The Big Fisherman (14 page)

The sun was already hot when she sighted it, a clump of palms and cypress, a straggling group of shabby cottages surrounding a large brown tent. This would be the khan where travellers and their pack-trains were accommodated. At the door of the tent, Fara dismounted from the perspiring filly, handed the reins to a taciturn old Arabian, and with long steps and an experimental swagger followed along to the corral, where she gruffly gave instructions how her mount was to be rubbed down and properly watered. And when the testy hostler growled that he knew how to take care of a horse, Fara shouted untruthfully that if he did he was the first old man she had ever seen who knew or cared whether a hot horse was safely watered, and that she proposed to stand by him until he had done it.

A wizened old woman glumly prepared a bad breakfast of stale eggs and staler bread. Feeling that she had need of practice in maleness in the presence of women, Fara complained bitterly about the food and reviled the old woman in what she felt might be the customary terms for a man to use on such occasions. Then she demanded a bed, and denounced the old woman as a foul and dirty slattern when she saw the untidy cubicle provided for her. This execration she attempted in Greek, aware that her vocabulary of vituperation in that language—learned of the gentle Ione—would need some polishing.

After two hours of deep sleep Fara was on her way again, after paying her hosts twice what they asked and swearing manfully that the place wasn't fit for a goat to live in; to which contemptuous accusation the old man and his slovenly wife—grateful for their unexpected windfall—respectfully agreed. Fara smiled complacently as Saidi bounded away over the north-bound trail, her fears about her ability to be a man having been somewhat alleviated.

Late afternoon, after a sultry, monotonous ride along the blinding white seashore, she entered the town of Engedi, eastern terminus of the old salt trail from the Port of Gaza. It was an incredibly ugly place, its small, box-shaped houses built of sun-baked brick, suffocating a narrow, dusty street. At the principal inn, a little further on, the stableyard of which was crowded with camels, donkeys, and their grimy attendants, Fara asked courteously for food and a bed for the night. Instantly she realized that she had made a mistake when the surly proprietor showed her a filthy pallet in a room containing half a dozen similar cots. Backing disgustedly out of the room, she opened her accumulated treasures of Arabian profanity and made it known to the master of the inn that she wasn't in the habit of sleeping in rabbit-hutches, dog-kennels, or pigsties. Thus advised, the innkeeper deferentially led the way to a private room where the bed, if not comfortable, was less dirty than the one she had rejected.

Fara gave this incident much earnest thought. It was obviously a mistake to ask for anything politely. The public considered politeness a sign of weakness. It had a very low opinion of gentle speech. To wait patiently and take your turn or to accept unprotestingly whatever was offered you meant only that you were accustomed to being pushed aside; that you knew you could not defend your rights. It was a thoroughly abominable world, decided Fara; but if it was that kind of world she would try to meet it on its own terms. Contracting her brows into a sullen frown and puffing her lips arrogantly, she marched heavily up and down the bare, creaking floor. In this belligerent mood she returned, with long steps, to the common room and flung herself into a dilapidated chair. Crossing her legs she sat impatiently flicking her high-laced boot with a finely crafted riding whip—a gift of Voldi's.

Well-dressed, good-looking men of affairs came and went, occasionally nodding to one another. Almost everybody knew everybody else. Fara honestly wished she were a man. They all seemed so effortlessly sure of themselves. She admired their self-sufficiency; tried to make herself think she was one of them. For the most part her presence in the big, dingy room went unnoticed. Sometimes a young man, passing by, would toss an impersonal glance in her direction and move on without giving her a second look. This was good, and Fara breathed more comfortably.

Immediately to the left of her, in the row of battered chairs backed against the wall, sat two men engaged in earnest conversation. They spoke in Greek, though it was evident that they were Romans. Fara had never seen any Romans, but she had been told how they looked.

The man in the nearest chair was probably forty. It was plain that he was a person of some consequence. Like his friend, who was many years his senior, he was smooth-faced and his greying hair was close-cropped. His face was deeply tanned, except for a narrow strip of white on his upper forehead which a bandeau had protected from the sun. His sand-coloured tunic, trimmed in red, was of fine texture; his belt, dagger-sheath, and tooled-leather sandals, strapped almost to the knee, showed expensive workmanship. Fara surmised that they both were directors of caravans, probably belonging to the same company. Another survey of them revealed that the younger man had a small V-shaped notch in the top of hisear. So—he was a slave. But apparently his servitude didn't bother him much.

'I hope he is still there next week when we return,' the distinguished-looking slave was saying. 'I should like to hear him again. But it is doubtful whether he will be at large by that time. The legionaries will have taken him in; for, as you have said, it was very inflammatory talk. But, by the Gods, Aulus, it was all true—what he was saying.'

'Yes, yes,' agreed Aulus, 'the world is bad enough to deserve a drubbing, and it always was. But—the fellow is crazy as a beetle, Tim.' The older man turned his full face and Fara saw a long scar across his cheek; relic of a savage fight long ago, she thought.

'That's where we differ, Aulus,' countered Tim. 'What the hermit was preaching showed him to be indiscreet, foolhardy; but no merely crazy man could collect a crowd like that and keep them standing for hours in the broiling sun listening with wide eyes and open mouths; and they say he has been doing it day after day!'

'Oh, you know how people are,' said Aulus indifferently. 'This half-starved fanatic, living on dreams and desert bugs, climbs up on a big rock and begins to yell that the world is due for punishment. Naturally the rabble, with nothing better to do, gathers around to watch his antics and shudder at his predictions.' Aulus shifted his position in the creaking chair and continued to extemporize. 'People like to be scared, Tim. Their empty lives are without stimulating sensations and they enjoy feeling the cold shivers run down their backs—especially when their instinct tells them it's all a lot of damned nonsense.'

There was quite a pause here, and Fara, who had been intently eavesdropping, leaned forward a little, hoping that Aulus hadn't said the last word. Presently Tim remarked soberly, 'I wonder if it is—just damned nonsense.'

'Poof!' scoffed Aulus. 'The fellow is crazy as a beetle!' He rose, stretched, yawned. 'And so are you,' he added. 'I'll see you at supper. I must have another look at that lame camel.'

'Just a minute, Aulus.' Tim patted the arm of the adjoining chair and his scar-faced friend sat down again with an indulgent grin. 'You have been talking of that throng at Hebron as if it were composed entirely of ignorant and lousy nobodies who would as gladly stand all day watching a caged monkey scratch itself. But that doesn't account for it. There were at least a dozen well-dressed, intelligent men in the crowd giving serious attention to everything the hermit said.'

Aulus dismissed this with a negligent flick of his hand.

'Local citizens, no doubt,' he explained, 'annoyed by the fellow's presence in their town, and waiting for him to start a brawl—so that they could lock him up as a disturber of the peace.'

'But some of them had come from afar, Aulus. I asked a bright-looking camel-boy if he wanted a job, and he loftily replied that he was in the employ of an eminent lawyer, Ben-Judah, a member of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.'

'What's this Sanhedrin?' demanded Aulus scornfully.

'The Jews' law-making body.'

'I thought Rome made their laws.'

'Just the laws on taxes. The Sanhedrin attends to the rest of it.'

'You surely have a strange talent,' observed Aulus, 'for collecting useless information. What else do you know about Jewish laws?'

'Only that there are far too many of them. Why, a Jew can be arrested for dragging a chair across his dooryard on the Sabbath! It might dig a little furrow in the ground—and that would be ploughing.'

'I think you made that up, Timmie,' chuckled Aulus. 'But—be that as it may—perhaps this wise Ben-Judah, in the course of a journey, turned aside to listen to the prattle of this fool, just as we did—out of curiosity.'

'Possibly; but it is much more likely that some influential people are spying on this hermit. He himself is a Jew, and he is talking to his own countrymen. Surely the Temple can't afford to let this fellow go on, gathering up a bigger crowd every day, shouting that the world is so bad it needs to be cleansed. That's the Temple's exclusive business: to see that the world—or at least the Jewish world, which is all that matters in this country—behaves itself. These learned lawyers and rabbis surely cannot permit a fiery prophet to march across Judaea, informing thousands of people that their land is filthy with graft, greed, and injustice, all the way from top to bottom; and that his God—who is also theirs—means to take the whole job of renovation out of the hands of the recognized authorities, and attend to it personally!'

Aulus grinned at this long speech and again rose to his feet.

'Perhaps you're right,' he drawled. 'In that case, they will probably toss the hermit into a dungeon—and forget about him. And so will the people. If a man dies a bloody death as a martyr to some new idea, the people remember, and build him a monument; but if he gets pitched into prison—Pouf! Let him rot!' Aulus dusted his hands and sauntered away.

After a while the handsome man with the deep crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes and the notch on his ear turned his head slowly toward Fara and coolly looked her over.

'Which way are you headed, young man?' he inquired in Aramaic, signifying that he considered her a Jew.

'I am going west, sir,' replied Fara in Greek, 'as far as Gaza.'

'Ever been there?' asked Tim, and when Fara had shaken her head, he remarked, 'Very fine place—to lose your shirt and have your throat cut. Let me warn you to ride straight down the middle of the street and have nothing to do with any of the inhabitants. Do not eat their food or drink their water or believe their lies.'

'I gather that you do not care much for Gaza,' commented Fara. 'I shall take your advice. The first large city to the west is Hebron, is it not? Is that any better?'

'Much! Hebron has been sound asleep for two thousand years, so there's nothing very lively about it; but at least it won't rob you or poison your food or murder you in your bed.' Tim recrossed his long legs and gave Fara a candid stare. 'How do you happen to speak Greek, young man? You don't live in Greece, do you?'

'Nor do you, sir,' said Fara with equal bluntness, 'yet you speak Greek.'

'I am a Greek!' declared Tim proudly. 'You are a Jew, are you not?'

'I am not!' replied Fara. 'I am an Arabian.'

Tim studied her face with interest, pursed his lips, and nodded.

'My mistake,' he muttered. 'No offence, I hope.'

'Not at all, sir. I have no quarrel with the Jewish people.'

Tim laughed quietly and said that he never thought he would hear an Arabian say that.

'But it is not so long, sir,' Fara risked saying, 'since the Jews and Arabians were in alliance.'

'What an alliance!' scoffed Tim. 'Of course you know all about that wretched marriage. One thing I never could understand: I know many Arabians—fine fellows who love nothing better than a good fight. Why haven't they ripped the bowels out of that Jewish rascal who humiliated your Princess? Surely it can't be that they have forgotten—or do not care!'

Unable to think of an appropriate answer to that, Fara abruptly changed the subject by saying:

'I could not help overhearing your talk about a prophet you met who said the world was to be punished for its misdeeds. Does he propose to attend to this chastisement?'

'No; not he,' said Tim. 'The fellow was careful to say that he himself was only a courier, announcing the early arrival of a divine person whom he depicted as a mighty avenger, a divinity to be sent from Heaven with an axe in his hand. The rotten old growth we have called Civilization was to be cut down so that something healthy and fruitful might grow.'

'Coming soon?' asked Fara.

'You would think, from his talk, that the prophet expected the avenger by next week—at the latest. If he had said it would occur a hundred years from now, his prediction would have been less risky.'

'And less interesting,' added Fara. 'Do you think the prophet might be there—at Hebron—tomorrow?'

'Unless he has moved further toward the hills. He was at least half a mile north of the road when we sighted the crowd. Apparently he does not study the people's convenience. They say he goes where he likes and the multitude follows. If you are interested I suggest that you inquire along the way as you approach Hebron. Almost anyone will tell you. The air is full of him over there.' Tim rose to move away, and Fara also came to her feet.

'Am I right in surmising that you were inclined to believe what he said?' she asked seriously.

Tim tugged at his lip, debating a reply.

'I don't know rightly what I do think about it,' he answered, measuring his words. 'The Jews are a singular people. They have always had their prophets, and many of their predictions have proved true, even to the dating of important events and the outcome of far distant wars. You'd better hear this man John for yourself. He may be greatly mistaken, but he is no fool!'

'Your friend says the man is crazy as a beetle,' said Fara.

'My friend,' drawled Tim, 'is a typical Greek who became a typical Roman. He doesn't believe in anything he can't eat or wear or buy or sell or ride.'

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