Retribution, page 20
part #3 of City of God Series
He gave her one of those heart-stopping grins that showed he was going to be a star with the ladies in just a few years.
“Imma!” Rachel’s voice, thin and squeaky and full of joy. “Imma, look what I found!” When she arrived, a shiny glow covered her face and a missing-tooth smile told Rivka that she had succeeded. “Look, Imma, I found a stone from the wall!” In her hand was a small piece of the white limestone used everywhere in Jerusalem.
Hana picked it up and showed it to Dov. “Less haste, little bear, and more speed, yes?”
“Yes, Imma.”
Hana stood up and handed the stone shard to Rivka. “Yes, Rivkaleh?”
Rivka sighed. “Yes, Hana.”
Hana took her hand and pulled. “Then come. It is time you were free from your prison.”
Rivka followed. “Where are we going?”
Hana gave her a sharp look. “You know.”
* * *
Rivka
When they reached the palace of Hanan ben Hanan, Rivka’s heart was pounding. What was Hana planning?
Hana pulled her past the front gate and around the corner of the outer wall into a tiny alley. Rivka hadn’t been here since the night Hanan ben Hanan had flogged Ari with intent to kill him.
“Imma, why are we here?” Dov said. Rachel immediately squatted in the dirt and began playing with a line of ants.
Hana put Rivka’s hand flat on the wall. “You will not take your hand away until you have forgiven the man.”
The wall felt clammy and cold. “Hana, what is it you expect me to do?”
Hana looked exasperated. “You will pray for him, just as Baruch has told you many times.”
Rivka gave her a blank stare.
Hana put her right hand over Rivka’s and raised her left hand toward heaven. “Hanan ben Hanan, I bless you in the name of HaShem. I bless your sons and daughters to the last generation. I call on HaShem to fill your heart with peace and joy, to give you a long life, and at the end to welcome you into the World to Come.”
Hana took her hand off Rivka’s. “Now you will do the same.”
Rivka wanted to scream at Hana, to tell her she couldn’t possibly understand. Except that Hanan ben Hanan had also tried to kill Baruch. If Hana could do it, Rivka could.
But she couldn’t. Rivka opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Imma, if you say the words, your heart will learn to mean them.” Rachel put a grubby hand on Rivka’s arm.
Rivka gave her a sharp look. Sometimes Rachel said things that were impossibly profound.
Hana narrowed her eyes. “Dov! Racheleh! Come, we have shopping. Rivka, please you will stay here until you are no longer a prisoner. I will be waiting for you at home.”
“Hana, wait ...” Rivka couldn’t think of a single reason why Hana should wait.
Hana took one of the children in each hand and disappeared around the corner.
Rivka felt panic clutching at her heart. This was crazy. She couldn’t do this.
She had to do this.
Hana was right. She hated Hanan ben Hanan’s guts, and until she could let go of that, she was going to be his prisoner.
Rivka raised one hand toward heaven and pressed the other against the wall. “Hanan ben Hanan, I ...”
Sweat sprang out on her forehead. This was hard, very hard.
“Hanan ben Hanan, I ... bless you in the name of ... HaShem.”
Rivka closed her eyes and tried again. And again. On the fourth try, she got all the way through the blessing Hana had said. She didn’t mean it, but she got through it. That was something.
Tears sprang up in her eyes, and she realized just how much she hated Hanan ben Hanan, and everything he stood for.
“Hanan ben Hanan, I bless you in the name of HaShem.” She continued straight through to the end. And still she didn’t mean it.
She said it again, the words boiling in her heart.
On the fifteenth time, she heard a voice in the street. “You there! Witch woman, what are you doing?”
Rivka’s eyes jerked open. She wiped her teary eyes with her sleeve and saw a man in the street. Probably one of Hanan’s servants.
Rage lit up his eyes. “You will leave now, witch woman, and never come back.”
Rivka felt like an idiot. She turned and raced away up the alley toward the next street. This was horrible. Worse than horrible. She could only imagine what it looked like—the witch woman casting a spell on Hanan ben Hanan. If that man told Hanan, she was going to be in real trouble.
* * *
Rivka
Rivka ran all the way to Hana’s house. When she got there, her heart was thumping so hard in her chest she thought Baruch and Hana would be able to hear it through their thick wooden door. She twisted the latch and collapsed inward, falling headlong on the dirt floor, gasping for breath.
Upstairs, she heard Dov and Rachel singing a song. Then Hana’s voice. “Children, hush! Did you hear something?”
Footsteps at the top of the stairs. A gasp. “Rivkaleh!” Feet thumped down the steps.
Hands caressed her face. “Rivka, are you well? Please, you will speak to me!”
Rivka fought to open her eyes. She smiled at Hana. “I’m ... fine, Hana. I ... did what you asked.” I tried, anyway. I didn’t finish, but I started.
Hana leaned close and peered into her eyes. A broad smile lit up the world. “Blessed be HaShem. You had hatred in your heart where it should not be, but now it has fled.”
Before Rivka could say anything, the world seemed to change. The veil to the Other Side pulled back and all her senses opened to another reality. She felt hot all over, and a brightness filled her soul. Flaming words formed in her heart, and she heard them, felt them, saw them, smelled them.
When you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be, let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Then the world darkened, and Rivka could see ordinary sights again, could hear ordinary sounds. Hana’s face swam into view. “—you well, Rivka?”
Rivka took a deep breath, and realized she had not been breathing while she was gone. “Yes, I am well.”
“Please, you will rest a little.” Hana put Rivka’s head in her lap and loosened her hair covering. “When you are ready, you will tell me what happened.”
Rivka relaxed and let her body catch its breath. She told Hana about praying for Hanan ben Hanan. About getting caught, and running here, and collapsing. About the thing she had heard or seen or whatever.
“It is a vision from HaShem,” Hana said. “What do the words mean?”
“It means it is time.” Rivka had been waiting years for this word from HaShem. Now it had come in the last way she would ever have expected. “Hana, I think it’s a sign that we need to leave Jerusalem. We knew it was coming. Now it’s here.”
“What is this abomination of desolation?” Hana’s face sagged with grief. “What is this sign?”
Rivka realized that Hana did not know any home other than Jerusalem. They had talked about leaving many times, but that was just talk. Now it was real.
“Please, you will speak with Ari the Kazan on this matter.” Hana’s voice sounded thick with emotion. “And I will speak with Baruch.”
* * *
Rivka
That night, after they put Rachel to bed, Rivka took Ari up on the roof of their home and they looked at the stars and talked. She told him the whole story.
“... and I’m certain it was a word from HaShem,” Rivka said.
Ari folded her hands in his. “Yes, Rivkaleh, I believe you.”
She heard tears in his voice and realized how much he loved this city. “What should we do now? I think HaShem wants all our people to leave.”
“Forever?”
“Yes ... forever. There won’t be anything to come back to when the Romans get through.”
“Of course.” Ari’s voice quivered. “Yes, of course, forever. We must speak with Shimon ben Klopas in the morning.”
“We?”
“You and I,” Ari said. “Baruch also. I feel in my heart this is a true word from HaShem. A year from now, the war will be upon us. We must leave soon, and find a place. Do you know where we are to go?”
“Eusebius says the community went to Pella,” Rivka said. “It’s a city on the other side of the Jordan.”
“Outside the Land of Yisrael.”
“Yes, outside.”
Ari put a hand on her hair and stroked it gently. “Come to bed then. Tomorrow will take care of itself.”
Rivka stood up and they went back downstairs, holding hands. She had been looking forward to leaving ever since she got here. Now she could not bear the thought.
* * *
Ari
The next morning Ari took Rivka with him to the morning prayers. While it was not forbidden for a woman to join in these prayers, such a thing almost never happened, since a woman was considered free from any commandment that would hamper her child-rearing responsibilities. During the prayers, Ari spread his tallit over both of them. A great well of sadness opened in his heart. This would be his sacrifice to HaShem, to be separated from his woman and child for the sake of his people.
By the time they finished the Sh’ma, Ari was weeping. Rivka clung to his arm, and Ari knew that she also wept to leave the city. She did not yet know that she would leave without him. Ari could not think how he would tell her, but he would find a way. Only not yet.
Ari folded his tallit and removed his tefillin and put them in his broad cloth belt. Baruch went to fetch Shimon ben Klopas. Half a dozen men clustered around Ari, sending sidelong looks at Rivka but refusing to ask the obvious question. Why had she come to morning prayers?
Baruch led Shimon over to Ari and Rivka. His wise old eyes ran around the circle. “My children, I will have a private word with Ari the Kazan and his woman and Baruch the tsaddik.”
Eyes opened wide and the room began buzzing with excited whispers. As the men left, many of them looked back at Rivka.
When the meeting room was empty, Shimon shut the door and led them to a row of wooden benches along the side wall. “So.” Shimon’s eyes studied Rivka. “It has been many months since Ari the Kazan told me certain matters that would soon befall. He told of a man named Florus. He told of the burning of the Queen of Heaven. He told that we must soon leave this city. The first two of these have passed us. Please, you will tell me the word HaShem has given to you.”
Rivka explained the vision she had seen.
“You saw this darkly or clearly?” Shimon asked.
“Clearly, my father.”
Shimon closed his eyes and sat deep in thought for a long time. Ari wondered if he had fallen asleep. Finally, the old man’s eyelids flickered open. “Please, you will explain again the matter of the abomination of desolation. This is a dark word that Rabban Yeshua spoke, and none have ever explained it. What is the meaning?”
“I do not know,” Rivka said.
Baruch coughed lightly. “My father, if Sister Rivka has heard a true word from HaShem, then we will know shortly what is this abomination, yes?”
“Yes,” Shimon said. “And if we learn what is the abomination, then she has heard a true word.”
Baruch was nodding as if this made perfect sense.
Ari bit his tongue. Shimon had just committed a logical fallacy, and now Baruch had agreed to it.
“Very good then, my children.” Shimon stood up. “Please, you will inform me promptly when you understand the matter.”
Chapter 24
Rivka
THAT AFTERNOON, RIVKA LEFT RACHEL with Hana and visited Gamaliel’s olive-oil shop. It was now only two days before Pesach, and the shop was crowded. Rivka waited patiently until the other customers left.
Baby Eleazar fixed her with a rapt expression. “Sister, I see that you have been in the Shekinah.”
Rivka wished she could just look at a person and see that. “I heard a thing from HaShem that worries me.”
Baby Eleazar said nothing.
Rivka picked up a small vessel of olive oil and examined it minutely. “Do you know the meaning of the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel?”
“It is the wicked king of Syria,” Baby Eleazar said. “HaShem raised up the Maccabees to drive him out.”
“Yes, but is there a second meaning? A meaning for a later time? I have heard of a word from HaShem that speaks of a second abomination standing where it should not.”
“If so, then it is a deep mystery of HaShem,” Baby Eleazar said.
Rivka put the vessel back on its shelf and turned to the door. Baby Eleazar didn’t know any more about this than she did.
“Sister, please you will tell me of the far country from which you come.”
Rivka wondered what she could tell him. “I come from a land where women are treated as men.” Almost like men, anyway. “There, any person can learn whatever they wish in great schools of learning. They have libraries with ten thousand times ten thousand books. They have wise men who know the deep mysteries of the universe. They have machines which can think like a man, and other machines to do many kinds of work. They have machines to fly through the air, and to speak with people in other far countries, and to see things in yet others.”
Baby Eleazar’s face was shining. “I wish to see your far country someday. Will you take me there? All people in your far country must be very happy.”
Rivka hesitated. People back home lived longer, owned more things, ate better food. But were they happier?
“Did I say something wrong, Sister?”
“No.” Rivka smiled at him. “People in my far country are often unhappy.”
Baby Eleazar seemed puzzled. “But with so many wonderful things, they must be very thankful to HaShem.”
Rivka did not know what to say. How could she explain that not all in her far country believed in HaShem, and of those who did, not all were thankful to him? It struck her that, given the choice to go back, she was no longer certain she would. She had grown to love this city of God, and now she was going to leave it, to abandon it to evil.
“I am sorry, Sister.” Baby Eleazar looked distressed. “You are a stranger in a strange land, and you intend to leave, yes? I saw when you came in that you mean to leave Jerusalem.”
His image blurred into a soft focus. “Yes.”
“And you are going home to your far country?”
“No, I can never return there.”
Baby Eleazar sighed deeply. “Then you are like me. You have no true home but the World to Come.”
Rivka peered into his eyes. Someday, he would be recognized as a great rabbi, the greatest of his generation. Then something would happen and the other rabbis would exclude him and he would live out his life as an outcast. “Are you lonely, little brother?”
He bit his lip and looked down at the floor. One single tear slid down his cheek and fell in the dust. “When will you leave? I will be sad of your leaving.”
“When I understand what is the second meaning of the abomination of desolation.”
Baby Eleazar’s face brightened. “Then it will be long before you leave, Sister.”
* * *
Ari
Ari loaded the last lead ball into the ballista. As a boy, he had been taught that such things were called catapults, but he had learned different here. A catapult threw spears. A ballista threw stones or other ballistic objects.
Brother Eleazar turned the winch and the ratchet clicked. The device was simple. It stored torsional energy in a set of ropes that twisted as the ratchet turned. When the ropes reached their full torsional compression, a switch could be activated to transfer the energy to the throwing arm, which heaved the projectile. The physics was easy but the engineering was not. Ari wanted to achieve maximum energy transfer and range, and that meant optimizing the mass of the projectile, its angle of launch, and the torsional energy of the ropes.
Ari had constructed a small ballista with the help of Levi the bronzeworker, using the best steel components he could build. The small scale made it easy to experiment. He had a theoretical model of how the device should perform, but now he needed data. They had come out here, two kilometers into the desert, where they could shoot projectiles as much as they wanted, with nobody to bother them.
Eleazar’s thick muscles strained at the winch. “It is ready,” he grunted.
Ari signaled downrange to make sure nobody was in line with the weapon. Small as it was, the device packed enough energy to kill a man at two hundred meters. “Fire the weapon.”
Brother Eleazar flicked the switch.
The arm leapt up much too fast for Ari’s eye to follow it. He heard the lead ball hum through the air, then watched the kick of dust far away. That was the tenth shot. Now came the part that mystified all the Sons of Righteous Priests, but which Ari knew was most important. They must collect and analyze the data. At the very least, he needed to measure the mean and standard deviation, and look for anomalies.
Ari pounded a short stake into the ground and began paying out a thin rope along the ground. He saw Brother Levi pounding in a stake where the projectile had hit. Ari and Eleazar walked toward him. Every ten cubits, a red silk thread was tied to the rope. Ari counted each one. At 352 cubits, they reached the first stake. It was marked with a number to tell which shot was fired.
“Write this,” Ari said. “Projectile number ten at 352 cubits.”
Brother Eleazar grumbled something and wrote it down.
Ari checked to make sure the numbers were correct, then moved on. The next projectile was number nine. And the next was number eight. This pattern continued all the way to the first, which had gone the farthest. Ari felt a surge of disappointment. The ballista was losing range with each shot. The problem was to figure out why.
The Sons of Righteous Priests collected the projectiles and they all walked back to the ballista. All of them looked thrilled that the device actually worked.
