Джеймс Миченер - The Source

His apprehension regarding Benjamin increased when Governor Tarphon traveled to Ptolemais, where work had accumulated regarding the seaport, leaving Melissa in the palace along the northern wall, for there Benjamin went in Tarphon’s absence, and it became clear to Jehubabel that an evil relationship had developed between his son and the gymnasiarch’s beautiful Greek wife. For several painful days Jehubabel lingered in narrow streets between the temple of Zeus and the palace, and from his hiding place spied upon the boy’s movements. What he saw convinced him that his blue-cloaked son was betraying his benefactor.

On the third night of watching, Jehubabel waited for some hours until Benjamin left the commodious house, his blue cloak over his arm as he headed for the gymnasium, but when the boy approached, Jehubabel stepped suddenly before him, saying in Aramaic, “You shall not go to the gymnasium. You shall come home with me.”

“The others expect me,” his son replied in the Koine.

“Your mother expects you,” Jehubabel muttered under his breath, and he dragged his son toward the temple of Zeus and then eastward along the main street, whose opulent shops exemplified for him the temptations into which the Jews of Makor had fallen.

At their home Jehubabel sat the bewildered boy on a bench and summoned his mother. Together the two older Jews challenged their son with having betrayed Governor Tarphon, who had so often befriended the family. “There is the dog that bites his keeper’s hand, and there is the young man who seduces the wife of his guardian,” Jehubabel said sententiously, while his son continued to look perplexed.

“Can a man take the fire of adultery into his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” Jehubabel asked, but still his words made no impression on the boy.

“Her house is the way to hell, leading you down to chambers of death,” the fat face with the beard mumbled, but Menelaus, his ear attuned to the subtleties of Greek thought, could not understand what his garrulous father was trying to say.

“Drink waters out of your own cistern and running waters out of your own well. Let them be yours only, and do not share them with strangers,” the pudgy moralist intoned, and Menelaus grew fidgety, which annoyed his father.

“‘Train up a child in the way he should go:’” Jehubabel said with great earnestness, “‘and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ We warned you that the lips of a strange woman drop sweetness like a honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil.”

“Father, you’re talking nonsense,” Menelaus said, using the Koine.

Jehubabel was stunned. He had been offering his son the profoundest wisdom he knew and the boy mocked him. He felt that he had to make some powerful statement that would clear the young man’s head and force him to see the grievous wrong of adultery, but instead all he could think of was the ancient summary of the Jews: “What son curses his father, his lamp shall be put out in darkness.” To Jehubabel, trained in the ways of Judaism, the sentence had frightening implications, but to Menelaus it was words only.

“I didn’t curse you, Father. I said you were talking nonsense, and you are. Now what is it you’re trying to say?”

Jehubabel drew away from his insolent son. “I am warning you that adultery with the wife of Governor Tarphon …”

Menelaus began laughing, easily and frankly. “Is that what’s frightened you?” he asked. Then, pointing with his hands, he said in broken phrases, “That I go … Melissa’s house … and Tarphon is in Ptolemais?” He laughed again and said, “Father, Governor Tarphon asked me to do this. Many of us go to Melissa’s. We sit and listen to her read.”

Jehubabel sat down heavily, “You do what?” he quavered.

“Or we talk.”

“About what?”

Menelaus was momentarily baffled. On this day Melissa had talked about a play in Athens, a philosopher from Antioch, and the day when a tame bear had chased her in Rhodes. “Well, we talk about many things.”

His son’s hesitancy satisfied Jehubabel, who could see Tarphon’s palace only as a pit into which his son had stumbled in his sexual debauchery. Ponderously he said, “Stolen waters are sweet, Benjamin, and the bread you eat in secret is pleasant, but death is there.” To Jehubabel it was tantamount to malediction, but to Menelaus it was quite irrelevant.

Once more the boy tried to explain: “We seven are like the sons of Tarphon, and Melissa cares for us. When we talk with her she tells us what to do.”

“You have entered the house of evil, and the servants have closed the doors,” Jehubabel said, and Menelaus looked at him in bewildered silence. The boy knew that he would not be able to explain to his father, so without speaking further the young athlete picked up a few articles of clothing and left. When Jehubabel asked where he was going, Menelaus said, “To the governor’s. Long ago he asked me to live with him, and now I shall do so.” And he was not seen again in the house by the synagogue.

When Tarphon returned from Ptolemais he was required to do two things which displeased him. On orders from Antiochus Epiphanes he announced that all Jewish households must be searched for male children, and if any under the age of six months was found to have been circumcised, that child’s parents would be flayed alive. When the order was given he summoned Jehubabel to the gymnasium and said, “I trust you have not broken the law.”

The bearded dyer looked at Tarphon in silence, for he was praying that the farmer Paltiel might somehow hide his son, but Tarphon interpreted the Jew’s refusal to speak as animosity stemming from the fact that Menelaus had moved to the palace. “Believe me, Jehubabel, when your son is champion of the empire you’ll thank me for taking over his training.” But Jehubabel continued to pray, and Paltiel succeeded in hiding his son Itzhak among his sheep, and that day the Jews were spared.

When the soldiers reported to the gymnasium that no circumcisions had taken place, Jehubabel regained his composure; it was Tarphon who sat down heavily in a chair, and the Jew realized how eager the governor had been to find no guilt. “We want no further executions in this town,” Tarphon said. Then he rose and clasped Jehubabel about the shoulder. “Thank you, old friend, for having spared us all.”

When the pudgy, long-robed Jew left the gymnasium—the most un-athletic-looking person who ever did so—Tarphon undressed and went to the wrestling room, where he asked Menelaus to fight against him, and as they moved about, grappling for holds, Tarphon had to explain the second bit of unpleasant business, but first he encouraged the young man by saying, after a vigorous sequence of thrusts and grabs, “In Ptolemais I met a group of wrestlers from Tyre. Claimed to be champions of the north.”

Casually Menelaus asked, “You wrestle against them?”

“Yes.”

Menelaus was breathing heavily. “Did you defeat them?”

“Easily.”

Tarphon watched Menelaus carefully, and what he saw reassured him. A slight quiver came to the young man’s lips and the governor knew what he was thinking: If Tarphon can defeat them, and I can defeat Tarphon, it means that I could be champion.

But Menelaus was cautious. Hesitating lest he offend his patron, he inquired, “Were they really champions?”

“They claimed to be. Said they were certain winners at Antioch.”

Tarphon was pleased with what happened next. Menelaus smiled. It was the relaxed smile of a young man who senses victory ahead. It showed neither arrogance nor conceit, but rather the anticipation of a contest in which there was reasonable chance for success. Men who had never played games would not have recognized this smile, but anyone who, like the gymnasiarch, had engaged in athletic contests most of his life would observe it with respect, because it was from such self-confidence that victory was built. At that moment Menelaus was very much a Greek and he said quietly, “I am eager to compete at Antioch.”