My Glorious Brothers (21 page)

The high holy days were approaching, the Day of Atonement, when Judas would go to the Temple and stand first in the ceremonies, so we put off going to Jerusalem; the more so our surprise when Moses ben Daniel turned up one day at Modin, hot and dusty with hurried travel. As ever, we were glad to see him, for there was a quality in his worldly wisdom and his gentle wit that was all too rare in our little village; but there was little wit in his manner now and less joy. “Call all your brothers,” he said to me; and I put him off with, “But first wine and bread—and let me wash your feet, Moses, my good comrade, and fresh linen, so that while we eat we can remember the old days.”

“There is no time! Call them now!”

So haggard and worried was his face, so agonized his tone of voice, that I did as he told me to; and a little while later John and Jonathan and Judas sat with me in the house of Mattathias, while the words poured unhappily from the merchant's lips. He started by begging us to believe him…

“Should I doubt you, Moses?” Judas asked comfortingly. “Be at peace, my good friend, for this is the ancient home of Mattathias and here there is nothing to fear. Or is it Deborah?”

“She is well, thank God,” the merchant said.

“And you see all your kin here,” Judas smiled. “We are your children, are we not? For what Eleazar was, we are, only less. Drink your wine and be at peace.”

“There is no peace,” he said unhappily, “for what I have to tell is like the bitter, poisonous herbs that grow by Arabah, the sea of sorrows. Let me tell you then, and God forgive me and others. A Greek called Nicanor, who is chief warden now for Demetrius, the new King of Kings—”

“We met this Nicanor,” I said.

“Then you know him,” the merchant went on, “and you know that he is no Apollonius, but a clever and unscrupulous man who will stop at nothing to obtain what he wants. He came to Jerusalem, not with an army, not with mercenaries, but with just his armor-bearer, a well-knit temperate man, and he spoke that way, simply and directly and to the point, modest in his bearing and in his clothes too. Yes, Demetrius is not Antiochus; they go at things differently—but I tell you, my children, the things they go at are the same, the same. His mouth was as filled with peace as a hive is with honey, but when it was necessary, he let the sting that was there show—he let it show. He came before the Assembly of Elders, of which I am one, Judas, my child, my Maccabee—of which I am one, because I was like an Adon in Damascus once, yes I was there and Ragesh too and others, and thus he spoke: There must be peace. Jews will till their land in peace and in peace they will worship in the synagogues and at the Temple; but they must acknowledge that full overlordship of Demetrius; they must increase the tribute to fifty talents of gold and ten of silver each year; they must allow the Hellenists to leave the citadel and take up their residence once more in their great homes in Jerusalem; they must resign themselves to five thousand mercenaries being in garrison at Jerusalem and at Beth Zur—and last of all, may my tongue rot inside of me, they must hand over to Demetrius the Maccabee.”

Then there was silence, Moses ben Daniel looking from face to face. Anticipating what had brought him in such haste, rage and anger burned inside of me, and in Jonathan too, but Judas appeared unmoved. His face did not change. Pouring another glass of wine, he said to the merchant:

“Drink, father, and then tell us the rest. No word you say will be doubted, for there is a bond between us and the bond is greater now.”

“So Ragesh spoke, and he asked of Nicanor, What do you want with the Maccabee? There is no war in Israel now, and he tills his land in peace at Modin. Thus spoke Ragesh, and Nicanor answered him smoothly. It was true that the Maccabee tilled his land in peace, but how long would peace prevail so long as the banner of Judas Maccabeus could still be raised? Suppose this same Maccabee desired to make himself king—were there not thousands of Jews who would rally to his standard? Was ambition so strange a characteristic of men? Did they say that Judas was not ambitious? Yet throughout the long war, was it not Judas and always Judas who extended the combat? Was it not Judas who would accept no peace and no compromise? Was it not Judas who demanded leadership for himself and his brothers, demanding that even when the army was divided, a son of Mattathias should lead each part of it? Could they deny this?

“Then Enoch of Alexandria pointed out that Judas was high priest, to which Nicanor countered, Was this not ambition? My children, don't harden your hearts against them. They are old men. They've seen too much war and suffering. They want peace.”

“Peace!” Jonathan cried. “God's curse on them for the shame of it!”

“Go on, Moses,” Judas whispered. “Tell me what Ragesh said.”

“Ragesh—Ragesh—” The merchant shook his head tiredly. “Ragesh held out more than the others—more, yes more. He would die himself, he said, before he sent the Maccabee to his death, but this Nicanor indignantly denied. It was no part of Demetrius's plan to slay the Maccabee. In Antioch, he would be given a palace and treated as an honored guest—or he could live in Damascus, if he would, with a palace and slaves and all his heart desired, only so long as he left Judea forever. And what bond? Ragesh demanded. What bond? Then Nicanor gave his sacred word—”

“The word of Greeks,” I smiled. “The sacred word of the
nokri
.”

“But they accepted it,” Judas sighed, his face suddenly old and worn. “Word of a Greek or word of a
nokri,
they accepted it, and they bought their peace with Nicanor—and after all, I suppose, the price was cheap. It was I who told Nicanor that when the struggle is done, the Maccabee is no different from anyone else—”

“It's not done, Judas,” I said.

“For me, it's done, Simon, my brother.”

I rose, wholly dominated by rage now, crashing my fists down on the table. “No! By the Lord God of Israel, what are you thinking, Judas—to give yourself up?”

He nodded.

“Then over my dead body!” I cried.

“And mine!” Jonathan said.

Gripping my brother's arm, I said to him: “Judas—Judas, listen to me! For years now, I have followed you, obeyed you, because you were the Maccabee—because you were right! Now you are wrong! They have not betrayed you—they cannot, those frightened old men! Adons, they style themselves! I knew only one Adon in Israel, my father Mattathias, may he rest in peace, but there will be no peace for him, Judas, if you betray yourself and your brothers and your people! How did he say when he died, the old man? Do you remember, Judas? In battle, you would be first—but it was to me that he gave the burden, telling me, ‘Simon, thou art thy brother's keeper, thou and no other.' Do you hear me, Judas?”

“I hear you,” he said miserably. “But what can we do? What can we do?”

“What we did before—go into the wilderness. Do you take the word of a Greek?”

“Alone?”

“Alone—just you and I, until this thing comes to a head! Have you ever known a warden to be satisfied? Have you ever known their lust to be satisfied?”

“I go with you,” Jonathan said.

“No—go to Jerusalem, Jonathan. Go to Ragesh, and tell him the Maccabee is in Ephraim, the Maccabee and his brother Simon—tell him two men are in Ephraim and that so long as two men walk free on Judean soil, the fight goes on. Tell him it goes on until all the world knows that in Judea there is a people who will not bend their knee to man or God! We were slaves in Egypt, and we will not be slaves again. Tell Ragesh that!”

***

John wanted to come with us, gentle, scholarly John who had neither the will to hate nor the strength to strike, yet whose loyalty had never wavered and whose courage had never faltered. A trick of birth had made him one of five strange brothers who were knit as never before brothers in Israel had been knit; an indomitable spirit had made him learn to fight, to lead, to do all things foreign to him; and now too, when we were alone, when there were only the four of us against the whole world, his heart was with us; and had Judas and I said only one word, he would have left his wife and children, his home and his synagogue, his precious scrolls—to come with us, to be an outlaw, a fugitive, a man without hope or future.

This, at least, we did not do; and after thanking Moses ben Daniel, kissing him as we would kiss a father, we took our weapons, as much bread and meal as we could carry, and left Modin. We left in the night, saying farewell to no one, for those who did not know would not have to search their hearts for answers, and started our journey to Ephraim. By night we traveled, avoiding the villages, and going across the mountains by the old paths we knew so well, almost every foot of which was marked in our memories by some shade of glory.

Without incident, we came to Ephraim, and there Judas and I took up life in a cave that once had sheltered many Jewish families. Both Jonathan and John knew the place well, and when the time came, one of them would find us there. What or when that time would be, we did not know; but until then we would tarry here—and indeed, it was nothing to gladden our hearts. Much we had been through and there would be more to come, yet nothing burns in my memory so awful and heartbreaking as that lonely exile in Ephraim. Never had our spirits been lower, never had the future seemed so bleak and hopeless—so much so that often enough I felt what Judas had put into words, that this was truly the end.

But what took its greatest toll of me was to watch my brother, to watch that glorious spirit and flame die out of him, to watch the gray streaks in his auburn hair widen, to watch the lines in his young face deepen. I knew well enough that inside of him, the betrayal of Ragesh was eating the life out of him—the simple fact that it should have been Ragesh, Ragesh who had been with him in the very beginning, Ragesh who knew fear so little and esteemed death so lightly that he was almost ready to embrace it out of an intellectual curiosity, Ragesh whose wit triumphed over any adversity, Ragesh who, for all of us, had become like a father—not only for the sons of Mattathias, but for thousands of other Jews. Yet, of this Judas never spoke, and never by word or action did he give any indication of the misery he suffered.

How shall I understand by brother, Judas, and how shall I know the people who birthed me and gave me sustenance? The two are one, and the spirit of Judas was like the essence of life, the fragrance and all the mighty power of life.

And like life, he endured, and the strength in him was more, far more than any strength in me…

We did not do much in that time of exile. We hunted a little for small game, that we might stretch out our store of meal; for we considered it best not to enter even those few villages that had taken root in Ephraim. We talked little enough. We slept early and rose with the dawn. We prayed, as Jews pray, because we were Jews and because we could no more abandon our God than we could abandon life itself—and we became very close. How shall I signify that closeness, which is given to brothers and to no others? It is almost like the existence of a single soul in several bodies, like the promise of a time when all men, the Jew and the
nokri
, will lie down together and rise up together, even as the sweet prophet of the Exile said.

And can I say more or know more? Once, without lust, without pain, we talked of Ruth and what she had been. Yet the dead lie easily, easily…

We were thirty-two days in the wilderness before Jonathan came to us, early one morning as we sat at the mouth of our cave. And we kissed him and embraced him, and Judas held him by both arms, looking him up and down, smiling for the first time in a long while to see this slim and supple lad who, like Benjamin, was our youth and our treasure.

“And what has been?” I asked him. “But eat first, and rest first.”

“Much has been” Jonathan said. He had been a child, and now he was a man. “I come from Jerusalem,” he nodded, “and I have seen awful things. Ragesh is dead, and Moses ben Daniel is dead, and also dead are Samuel ben Zebulun and the Patriarch Enoch of Alexandria and others, and others—” He was very tired; we had not noticed at first, in our joy at seeing him: but now his head nodded as he spoke and pain twisted his face. “So many others,” he whispered. “They bought their peace so cheaply, so cheaply, but they sold it at a price.” The tears ran down his cheeks. “At a price—”

“Jonathan!” Judas said sharply. “Jonathan!”

“I'm all right,” the boy said. “I am here with the Maccabee, so I am all right. But in Judea, they say the Maccabee is dead. I'm all right, only I'm hungry and haven't slept.”

Judas gave him food, and I washed his feet and rubbed them with balm. “Tell us everything,” Judas said.

“There isn't much to tell. I went to Ragesh, as you told me to, Simon, and I spoke your words to him. Simon, Simon, God keep me from suffering what Ragesh suffered! And then came Nicanor to him and said, Deliver me Judas. And Ragesh told him, Judas is gone—Judas is in the wilderness. No man knows where the Maccabee dwells. Thus Ragesh spoke, and Nicanor was in a rage. Can Jew hide from Jew? he wanted to know, calling the old men perfidious and evil, and swearing by all of his gods that unless they gave him Judas, they would suffer all the consequences of it. Then Ragesh came to me and this he described to me. ‘Do you know where your brother is?' he asked me, and I told him I knew. ‘Will you go to him?' Ragesh asked me, and I said, ‘Yes, I will go to him when the time comes.' Then Ragesh said, weeping as he spoke, ‘Make yourself my messenger, Jonathan, my son, make yourself my messenger and go to Judas Maccabeus, wherever he is, and take his hands and kiss them with my lips, and beg his forgiveness in my words, in my words, and these are the words of Ragesh'—”

Jonathan paused. “Judas,” he said, “Judas—these are his words. ‘Tell him,' he said, ‘that I ask only his forgiveness, not God's. Damned I am and damned I will be, but the heart of Judas Maccabeus must be large enough to offer me some little sustenance.' Those were his words, Judas—”