Джеймс Миченер - The Source

If I go to the southwest corner of my prison I can see down the avenue one of my happiest creations. In my youth I used to play near the old Greek gymnasium, then a building fallen into sad disrepair, and I used to run along the cracked and crumbling walls imagining myself an athlete at the Olympiad and shivering in the mournful memories of the place: at the broken gateway stood two statues which I loved even before I had learned to appreciate the excellence of Greek carving. To the left stood Hercules as a wrestler and to the right was nimble-footed Hermes as a runner, while inside the faded halls stood the statue which impressed me with both its gigantic size and its ugliness. It was Zeus, now called Jupiter, as a discus thrower, but we were told by loyal Jews that it was really Antiochus Epiphanes, the benefactor whom the Jews had driven from the land a century before, but no part of that story did we then believe.

I took this crumbling gymnasium and made of it a thing of beauty. For me it was a work of love, in no way conspicuous among the many temples and stadia I built, but it gave me almost as much pleasure as either the Augusteana or the little temple in which I now rest; because when it was finished, all in white marble, it became the center of life in Makor, and whenever the king had to sail from the port of Ptolemais, he stayed with me and spent hours in the marble baths. He once told me that some of the happiest hours of his life had been spent in Makor, the first town he had conquered and the base from which he had gained control of the Galilee and later of the entire Jewish kingdom.

Because the king had prospered in Makor, he allowed me freedom in rebuilding my little town: the main gate was reconstructed, but I kept the ancient zigzag pattern; and wherever needed, the walls that must have dated back to the time of King David were rebuilt, so that the town seemed encased like a precious jewel in a stout stone setting. The streets were clean and straight, and old houses were torn down to be rebuilt of white limestone. Even the old water system I refurbished, installing a new set of granite steps in the main shaft and placing marble benches about the well itself.

Under the Roman peace that dominated our kingdom, the environs of our town prospered too. The road to Ptolemais was straightened and paved with stone along which chariots could move with ease if not with comfort. I ordered the old olive press on my family grounds replaced by a superior type developed in southern Italy, and my fields were lined with stone walls, marking their proper limits. There was a neatness in our countryside which I added to whenever I returned home from working in distant cities, and inside the walls we knew an opulence which came to us from all parts of the world: Persia and India were as close to us as Britain or Gaul; caravans reached us from all directions and ships put in to Ptolemais from every port in our sea and from some along the western shore of Africa. Old Jews tell me that today Makor is as big as it ever was, with more than a thousand people living inside the walls and six hundred living in peace outside. I have seen all the rivers of the east. I have sailed into all the seaports. I have worked at Rome and Athens and Alexandria …

My wife is waking. I go to her bed and tickle the end of her little nose with my fingernail, so that I may be the first thing she is aware of on this last day. She turns on her pillow and smiles, and I recall what a philosopher once told me in Jericho: “A man is never old if he can still be moved emotionally by a woman of his own age.” If he was correct I shall die a young man. This morning I could run a race or direct the first steps in the building of a new temple, and I love Shelomith. She smiles and says with a certain gaiety, “I would not miss a moment,” and places her feet on the marble floor.

“They’re getting up,” the guards call one to another, and word is carried to the town officials.

“Is this the day?” Shelomith asks, and I tell her, as she washes at the alabaster laver I had carved in Antioch, that in my judgment the king must surely be dead by now—he could not have lived much longer, not possibly—and that before the day is out the messengers must arrive with the news that will set the soldiers upon us with their swords at the ready.

Some eleven times in my life I have seen the king’s mercenaries turned loose upon prisoners. It was a favorite trick of the king’s, to have his enemies enclosed in a narrow space, unarmed, and to send roaring through the doors his legionnaires in battle dress, wearing shields and short swords. Why the soldiers obeyed him I never understood, for the slaughter was hideous to watch, and it must have been equally repulsive to those who performed it. But always the soldiers were obedient, and their short swords flashed until their military tunics were red with blood; and almost never was any victim killed by a simple thrust. He was always hacked to death, with ears sliced off and legs cut away at the ankle until the carnage was more than I could bear. But the king would stand and watch, his gray-white tongue licking his lips, his fat hands clasping and unclasping in fury as he cried, “Death to them all, for they have opposed me.”

I first met Herod forty-five years ago at the zigzag gate of Makor. He was twenty-five years old then, and I nineteen. He was the glamorous, daring son of the Idumaean manipulator who was trying to win the kingdom of the Jews away from the rightful heirs of Judah the Maccabee. It seemed impossible to us then that a non-Jew could win the throne, and we who were young did not join Herod because we hoped for preferment if he became our king; we rallied to him, I think, because he was handsome and commanding. In those days there were bandits in Galilee who called themselves patriots, and we wished an end to them. Herod told us, “If we attack relentlessly we can conquer them. You shall have peace, and I shall have”—he hesitated, then added—“my reward.”

At different points near Makor we rounded up large numbers of the bandits, whom not even Rome had been able to subdue, but whom Herod terrified. At two of the general killings I was present; I carried my short sword among the unarmed prisoners and helped hack them to death. How many did we slay in those first campaigns? A thousand … four thousand? I swung my arm until it was leaden, and we crushed the bandits. The worst we burned to death. The seconds-in-command we crucified slowly. Herod, conspiring to win the Jewish throne, started by killing thousands upon thousands of Jews.

Herod chose me as his confidant because at four crises in his life I supported him when others feared to do so. I formed this habit in those early years, when the Jews rose against their tormentor and when it seemed, twice running, that he was doomed. In Jerusalem the leaders of the Jews pointed to his massacres in Galilee and said that he had acted outside the Jewish law, which was true. He had ignored it and had willfully perverted it, killing without trial or judgment, crucifying and burning; so he himself was hauled to trial, and on the evening before the tribunal convened, to sentence him to certain death, he asked me if I was as courageous in the law as I had been on the battlefield, and I said, “Yes.” So when the austere court of bearded elders assembled to condemn him, I marched my soldiers into the court and threatened to kill any Jew who voted against my general. The judges panicked and Herod was set free.

The second time I supported him was when the Jews, still hoping to keep him from the crown, sought to poison the mind of Antony, who had followed the greater Caesar in the bed of Cleopatra, our southern neighbor. I went to Antony, who ruled our areas, and spoke on Herod’s behalf; and partly because of my pleading Antony accepted Herod as his regent for the Jews, and in this manner my red-cheeked young general attained the highest power. I must say that he did not forget the assistance I rendered him in those first two tests.