Джеймс Миченер - The Source

She became so agitated that she insisted upon talking with Jehubabel, there and then, but Tarphon refused to argue any further with the Jew; so exercising her freedom as a Greek woman she summoned two of her slaves, who bore small lamps into the street, and thus she made her way to the home of Jehubabel, surprising him by insisting upon coming inside and sitting like a familiar neighbor on one of the kitchen chairs.

“Jehubabel,” she began in the Koine, “I am distressed at the enmity which has grown up between you and Menelaus.”

The Jew thought: She has ensnared my son, and now she wishes to entrap me. But for what purpose?

“And I am even more distressed that you have opposed my husband. Truly, Tarphon is the best friend you Jews could have. He has tried to soften every law.”

The Jew thought: Ah! There’s some new edict which Tarphon is afraid to discuss with me face-to-face. He’s sent his wife to trick me.

“My husband and Menelaus have both told me what you think of me. Believe me, Jehubabel, you are wrong. I have tried to help Tarphon bring Makor a good government and I have tried to show your son the greatness of our empire. But I am not important. Menelaus is. Don’t you realize what a magnificent son you have? That he could one day be governor of this district?”

Jehubabel drew back from this tempting woman. Now he could understand why Benjamin had fallen victim to her allurements: she was graceful and desirable and it was appalling that such a woman should talk of empire and the education of young men.

“Unless you work with us,” she was saying, “we’ll have difficult times in Makor. Next week there’s to be another search. For the circumcised ones.”

Jehubabel heard no more of what she had to say. He could think only of the baker Zattu and his wife Anat. With them he had conspired to break the law and if they were apprehended it was certain that this time he too would be executed. It seemed to him that Melissa was speaking of the trivial manipulation of society—if the Jews behaved, a boy like Benjamin might one day become governor—while Jehubabel was being driven to consider the ultimate relationship of the chosen people with YHWH. In his moral arrogance he could not understand that Melissa was speaking of neither politics nor society but of something quite different: the hungry yearning felt by many Greeks for a stern moral structure to accompany their exquisite sense of artistic and philosophic beauty. “Don’t you suppose we’re ashamed of the flayings?” she asked. To his deaf ears she made an impassioned plea for harmony between Jew and Greek, but Jehubabel now saw the latter merely as an oppressor of savage malignity; she pleaded with him for a further temporizing with Antiochus IV and his aspiring plan to Hellenize the eastern world, but for the Jew there was only Epiphanes, the would-be god who slaughtered infant boys. She tried to depict the world that could result when present religious irrationalities were controlled, but he would not hear. She spoke of a Greece that was reaching out to encompass the world, but he thought of a Judaism that was retreating within itself, seeking to purify itself for the tests ahead. The time for dialogue between Hellenism and Judaism had passed; briefly there had been a chance that between intellectual Greeks and moralistic Jews some kind of fruitful alliance might be achieved, with the lyric insights of the former uniting with the rugged power of the latter to create some new and vital synthesis, but the Greeks had behaved so stupidly and the Jews so stubbornly that now the rupture was beyond repair. Two hundred years from this night, not far from this very spot, Hellenism still searching would discover a more pliable religion arising in Galilee, and that union of philosophical Greek and Christian Jew would provide a spark which would ignite the world. Unaware that this was to happen, Melissa went sadly home, satisfied that in her generation the attempt would accomplish nothing.

When she was gone Jehubabel did not hesitate. He sent his wife to summon the leaders of the Jewish community, including the baker Zattu, and when they were assembled in his kitchen he said, “Next week there will be an inspection of all male babies.” Zattu paled, but he had known that sooner or later this moment must come, so he was prepared for it, but he looked to the older men for guidance, and Jehubabel was ready. He said, “We must leave Makor.”

“For where?” Zattu asked.

“The swamps. The mountains.”

“Can we live there?” the baker asked.

“Can we live here?” Jehubabel countered.

There was earnest discussion of how the Jews might survive outside the town, and all were apprehensive until Jehubabel reminded them, “For centuries our people lived in that manner, and we can do so again.”

“But we will be so few,” Zattu argued, even though it was he who risked the sentence of death.

Then for the first time in his life Jehubabel became prophetic: “I believe that other Jews in other towns must realize that with the Greeks there can be no hope. I believe other Jews are holding discussions like this … tonight … now.” He stood silent, and his listeners could visualize the perplexity with which their fellow Jews were facing the great persecution. And after midnight they agreed that at the first sign of the next general search, those in that room, and their families, would flee Makor to make their lives in any way they might among the swamps and the hills; and as each man left, Jehubabel inspected him and asked, “Is it a pledge?” And it was so pledged.

At the end of the week, when tension was high and no one knew where the next blow would fall, a welcome diversion came with the return from Ptolemais of Menelaus, accompanied by a team of wrestlers who had come by ship from Cyprus. Tarphon announced happily that he would sponsor a public exhibition between the Cypriots and the men of Makor, at which he would wrestle the second man of the Cyprus team. “Their champion will be met by our champion, Menelaus!” Proudly he placed his arm about the shoulder of his returning protégé, and the young athletes filed off to the gymnasium.

That afternoon the gymnasium was thrown open, and the stone seats of the exhibition hall quickly filled with townspeople. Jews were forced to attend, it having been found that otherwise they would refuse to participate in what they held to be pagan rites, so in the front row, across from Melissa’s box, sat Jehubabel, his arms folded stubbornly across his fat stomach, his eyes fixed on the sanded floor of the arena. To have to watch one’s own son parade his nakedness was humiliating, but to attend on this particular day, when the fate of the Jewish community was in jeopardy, was abhorrent, and he would not try to hide his sense of insult.

Trumpets sounded, and from a door leading to the dressing rooms the six young men of Cyprus marched out, naked, tanned from their life aboard boats, and confident. They had come from a major island of the Ptolemaic empire to show a small provincial village on the outskirts of the Seleucid empire how men from a cosmopolitan center conducted themselves, and they paraded a certain appealing arrogance. Melissa, looking at their superb bodies, thought what a handsome lot they were, and how surprised at least the first two were going to be when they struck young Menelaus and her husband.

Another flurry of trumpets caused a different door to open, and from it marched the six local athletes, led by the red-haired gymnasiarch, manly and stalwart as he had been during his championship days in Athens. He was still a superb human being and the local audience applauded, but as the men lined up in the center of the arena a murmur began in the front rows, then climbed through the stone seats and at last erupted into cheering applause as the population saw the transformation that Menelaus had undergone. All evidence of his circumcision was gone, and since many knew how painful this operation was, cries of approval began to greet the young champion.