Jesus and Menachem. Siegfried E. van Praag
and so he remained alone.
Outside the town and the dirty grey embrace of its bumpy streets, Menachem sat down on a stone, thinking that he really had no goal. The road was like a line of yellow powder that ran down to the plain which stretched out in the distance, green with crops and vegetation.
There the forests lifted their small shaggy backs. From the middle of the plain rose Mount Tabor. The mountain was full of the secret powers of the earth and more inscrutable than a human body which one can cut open. Menachem loved the spaciousness of that Galilean landscape.
At that moment a group of boys appeared from the village on the road which led northwards to godless Tiberias. Menachem was frightened and abashed. He wore a richly stitched mantle and sandals with silver thongs. His head was covered by a luxuriously embroidered red cap. His parents were rich people and he was ashamed of it. The boys remained standing before him.
“Ho, Jerusalemite,” they jeered, “did you steal those clothes again? Surely, your father is a tax collector for the stinkers.” “Hey, Judean, what are you doing here? Did you come to spy for the great Idolator, or for the old greybeards of the Sanhedrin? We smell of cow dung; tonight you will stink too. What will your mother say to that?”
“Come on, fellows, let’s chase him,” yelled another ringleader. “Ho, Jerusalemite, get up! Aren’t you going to stand up? We’ll teach that rich boy to run once. Then tonight he can say at home he had a peasant behind his ass.”
They began to look for the numerous small pebbles which lay everywhere before them on the road.
“Say, fellows, I’ve got a swell idea. Let’s stone him. Yea, let’s stone the little sissy from Jerusalem.”
The first throw hit him. Menachem felt a pain in his shinbone where the sharp edge of the stone had cut open his skin.
“Are you mad? Hands which stone will be palsied; and hands which have stoned an innocent will rot away!”
“There he goes spoiling our fun again. Go to the rabbis, woodchopper; there you can learn to split letters.”
But it was remarkable that none of the boys ventured to cast another stone at Menachem, who with large questioning eyes continued to gaze at the strange lad who had hindered the others from completing their pastime.
“We are going to look for more boys. Come along, Yeshua, we are turning down another road.”
Yeshua, as the others called him, was a thin, poorly dressed boy with a grave demeanor. His eyes were full of power. Sometimes that power appeared to pull inward, other times to flow out. His mouth was drawn with generous strokes. Nevertheless, there was something grim, almost indignant about that youthful countenance. A very docile companion he could not have been.
This Yeshua had magnificent hair, neither brown nor black, but like precious rosewood his locks flashed from brown to black and from black to brown.
This then was Yeshua, who had been unwilling to stone another lad simply because he came from somewhere else and in the course of his childhood years had become somewhat different from other boys.
“What do you see in me, Yeshua, that you have helped me?” asked Menachem, who had now gotten to his feet.
“Nothing unusual,” replied Yeshua quietly, continuing to stand before him. “One of the many who should not be hit, but who, nevertheless, are struck.”
They did not resemble each other; the boy from Nazareth looked healthier. The Jerusalemite had black hair combed backwards, which encircled the back of his head, and ears like a hood. Here and there where the light bored an opening it glittered. He had a dull sallow skin, delicate hands, withered mouth, with large questioning eyes which lay forever ready for affection. Menachem felt himself drawn to this first child of the poor who had been willing to speak to him without spitting on him.
He loved the poor people, the dust of the highways and the roughness of the ground. Once in Jerusalem when he had been younger and could not yet understand the distinction between homesickness and death, he had lain down in the filthy street with his best clothes and nestled his head against the stones plastered over with camel dung.
Thereupon, one of his father’s servants had gone outside, picked the child up roughly and carried him into the house. It was the only time his mother had allowed anyone to spank him.
“Who are you, boy?” asked Menachem.
“I am Yeshua ben Joseph the carpenter, and you?”
“I am Menachem ben Gedalia. My father is the merchant from Jerusalem, he whom they call Marcus Mercator,” answered Menachem. “Will you go home with me?”
“Why not?” said Yeshua. “Where another has set foot, I too can enter.”
“Yes, but we are rich people.”
“That is not your fault.”
The boys walked together. Menachem could not tear away his eyes from Yeshua but the latter paid no attention to his new comrade.
“Does your father love you?” Menachem asked him abruptly.
Yeshua looked at him. “I do not ask myself that question. Do you want me to put the same query to you?”
Menachem nodded. “My father does not love me. He does not think me a worthy successor. I don’t want to be a merchant. He also says I ask too many questions.”
Yeshua remained silent.
“Do you mean to say it doesn’t matter what your father thinks about you?” resumed Menachem after a pause. “Do you really think so?”
“I believe it,” said Yeshua.
Menachem shook his head.
“But it does matter, it matters very much. If you have everything, you never know what the next one needs and that’s important. It is not very pleasant at home when your father does not love you. My father thinks I can become dangerous. Are you dangerous also, Yeshua?”
“I am dangerous too. Blessed are they who expose themselves to danger, for they bring blessings.”
“You speak just like the prophets. But no one is a blessing to everyone.”
Yeshua surveyed Menachem thoughtfully.
“That is hair-splitting.”
“No, it is not, Yeshua. If I were a blessing to my mother I would be sitting with the rabbis, with Gamaliel in Jerusalem, but then I would not be a blessing to my father who wants me to be a merchant.”
Finally they reached the rich house of the merchant Gedalia ben Sirach, the Jerusalemite. It lay at the end of a path which led north from the village of Nazareth and had formerly belonged to a rich Roman who had withdrawn into beautiful Galilee. Yeshua, who had never set foot in a rich man’s house before, was not disconcerted by this at all and stepped boldly inside as though he were in his father’s shop.
“I shall bring you to my mother,” said Menachem. “If you wish to make her happy, pretend you’re my friend.”
Entering the atrium they came to a large oblong room where a broad stone table stood on curved ebony legs. On the shelves on the walls stood a row of brightly colored plates and dishes. Against the wall of the great room a seven-branched candelabrum blazed on top of an ivory table. The stone floor was richly overlaid with dark carpets. It was a room which seemed to absorb the light in waves, and to give it back only here and there on the edge of some gaudy metal leaf.
“Here we eat,” said Menachem. “Come.” He lifted a hanging carpet in the corner of the oblong room, and he and Yeshua entered a dark corridor. Only by feeling one’s way could one ascertain that this small space was sealed here by walls and there by yielding tapestries. But before they could push one of the carpets aside they heard groans, followed a moment later by a sob.
“That is my mother,” said Menachem. “She is unhappy because my father is not good to her.