My Glorious Brothers Read online

  “Come inside,” I said, for the old man leaned heavily upon me, shivering a little. “The night air is cold.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and I’ve talked on like an old fool, long and not too wisely.”

  And we went down the hillside, the Adon leaning on my shoulders.

  ***

  To the house of Moses ben Aaron I went, the next day, and the vintner had become like one of his own grapes, squeezed dry, and of no good to anyone; and his wife sat like a shadow, a black shawl over her head. “Come in, Simon,” he said to me, “come in, my son, and take off your shoes and sit with us. We will think, for just a while, that my daughter is here with us.”

  “We will not think that,” his wife said dully.

  “A cup of wine for the son of Mattathias,” he said, pouring it for me. “Thus I would send her into the house of the Adon with a new vintage. Let Mattathias ben John taste and judge—Simon, Simon, this is a lonely household.”

  “Must you talk of her?” his wife demanded. “Can’t you let the dead sleep?”

  “Now peace, woman. Do I disturb her sleep? This is the man who loved her—this is Simon ben Mattathias. Of what else should I speak to him? When she was a child, he played with her, and when she grew to be a woman, he held her in his arms. What else should I speak of?”

  “Of Apelles,” she said.

  “May he rot in hell! His name soils my tongue!”

  “Of Apelles,” she repeated.

  “Talk to her, Simon,” he pleaded to me. “Talk to her, because she takes no food, not wine, not bread, but only sits like a shadow. Talk to her.”

  “I’ve heard enough talk,” the mother of Ruth said. “Do I need talk from the sons of the Adon? I was like a mother to them, but of my own I had only one child. Simon, what will you do when Apelles returns to Modin?”

  Both of them stared at me, and I nodded. I poured another cup of wine and held it out to her. “Drink, my mother. The time of mourning is over.”

  She rose, took the cup of wine, and drained it.

  ***

  In a little shed, built out from a fragment of stone wall as old as the hills, was the anvil and forge of Ruben the smith. Now, as in my own childhood, it was a favorite place for the children. Your mother sent you with a leaking pot or your father with a broken hoe blade. The work was done, but you stayed as the day faded away, caught, trapped, taken by the broad little man, soot-blackened, his mighty arms the personification of the metal he worked, his great hammer a fearful engine of destruction, his bellows the living mouth of a dragon. He lived in a world of sparks and heat, and under his hands the dead metal came alive. He liked children, and he told them his strange stories, like no other stories. Well do I remember coming there once with Ruth, and how she clung fearfully to me while Ruben told us of Cain, the black-browed, red-handed Cain, who was plunged down to the nether world where first he saw the imps work metal—and how he rambled on and on until finally Ruth burst into tears. “Weep not, little girl,” he said, melting all at once, and picking her up in his bare, hairy arms. “Oh, weep not, my golden one, my queen in Israel, my beautiful one.” But she fought him until he let her go, and then she ran and hid in our corn crib, where I found her and comforted her.

  It might have been yesterday when I came to his workshop, for the children were there still, as close as they dared come, while he worked with his hammer, and Judas, stripped to the waist, clamped his metal for him. “And here is Simon,” Ruben said, down with the hammer, clang, clang, clang, “also to teach me my trade? I was burning metal before you were weaned, either of you. And I’ve seen a thing or two, for twice I went north to the mountains with Moses ben Aaron, to buy the iron where they dig it from the earth, where the slaves crawl into the ground like moles, all naked—and blind, too, and at night they sleep fenced in, like animals, whining and whimpering. That I saw with my own eyes on the slopes of Ararat, where the ark settled to earth, where the Greeks bring slaves from the whole world over to mine the metal for them. Yet when I make a spear, it is no good, too short in the haft, too heavy in the head—”

  “A weapon must serve a man, not man a weapon,” Judas said.

  “You hear him, Simon ben Mattathias,” Ruben smiled, the hammer showering sparks as he beat at the iron—“me, he tells of spears and weapons. When you toddled, Judas, when you were in swathing, I was in Tyre and a Roman cohort came—the first, mind you—and I felt their pilum, six pounds of metal and six pounds of wood behind it. There is a weapon, by all the devils! I have seen the spear of the wild men who live beyond Ararat, three feet of metal and shaped like a leaf, and I have seen the nasty, snakelike spear of the Parthian. Or your Syrian spear, a shovel to scoop out the flesh, or your Greek weapon, fourteen feet long for three men to hold, or your miserable Egyptian spear with its bronze head, or your Bedouin lance. The Roman captain said to me then, Who are you? I answered, A Jew out of Judea, a smith, a worker in metal whose name is Ruben ben Tubel. I hadn’t his language or he mine, but we found them to translate. I never met a Jew, he said. Said I, I never met a Roman. He said to me then, Are all Jews as strong and ugly as you? And are all Romans, I answered him, as foul of mouth to strangers? That is a dirty weapon in your hand and a dirty tongue in your head. For I was young then, Judas ben Mattathias, and never afraid of anything that lived. Well, he took a pilum from one of his men and there was a donkey on the street with a bit of a sweet-faced lad pulling it. Look, Jew, he said, and drove the pilum through the donkey with one motion, so that the wood pressed the donkey’s side and the iron pole stood two feet beyond. There’s our weapon, Jew, he said, while the lad screamed with fear and grief, and there’s good pay and better glory in the Legion. I told you I feared nothing then. I threw a silver coin to the lad, and I spat in the Roman’s face and walked away. Yes, he might have killed me, but they were strangers there—”

  True or not, the children loved his tale, their eyes fixed upon him, their faces rapt. Judas held up the spearhead, long, slender as a reed, still glowing red from the heat.

  “Temper it!” the smith said, and Judas plunged it into a bucket of cold water. Through the steam, I heard the smith ring it with his hammer.

  “Too frail,” he said. “Too frail. Armor will stand it.”

  “But flesh will not,” Judas answered evenly, “and it will find its way. Make them, Ruben, make them.”

  ***

  And in the month of Tishri, when the sweet breath of the new year was all over the land, Apelles returned. So things have a beginning and an end—even Modin.

  Judas laid his plans well. He was tireless; day and night, he worked, planned, schemed, and day by day, the store of long, slender spears mounted. A village condemned was Modin. We dug our bows out of the ground. We made new arrows. We turned our plows into spears. We put a razor edge upon our knives. And already, even now, it was to Judas that people brought their woes. “And six children, Judas ben Mattathias—” “We will make provision for the children.” “And what will a man do with his goats?” “Our stock goes with us.” It was Lebel, the teacher, who pleaded his case. “I am a man of peace, of peace.” He came to the Adon, his bloodshot blue eyes wet with tears. “Where is the place of a man of peace in Israel today?” And the Adon called for Judas, who listened and nodded.

  “Will our children grow up like savages in the wilderness?”

  “No,” Lebel said.

  “Or Jews who cannot read or write?”

  Lebel shook his head.

  “Then make peace in your heart, Lebel!”

  Then Judas told the Adon that the few slaves in Modin must be freed. “Why?” “Because only free men can fight like free men.” Judas said. The Adon said, “Then ask the people—” And thus was our first assembly in the open valley. From the near-by villages of Goumad and Dema, people came to listen, and the synagogue would not hold them all, so Judas stood on the fr
agment of ancient stone wall to speak, and he said to people:

  “I want no man who is faint of heart to follow me! I want no man who cares more for his wife and child than he cares for freedom! I want no man who counts the measure when he pours it out! I know a road that leads in only one direction, and who travels it must travel light. I want no slaves or bondsmen—turn them away or put weapons in their hands!”

  “Who are you to talk like that?” some of them cried.

  “A Jew out of Modin,” Judas said. There could be an incredible simplicity about him—yet a cunning measure of the people he spoke to. “And if a Jew should not speak, then I’ll be silent”—and he began to climb down. But they shouted at him:

  “Speak! Speak!”

  “I don’t come with gifts,” he said simply. “I come with blood on my hands—and there will be blood on yours when you listen to me.”

  “Speak!” they told him. And afterwards, when twenty men from Goumad came armed, to seek him out, they asked in the village:

  “Where will we find the Maccabee?”

  And the people of Modin directed them to the house of Mattathias. Thus it was in the days before Apelles came back…

  I told you how the road ran through our village and through the valley. There was much that Judas did, but this I took on myself, and each morning I posted one of the village boys on a high crag, where he could see the road for miles. Eastward, over hill and dale, through a necklace of villages, the road traveled to Jerusalem, but westward by stages it went down to the forest and through the forest to the Mediterranean. One day it was Jonathan, one day another of the boys, and as long as it was light they perched on the rocks, straining their young eyes for the glitter of a breastplate or the flash of a spear. I knew it must come and come soon; no secret can be a secret in a land like ours, where every bit of news travels like the wind through the valleys and the villages.

  I had none of Judas’s sublime faith. There were the weak and the strong, the poor and the wealthy, and it was well enough to talk about the warden and his men, but what would happen when the test came? Already Eleazar and Jonathan worshiped Judas; his every word, his every wish was their law. How can I deny that I envied the way they listened to him, the way they watched him! When I saw that, the old hatred, the old bitterness, the old resentment welled up in me—so that I asked myself over and over again, Why isn’t he like other men? I soaked myself in guilt, because I knew deep in my heart that if Judas had been here, Ruth would be alive—and somehow I held it against him that there was never a word of reproach, never a word of blame for me, never a word of anger. Yet when John came to me looking for sympathy, I turned on him.

  “Are you for this too?” he wanted to know. His wife was heavy with child.

  “For what?”

  “For war, for death? Walk in righteousness, it says, walk in peace. But when Judas speaks, we stop thinking.”

  “What would you think of, John?” I demanded.

  “At least, this way we live.”

  “And is life so dear?” I cried. “Is it so good, so sweet, so just?” I caught myself. Was I like the Adon already? Was this my brother or a stranger? Yet in spite of myself, I said the cruelest thing I knew, “Are you a son of Mattathias, or a bastard? Are you a Jew?”

  It was like the lash of a whip, and John cringed visibly; it was worse than the lash of a whip, for this was a saintly man who had never lifted up his voice against any living thing, but accepted God’s will with that gentle Jewish Amen, so be it; and he stared at me for a while before he dropped his head and walked away…

  And then Apelles returned.

  In the morning, Nathan ben Borach, thirteen years old and fast as a deer, came leaping down from the hillside, calling, “Simon! Simon!” But all the people heard, and when I reached him, I had to push through the press of the people. “From where?” I asked him. “From the west.” “And how far?” “Two or three miles—I don’t know how far. I saw the gleam you told me to watch for, and then I saw the men and I came.”

  “We have time,” Judas decided, quieting them. “Go to your houses and bolt the doors and close the shutters—and wait.” He had a little silver whistle that Ruben had made for him. “When I call you, come—those who have spears with spears and the rest with bows. Watch your shafts when you drop them and shoot well.”

  “And the men from Goumad?”

  “It’s too late,” Judas said, “and this will be for Modin.”

  “We could go to the hills now,” someone said.

  “And we could bend our knees to Apelles. Go to your houses, and those of you who have no heart, stay there, stay there.”

  They did as he said, and doors closed and the village became silent. The Adon and Rabbi Ragesh and Judas and Eleazar and I stood in the square and waited. I had my knife in my belt, and under his cloak Judas wore the long two-edged sword of Pericles. Then Jonathan ran from the house and joined us. I would have sent him back, but Judas looked at me and nodded—and I held my peace. A moment later, John joined us, and with him was Ruben ben Tubel, cloaked and clenching his hammer under his cloak. Close together, the eight of us waited, until presently we heard the beat of a drum and the metallic clash of armor—and then the mercenaries came, first a rank of twenty, then Apelles in his litter, then sixty more in three ranks of twenty, no horsemen now, for which I breathed a sigh of relief, but walking among the mercenaries a Jew, a white robed Levite whom I recognized as one of the Temple attendants from Jerusalem.

  The slaves set down the litter, and Apelles hopped out, grotesquely magnificent in a golden mantle and a little red skirt. How well I remember him as he stood there in the cool Judean morning, the apostle of civilization, his hair carefully set and curled, his cupid bow lips delicately rouged, his pink cheeks carefully shaven, his jowls underlined with a golden necklace, his capon bosom swelling the golden mantle, his fat thighs setting off his flounced skirt, his little feet encased in high silver sandals that wound up his dimpled calves.

  “The Adon Mattathias,” he greeted us, “the noble lord of a noble people.” My father nodded, but said nothing. “And is this a welcome?” he lisped. “Are eight men a fitting delegation for your warden?”

  “The people are in their houses.”

  “Their pigpens,” Apelles smiled.

  “We will call them if you wish,” the Adon said, gently and respectfully.

  “Presently, presently,” Apelles agreed. “You suit my mood. There is a civilized way of doing everything. Jason!” he cried, waving at the Levite.

  Hesitantly, the Jew joined him. The man was afraid. His face was as white as his cap, and his tiny beard and his two tiny mustaches trembled visibly.

  “Now welcome, Joseph ben Samuel,” my father said gently, “to the poor hospitality of Modin.”

  “Shalom,” the Levite whispered.

  “An ancient greeting, a warm greeting,” the Adon said. “And peace unto you, Joseph ben Samuel. Our house is enriched with an elder of the tribe of Levi.”

  “He comes to the sacrifice,” Apelles lisped smilingly. “The great King to his poor wardens saith thus, ‘My heart is heavy with this dark folk and their dark worship. An unseen God makes a secretive and vile people.’ So saith the King to me, his poor warden, and what else should I do but obey his orders? Yet I brought the good Jason here, a Levite, so that you might sacrifice in your own way.” He clapped his pudgy hands, and two mercenaries fetched a bronze altar they had been carrying and set it down before us. It was a slim thing, about four feet high, and crowned with the figure of Athene.

  “Pallas Athene,” Apelles said, mincing around the altar. “She was my own choice—Wisdom. Knowledge comes first and then civilization. Is that not so? Later Zeus and the swift Hermes. A complete man is a full man, is that not so? Make a flame, Jason, and burn the incense—and then we will have the people forth to s
ee the Adon do honor to this noble lady.”

  “Yes, make a flame, Joseph ben Samuel,” my father said. “Pallas Athene—later Zeus and the swift Hermes. Make a flame, Joseph ben Samuel.”

  Looking at the Adon, never taking his eyes off the Adon, the Levite approached the altar. Then, with one quick step, my father reached out a long arm, seized the Jew, and in a motion so quick I could scarcely follow, drew his knife and plunged it into his heart.

  “There is your sacrifice, Apelles!” he cried, hurling the dead Levite against the altar. “For the Goddess of Wisdom!”

  The shrill sound of Judas’s whistle broke the morning air. The two mercenaries who had brought the altar leveled their spears and came at us, but Eleazar raised the altar and flung it at them, bowling both over. Apelles turned to run, but Judas was on him, his first grasp short and stripping off the golden mantle. Half naked, Apelles tripped and fell, rolled over, and then squealed wildly as he saw Judas above him. With his bare hands, Judas killed him, lifting him by the neck and snapping it suddenly, as you do with a chicken, so that the wild squeals stopped and the head lolled.

  Then, for the first time, I saw Judas fight. The mercenaries were driving down on us, their brazen shields lapping, their shovel-like spears leveled. Judas drew his sword; I picked up the spear of one of the groaning mercenaries Eleazar had struck, and Eleazar had gotten from somewhere a wine mallet, an eight-foot pole with twenty pounds of wood at the end of it, used for mashing grapes in a deep cistern. The blacksmith joined us with his hammer, but it was Eleazar who broke the first rank of spears, charging in and using the long, heavy pole as a flail. Judas was beside him, sword in one hand, knife in the other, never pausing, never still, quicker than I had ever dreamed a man could be, a stroke here, a cut there, always in motion, always making a circle of steel around him with the sword.