Dear and Glorious Physician (57 page)

Samos gripped the sides of his chair and raised his face. “I am ready,” he said.

“Close your eyes so the blood will not drip into them.” Lucanus lifted a narrow keen blade. He must work fast. He examined the brand again. Ugly though it was, it was not an old scar; the skin was still tender about it, and flexible, for Samos was young. He would remove the brand carefully, not injuring underlying tissues, and would draw the clean edges together. When the wound healed there would be only a long thin wrinkle from the hairline to the brows, and in a few months it would whiten and be hardly noticed. Lucanus explained what he was about to do, and Samos nodded; his mouth had paled in anticipation, and had become rigid.

Lucanus drew the blade from the top to the bottom with a delicate touch, and the scar opened like a mouth and bled. But there were no large blood vessels underneath. Samos did not wince; he was very still. Lucanus wiped away the dripping blood and carved out the brand. Samos turned as white as death; his knuckles rose on his gripping hands. But he did not move. Lucanus began to sweat in his fast urgency; tears of blood ran from the wound and rolled in red drops down Samos’ cheeks; some gathered in little puddles in the corners of his mouth. The lamps flickered and blew in a light wind from the window.

The physician, concerned over the pain he was inflicting, glanced at Samos’ taut face for an instant. Again that sensation of familiarity came to him. “You are very brave,” he said, and his voice shook. “You are a brave and noble man, Samos.”

The brand lay in a little saucer, as evil as a demon’s eye, and already shriveling. Lucanus took up his linen thread and needle. Samos had a look of exhaustion about him; Lucanus wished he would faint. But the proud expression about the younger man’s mouth did not slacken. Lucanus began to sew deftly, and he talked in a soothing voice of the work he did among the poor, and the odd cases he had encountered. Samos smiled faintly. The young smooth skin had to be stretched to meet together. The scar, oozing little drops of blood, slowly closed. It was done.

“Open your eyes, Samos,” said Lucanus, and fell into a chair and wiped away his sweat with the back of his hand. Samos opened his eyes and smiled at him with joy and pride. After a moment Lucanus bandaged the wound, which no longer bled. “Ah,” he said, “I am pleased with this. It will be better than I hoped. But now you must drink a goblet of wine with me, for I am undone!”

Laughing in a trembling voice, he poured two glasses of wine. Samos reached for one with his left hand. Lucanus put the goblet into that hand, then stopped abruptly. His heart also seemed to stop, and there was a roaring in his ears. His face became whiter and stiller than the face of Samos.

Samos looked at him, and was startled. “Lucanus!” he exclaimed. “This has been too much for you! You appear ready to collapse.”

He got to his feet, wavering, and put his arm about Lucanus’ shoulder. Lucanus’ mouth opened silently, then he gasped. His eyes swelled with tears. He rose and stood beside Samos, and tried to speak, and he could only croak. Then he looked at Samos and said, in the very quietest voice:

“You are not Samos. That is not your name. Your name is Arieh ben Elazar, and you are a Jew, and I have been searching for you for twenty years!”

He lifted the astounded young man’s left hand and raised it to the light. The little finger was very crooked, and bent sharply inwards towards the other fingers. And Lucanus looked into Arieh’s eyes and saw the eyes of Sara, and burst into smothered weeping. “God is good,” he faltered. “Above all things, God is good!”

Lucanus wrote at once to Sara bas Elazar’s lawyers in Jerusalem. He said to Arieh, “You must leave on the next ship, which will arrive after my letter has reached the lawyers. I would accompany you, for this is a very dear thing to me, but I have a contract for two months on another ship, and I cannot break my word. But I will join you in Jerusalem later — perhaps.”

But Arieh said to him, “Do not ask me to leave you. I have not had much experience; let me be your assistant for those two months.” Lucanus smiled; he knew that Arieh had made this excuse in order not to be separated from him. So Lucanus agreed, and Arieh, walking with the high quick step of released youth, went with him. Then Lucanus, who felt as if some awful abscess had been finally lanced in him, and purified, began to teach Arieh his ancient religion in the watches of the night. Arieh had been indifferently educated in Greco-Roman religion in the home of his first master, and then in Tarsus by his teachers. He listened to Lucanus with the deepest attention, and asked pertinent questions. “It is strange to discover I am a Jew,” he said, once, shaking his head. “My masters hated the Jews, and called them avaricious and cunning — and they themselves the most evil and greedy and crafty of men! My first master, in particular, could not sleep for his schemes, and I never saw him rejoice except when he had ruined another man.”

When Arieh walked Lucanus remembered what Elazar ben Solomon had said of his son: “He is a young lion!” He questioned Arieh about any memories he possessed.

Arieh frowned, trying to remember. “I was told I was born on Samos, and so was given this name. I was two years old when I was purchased, to be a toy to my first master’s children; I was bought from a block. That is all I know.” He paused. “I have had a dream which haunted all my childhood, and which I sometimes dream even now. I am in a great and beautiful garden; I see white columns, but no statues such I saw later in other houses. I see profusions of flowers everywhere, and bright fountains. I have a little white dog, which is my own. It is very lovely, and very peaceful. A young man comes into the garden and tosses me in his arms and kisses me; there is a young girl too, with dark flowing hair, who plays with me.”

Arieh brushed his hand over his healing brow. “The dream mingles. Was it the same day or another? I am with two girls in the garden, who romp with me. It is very brilliant and very silent in the sun. My little dog is not there, and I miss him. All at once two dark, almost naked men appear. I look at them without fear, though I do not recognize them as I recognize my guardians. They creep up upon the girls; they raise something in their hands which flashes in the sun. The girls fall upon their faces. I laugh and clap my hands, for I think it is a game. Then I am seized by one of the men, who move like shadows; a hand is put over my mouth, and I begin to suffocate. I cannot breathe. Then something black falls over my eyes. That is all I remember. My next memory is of a strange house and cruelty and blows. How much later that was I do not know.

“It must be a dream,” said Arieh, shaking his head.

“No,” said Lucanus, “it was not a dream.”

Arieh developed an intense hunger to know all about his family, his father, his sister. Lucanus never tired of talking of Sara. Once, while he was speaking, he saw Arieh looking at him with an inscrutable expression. “She was the loveliest of women, and the sweetest and the kindest,” he said, in a voice he believed to be dispassionate. Lucanus patted Arieh’s shoulder affectionately. “I feel like a father,” he said, “and in truth, you could be my son, for I am not young.” He was comforted.

He painted a small picture of Sara for Arieh. The fair face and candid eyes and beautiful smile beamed like flesh from the wood, and the white neck was proud. “She is like a divinity,” said Arieh. This made Lucanus laugh. “Do not speak like a Greek or a Roman!” he exclaimed. “Your countrymen will look at you with umbrage and detestation if you call any human being a ‘divinity’. Let us sit down and study again of Moses and how he delivered his people from the Egyptians. I find the story fascinates you. And, as the son of Elazar ben Solomon, you must do better with your Hebrew lessons.”

An attachment grew up between them which was like the deep devotion of a man who has only one son, and whose heart speaks to that son. Lucanus’ mysterious sense of comfort and fulfillment increased day by day. It was as if all he had ever loved was embodied in Arieh, whom he taught like a child. They were never weary of conversation. Lucanus, in speaking of his own life, lived it again as he told Arieh of it. When they stopped at one port a messenger came aboard to deliver a large bag of gold to Arieh, and joyful messages from the lawyers in Jerusalem. “We await the arrival of the son of Elazar ben Solomon,” they had written. “He will be purified in the Temple and returned to his people. Blessed is God that He has found you.”

Arieh distributed the money among the members of the miserable crew. He went into the galleys and gave several of the slaves enough gold to purchase their freedom. For days and nights thereafter the little ship rang with joyous cries and salutes to the gods. Sailors kissed the hands of Arieh when he passed them, and he was embarrassed.

Lucanus could speak fully and with love of God to Arieh now. His spirit was liberated. He was like one who waits for a summons he is sure will come, and waits serenely. He was frank with Arieh, and explained his earlier hatred for God. “Yet all the time I was secretly enraged that He did not manifest Himself to me, but appeared to ignore me! I would defy Him, and there was no answer. That was unpardonable!”

He told Arieh all that he had been told by Keptah and Joseph ben Gamliel, and when Lucanus spoke so it was as if these beloved teachers stood at his elbow, smiling and nodding. He told Arieh of the Jewish, Chaldean, Babylonian, and Egyptian prophecies. He told Arieh of the strange Jewish teacher of whom Priscus had written, and whom Ramus had seen. “But we hear no more of Him,” said Lucanus. “Once many stories came to me, until two months ago. Since then there has been only silence. I have questioned people in the several ports, but receive only baffled smiles. I have written to my brother, Priscus, several times, asking for more news, but there is none. He has not written to me. Has he returned to Rome? I wrote my mother two days ago.”

“We will find the Jewish rabbi in Jerusalem,” said Arieh, intensely interested. “He invades my thoughts. Repeat to me again the prophecy of Isaias.”

When they found a little Jewish synagogue in the ports Lucanus would take Arieh to it. But they could not penetrate beyond the Court of the Gentiles. “I understand that I cannot approach the Holy of Holies until I am purified,” said Arieh, looking about him curiously. “But why are the Gentiles forbidden to enter? God is God of all men. My people must be a proud and obdurate race.”

“Had they not been so they could not have survived the ages,” said Lucanus. “A man must preserve what is best in him and his people. Still, as you say, God is God of all men. However, I am mindful of the ceremonies in the temples of the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians. Only the priests, the elect, can partake of the mysteries. Only the priests drink the sacrificial wines and eat of the sacrificed animals. There are some things which must be kept from the vulgar and the stupid, for they can only corrupt. The ordained priests bless and perform their offices, but you must remember that they have been ordained.”

“My people are a priestly people,” said Arieh. “And only they have commanded that men love one another and do justly to each other, not as a matter of philosophy, but as an act of faith. It is a strange commandment.” He looked at Lucanus with a stately lift of his head. He touched Lucanus on the shoulder with his hand. “Yes, He has called you.”

A great storm arose one night, and the ship was forced to put into a little harbor which was already crowded with ships which had run before the bellowing of the wind and the leaping of the waves. When the day dawned in fire the sea was still tumultuous, and the battered ships swayed at anchor and were fearful of putting out again. Lucanus and Arieh stood on the plunging deck of their vessel, and they saw that their nearest neighbor was a magnificent ship with fine wood; its furled sails lay like heaps of burnished silk on the deck; the sailors were clad in good clothing and walked confidently; the captain was apparently a man of consequence, though he was now pacing up and down with a worried expression, and the two friends could see him biting his lip. “It is a private vessel, the toy of some very rich man,” said Lucanus. He hailed the captain, who came reluctantly to the railing of his ship, which was inlaid with ebony and pearl and gilt. Lucanus noticed that the ship had no figurehead of a woman or a mermaid.

“Is there something wrong aboard?” asked Lucanus, in Greek. The captain shook his head. Lucanus tried Aramaic, and the captain nodded eagerly. He replied, “Yes, there is something very wrong. My glorious master, the owner of this ship,” and he looked about him proudly, “lies ill in his bed. Our physician died last night in the storm; he was thrown against a wall and his head was smashed.”

“What ails your master?”

The captain shook his head. “Who knows? He has lain like one stricken by a mortal illness for more than two months. He is from Jerusalem. His physician was very renowned. Two months ago my master took to his bed, weeping violently, and would see neither his wife nor his children, neither his mother nor his father. The physician was bewildered. Then my master said he would sail the seas to forget, but what he is trying to forget no one knows. He has not moved from his bed; he is dying moment by moment, and he wrings his hands and will not speak.”

Lucanus said to Arieh in a low voice, “The man is apparently suffering from some illness of the spirit.” He looked at the captain and said with hesitation, “I am a physician. I should like to see your master.”

The captain’s face brightened; it was evident that he loved his master. “Wait, Master! I will arrange to take you aboard, for truly I am afraid that death is approaching.”

It was difficult for Lucanus and Arieh to board the other vessel, for the two ships leaped restlessly, but not in tempo with each other. The captain received them like kings. “Oh, God is good!” he exclaimed. “My master will not die now!”

Never had Lucanus seen so wonderful a ship; a Roman Augustale, or even a Caesar, would have been proud to own it. The decks were of teakwood, the walls of ebony inlaid with artistic patterns of flowers and leaves of pearl and gold and silver. They gleamed in the hot sun. Lucanus said to the captain, “You are Jews, I see, for I observe no statues of the gods, no murals of animals. What is your master’s name?”

“Hilell ben Hamram,” said the captain, and looked at Lucanus and Arieh, expecting their awe. “Surely you know of this family, for not only is it the richest in all Judea, but it is a family famous for its doctors and lawyers and learned men, and my master is a friend of Pontius Pilate himself, and King Herod Antipas is flattered to receive him as a guest.”

Lucanus smiled faintly; young Arieh was listening with interest. Lucanus motioned to him. “Let us go to our patient.” They were conducted down to other decks, each more lavish than the last, and full of light and precious fabrics and woods and furniture. “You understand that my master owns no slaves,” said the captain, with adoration in his voice. “It is against the principles of devout Jews.”

Lucanus could not help saying, with a gesture indicating Arieh, “You are very learned, my captain, about the names of those renowned in Israel. Surely you recognize the son of Elazar ben Solomon, who has been touring the world in order to perfect himself in the arts of medicine?”

Arieh blushed; Lucanus was enjoying himself. The captain’s eyes bulged as he looked at Arieh. “The son of Elazar ben Solomon! But his son was stolen from him as a child, and was lost.”

“He was lost, but has been found,” said Lucanus. “Come. Is this your master’s door?”

Speechlessly, and staring at Arieh, the captain opened a door concealed by gold brocade, and the physicians entered a chamber so lavish in its Eastern magnificence that they were dazzled. Curtains of silver brocade swung from the windows; Persian carpets covered the floor; the deck heaved and swayed, but the great gilt bed was bolted firmly. In it, under rich silken coverlets, lay a man of not more than twenty-nine. His face was like worn marble; his eyes were sunken in large circles like bruises. He appeared not to breathe. His black hair lay like a fan on his embroidered cushions; his features were fine and austere. When Lucanus and Arieh approached him he did not stir.

“Hilell ben Hamram,” said Lucanus, gently, bending over him, “I am Lucanus, a physician, and I have come to help you.”

“And I am Arieh ben Elazar, also a physician, and your countryman,” said Arieh, with deep compassion in his voice.

The sick man did not move. It was as if he had already gone beyond hearing. Then Arieh appeared to be listening. He put his hand on Hilell’s cold forehead and said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One!”

Hilell remained motionless. The two physicians watched him anxiously. Lucanus lifted his slack and icy hand and felt for his pulse. He put his ear to the almost breathless chest. The heart was slow and feeble. When Lucanus looked up again he saw that slow tears were seeping from under the shut eyelids. Arieh sat down beside Hilell and took his hand and held it strongly, and Lucanus was struck by the beauty of the picture of this handsome young man silently comforting his brother. The sun poured through the window and lay on their faces. “Do not weep,” said Arieh, tenderly. “For God is with you, and we will help you, with His power.”

The tears poured faster from under the eyelids; Arieh believed that the fingers of the sick man tightened on his own. He said, “I was lost, and He found me. I was a slave, and He delivered me. I was a stranger, and He brought me to my people. Blessed is He, King of Kings! For nothing is beyond His power, and He shall not be silent when His children call unto Him!”

Hilell groaned; it was as if the sound rose not only from his flesh but from his spirit. He did not open his eyes but he whispered, “It is too late. He called to me, and I turned from Him. I did not forget Him, and one day I knew I could not live without Him, though what He asked of me was very arduous. So I went seeking Him again. It was too late. The Romans had killed Him, had nailed Him on a cross like a criminal.”

Lucanus started violently. He caught Hilell’s emaciated shoulder in his hand; the soft silk rustled under his fingers. “When was this?” he cried.

Hilell did not reply for several moments; it was as if he had fallen into the sleep of death. Then he said faintly, “It was at the Passover, when the earth darkened.”

Lucanus sat down abruptly. His heart was leaping, and there was a thundering sound in his ears. He pressed his hands to them to clear them. After a little he reached mechanically for his pouch and brought out a vial which contained a stimulant. His hands trembling, he poured a little into a goblet of wine which stood on a table of lemonwood at the sick man’s elbow. He held the goblet to Hilell’s lips and cried peremptorily, “Drink this! And then you must tell us, for this story is what we have been seeking!”

Hilell drank without opening his eyes, then Lucanus let his head down on the cushions. The radiant sea threw glancing shadows of light into the chamber; gulls cried near the windows, and the voices of many seamen echoed on the wind. The hot odor of tar and salt and fish was mingled with an aromatic odor like myrrh. Lucanus and Arieh waited for Hilell to speak. A faint color began to creep over his ivory cheeks; his ashen lips quickened to coral, and the sweat dried on his brow. Then he opened tragic eyes, and they were dark and tormented. “You seek Him?” he murmured. “But He is dead. I saw three crosses, tiny and diminished, on the far Place of Skulls, against a turbulent sky of pink and lilac clouds, huge and boiling, and there was an awful light upon the earth. And the people told me, where I stood, that One of those on the crosses was Jesus of Nazareth, and that He had been condemned for flouting the Law and causing insurrection against Rome. And while I stood, a sensation of dying and loss in me, the sun withdrew his radiance, and the earth shook, and the people fell on their faces with a sound of great terror and mourning. I was too late, too late forever to tell Him I would follow Him.”

“And then?” said Lucanus, as Hilell fell silent, turning his head in anguish.

The sick man made a feeble gesture. “I do not know. I fled that accursed place that night, and I went to Caesarea, and remained for a few senseless days, and then I fled to the sea, for nothing was to me worth anything any longer.”