Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Where had they come from, these Jews of Makor? Following the general expulsion of 351, when Tverya was laid waste and the compilation of the Palestinian Talmud brought to an end, in each remote valley a few rural families had survived, and when the fury was over, these remnants began to assemble in towns like Makor, where they formed ineffective groups lacking both funds and leadership. Once or twice every decade some Jew of Ptolemais or Caesarea, where the communities were strong, would make the long trip to Babylonia, where the center of Judaism now lay, to refresh himself as to what was happening among the leaders, and he would return to explain to neighboring villages the decisions that Babylon had recently handed down. And occasionally a ship from Spain would bring some wandering scholar on a visit to the holy places of Judaism, and he would report to the gape-mouthed Jews of Makor on the wonders of Europe.

In this year of crisis, when Islam was on the march and when only a unified land could hope to withstand the assault, their foolish rabbi had sorely split his community over an incident so timeless that it could have sprung from the scroll of Genesis. Like most of the classic tragedies of the Torah it began simply: There were two brothers. One married a beautiful wife. The other did not.

Throughout Palestine, for the last two thousand years and regardless of who controlled the country, there had always been one occupation monopolized by Jews, the dyeing industry, and in Makor the dye vats that lay west of the basilica were owned by two brothers, Judah and Aaron, the older of whom had some years before married Shimrith, 9 stately, beautiful young woman whose father had traded by donkey with the markets of Ptolemais, while the younger brother had married a local farm girl, stodgy and hard-working. The marriage of Judah and Shimrith had been a productive one, for although they had no children they had established a loving, observant Jewish home from which they radiated what little enlightenment Makor knew in those bleak years. In fact, when Jews compared their fumbling rabbi with Judah, they often observed among themselves: “How much better off this town would be if Judah were our rabbi.”

But this year his attention had to be focused elsewhere. With the fall of Damascus to the Arabs, stragglers began arriving in Makor with tales of Arab invincibility, and fear settled over the town. Trade with Damascus halted and a worrisome surplus of dyed goods began to accumulate, so that the brothers were faced with a difficult choice: close down the vats and throw their Jewish workers into starvation, or visit Ptolemais to see if more lengths of cloth could be pressed upon the merchants coming there from Venice and Genoa. Accordingly, in early November, Judah did what thousands of men from his little town had done in centuries past: he dressed in his best clothes, found himself a staff and set forth upon the journey to Ptolemais, which still seemed the most exciting and romantic settlement in the world; and it was while he was gone that his wife Shimrith became vaguely aware that her brother-in-law Aaron had begun to look upon her with unaccustomed interest, even though he had a wife of his own.

The brothers had always lived together in a cluster of cramped buildings at the western edge of town: the dye vats stood in the middle, with the mean synagogue to the north and a home for two families to the south. Aaron and his large family kept to one half of the house, while Judah and Shimrith held the other. Often the two households ate together, so that Aaron had many opportunities to know Shimrith, who respected him as the gruff, powerful man he was, beardless and slope-shouldered from the heavy work at the dye vats. His big hands were usually stained with the signs of his occupation and he was careless of his general appearance, so that he was not the kind of person Shimrith would normally seek out, and now in her husband’s absence she began to fear him, for it was obvious that he had become obsessed with her.

Whenever she was in sight he stared at her, lasciviously. Ignoring his own wife he tried to place himself so that Shimrith would have to pass close, and at each opportunity his red-stained hands reached for her legs. She avoided him when possible, but the proximity in which they lived made contact inescapable, and she grew to loathe his sudden, grabbing appearances from behind doors. One day he cornered her when his own wife was absent and was so disgusting in his behavior that Shimrith cried, “I shall tell Judah when he returns.”

“Do so and I’ll kill him,” Aaron threatened, but Shimrith beat him about the face until he had to let her run panic-stricken to her own portion of the house.

While she huddled there alone she heard the rising of the wind as a storm came in from the sea, bringing the reality of winter to the Galilee. That night there would be frost and on the higher mountains snow; farmers would hurry with their winter plowing and citizens of the town would don their warm clothes and cluster together about small fires, listening to the winds howling down the wadis. Makor, on its exposed height, was especially susceptible to these wintry storms, and pilgrims from Europe who had always imagined Jesus and Moses as living in the sweltering heat of the desert were often bewildered when they found the Galilee as cold as their homelands.

For Shimrith it was a miserable, lonely period. During the bleak winters she had always loved being with her husband, in the warmth of his arms and safe in his protection. Now, alone, she felt afraid to leave her own cold rooms lest her brother-in-law molest her, and even when she heard the children playing and calling for her she kept to herself, praying for the swift return of her husband from Ptolemais. But the storms kept him in the port city, and the day came when Aaron felt free to make a direct attack upon her.

He was impelled to do so by a curious logic with which he had convinced himself that she was hungry for his advances: Look at her! That big, wonderful woman with wide hips and me the only man in Makor strong enough to satisfy her. She’s alone and she must want me to come to her. One look at her smooth olive face tells me she wants to be loved, and her hands twitch nervously when I’m nearby. He honestly believed that he would be doing his sister-in-law a favor by approaching her, and this led to the conviction that she had, by sly glances, invited him to do so.

Consequently, in the middle of a morning, when he should have been at the dye vats, he slipped out the rear of the workshop, scurried along the edge of town and darted into the back door of his home. Assuring himself that his wife was occupied with her children in the open area between their house and the basilica, he burst into Shimrith’s house, appearing before her suddenly, grabbing her and kissing her with much vigor.

She tried to push him away, but with a skill that he must have practiced in imagination he pinioned her arms with his body, used one hand to cover her mouth and another to throw aside his loose-fitting robe, so that he stood naked and furious before her. He then proceeded to tear away her clothes, while she kicked and struggled vainly against his superior force. When he had her nearly nude he forced her to the floor, still keeping his hand over her mouth, and in a violent scene of tearing and brutality tried to force his massive way into her body.

When the struggle reached its final stage she was afraid that she must faint, for she was barely able to breathe, but when she felt his body stabbing at her and his animal-like breath enveloping her she made a supreme effort to protect herself, kicking at him with her knees and scratching her nails across his face. This unexpected pain enraged the dyer, and with an uncontrollable blow of his fist he bruised her face and knocked her nearly unconscious. Unable to resist any further she fell back exhausted and in a kind of wintry haze felt him ravage her.