believe that he will return and found a visible kingdom, but all this is very involved and unreasonable, and I cannot teach you anything about it. Your mother would have been able to do so, for as a woman she understood better than I about the affairs of the kingdom, and I still cannot understand why she had to die for my sake.”
I was beginning to doubt my father’s sanity and I thought about how he in all things behaved differently from most people.
“Then have you drunk blood with the Jews in their superstitious rites?” I said roughly.
My father looked very troubled.
“This is something you cannot understand,” he said, “for you know nothing about it.”
But he took a key and unlocked a chest, taking out a worn wooden goblet and holding it gently between his hands. He showed it to me.
“This is your mother Myrina’s goblet,” he said, “and from this goblet we together drank the wine of immortality one moonless night on a mountain in Galilee. And the goblet did not empty, although we both drank deeply from it. And the king appeared to us and spoke to every one of us, although we were more than five hundred. To your mother, he said that never again in her life need she be thirsty. But afterwards I promised his pupils that I should never try to teach anyone these things, as they considered that the kingdom belonged to the Jews and I, as a Roman, had no part in it.”
I realized that this was the enchanted goblet Timaius had said was of the Goddess of Fortune. I took it in my hand, but to my hand and my eyes it was but a worn wooden goblet, although I did feel a tenderness at the thought that my mother had handled it and prized it highly.
I looked sympathetically at my father and said, “I cannot blame you ~ for your superstition, for the magic arts of the Jews have confused the heads of wiser men than you. Without doubt the goblet has brought success and wealth to you, but I wish to say nothing about immortality, for I don’t want to hurt you. And as far as a new god is concerned, there are old gods who have died and returned, such as Osiris and Tammuz and Attis and Adonis and Dionysius, not to mention many others. But all these are but parables and tales which those initiated into the mysteries revere. Educated people no longer drink blood and I have had more than enough of mysteries, thanks to stupid girls who hang colored ribbons in the bushes.”
19
My father shook his head and pressed his hands together. “Oh, if only I could make you understand,” he said.
“I understand only too well, even if I am not fully grown,” I assured him. “I have, after all, learned something here in Antioch. You talk about Christ, but the new superstition is even more pernicious and shameful than the other teachings of the Jews. It’s true he was crucified, but he was by no means a king and neither did he rise from the dead. His disciples stole his body from the tomb so that they would not be ashamed before the people. It is not worth talking about him. The Jews see to all the talking and the bickering.”
My father began to argue the matter with me.
“He was truly a king,” he said. “It was even put in three languages on his cross. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. I read it with my own eyes. If you don’t believe the Jews, then you must believe the Roman governor. And his disciples did not steal his body, even if the Jews did bribe the guards to say so. I know that because I myself was there and saw it all with my own eyes. And once I met him myself, on the east shore of the lake of Galilee, after he had risen from the dead. At least, I still believe that it was he. It was he himself who led me to find your mother. She at that time was having trouble in the city of Tiberias. Admittedly, sixteen years have passed since these events, but I can still see them clearly before my eyes when you upset me by your inability to understand.”
I could not afford to make my father angry with me.
“I don’t wish to argue with you about divine matters,” I said hastily. “There is only one thing I want to know. Can you return to Rome whenever you wish? Timaius maintained that you can never return to Rome because of your past.”
My father stiffened, frowned and looked sternly at me.
“I am Marcus Mezentius Manilianus,” he said, “and I can certainly return to Rome whenever I wish. I am not an exile and Antioch is no place of banishment. You should know that yourself. But I have my own private reasons for not going to Rome. Now I should be able to do so, if forced to, now that I am elderly and no longer as receptive to influences as I was when I was younger. Other reasons you need not ask about. You would not understand them.”
I was pleased with his assurances and cried, “You spoke of a dividing of the ways and my future which I myself must choose. What were you thinking about?”
20
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