Agrippa's Daughter (15 page)

I considered what he said. Believe me, sister, it is no easy matter to sort out this advice from that advice and to make sense of two sage pieces of counsel, each of them opposed to the other. But the upshot of this thing was that I decided to swallow my pride and go to speak with this Shimeon Bengamaliel. I tell you in all detail what followed then: and I tell it to you bluntly and plainly:

I went alone to the House of Shlomo—that is, alone except for my armor-bearer, who is one of those oversized Galilean hulks, with a neck as thick as my waist and a little bit of brains in his fists. His name is Adam Benur, and he is a holy terror in an argument, and as large and ugly as he is, less of an attention-gatherer than a troop of armed guards. The House of Shlomo is outside of the city walls, one of those large villas built directly on the lake, with a stepped terrace down to the lake, built of a pink stone fetched here all the way from Megiddo. Believe me, they do themselves well, these fishermen. I was greeted by the head of the house, Gideon Benharmish—they have gone back to the old Hebrew names, these newly rich Israelites—a tall, soft-spoken man in his fifties, and well-mannered for a merchant. Servants all over the place. The master, his wife, his relatives—no lack of respect, believe me—bowing and scraping and honored beyond their ability to express. Of course, they would never have had the courage to demand that I come there. That was the doing of this Shimeon, who is only a few years older than I, certainly. They greeted even my horse as if it was of royal blood, and took big Adam off to sit in the kitchen and fill his belly, an honored guest on his own terms.

Shimeon himself stood somewhat aloof, back and away from the immediate family—so that I was there for a while before they presented him to me. He is a big man, a full head taller than I am, broad, dark-eyed, with a close-cropped black beard. He was dressed very simply but presentably in sandals, the latest style of white linen trousers, cut just below the knee, and a sleeveless coat of white linen that revealed a pair of large and muscular arms, too large and muscular, it appeared to me, for a physician and a scholar. Like the stricter Pharisees, he wore no ornaments or colors, but he is no ascetic. At the magnificent table they spread, he ate as well as any and better than most.

He bowed to me and did me honor, at which I expressed surprise, and then he explained, “I honor the House of Mattathias. I am told that your sister puts herself forward as a Hasmonean.”

“We have every right to do so,” I said, “by the line of my great-grandmother Mariamne, who was herself the granddaughter of Hyrcanus, and thus out of the true Maccabee blood and line.”

He smiled at my protestations, as if they amused him, and said that here in the House of Shlomo, as in his own house, they had too much work to do to bother about their pedigrees. But some of this attitude is merely bragging, for I am given to understand that he is the grandson of the sage Hillel, an immigrant from Babylon who was the founder of his house, and as proud as a peacock of this short line and descent. In any case, he was pleasant enough, and I think we became friends of a sort. I did not have to explain concerning the slanders that are circulated about us. He had heard them, and he was contemptuous of people who slander others. Then I explained to him the circumstances of Polemon’s relationship to you.

“So he desires to become a Jew,” Shimeon said.

“Exactly. We need a surgeon of skill and importance. Polemon can pay whatever fee you ask.”

“Has it never occurred to Polemon that there’s more to being a Jew than having one’s foreskin chopped off?”

“Come, come,” I reminded him. “Every day, thousands of infants are born into this world, and they become Jews willy-nilly, simply by having their foreskins chopped, as you put it. Polemon is a king. Surely, he can become Jewish by doing the same thing at great cost of pain and risk.”

“That’s a hard argument to meet,” Shimeon nodded, smiling.

“It appears to amuse you.”

“It does. From what you have told me, Queen Berenice has no desire to marry this Polemon.”

“She can be persuaded.”

“Why?”

“I told you why. Either you will do the operation—or we shall find another.”

“Oh, I will do it,” Shimeon said. “Have no fear of that. Even if it’s a sort of lopsided Jew that I am making, I will do the making. There’s supposed to be some virtue in it, although why there should be at the news of one more Jew in this sorry world is more than I pretend to understand. How old are you, Lord Agrippa?”

I was pleased that he used “Adon” as a title for me. Too many did not. Nor was he being cynical. I could see that he liked me.

“Twenty-one years,” I answered.

“Ah. That is young, isn’t it? But I suppose one becomes a king when one does, not by choice or training.”

“I never thought of it that way. But you’re right.”

“You know,” he said, “I will be creating another Jewish king with this operation. Don’t you mind?”

“Not at all,” I shrugged.

“Your great-grandfather—no, even your father would have seen me in hell before I was prompted to create royal Jews.”

“I am afraid I lack the lusts of either the Herods or the Hasmoneans,” I shrugged. “Being king is not something that delights me. I suppose I have small character and little ambition.”

“You have a sense of humor, my lord, and that delights me.”

So, you see, sister, we became friends, and tomorrow Polemon subjects himself to Shimeon’s knife. I pray you to send me your consent by return messenger.

From Berenice to her brother, Agrippa:

I do not know what to say. The days and weeks and months pass, and I feel more and more like some animal creature enclosed in a box. However I turn, there is no way out.

Always I have taken a husband or betrothed because it was necessary or expedient. My father married me to his brother because as he had it, I was a whore. Now I cannot go near the place I was born or the brother of my flesh because all the wagging, evil tongues in the land will have it that we lie together. My brother Agrippa—what am I to do? I am lost, and there is no way for me to find myself.

Agrippa to his sister Berenice:

I am sending for you. I am sending a troop of horse and a gift from Polemon. This is a scarf, measuring two feet in width and seven feet in length, and the whole surface is covered with pearls that have been sewn to it—over two thousand pearls. It is said to be very valuable. Beradin, who has excellent connections with the pearl dealers in the Far East, has been after me to sell it, since according to him the pearl market is at its height today. He feels that if the money is invested in the glassworks at Tyre, it can be doubled within a year. He says that the gesture of presenting the scarf to you is typical of Polemon. I gather from Beradin that financially, Polemon leaves something to be desired, but the advantages of a union with him far outweigh such disadvantages. In any case, the disposal of the scarf is a worthy gesture.

I am amazed at the grasp of matters financial by people like Beradin or the men of the House of Shlomo. Their knowledge fairly makes my head spin, but as Beradin puts it, it is more important for a king to know the assets and resources of his neighbors than the size of their armies. He has persuaded me to put funds into the wool trade, and already I can see profits that amaze me.

But that is off the point, is it not? I am writing to tell you that Shimeon Bengamaliel has successfully completed his operation on the king of Cilicia, and that for the past two weeks Polemon has been recuperating very nicely.

We postponed the operation until Polemon’s uncle and two of his seneschals could come to Tiberias—a considerable journey, as you know, from Cilicia. Along with myself, Beradin, and others, they witnessed the operation. The operation itself is no great problem for a skilled surgeon, and in this case it took only a few minutes. Not only is Shimeon very clever at his work, but he makes a fetish of cleanliness, being of the school of Hippocrates, which holds that cleanliness is a bar against infection. He uses wine as wash water—which most of our Jewish surgeons do—but he also heats his instruments and then cools them. In this case, he used a copper plate almost identical to that which the Mohel uses for infants, except that it was somewhat larger to accommodate the manhood of Polemon—such manhood being of normal size, a reassuring fact in itself. The plate has a slit, and after the foreskin is properly inserted in this slit, the surgeon removes it with three quick cuts. Then wine is poured upon it and the cut member is packed with wadding to halt the bleeding.

I must say that Polemon took it very well, not crying out except for a single squeal when the first cut was made; and all the people watching applauded him and said that he had shown a very kingly spirit indeed. Yet I must say that I am quite grateful that my own circumcision took place in my infancy.

The following day, some slight infection set in, and for three days thereafter Polemon had a fever. I was very uneasy lest he should become really ill and die in Tiberias—something that could only lead to endless political complications. But he overcame the infection and now he is completely healed and healthy.

He looks forward to your arrival as eagerly as I do, my sister. I await you. Our separation has been too long.

Part Three

An old man with a limp, a withered arm, and a tattered gray beard was called Rabbi Gershon—a title which no one questioned too stringently. He had the freedom of the palace for alms, as certain other beggars did, providing that they were old and unobtrusive and appeared infrequently enough to avoid being nuisances. Berenice met him in the hallway, as she was entering her chamber, and when he asked for alms, Gabo appeared to chase him away.

“Let him be,” Berenice said, going into her bag and finding a gold piece that she dropped into his outstretched hand.

“Gold!” Gabo exclaimed. Her eyes were wide as saucers.

“You made a mistake, my lady, Berenice,” said the old man.

“Why?”

“Gold. Just as that Benjaminite says—her eyes are ready to fall out of her head. I thank you with all my heart, and I bow to you and kneel to you—if I may, figuratively—my arthritis being what it is, if I did get down on my knees there is no telling when I would get up again.”

“I didn’t make a mistake,” Berenice said. “I have plenty of gold. It is nothing.”

“But one does not give gold to a beggar,” Rabbi Gershon insisted.

“You are a most obstinate old man, aren’t you? And how did you know that my maidservant here is a Benjaminite?”

“Oh? It’s simple—dark skin, crafty as a jackal at night, shies away like a wild animal—but very clever if they are educated.” He bit at the gold piece with his yellow fangs.

“Don’t you believe my gold is gold?” Berenice asked.

“You I believe, my lady. This is simply the reaction to the world I live in—a world full of thieves and connivers. You—I ask for God’s blessing on you. God keep you, back here in the land of your fathers in this good place, Tiberias. May the Lord God Almighty bless you and make your womb ripe and fruitful and your years prosperous.”

“And you would call down such a blessing upon the infamous Berenice?”

“May my tongue wither before I repeat such a term,” the old man said. “God bless you.”

In her chamber, Berenice said to Gabo, “That was very nice of him.”

“So would I for a gold piece.”

“You’re not a rabbi—not even a self-styled one. You are a bothersome girl who never bathes enough—and you’d better bathe today because you are beginning to smell ripe. Anyway, whether a gold piece purchased it or not—”

“A gold piece,” said Gabo. “Enough to keep a family for a year!”

Looking at her brother, Agrippa, king of Tiberias and king of Chalcis, king of some Jews and some Gentiles, Berenice decided that he had changed very little in five years. He was almost twenty-two years old now, but he was as slender and boyish as at seventeen, his head covered with dark ringlets of hair, his beard short and softly curled, his face the long-suffering face of a put-upon young man—a face without too much strength or ambition. He was like his face too—as if all the fierce, unspeakably cruel ambition and lust for power that had marked the Hasmonean and Herodian lines with a brand of infamy that all of time would never erase had washed out in him, the last male of his line; leaving him serenely unassuming and unperturbed by either ambition or overwhelming desire. People were always struck by his diffidence. He had a sort of stammer that was not a stammer; and if he were not a king—and not simply a king but the last of the most famous royal house in all the world of his age—he would have been occupied with an endless series of apologies. He disliked anger and scenes charged with emotion, so that even now, when his patience was near the breaking point, he resisted the temptation to shout at his sister.