps I can do our people some good from within.”

“I sense an undercurrent of rebellion from without.”

“That may be. Yet every man needs a structure, traditional beliefs to grasp in this world or they would turn completely hedonistic.”

“Like the Romans who rule the world,” I said.

“Is that what you wish for us Jews?”

I had no desire to reopen my old debate with my learned brother, but my perverse nature compelled my persistence. “We must be strong and bold if we are to break the yoke of the Empire.”

“Do you believe we must forsake our religion to accomplish that?”

“James, we have been taught from our earliest consciousness to submit to our fate; that we are the Chosen People of Yahweh, who will raise us bodily from the dead at World’s End, the good among us to live forever with Him in the Kingdom of God for all eternity, the wicked to die again for all time.”

“You take exception to that prophecy?”

“It causes us to lie prostrate under the heel of Rome. When will Yahweh fulfill His promise to prevail against our enemies? How long must we wait for Him to send a Messiah to end our suffering, to establish His Kingdom?”

James looked at me with a saddened expression. “Your life has been a terrible trial, Shimon. I pray for you nightly. But you must have faith, Little Brother.”

“Faith!” I scoffed. “Religion is the worst invention conceived by man.”

“Yahweh has made Himself known to our holy ancestors. The path we must follow is well-documented in scripture.”

“Convenient myths bred by visions, imagination and wrongheaded obsession to reign in the natural, God-given, by the way, instincts of man.”

James had always made exception for my assault on our religion, once confiding to me that he believed that any good man would be admitted into Heaven, despite his atheistic persuasion.

“Even pagans?” I asked him.

“What does it matter?” His shoulders rose and fell beneath his priestly robe. “I believe God loves all men who do no intentional harm to others.”

I wondered if that included me.

Our conversation turned to more pleasant topics and family recollections, which as usual were infused with James’ infectious sense of humor. I left Jerusalem several days later with the good spirits I always felt after spending time with my eldest brother. By mid-afternoon the following day, the easy canter of Nubia had brought me to a wooded area south of Zaphon, above the bank of the Jordan, where I decided to make overnight camp. Since it was too early for my evening meal, I tethered the mare to graze, and settled myself with my wineskin against a mature oak, whose deep green leaves moved in a gentle breeze under sparse clouds of the purest white, suspended in the dark blue sky, the chirps of birds and crickets intruding pleasurably on the silence.

I pondered James’ unshakable, though pragmatic faith against the ambivalence of Yehoshua, and my own logical analysis of an unseen Deity who seemed to ignore His chosen people. It was a dilemma I did not solve on that eve as the sun moved toward the western horizon, nor despite the momentous events that transpired during the years that followed.

* * * * * *

I had begun visiting Yentl on foot after dark, but that arrangement was not satisfactory and caused frequent disputes, mainly due to the problem of Hezibia. One morning after a half-night with Yentl, I received a visit from Judah the Galilean. I was alone, in a sour mood when he tied his horse in the alley behind my courtyard and slipped through the rear gate to find me seated under my narrow portico gouging a reluctant piece of teak.

He stood just inside the gate and lowered the hood of his robe. “Am I welcome, Shimon?”

I knew he was wanted by the Romans for sedition, but assumed he had taken precautions in coming to me. “Of course, Judah.” I gestured to a bench on the patio. “I understand you have taken the trouble to follow my exploits.”

“Antipas has beheaded your cousin, John the Baptizer.”

This news did not shock me because I knew Herod had imprisoned John for criticizing the King’s marriage to the wife of his own brother. I was more disturbed at the thought of my brother traveling around the countryside preaching pretty much the same opinions as John.

“Jesus could be next,” I said.

“We keep him under surveillance,” Judah assured me.

“I cannot believe a man who preaches brotherly love would have anything to do with your
Sicarii.
”

“As you know well, Shimon, the Romans are not our brothers.”

“Are you saying that Jesus teaches rebellion against Rome?”

“I say, go and see for yourself.” Judah moved to the edge of the bench, forearms on thighs, leaning toward me. “It is not the mission of Jesus about which I have come to speak.”

“I have no mission. I have retired from fighting.”

“There is a movement afoot to mount a rebellion. After being forced by the Romans to fight for your life in arenas, will you now sit in the stadium and watch?”

I placed my poor wood carving on the table beside me, turning, hefting, and staring at my faithful
pugio
in my hand, that I had washed and scrubbed and cleansed and honed a thousand times since my manumission. ‘Not again,’ I thought. ‘Please, not again.’

3782
Iyar
(CE 36 May)

I found Jesus teaching from a hillock outside Tabigha to a gathering of about fifty men, as Judah predicted. One of the Zealot leader’s sources had purloined a tablet of the recent Galilee census, indicating approximately one hundred fifty towns and villages in that primarily heathen region had an average population of 200 families comprised of Jews, and gentile settlers from Rome and other provinces. He estimated that the total number of men Jesus could draw from the area to which he confined his itinerary was about 1,500 men, plus a smattering of women. Not a large base in which to sow the seeds of religious change. The vast population in cities, of course, was comprised of wealthy Jews and pagan Romans, who had scant interest in my brother’s admonition to earthly poverty and the ultimate reward of The Kingdom.

I stood on the edge of the crowd acknowledged by several Zealots within it, listening to Jesus preach his central theme echoing Hillel that we should, “Not do to others what we would not have them do to us.” He spoke several parables explaining the concept to his simple audience of farmers and fishermen, speaking of The Kingdom of God to come, shocking the few affluent merchants and Pharisees among them with the admonition to share their wealth with the poor in the name of God and follow His way.

As Jesus continued to speak, I realized that a major element of his attraction to his followers was his proposal to relax some of the most restrictive, non-religious aspects of Torah dictates: the proscription against performing even the most humane tasks on the Sabbath, for example, and its prohibition for Jews to dine with gentiles. The first of these might eventually permit peasants to work on the seventh day; the latter would allow merchants to negotiate business with non-Jews in a relaxed ambiance partaking of food. These and like absolutions appealed to Jews, who felt unnecessarily fettered by their religion in commerce, arguably the same mentality that was most conducive to embracing even subtle urgings to rebel against Rome.

Halfway through Jesus’ preaching, a man in his middle age wearing a clean robe of fine cloth stood, asking, “That is all well and good, but after paying exorbitant taxes to Rome, even the wealth of an industrious merchant is sorely diminished.”

“Do you feel the same obligation to Caesar,” Jesus answered, “who has taken your country by force, as to the lesser children of your God who offers eternal salvation?”

The meaning was clear to that gathering of oppressed Jews who believed they owed Rome nothing. The crowd murmured, shifting uneasily at this blatant advocation of sedition, some leaving the seated group in pairs or alone. Jesus tried to hold them with more benign teachings, but it was late in the day and soon all had dispersed but his most tenacious followers of seventeen in their number.

I hugged my sister Mary in greeting, who remained protectively close by our brother’s side, alert to his every need. Jesus introduced me to a balding, slack-jawed man no taller than me, in a dirty robe with a frayed rope knotted at his waist, his long, unkempt brown beard tinged with gray whose name was John, and a shifty eyed man called Simon, who smelled of dead fish, taller, equally unkempt, whose clasped hands before his chest displayed long black fingernails. Several other followers hovered about Jesus until Mary instructed some to set up camp and others to go into Tabigha to beg food.

The Zealots had disappeared from view, but were probably somewhere about, and I now realized why. Since Roman soldiers did not occupy a major presence in the poor Galilee region, there was little danger of a mounted cohort sweeping down to imprison my brother and his assembled audience, though citizen settlers and Roman sympathizers might well attempt to ingratiate themselves to the Prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate, by taking my brother into captivity.

Jesus greeted me with a frown that took in my belted sword. “I wish you would not come to me so obviously armed.”

“A freedman,” I replied, “can carry arms against robbers and brigands.”

He held a hand up to Mary and others still near, then bid me walk away with him. We strolled in silence for a time until he said, “I find myself in conflict regarding our destiny. Though I am convinced it is the will of God for all men to strive for peace, how can peace in the world or within our hearts be accomplished under the yoke of a cruel pagan Empire?”

I had asked myself the question a thousand times, always with the same answer. “Is that more important than spilling human blood?”

He preached in Aramaic to small gatherings largely comprised of poor Jewish peasants and workers in meadows and from hills outside villages and towns east of the Galilee Sea, adding and losing followers as he went. In Capernaum, he spoke from a boat to a crowd assembled on the shore, after which the fishermen hauled in a large catch compensating for their inactivity of the morning. I heard several in the crowd speculating whether Jesus was responsible for those bursting nets, unable to suppress a smile at the superstition and/or naiveté of those simple men.

That afternoon, I was rubbing Nubia down as she stood in the water near fishing scows, when a covey of children cavorted about begging for rides on my horse. I acceded to their request, leading the black mare to a level field behind the family dwellings of some fishermen, heaving the boys upon her back as their sisters stood by giggling.

It was then that I overhead portions of a loud discussion between the fisherman Simon and his wife through a rear window of their home.