Chapter 23 - The love of Philippus

We sat by a campfire by the lake that evening as usual. The star Tsedek approached Alma's lands and was as bright as if it wanted to warm human creatures with its mercy. We were all there. Andreas had returned from Bethsaida and told the news. Simon had baked flat, unleavened lentil rolls for everyone on a stone. The waves murmured across the sand, the campfire flames shot one way, and then another, and Simon had to move the stone. It was one of those evenings to which I had attached little meaning but which, now clear to me, had become the faithful and best texture of my life that, on other days, would be forgiven for bitterness and vanity.

The conversation was about equal love.

Recently, a large boat moored there, and the owner made his money by sailing people and cargo from one boat to another. One of those on board was a youth named Jonah. He looked handsome: slender gardens, with a narrow hook nose and green eyes. He had hairless care, perfumed hair, clean-shaven cheeks, soft clothes, and a lilting voice. It turned out that the boy was born in Hippo and had come to me because he had heard that I was not as strict as other teachers. The reason was that he was irrepressibly attracted to men. In Hippo, he had become the object of ridicule and bullying; his parents were ashamed of him, and his peers shunned him.

What bothered him most was that his acquaintances refused to see him as a man and did not refer to him as anything other than Lilla. He rightly believed that he could continue to be considered a real man if he fell for men and gave himself to them. His daughter, whom he did not live in Jerusalem, bore even, if spoiled scribes of the new generation had more power than in the hinterland and could have taken him to court, even though male love was not forbidden in the Torah, that Time only spoke of the prohibition of intercourse with a hermaphrodite: 'do not lie to a man with the womb and a woman,' and the prohibition bed explained only from the concern for the hermaphrodite, who could be fertilized but if it came to birth would die during the birthing contractions. Incidentally, I had heard a venerable gray hard in his oral commentary on the Torah speak of the permissibility of intercourse with a hermaphrodite through the back gate.

Yes, such a heartless, well-off-the-tongue scribe came to prove to the crowd in square dead ease that this angelic youth, Jonah...was the greatest danger threatening Israel. The scribes, the messengers of God's will... That's where they had these empty heads in such great tongues? How far they went in their monstrous faith into the palace chambers of hatred! The wise Hillel of Babylon told them, "What you do not want done to you do not do to another; therein lies the whole Torah," but even his voice drowned in the crowd's murmur.

The wisdom of our people had almost disappeared under a thick layer of sand.

Jonah confessed that it couldn't go on like this, and he asked me to cure him of his weakness for the male updraft. I thought that was ridiculous.

"Your lust is your life," I said, "can I sometimes cure you of life?

He was surprised I didn't scold or admonish him, and his contrite face beamed.

"People do not see you as a man and me as a man; therefore, I understand you very well, dear Jonah! Added I, with which she was finally comforted.

I liked that Jonah stayed with us for a while.

Philippus immediately took care of him. He spread a bit of dry reed for the lad, shorted all kinds of delicacies for him, and spoiled him in every possible way, after which he also laid on him like a woman. To their mutual satisfaction, by the way. I put no obstacle in his way.

But that evening, when we were all sitting around the campfire, having finished our sandwiches with small smoked fish, Matthew suddenly, out of the blue, began to accuse Philippus of being too carried away by Jonah's song: he said that it could end badly with us if people in the city got wind of it, the elder and the rabbi could, he said, even initiate a targeting of it its outcome was highly uncertain.

Jonah had gone to town, sent out by me to pick up a kaddim palm-sikera somewhere. Philippus said nothing.

'Let's sell Jonah to the Roman garrison,' Andreas joked, but so foolishly that no one even smiled, while Philippus and, with so much wrath, obliquely looked at him that it looked as if he might attack at any moment.

Everyone is waiting for my decision.

'Mattheus,' I said, 'Let's imagine for a moment that you were tired of wandering around cities and spots with me any longer and had, say, built a nest somewhere in Jerusalem or so, in a little back date near the snake gate, where the scriptures live, the healers, the fortune tellers, and the Chaldese sorceresses...'

"No, Jesus," Matthew fulminated. I'm not abandoning you. Why do you say that?

'Let us imagine it anyway,' I continued, 'for it is the power of imagination that seems to the warriors the victory, the poets the ability to write poems: with his imagination, Barak defeated the Canaanites with the iron chariots. As a connoisseur of the religion, you have found your foothold, become a scriptor, neatly bring your gifts to the Baalberit, and copy the trade documents, the real and the forged wills, and the books about the Temple. You massage your bald head with holy oil, you dye and trim your beard, and you look so pleasing to God that the pilgrims give you coin money. You may even be married...'

'That was all that was missing, Jesus,' exclaimed Matthew. His face expressed genuine suffering, and everyone smiled. 'Stop laughing at me, Master! That I would go live in a cottage somewhere with a helpless bitch at the snake gate, where they find a robbed dead person every morning...?'

'Listen to my whole story, Matthew,' I said with a frown. 'Anyway, you had enough money at a perish and decided not to put it into preserving the Temple but to leave it at home. And at home, you had two holes; one was whole, and the other had no bottom. In which of these two vessels then do you light your gold?'

Everyone was silent. The fire snapped. Matthew furrowed his brow. He made no haste to answer, sunk in contemplation.

'Throughout,' he finally replied hesitantly.

"Very good! Said I delightedly. 'You must remember the words of the great Rabbi Menachem Mendel Tabbai, that true wisdom can turn a few drops of its seed into a few gold coins in a day?'

'Yes,' Matthew nodded.

"Yes, and that means, Matthew, that we can equate gold with the male seed.

"Yes," he agreed, "but what does that have to do with Philippus's inappropriate relationship with Jonah?

'I'll tell you that,' I said, looking at him sternly.

'Everyone has heard how you chose to put your gold in the whole barrel. But you have forgotten that another wise rabbi, Nittai of Arbela, said that a woman is a vessel without a bottom. So, a man is a vessel with a bottom. Considering all the saying, you have confessed that you are willing to put your seed into a man.'

Matthew wanted something against it and even made an indignant hand gesture, but he couldn't.

'So what do we see, dear people? Why did those rabbis say that? Continued. 'They said that because of this: through a woman, the seed is poured into insatiable eternity; it is no longer yours and turns into an unquenchable fire. The woman continues the disease of life. Therefore, do not let Philippus fall too hard; perhaps he is wiser than us. After all, he has already known the bitterness of marriage and can compare one with the other... But in doing so, we must also not forget the proverb of the Arabian nomads, "A lad's ass is splendid, but it is not the gateway to eternity. There is something of pity in that proverb... Therefore, choose, but remember, eternity is unpredictable. You can pour in a sea of seeds, which will dry up and leave only dead salt on the surface. But you can also throw in a few barely intelligible words and create a flourishing empire where your old age will be adorned with the love of your heirs. In this, then, everyone can make their own choice.'

'But can you also cure Jonah and send him to his parents' home after Hippo?' Asked Simon, he clarified, 'After all, we are but dull beers to him and quite old age. I'm sure he won't stay with us forever. He'll be looking for new feelings. And angry members might do whatever to him, as gullible as he is.'

'Who's to say, Simon,' I replied. 'Maybe Jonah will stay with us as long as the holy Sanhedrin is in us according to the word cheek crossed out. That word is the best medicine against both love and life.'

Philippus brightened.

'Thank you, Jesus, for understanding me,' he said. 'I only have to imagine someone coming after Jonah, or I immediately feel such pain in my heart. What if they enslave him through trickery and deceit? After all, he can only sing and dance with a tambourine. My heart is torn at the thought of him sighing at work in the fields, under the relentless sun and the knot. What if he ends up on the purple donkey?

Yes, Philippus did not worry for nothing. Knaves like Jonah saw themselves as the cleanest among men for a reason. Still, they were defenseless in the face of the world's arrogance and brute force, which over once was not a denial of their manhood, for even a Lion in the wilderness of Judea could trap you.

I threw some sprinkles on the fire and remembered how I had once seen a renowned ship from Corinth in the port city of Tyre, with purple sails and a prow decorated with the wooden head of a donkey. An enterprising man, evidently inspired by the Hellenic saying that a brothel is a much more reliable investment than a ship, had had a floating lupinarium built, on which boys and boys were kept, the children of enslaved people, as well as some fantastic monstrosities for entertainment: a woman with four tits, a blind, toothless albino negro who had reached the height of Zeus in the craft of fellator, an old Libyan woman with a hairy face who with her gaze in her whispering voice could bring a man into a state of sweet half-sleeping is to fellowship with him had until friends or relatives and carried home. There was also a learned hermaphrodite on the ship with six fingers on each hand who indulged men with an artful leather rod. During that occupation, he engaged in conversation so refined that even the sages of Mylete would have found satisfaction in it.

The painted head of the donkey saw ephebophiles and pleasure seekers in all the great port cities from Kirinia to Thrace; the ship of dreams also came as far as Chersone on the Pontus Euxinus. Worthy men visited it and paid good money for this happy science, but to end up in the skin of a young enslaved person was less sweet. In other words, at what happened on that ship, even fornication in the bathhouses of Antioch paled.

'Do not worry, my dear Philippus,' I said, 'the purple sleet will not appear on the Sea of Galilee, even though it is sometimes called a sea.' The moderate gentlemen's love is good; King David has already spoken of his lover Jonathan, and his passion far exceeds the woman's. You must know how to measure up in everything—smoking, laughing, getting angry. Grieving should also be done in moderation. Otherwise, you lose the willpower, and the spirits of the earth will do a will through you. A frenzied gentleman lover and crier can go so far in the power of that spirit that he simply kills his lover just because it peels off the skin of the Indian fruit from the wrong side for him. The letter of such a person's name can naturally jump from one place to another and form unnecessary, sometimes even dangerous combinations. As the teacher Socrates said, Virtue rests on the mastery of lust.'

Soon, Jonah was back from the store with a jug of Sikora. From the money he had left over from that I had given him, he had bought himself some sweets of honey and crushed berries. He came and sat by the fire and began to say something, smiling, his face particularly tender and youthful in the light of the fire. He took a few sips of Sikora, was immediately tipsy, walked to the barn, found in his belongings a beaded string of coralline, put it on, then threw off his chiton, stayed behind with only loincloth on, and began to dance with his tambourine. The white silks of his loincloth stood out brightly against his tawny skin, which, though covered with a short, soft coat, his pearly white teeth shone; with his feline manners, he had something of the goddess Bast, and we cast our eyes on him. We clapped our hands and chanted a song in tune with his predatory movements.

In all the inner darkness that surrounded Capernaum in the lake, and sleeping is well, in all this shaky and unwell world, he danced like a God, just for us, and it was beautiful; Jonah embodied the blossoming male beauty, as it is in the period of transformation from youth to young man.

Only Matthew did not give in to the spell; he walked to the barn, set himself at the door, raised a lamp, once lit, and sat down to write with a weighty face.

Jonah stayed with us another week. Then, in the city, he met a commercial traveler, Hellene, no longer the youngest but well-to-do. An hour later, Jonah gave himself to him in the city's thermal baths. The next day, he led his caravan out of the city, and Jonah joined him.

From the goat and the man, the faun is born. From the goat and the woman to the satyr. From a satyr and a nymph works, the youth Ampel was born, who was loved by Dionysos and became the star in the palace of Tsedek. But I always wanted to know what in the world of phantoms was born of two men. One thing I know for sure is that two men in bed were better than a donkey and a mule harnessed together for a chariot. A mule and a donkey could never walk side by side, while men could always walk through the same door if they wanted to.

Sometimes, I think Jonah is still dancing at the edge of the lake, although all of us who watched him then with wide eyes have long since turned into mummies. The stones sing under his feet, are ground to sand, the local fishing boats endlessly cast their nets, the little girls turn into embittered older women, the mothers curse a negligent son, the hibiscus bleeds out hundreds of times, and Jonah dances on and on; by day his lithe body seems dark, in the darkness it radiates light, and if you throw him a handful of kernels of the Phoenician apple at his feet in a moonlit night, he sees them as precious anthrax, it gets down on its knees to pick them up, and at that moment, without any redundancy, you can put your fiery zajien in his mouth.