Chapter 13 - The Envoy
Capernaum's love for me had cooled, and only a few local women sometimes helped, coming for advice and bringing food: eggs, vegetables, and something else. One even wowed me on a cold night because her old husband was off to his family in Bethsaïd for a party. We still live in that barn by the lake, in the neighborhood with those dried fish,
which made you think that that shed on the shore of eternity was reminiscent of a storehouse for people singing in the afterlife, where, drenched with the salt of passion, they were suspended in long lines awaiting the voice of the trumpet. But if those fish did not wake up, surely we, caught in the nets of death, would not wake up either.
The prefect did not leave us alone any further, even though I did not ponder letting my little community peg itself off to a soap shop. That was repulsive work. The soap factory was located on a hill five stadia from the city, and from there, the wind sometimes carried the stench of rotting meat. To boil the soap, thirds use animal strands. I understood that the prefect wanted to send us there because he was upset about the soap sale money. Aurelius had put soap-making on an excellent footing and hatched some new recipes himself for the sea of Capernaum by adding ambrosia, myrrh, and juniper; you even had them in different colors: red ones with the juice of the Phoenician apple,
yellow with saffron, light blue...
The city was located on the main road, and Aurelius received no small income from tolls; the tax collectors remitted denarii and didrachms to him, and local merchants and fishermen tried to appease him. Of course, he did not deduct all of what he managed to bring in from the county's coffers. And what would we have gotten for the work at the soap sawmill, which could be equated to the work of the stonemasons and the cesspool men? A few copper assarii, just enough to buy cheap wine in the evening.
People did come from other places (not just Galilee) to see me. I spoke to him, gave advice, and treated him to the best of my ability, but I requested somewhere in the city to spend the night so as not to gather people around me and thereby incur the wrath of Aurelius.
I did my best not to antagonize the government, remembering what good fortune I had had that Valerius Gratus' letter had not reached His destination. Had it done so, and the Romans had been able to hold such self-things throughout the province, the loose-knit brotherhood of Jewish prophets and chant healers would have been destroyed.
My call did not silence in Lidda, not in Jericho, unlike those of hundreds of other prophets who rose for a year, or but a spring, only to dissolve into invincible life. One made a fortune, bought a profitable orchard in the Jordan Valley, and became a happy, workaholic villager; another died, torn apart by the furious mob that had been stirred up by the clergy. And a third lost his mind and degenerated into an ordinary filthy beggar or worked as a jester at the funerals of Romans, putting on the death mask and entertaining the guests, as well as with variety at weddings, writing insipid verses and performing them publicly.
One time, a young man came up to me. That he was not a Jew, I could see travel from afar by his beard. Or rather, he arrived on an expensive thoroughbred, fastened it to a tree on the hill, and descended along the steep path to our barn. He asked politely and appreciatively, in Aramaic, which of us was Jesus, then bowed to me and said, "My name is Amiminan; I have been requested to present to you, teacher Jesus, a letter and gift from Oroza Bakoerat, the supreme astrologer of Abgar Oechomo, King of Osroene.
I did not immediately believe that I was worthy of this visit from a foreign envoy of a royal star diviner. I thought that the man was making fun of me or had been sent by Aurelius to provoke me so that the prefect could accuse me of one thing or another, of treason, for example, and put me in a cellar jail awaiting my trial. Those Romans always found a cause. Allegedly, someone had been accused of desecration of majesty for the bare fact that he had spanked his slave when the slave carried a silver coin with the image of Tiberius. My students already wanted to chase the suspicious guest away, but Andreas insisted. However, after conversing with the envoy (who patiently and precisely answered all my questions), I understood he was not lying.
He was in his early 20s, ruddy and anything but handsome, in dry clothes as simple as solid, apparently to reduce the risk of becoming prey to robbers in the extinct places through which he had come to me. He said he had looked for me in Jerusalem and Beth San before coming here.
Attached to the envoy's belt was a scimitar in a sandalwood skull. He was broad-shouldered and, by the looks of it, extremely strong. Added to his simple clothing, none of this made him easy prey for highwaymen. The fact that he was alone did not arouse suspicion among the authorities of the regions through which his path had led.
He handed me the gift of his king, a gold signet ring with the head of a snake, of which the eyes bore two transparent stones of unusual purity and brilliance, and that convinced me definitively that he was not yet. I was astonished! I understood that it was still too early to end the life I was leading and become an ordinary, quiet master, a warrior against gout and blisters.
I put the ring on the middle finger of my left hand.
Then Amminan rolled open a papyrus scroll and was before me the letter: I, Oroza Bakeorat, chief astrologer of the king of Orsoene, to Jesus of Nazareth, physician, residing in the land of Jerusalem. Wonderful here! I have heard of you and your healings, performed with the help of physicians and herbs, as well as with the help of words. In the course of the stars, I have seen the fate of a man whose life continues after his death and will be like a great tree with hundreds of branches, like snakes. One branch will bite the other, and one will not understand what the other does. I know who the root of this tree is: you. I am happy to have had the honor of informing you of this. You came to the Temple on your most significant feast day, fearlessly exposed your clergy there, and even pulled the highest clergyman's beard. Our good King Abgar has had dealings with the honorless powerful of your clergy; they sent people to us to set us up against our neighbors, the Parthians. I say that you have acted correctly. In time, you will be the man who will bring glory to his people; from all my heart, I wish you that. Pray for me, godly Jesus of Nazareth. Be careful, for I heard that the Hebrews murmur against thee and plot evil things against thee. I humbly ask you not to give this signet ring as a gift to you so that you may think of me occasionally.
Upon viewing the signet ring, my students expressed joy and amazement at the loudest. At the same time, I thought that perhaps Oroza Bakarut had written all that in a fit of drunken carelessness, for after all, what did a star diviner of the king have to do with a poor Jewish healer...? But how quickly the rumor of my visit to Jerusalem had spread! By the way, rumors are a force with the help of which you come to find the way to fame as well as to the grave. But what tree was he talking about? I still don't understand that now. Dick Wells Bert, the woolly language of astrologers, understood only by themselves.
"Does the astrologer have children? Add me as the envoy.
'Yes, three sons and two daughters,' he replied.
The envoy had writing implements with him. He took them out, dissolved ink from soot and serum, and wrote with a drive with a slant cut. My answer on a sheet of parchment: I thank you for your precious gift, wise and clairvoyant Oroza Bakoerat. You have turned from your business and the path of the eternal stars to send me this letter and this signet ring. Be a blessed, learned man who believes in my art even without seeing me. For it is written by the prophets that those who see me will not believe in me, and those who do not see me will believe and be saved, to become partakers of eternal life and the joy of God's palaces. Do not believe everything said; I have not pulled that supreme cleric by the beard. Otherwise, you would not have read this letter, for wise astrologers do not send their icons to the third world to await their return. And as for the request to pray for you, I will do so every day with great iron, and you will understand that our Jewish God does not only abound from his own but from those for whom holy prayers drink up to him. May your days be many and how sincere friends, peace be Osroena, and you and your five children.
I saw from the envoy's face that my answer pleased him.
I still had a little kid left, so I stopped the pipe and treated him.
After salvaging his scroll with my answer in a bag attached to his saddle, Amminan accepted the return trip.
After leading him out, I looked at the signet ring for a long time, and it was as if the snake would talk to me at any moment.
