Chapter 20 - Gergesa

Venedad prepared us for a hospitable reception. He had not been in Capernaum for a long time, believed that we were still going for the winter and enjoyed dealing with successful people, in his eyes they were the righteous, he believed the Sadducees, who said that God's grace fell to him who was successful in earthly matters. Whereas in our case, it was the other way around: from time to time, we were successful, but only because we presented ourselves as holy beasts.

Shortly after finding Venedad's distinguished house in Gergesa, visible from afar, we entered the atrium, around which the rooms were arranged. A couple of old women sat spinning under a canopy. Behind a bulkhead, the sheep barked, and on the floor and on the shelves along the wall was a large quantity of Kirsten, bowls, and layers of crammed bales. In the middle of the atrium, he is a millstone of basalt. A small old lady, wrapped up to her eyes in gray on the rug, stared at us, startled. She was sorting cereal on a bench in a corner, in the shade, and I had not noticed her immediately. The woman quickly slipped into one of the rooms, you could hear voices, and Venedad came out from there.

'Bye, Venedad! The venerable Iran gives you his good and expresses the hope that all goes well with business,' I joked.

'Glad to see you, Jesus,' he replied. 'Of course, I remember you. Are you still healing people in Capernaum?

'Yes, today, before dawn, I witnessed the death of a leper,' I said, nodding to my students. 'They all saw it.'

Venedad mused that it was a joke and burst out laughing.

"Well, let's go to my upstairs quarters," he said invitingly, "then we'll talk a little and eat a little.

We walked up the stairs to the roof of the house that was lined with a balustrade. There stood wicker chairs with cushions and a low table of Lebanese cedar wood topped with a papyrus box, empty and unopened dishes, while on floor mats around it lay a large quantity of dates drying. The house stood against the heroes of a hill, and from the roof to which the lord of the house by the looks of it spent many hours, the view opened onto the lake, onto the semicircular bay of Gergesa and onto timers that descended stepped to those blue waters.

We sat down and women brought us food.

Before getting down to business, I politely asked Venedad all about his health, his family and his well-being. He complained about pain in the spine, about having to go out at night to pee quite often, and also that his nose could be blocked for ages. He complained that the government of Judea prohibited him from trading with foreigners. He complained that he was going bald from everything he had to go through and felt that his character was deteriorating. He also related that a ceramic dealer from Jerusalem had almost borrowed a talent of silver from him and had not returned it.

When he had told us all this, Venedad pathetically threatened to call it quits, get rid of his stores and caravans and become a plasterer, or designer of cologne, and then immediately asked if we wouldn't take a couple of Egyptian horses from him, for a soft price. I said those horses wouldn't fit on our boat.

Venedad was quite content with his family though, especially his daughter, born of a wife he had brought from Jasriba. His first wife had died.

'My daughter is clean, my gentle wife silent, what more could I want, dear people?' Spoke Venedad, looking at us cheerfully.

I gave him some advice for his treatment.

The entire environment knew that Venedad was an unscrupulous scalper and as stingy as an old Helleen. He did not even shy away from giving money on growth to Jews with impunity, which had been strictly forbidden by the Torah since time immemorial, and was not ashamed to argue this with the fact that a distant ancestor of his had been an Iberian.

His naive face with the little rocker nose, wreathed by a black curly beard, almost always expressed rested piety, while the meek, slightly bulging eyes irrevocably led those who believed him astray.

He also told me that he had begun to write a book about his life, that for this purpose he had bought the best kind of papyrus from Sebennytos and was working on it every day, scrupulously describing the things he experienced: where he had been, what he had eaten, whether he had slept longer, believing that this experience was invaluable. I could barely restrain myself from asking if he also noted how he had wound someone around his finger.

I grabbed food from a platter and in doing so let my signet ring shine so much that Venedad would notice it yet again, and was amazed that we ate for free am a man who was so on the token. He surprised us with a thick soup with pieces of beef, warming unleavened barley bread with honey, vegetables, mashed beans with garlic, as well as a small fish marinated in spicy sauce, the recipe for which he had brought from Caralis, where he had been with a merchant ship.

When we had eaten our fill, and Venedad was too tired to talk about himself any longer, I asked past my nose if he wouldn't supply a bag of good, powerful kif on the puff. Venedad looked at me in surprise and chuckled.

"What do you want with so much kif, Jesus? He asked, dipping an unhealthy loaf of bread into the hot sheep's pie fat. 'Have you decided to descend into the realm of pleasure and dream with all of them for an extended period of time? And why don't you want to read the money right away? A whole bag, but 24 stay going in, if you don't stomp the knife, will get you nothing more than seven Tyrian starters.'

I explained that I needed the kif for medicinal herbal mixtures, kept silent about the fact that I planned to resell them, and asked why he was negotiating such a high price.

Venedad deflated in an indignant explanation, "Jesus, nothing goes for nothing! After all, even the manure costs money, with which this herb is abundantly improved, so that it becomes full and strong. On top of that, people bring me that kid from afar, you know yourself that this herb is not good for anything in our regions, only for cheap weaving dust. But even there, whence it is brought, you have different qualities. I have top quality. How can I explain that to you... It is like the first pressing of oil, which neat people put through food and which is used for rituals. The second pressing is for slaves, and the third for candlesticks. So why did you come to me without money?

Judas explained how that morning, amidst a crowd of onlookers, we had got into the little boat to recover a little from the people's bustle and come to rest in the lap of the waters, and how we had then remembered that such a good man as Venedad lived in Gergesa, and that we had only half to go, and could not have done anything else but sail to him and give him greetings from his comrade Itan. 'May God protect your business affairs, Illustrious Venedad, for you are an irreplaceable man, you are the jewel in the crown of the cities along the lake and of all Galilee,' Judas rounded off his speech.

This was such blatant, lying flattery that Venedad's refined mind refused to believe it was fictitious.

We settled the matter in seven states, with interest, which I promised to pay in a month.

When we were negotiating, a girl about seven years old came up a second flight of stairs, straight from outside. When he saw her, Venedad completely blossomed.

'That's my daughter lilit,' he said. 'Come here, dear.'

The girl looked very sweet and well-groomed in a hooked bright said overgown. Her shiny black hair was neatly braided, in her little pink ears already sparkled the gold earrings and hooked brown-burnt feet adorned artfully made sandals of light and supple leather.

'Speaking me,' Venedad said proudly, however delusional it sounded considering his pudgy body. 'When she grows up, I won't let her marry, so she can help me nicely with business.'

Lilit held in her hands a peculiar animal, with soft fur. It was reminiscent of a huge mouse, with large hind legs and comically long ears. The little animal trembled and was the incarnation of carelessness. Around its neck was a red silk ribbon.

The girl walked up to us.

"What do you have in your hands there? I asked.

'That beast is called rabbit,' they replied, 'a friend of Dad's brought it for me from Hellas, they only live there, and that still only in one single place, in Olympia, you don't meet them anywhere else! I wanted a cliff badger. An employee of ours often catches them on the rocks near the vines, but cliff badgers bite and are not so sweet. I also wanted a dune cat, which hunts snakes in the desert but they just can't get them for me. Such a cat has such beautiful eyes! Jesus, but how does he save himself when it storms? Then he'll probably get all sand in his ears...?

I gave Lilit a stroke on her head and talked to her some more. She was a bright little thing.

Venedad fetched some kif, to try. I stopped the pipe, and then smoked. The kif was excellent.

A service mate came with fruit and cheese. Then he had her bring the contested bag, a piece of parchment and ink. I write out a confession of guilt. We spent a few more hours on the roof at Venedad's and when it was almost evening, we decided to accept the way back.

Venedad and his daughter descended to wave us off, and Hilde stopped for a moment at the door with a massive bronze holding a scroll of the Torah above it.

Apparently I was so taken with Lilit that she wanted to give her little animal as a gift. I wanted to refuse, her father also tried to protest, but Lilit gave me the rabbit anyway, with anything but childish determination.

As we were about to set sail, a stick old man with a thick black bald head from the sun and a gray beard that had turned almost yellow came walking up to the boat, silently handed me a small crockery, the neck of which had been broken off, and removed sight lying down, without saying a word. I thought it was a childish whim and wanted to throw the worthless piece of crockery on the shore, but Judas decided to take it with him, saying that thrift went before riches.

There was a strong easterly wind, and with the sail raised we had quickly sailed to the middle of the lake. Judas and Philippus do not belong to the oars with a finger, while I lightly steered the boat with the tiller. The rabbit was quivering on the bottom at my feet. Apparently that vibrating was his fundamental occupation.

Then the wind cleared to the north, and there, in the north of the lake, happened what all the fishermen of Galilee so feared: in an instant, like the mood of a woman at Regulus, the weather turned. The north wind carried clouds from the Golan Heights and collided over the lake with the hot desert wind.

Our little ship began to dance on the waves, her boards creaking. Had that blue water faded and began to shelter, as if from anger, and in the garden between the waves yawned a dumb and grave black.

The worst part was that the waves would sometimes persist from one side, then from the other, in great disorder, it seemed as if the lake was making fun of him, and we did not get time to face the little ship with her nose to the waves. The wind was blowing so much that I could no longer hear my own voice, the shores disappeared and were shrouded in dark clouds, and we could only orient ourselves to the sun that hung in a hazy sky in the west, like a faint copper disc. Philippus worked desperately with the oars and shouted something, while I nearly knocked overboard several times, trying to adjust. Judas was sitting on the bottom of the boat, in a puddle, with one hand around the mast, with the other the bag of knives pressed to his chest, around which he had wrapped his cape.

At yet another wave we made such a slide that the rabbit went overboard, but it did not drown but just jumped from wave to wave with stunning activity, and fled hastily in the direction of Capernaum. I was so startled by the storm that I found no strength to marvel at it, while Philippus and Judas did not even notice what was happening.

Soon everything settled down as quickly as it had begun. It was almost evening.

The piece of crockery with the chipped neck came in very handy, I used it to scoop the water off the bottom of the boat.

Philippus and Judas got on their belts.

The bag of kif was soaked.

I did realize what had happened. During the storm, God had known mercy on us, but as always he acted with his own carelessness: since the chance of salvation had come to us-as a whole, and not each one individually, the innocent rabbit had taken all the blessings, and not we sinners. Spiritually speaking, this idea was on a par with the tall tree where lightning struck by God's grace, because it was closest to heaven at that moment.

When we reached the shore, it was almost dark. The peaks of the mountains of Gergesa changed their color from gold to purple. Matthew and Andreas were still not there, but next to the jetty Simon was waiting for us, who informed us that he had caught a peculiar beast from nowhere at the water's edge, with a ribbon around its neck. He asked me if we could prepare it for dinner.