Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Then it must stand on end,” a listener from Egypt suggested, and this proposition the sophist demolished with witty evidence until all had to confess that they were listening to a brilliant man whose white beard and black skin lent dignity to their city.

Ptolemais in those days contained some sixty thousand people, including businessmen from Rome, who sent secret reports back to their senate, and as the young athletes from Makor watched these rich and varied persons at their work they came to understand how precious Greek citizenship could be and what a treasure they would gain for themselves could they become citizens, too. Of the sixty thousand, only five thousand were citizens, some thirty thousand were slaves, and the remaining twenty-five thousand were residents possessing no rights of voting or claims to consideration by the city-state. Jews fell mostly into the latter category, but as Tarphon explained to Menelaus, “This is the essential reason why it’s prudent for you to visit the doctor. For if you win at Antioch, you will be made a full citizen of Ptolemais. Only citizens can compete in the Olympics at Greece.”

“Are you a citizen?” Menelaus asked.

“I won my citizenship in the wrestling arena,” Tarphon said with visible pride.

“I shall be a citizen of this city,” the youth vowed and he asked the gymnasiarch to lead him to the doctor.

In a side street, not far from the theater, an Egyptian doctor accepted the two strangers, listened as Tarphon explained, then said, “Gymnasiarch, now you shall go, for this must be a matter between the boy and me.” Tarphon nodded, gripped his protégé by the shoulder and whispered, “This is the path to citizenship,” and he was gone.

As soon as the door closed the Egyptian startled Menelaus by ripping aside a curtain to disclose the marble statue of an athlete, naked and powerful. Grabbing a knife the doctor took the statue’s penis in his left hand and pretended to slice it with four sharp, deep cuts, crying, “This is what we do.” He was watching not the statue but the patient and saw with satisfaction that although Menelaus flinched, and blood left his face, he did not look away but kept watching the marble penis so as to judge whether he could bear the pain. Satisfied that he could, he bit his lip and waited. “Under this pain,” the doctor explained, “a Jew older than you, from Jaffa, committed suicide.”

“He was not seeking the prize I seek,” Menelaus retorted, whereupon the Egyptian moved swiftly at him with the knife, seeking to terrify him, but the young Jew did not flinch.

“I think you are ready,” the doctor said, “and you may scream as much as you will, for it will exhaust the pain.” And he made ready a table upon which the young man would lie, and called three slaves to hold him.

When Tarphon received satisfactory reports from Makor stating that the disobedient Jewish family had been executed and that any uneasiness resulting therefrom had subsided, and when the Egyptian doctor assured him that Menelaus had been unusually courageous and would soon mend, he assembled the rest of his team and led them home, where they were received in triumph, but it was soon noticed that Menelaus, the Jew, was not among them, and this, coming so soon after the executions, caused comment which the gymnasiarch allayed by announcing that a great honor had come to Makor: “Our young champion Menelaus has been invited to the imperial games at Antioch.” When the crowd stopped cheering he added, “He’s training in Ptolemais, but he will soon be home.”

He took three of the young men to the palace, where Melissa had a feast prepared for them, and there he announced that the young man Nicanor, who had triumphed over him in the race to Ptolemais, would henceforth be permitted to wear the town’s uniform, and ceremoniously he handed the young Phoenician the coveted garb. Melissa kissed the youth and then Tarphon said that he was going to the gymnasium, where he asked his slave to fetch Jehubabel.

The meeting was unpleasant. Tarphon began by explaining to the Jewish leader that in the case of the Paltiel family his hands had been tied. During his absence in Ptolemais the orders had come from Antiochus Epiphanes, and since he had not been able to return to Makor in time … Jehubabel looked at him with disgust, and this irritated Tarphon, who reminded him, “If I had been here I might have arrested you, too, for you must have been involved in this thing.” But Jehubabel, a timorous man in the beginning, was no longer to be frightened, and Tarphon, seeing this, tried to regain his friendship by other means, for the governor knew that if there was to be open enmity between them the control of Makor might become difficult. “Let’s forget Paltiel,” he suggested. “The important news is your son. He performed brilliantly. Wrestled with the best and defeated them all.” He pointed his finger at the pudgy Jew as if he were prophesying: “One day that boy will stand in the victor’s circle at Olympia.”

Jehubabel looked at Tarphon as if the latter were an imbecile, and he began to say what folly it was for the leader of a people to take pride in standing naked before them, as if athletic ability had any bearing on integrity; but instead he launched into an attack on Tarphon’s wife: “How can you presume to govern when you can’t control your own wife?”

Tarphon was stunned. “What do you mean?”

“My son. Your wife.” The round-faced Jew was scarcely intelligible, but Tarphon guessed that Jehubabel must have placed some ugly interpretation on a matter with which he was not acquainted.

“What has happened between your son and Melissa?” he asked.

“He’s in your house. At the gate she kissed him while you were watching. Have you no shame?”

Governor Tarphon looked down at his folded hands. How could one explain anything civilized to the Jews? All during his years in Athens, Tarphon had moved from one principal home to the next, where beautiful women patronized promising young men and suffered no compromise in doing so. Sensible Greek matrons knew how to conduct themselves, and Tarphon had found that one of the finest rewards of his marriage was the spacious room in which his beautiful wife met with young men of varied accomplishments and encouraged them to further attainment; it was this interchange of philosophy and art and politics that sustained life, and Tarphon pitied the narrow-minded Jew who interpreted the process otherwise.

“You should guard your wife,” Jehubabel warned. “Like a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout is a fair woman without discretion.”

“What are you trying to say?” Tarphon asked in some exasperation.

“A man whose wife is a whore, what peace can he know?”

“Get away from here!” Tarphon cried, rushing from his chair to push the dumpy Jew from his room. He had tried, the record would prove how desperately he had tried, to conciliate Jehubabel, but it was now obvious that there could be no fruitful discussion between them. When he had Jehubabel at the door he warned, “The law will be enforced. And when we find the next circumcised child, you too will die. For you shared in the guilt of Paltiel.”

He shoved his guest through the door, but this placed Jehubabel under the statue of Antiochus, and with a courage new to him Jehubabel said scornfully, using the joke of the Jews, “Antiochus Epimanes,” meaning the fool, after which he spit upon the discus thrower, crying, “This vanity will perish,” and he left the gymnasium.

That evening Tarphon repeated the conversation for Melissa, and she was distressed that the Jew had made such a fool of himself. That he had misunderstood her actions she was willing to forgive, for Greek ways must seem strange to austere Jews, but she could not understand his failure to appreciate his own son. “In Menelaus he has the finest youth in Makor, but he seems determined to crush his spirit. Why can’t he simply accept the wonderful thing the gods have given him? And not see him as a criminal?”