IV.
In the gardens of the palace the tetrarch mused. The green parasols of the
palms formed an avenue, and down that avenue now and then he looked. Near
him a Syrian bear, quite tame, with a sweet face and tufted silver fur,
gambolled prodigiously. Up and down a neighboring tree two lemurs chased
with that grace and diabolic vivacity which those enchanting animals alone
possess. Ringed-horned antelopes, the ankles slender as the stylus, the
eyes timid and trustful, pastured just beyond; and there too a black-faced
ape, irritated perhaps by the lemurs, turned indignant somersaults, the
tender coloring of his body glistening in the sun.
“It is odd that Pahul does not return,” the tetrarch reflected; and then,
it may be for consolation’s sake, he plunged his face in a jar of wine
that had been drained, in accordance with a recipe of Vitellius, through
cinnamon and calamus, and drank abundantly.
Long since he had deserted Machærus. The legends that peopled its
corridors had beset him with a sense of reality which before they had
never possessed. The leaves of the baaras glittered frenetically in the
basalt, and in their spectral light a phantom with eyes that cursed came
and went. At night he had drunk, and in the clear forenoons he paced the
terrace fancying always that there, beyond in the desert, Aretas prowled
like a wolf. Machærus was unhealthy; men had gone mad there, others had
disappeared entirely. It was a haunt of echoes, of memories, of ghosts
also, perhaps too of reproach. And so, with his court, he returned to his
brand-new Tiberias, where the air was serener, and nature laughed.
And yet in the gardens that leaned to the lake the tranquillity he had
anticipated eluded and declined to be detained. Rumors that Herodias
collected came to him with the stamp of Rome. One of his brothers was
plotting against him; another, though in exile, was plotting too. It was
the Herod blood, his wife said; and, with the intemperance of a woman
whose ambition has been deceived, she taunted him with his plebeian
descent. “Your grandfather was a sweep at Ascalon, a eunuch at that,” she
had remarked; and the tetrarch, by way of reply, had been obliged to
content himself by asking how, in that case, he could have been
grandfather at all.
But latterly a new source of inquietude had come. At Magdala, Capharnahum,
Bethsaïda, there, within the throw of a stone, was a Nazarene going about
inciting the peasants to revolt. It was very vexatious, and he told
himself that when an annoyance fades another appears. Life, it occurred to
him, was a brier with renascent thorns. And now, as he gargled the wine
that left a pink foam on his lips, even that irritation lapsed in the
perplexing absence of Pahul.
Pahul was a butler of his, a Greek whom he had picked up one adventurous
night in Rome, who had made himself useful, whom he had attached to his
household, whom he consulted, and on whom he relied. Early that day he had
sent him off with instructions to run the demagogue to earth, to listen,
to question if need were, and to hurry back and report. But as yet he had
not returned. The day was fading, and on the amphitheatre which the hills
made the sun seemed to balance itself, the disk blood-red. The lemurs had
tired, perhaps; their yellow eyes and circled tails had gone; the bear had
been led away; only the multicolored ape remained, gnawing now with little
plaintive moans at a bit of fruit which he held suspiciously in his
wrinkled hand.
Presently a star appeared and quivered, then another came, and though
overhead were streaks of pink, and, where the sun had been, a violence of
red and orange, the east retained its cobalt, night still was remote—an
echo of crotals from the neighboring faubourg, the cry of elephants
impatient for their fodder, alone indicating that a day was dead.
In the charm of the encroaching twilight the irritation of the tetrarch
waned and decreased. He lost himself in memories of the princess who had
been his bride, and he wondered were it possible that, despite the
irrevocable, he was never to see, to speak, to hold her to him again.
Truly her grievance was unmeasurable, the more so even that she had not
deigned to utter so much as a reproach. At the rumor of his treachery she
had betaken herself to the solitudes, where Aretas her father was king,
and had there remained girt in that unmurmuring silence which nobility
raises as a barrier between outrage and itself, and which the desert is
alone competent to suggest.
“It is he!”
The tetrarch started so abruptly that he narrowly missed the jar at his
side. On noiseless sandals Pahul had approached, and stood before him
nodding his head with an air of assured conviction. The ape had fled and a
stork stepped gingerly away.
“It is he,” the Greek repeated—“John the Baptist.”
Antipas plucked at his beard. “But he is dead,” he gasped; “I beheaded
him. What nonsense you talk!”
“It is he, I tell you, only grown younger. I found him in the synagogue.”
“Where? what synagogue?”
Pahul made a gesture. “At Capharnahum,” he answered, and gazed in the
tetrarch’s face. He was slight of form and regular of feature. As a lad he
had crossed bare-handed from Cumæ to Rhegium, and from there drifted to
Rome, where he started a commerce in Bœtican girls which had so far
prospered that he bought two vessels to carry the freight. Unfortunately
the vessels met in a storm and sank. Then he became a hanger-on of the
circus; in idle moments a tout. It was in the latter capacity that Antipas
met him, and, pleased with his shrewdness and perfect corruption, had
attached him to his house. This had occurred in years previous, and as yet
Antipas had found no cause to regret the trust imposed. He was a useful
braggart, idle, familiar, and discreet; and he had acquired the dialect of
the country with surprising ease.
“There were any number of people,” Pahul continued. “Some said he was the
son of Joseph, the son of——”
“But he, what did he say? How tiresome you are!”
“Ah!” And Pahul swung his arms. “Who is Mammon?”
“Mammon? Mammon? How do I know? Plutus, I suppose. What about him?”
“And who is Satan?”
“Satan? Satan is a—He’s a Jew god. Why? But what do you mean by asking me
questions?”
Pahul nodded absently. “I heard him say,” he continued, “that no man could
serve God and Mammon. At first I thought he meant you. It was this way. I
got into conversation with a friend of his, a man named Judas. He told me
any number of things about him, that he cured the sick——”
“Bah! Some Greek physician.”
“That he walks on the sea——”
“Nonsense!”
“That he turns water into wine, feeds the multitude, raises the dead——”
“Raises the dead!” And the tetrarch added in the _sotto voce_ of thought,
“So did Elijah.”
“That he had been in the desert——”
“With Aretas?”
“No; I questioned him on that point. He had never heard of Aretas, but he
said that in the desert this Satan had come and offered him—what do you
suppose? _The empire of the earth!_”
Antipas shook with fright. “It must have been Aretas.”
“But that he had refused.”
“Then it is John.”
“There, you see.” And Pahul dandled himself with the air of one who is
master of logic. “That’s what I said myself. I said this: ‘If he can raise
the dead, he can raise himself.’ ”
“It _is_ John,” the tetrarch repeated.
“I am sure of it,” the butler continued. “But he did not say so. Judas
didn’t either. On the contrary, he declared he was not. He said John was
not good enough to carry his shoes. I saw through that, though,” and Pahul
leered; “he knew whom I was, and he lied to protect his friend. I of
course pretended to believe him.”
“Quite right,” said the tetrarch.
“Yes, I played the fool. H’m, where was I? Oh, I asked Judas who then his
friend was, but he went over to where a woman stood; he spoke to her; she
moved away. Some of the others seemed to reprove him. I would have
followed, but at that moment his friend stood up; a khazzan offered him a
scroll, but he waved it aside; then some one asked him a question which I
did not catch; another spoke to him; a third interrupted; he seemed to be
arguing with them. I was too far away to hear well, and I got nearer; then
I heard him say, ‘I am the bread of life.’ Now, what did he mean by that?”
Antipas had no explanation to offer.
“Then,” Pahul continued, “he said he had come down from heaven. A man near
me exclaimed, ‘He is the Messiah;’ but others——”
“The Messiah!” echoed the tetrarch. For a moment his thoughts stammered,
then at once he was back in the citadel. On one side was the procurator,
on the other the emir of Tadmor. In front of him was a drunken rabble,
wrangling Pharisees, and one man dominating the din with an announcement
of the Messiah’s approach. The murmur of lutes threaded through it all;
and now, as his thoughts deviated, he wondered could that announcement
have been the truth.
“But others,” Pahul continued, “objected loudly. For a little I could not
catch a word. At last they became quieter, and I heard him repeat that he
was the bread of life, adding, ‘Your fathers ate manna and are dead, but
this bread a man may eat of and never die.’ At this there was new
contention. A woman fainted—the one to whom Judas had spoken. They carried
her out. As she passed I could see her face. It was Mary of Magdala. Judas
held her by the waist, another her feet.”
Antipas drew a hand across his face. “It is impossible,” he muttered.
“Not impossible at all. I saw her as plainly as I see you. The man next to
me said that the Rabbi had cast from her seven devils. Moreover, Johanna
was there—yes, yes, the wife of Khuza, your steward; it was she, I
remember now, who had her by the feet. And there were others that I
recognized, and others that the man next to me pointed out: Zabdia, a
well-to-do fisherman whom I have seen time and again, and with him his
sons James and John, and Salomè his wife. Then, too, there were Simon
Barjona and Andrew his brother. Simon had his wife with him, his children,
and his mother-in-law. The man next to me said that the Rabbi called James
and John the Sons of Thunder, and Simon a stone. There was Mathias the
tax-gatherer, Philip of Bethsaïda, Joseph Barsaba, Mary Clopas, Susannah,
Nathaniel of Cana, Thomas, Thaddeus, Aristian the custom-house officer,
Ruth the tax-gatherer’s wife, mechanics from Scythopolis, and Scribes from
Jerusalem.”
The fingers of Antipas’ hand glittered with jewels. He played with them
nervously. The sky seemed immeasurably distant. For some little time it
had been hesitating between different shades of blue, but now it chose a
fathomless indigo; Night unloosed her draperies, and, with the prodigality
of a queen who reigns only when she falls, flung out upon them uncounted
stars.
Pahul continued: “And many of them seemed to be at odds with each other.
They wrangled so that often I could not distinguish a word. Some of them
left the synagogue. The Rabbi himself must have been vexed, for in a lull
I heard him say to those who were nearest, ‘Will you also go away?’ Judas
came in at that moment, and he turned to him: ‘Have I not chosen twelve,
and is not one of you a devil?’ Judas came forward at once and protested.
I could see he was in earnest, and meant what he said. The man next told
me that he was devoted to the Rabbi. Then Simon Barjona, in answer to his
question, called out, ‘To whom should we go? Thou art Christ, the Son of
God.’ ”
Antipas had ceased to listen. At the mention of the Messiah the dream of
Israel had returned, and with it the pageants of its faith unrolled.
Behind the confines of history, in the naked desert he saw a bedouin,
austere and grandiose, preparing the tenets of a nation’s creed; in the
remoter past a shadow in which there was lightning, then the splendor of
that first dawn where the future opened like a book, and in the grammar of
the Eternal the promise of an age of gold.
Through the echo of succeeding generations came the rumor of that initial
impulse which drew the world in its flight. The bedouin had put the desert
behind him, and stared at another. Where the sand had been was the sea. As
he passed, the land leapt into life. There were tents and passions, clans
not men, an aggregate of forces in which the unit disappeared. For
chieftain there was Might; and above, the subjects of impersonal verbs,
the Elohim from whom the thunder came, the rain, light and darkness, death
and birth, dream too, and nightmare as well. The clans migrated. Goshen
called. In its heart Chaldæa spoke. The Elohim vanished, and there was El,
the one great god, and Isra-el, the great god’s elect. From heights that
lost themselves in immensity the ineffable name, incommunicable and never
to be pronounced, was seared by forked flames on a tablet of stone. A
nation learned that El was Jehovah, that they were in his charge, that he
was omnipotent, and that the world was theirs.
They had a law, a covenant, a future, and a god; and as they passed into
the lands of the well-beloved, leaving tombs and altars to mark their
passage, they had battle-cries that frightened and hymns that exalted the
heart. Above were the jealous eyes of Jehovah, and beyond was the
resplendent to-morrow. They ravaged the land like hailstones. They had the
whirlwind for ally; the moon was their servant; and to aid them the sun
stood still. The terror of Sinai gleamed from their breastplates; men
could not see their faces and live. They encroached and conquered. They
had a home, they made a capitol, and there on a rock-bound hill Antipas
saw David founding a line of kings, and Solomon the city of god.
It was in their loins the Messiah was; in them the apex of a nation’s
prosperity; in them glory at its apogee. And across that tableau of might,
of splendor, and of submission for one second flitted the silhouette of
that dainty princess of Utopia, the Queen of Sheba, bringing riddles,
romance, and riches to the wise young king.
She must have been very beautiful, Antipas with melancholy retrospection
reflected; and he fancied her more luminous than the twelve signs of the
zodiac, lounging nonchalantly in a palanquin that a white elephant with
swaying tail balanced on his painted back. And even as she returned, with
a child perhaps, to the griffons of the fabulous Yemen whence she came,
Antipas noted a speck on the horizon that grew from minim into mountain,
and obscured the entire sky. He saw the empire split in twain, and in the
twin halves that formed the perfect whole, a concussion of armies,
brothers appealing against their kin, the flight of the Ideal.
Unsummoned before him paraded the regicides, convulsions, and anarchies
that deified Hatred until Vengeance incarnate talked Assyrian, and
Nebuchadnezzar loomed above the desert beyond. His statue filled the
perspective. With one broad hand he overturned Jerusalem; with another he
swept a nation into captivity, leaving in derision a pigmy for King of
Solitude behind, and, blowing the Jews into Babylon, there retained them
until it occurred to Cyrus to change the Euphrates’ course.
By the light of that legend Antipas saw an immense hall, illuminated by
the seven branches of countless candelabra, and filled with revellers
celebrating a monarch’s feast. Beyond, through retreating columns, were
cyclopean arches and towers whose summits were lost in clouds that the
lightning rent. At the royal table sat Belsarazzur, laughing mightily at
the enterprise of the Persian king; about him were the grandees of his
court, the flower of his concubines; at his side were the sacred vases
filled with wine. He raised one to his lips, and there on the frieze
before him leapt out the flaming letters of his doom, while to the
trumpetings of heralds Cyrus and his army beat down the city’s gates.
It passed, and Antipas saw Jerusalem repeopled, the Temple rebuilt, peace
after exile, the joy of bondage unloosed. For a moment it lasted—a century
or two at most; and after Alexander, in chasing kings hither and thither,
had passed with his huntsmen that way, Isis and Osiris beckoned, and the
descendants of the bedouin belonged to Goshen again, and so remained until
Syria took them, lost them, reconquered them, and might have done with
them utterly had not Juda Maccabæus flaunted his banner, and the Roman
eagles pounced upon their prey. Once more the Temple was rebuilt, superber
than ever, and from the throne of David, Antipas saw the upstart that was
his father rule Judæa.
With him the panorama and the kaleidoscope of its details abruptly ceased.
But through it all the voices of the prophets had rung more insistently
with each defeat. The covenant in the wilderness was unforgetable; in the
chained links of slavery they saw the steps of a throne, the triumph of
truth over error, peace over war, Israel pontiff and shepherd of the
nations of the world.
The expectation of a liberator who should free the bonds of a people and
definitively re-create the land of the elect possessed them utterly; his
advent had been constantly awaited, obstinately proclaimed; the faith in
him was unshakeable. Palestine was filled with believers praying the
Eternal not to let them die before the promise was fulfilled; the
atmosphere itself was charged with expectation.
And as the visions rushed through his mind, Antipas fell to wondering
whether that covenant was as meaningless as he had thought, or whether by
any chance this rabbi who had been arguing at Capharnahum could be the
usher of Israel’s hope. If he were, then indeed he might say good-bye to
his tetrarchy, to his dream of a kingdom as well.
“Yes,” Pahul repeated, “the Son of God!”
Antipas had been so far away that now he started as one does whom the
touch of a hand awakes. To recover himself he leaned over and plunged his
face in the jar. The wine brought him courage.
He must be suppressed, he decided.
“But,” the butler continued, “I——”
The frontal of the palace was set with lights. The parasols of the palms
had turned from green to black, the stars seemed remoter, the sky more
dark. From beyond came the call and answer of the sentinels.
Antipas stood up. A fringe of his tunic was detained by a rivet of the
bench on which he had sat; he stooped to loose it; something moist touched
his fingers, and as he moved to the palace the black-faced ape sprang at
his side and nibbled at the jewels on his hand.