LITMIR.BIZ

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room was as still as a tomb in the rocks of sepulture while he spoke. Theron did not move as much as a hair of his bushy head. Once his hand tightened on the shoulder of the boy and he whispered, “My son, my son, can it be there is only one God and that He is a God of kindness and light?”

      The discourse, however, was far over the head of a boy of six. Ambrose’s attention became riveted instead on a second man, who stood off to one side of the gathering. He had a broad brow and a kindly eye and a smile of such gentleness that each strand in his great red beard seemed to curl in amiability. He was watching, familiarizing himself no doubt with the new faces in the gathering.

      Theron was full of what they had witnessed when they reached the crowded room in the Ward of the Trades that served as home to his brood. “I have heard a great man deliver the most amazing message,” he said, his eyes still veiled and withdrawn.

      His wife had dampened his enthusiasm immediately. “Christians!” she said scornfully. “They are a bad lot. I saw one stoned to death in my native village. It was a woman, and I threw a stone myself. That is what happens to people who become Christians!”

      “But the man Jesus performed miracles,” protested Theron. “Those who follow Him cast out devils also and cause the lame to walk and the blind to see.”

      “Miracles!” scoffed his wife. “The face of that woman had turned black when I cast my stone. Why wasn’t there a miracle to save her? There is one Simon the Magician who can perform miracles as well. They are all tricks.”

      They never returned to the synagogue, but one thing kept the meeting in Basil’s memory. He recalled the face of the man with the red beard. It was still clear in his mind even when the contour of his own father’s features had become dim and uncertain. What made it stay was a hint there of seeing things which other eyes missed, of hearing sounds, perhaps of music, in the stillest air.

      There had been something of this same look on the face of the vendor of sweetmeats.

      His hands were never idle while he sat in the latticed aliyyah and watched the rich spectacle below. He used bits of charcoal to make sketches on papyrus or on discarded fragments of cloth, catching with a few deft strokes the proud folds of a toga or the dignity of a red-and-white nomadic turban, the furtive leer of an unshaven beggar or the animal grace of a gladiator from the amphitheater that great Caesar himself had built. Later he would carry the sketches back to his room and mold figures in damp clay from the best of them.

      Ignatius joined him once at his post of observation, seating himself with a hint of apology on the colored tiling of the floor. He studied the sketches with which the boy had surrounded himself, making a clucking sound with his tongue that conveyed approval.

      “My son,” he said, lifting up for closer inspection a figure done in wood of a slouching, bowlegged thief, “you have the gift the gods so seldom bestow. There is in this one the strong touch of Scopas. Sometimes I have seen in your work the ease and grace of Praxiteles, but this one is all Scopas; and for that reason I like it much. And yet you have never seen any of the work of these truly great men.” He paused and indulged in a smile at the surprise on the face of the boy. “You did not guess how much I know about the glorious art of our race. You hear me railing and browbeating in that room of mine that is as round as the moon and you see me at meals filled with the troublesome problems of the day. Ah, my son, the glory that is so nearly lost to our race fills my mind oftener than the price of olive oil.” He nodded his head slowly after several moments of reflection. “One day it will be necessary for you to learn something of the affairs of Ignatius the merchant so you will not be at a loss when the reins pass into your hands. But there is plenty of time for that. At the moment it is my earnest desire that you continue as you are doing.”

      There was a long pause then, and Basil knew that his father had something more to say and was finding it hard. Finally, in a defensively brusque manner, the merchant asked: “And what of you, my son? Are you happy here?”

      The boy had no hesitation in answering, “Yes, I am very happy.” Then he added, using the word for the first time since he had come to live in the high white palace, “Yes, Father.”

      Ignatius nodded his head several times, and it was clear that he was quite moved. “You are a good boy, my Basil,” he said. “I think you are going to be worthy of the name I gave you. He was a truly great man, my father. When you get older I will tell you many things about him that will show what an honor it was for you when I gave you his name. Yes, my son, we shall have many talks.”

      Once when Basil was bathing in his sunken tub, the merchant came in and watched. It was always a matter of embarrassment to the boy that he was not permitted to take a bath by himself. Servants would always be about, some of them girls, to hold towels and pieces of soap (he had never lost his delight in having plenty of soap that gave so much lather and smelled so enticing), and he would have to drop off his tunic and the linen garment he wore next to his skin and then step naked into the water under the close observation of all these pairs of eyes. There were four attendants in the room on this occasion when Ignatius paid his visit.

      The merchant watched in silence for several moments and then gave his head a shake. “It’s clear you have no reason, my son, to be proud of your muscular development,” he said. He seemed to find some discontent in this, and it was several moments later that he added: “But I didn’t select you as a thrower of the discus. It was your spirit that I liked. Why should I be concerned now that you are as thin as a lath? You will be much like my father, who was never a strong man.” He seemed to have discarded now all feeling of disparagement. “You are going to be tall, and that is what counts. I think you will be taller than all the sons of the men I call my friends.”

      4

      Basil spent his seventeenth birthday finishing a gift for his father. He and his mother were making a joint offering of it. Persis had placed a fine ruby in his hand and suggested that he design a ring to hold it. He had decorated a narrow band with views of the Acropolis and had taken very special pains to make the stone show to advantage. To assist the red gold, which was to serve as the foil beneath, he had covered it with velvet of a deep wine shade and had placed the ruby on that, with the result that it glowed in an unnatural splendor. Delighted with the success of his experiment, Basil had said to his mother, “No king in the world has a ring on his finger to equal this one.”

      But the gift did not arouse in Ignatius the pleasure and gratification the two donors had anticipated. He looked at it so long in silence that Basil raised his own eyes from the ring to see what the matter could be. He discovered then that the face of the merchant was drawn and gray and that his neck, which had been as round and firm as a column of stone, had a flaccid look to it.

      “Are you ill?” he asked with sudden anxiety.

      “Blind! Blind!” said the merchant bitterly, as though speaking to himself. “I have been stupid, my son. I have wanted you to give all your time to making beautiful things like this, thinking that in due course I would teach you what you will need to know when you take my place. But will there be time? Here I am, with a pain like a hot iron in my side and the fear of death on me. And what do you know of the care of the groves, of the sailing of ships, of the accounts? I have been deliberately blind! And now perhaps it is too late.”

      Two days afterward he was dead. The white marble house fell into silence. No sound rose from the slave quarters; no one moved in the halls. A cautious hand had turned off the water which ran in the pipes, and so even the light ripple of the fountains ceased to be heard. The porters locked all the doors and stood guard in the shadows within. When Basil went to view his father’s body, the scuffing of his felt heels echoed in the empty rooms as though a ghost were at large.

      He approached the bier with a sense of dread. With his last breath Ignatius had issued a command against embalming. He did not want his brains drawn out through his nostrils, he had said; he had found them good brains and he wanted them left where they belonged inside his skull because he might have need of them in the strange land to which he was bound. In accordance with his wish, his body had been washed and scented

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