Two

The learning to read did not happen at once, however, and as time went on he almost forgot about it. After he became a man at age thirteen, he began to be big enough to row the boat, and occasionally took over the job from James, whose father had told him to share the tasks so that both would know all about fishing.

James was, truth be told, considerably less awkward than John, and the net that got thrown out by him more and more often brought in fish, rather than sinking in a lump to the bottom and having to be hauled out empty, as happened so often with John. He was improving, but there was no question but that James was a natural fisherman in a sense that John was not, much as he liked the occupation.

The boat, though really still a toy, was a chore for John's young muscles to manage, and he woke up that first night crying from the pain in his arms and chest. His mother gave him a drink of a concoction of willow bark boiled in vinegar which seemed to lessen the pain, and let him sleep. The next day, the two young men went back to their previous roles, which they kept for two or three days, and then switched back.

After several sessions of this, John did not ache so much when he came home; and he swelled with the pride of teamwork when they brought in a pail of several fish that "they" had caught. James, who was fond of John, joined in the fiction that they had done it all together, and John glowed.

All that rowing made him strong for his age--he was fourteen now--and it became less and less arduous as time went on (they never went far from home, actually; their father left them now, and went off to the promising spots by himself with the hired hands). And a year or two later, there was talk that the boat was getting too small for the "real fishermen" that they were, and that Zebedee was thinking of finding a used boat for two that they would be able to manage.

But John's mother had not forgotten what Mary had said, and had ambitions for John that went far beyond what John himself had dreamed. She pictured him as the advisor to the head of the Sanhedrin, to a successor (perhaps twice or thrice removed) to her distant relative Annas. And, in the way of women, she managed to make Zebedee think that his youngest son was perhaps cut out for greater things than fish, and so one day a neighbor, who could read, took John aside after he came home from fishing and asked him if he would like to learn the alphabet.

John, of course, leaped at the chance, and the wax tablet became a new magic for him, as he wrote the letters and erased them with the blunt side of the stylus, saying their names over and over to himself and the sounds his tutor told him they said.

But with John, learning was not always a one-way street. "Why is this a letter?" he asked once, pointing to the aleph. "It says nothing. Are letters not supposed to say something?"

"Well, it says nothing itself, but it stops what comes before it. You will see."

"I do not understand."

"Be patient. You cannot learn everything at once."

Then there was the teht (which looked almost exactly like the mem) and the taw, pronounced the same, as were the kahf and the kofh. "Well, not exactly the same," said the tutor, and pronounced them very carefully--exactly the same, as far as John could tell. "Why have two letters that say the same thing?"

"Because there are two, that is all."

"But it makes no sense."

"Simply learn them."

"But it makes no sense!"

"Do you wish to learn to read, or not?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then learn them."

And John muttered to himself, "But I want to know!" but he had enough brains to keep silence, because it was obvious to him that his teacher did not know, and would never admit that he did not know why these things were so.

And this was all well and good, but it was not reading. He got so he could recognize all the letters, and give the sounds they made (when they made any), but it took him a while to put them together and make words out of them.

Especially because, "Where are the other letters?" he asked when the neighbor sounded out words.

"The written letters are only the closed ones. The open ones you have to supply yourself."

"That is silly! Why not write them all down?"

"They do in other languages, but this is the way we do things."

It struck John that "the way we do things" was not necessarily the best way, though his tutor obviously thought so, especially when he scornfully remarked, "And the Greeks and the Romans even write backwards!" John had a suspicion that whoever invented written languages was half a fool, no matter what the language was.

But as time went on, he began to puzzle out the words, and then sentences, and could decipher even some of the Scripture. When, after a long time, he first picked up a scroll (the neighbor, who was very wealthy, had quite a supply of writings) and did not know what it was, and then actually read a few words and recognized them, that he was actually reading a psalm, he almost fainted with joy.

He was, of course, fishing during the day all this while--which had stretched into years. His father had found a two-man boat that looked decent and given it to them, taking the old, tiny craft and putting it as a kind of museum piece beside their house, with their miniature net draped over it. He "could not bear to sell it," he said, and proudly showed it to everyone who came to visit.

It was hard work rowing the larger craft, but John did it with a will, knowing that now it was real man's work, and not something one did simply for practice. James became quite adept with the net, and John developed a knack for rowing that made little disturbance of the water, so as not to scare away any fish; so their roles became fairly well fixed--and John "went from strength to strength" because of his work at the oars.

One day, when he was about fifteen, he saw at the fish market one of the twins of another fishing business, a boy of about his own age, who seemed to be wanting to strike up a conversation, but did not know what to say. "Where is your brother?" he asked.

"Oh, he is talking to a rich person who sits on the shore every day under a fig tree and does nothing. He is learning to read from him."

The tone of his voice did not prompt John to volunteer that he also was learning to read in his time off from work, and so he said, "I am John, Bar-Zebedee."

"My name is Samuel. My brother is Thomas."

"And your father is...?"

"Oh. Sorry. Malachi."

"Ah, yes. We have heard of him. We are partners, you know, with Simon and Andrew Bar-Jona, and they have spoken of Malachi as quite skilled."

"He is. We have our own boat, but he takes the big one with the hired hands. We manage, but of course our business is not as large as yours, with two families."

"Yes, we do rather well. Today's catch was not a particularly large one, but most of the time, we bring in many fish."

"Well, but I must go and help my father. It was a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure was mine. I hope we will see each other often."

"I am sure we will. Peace." And he left. John got the impression that he would see more of him, because he seemed to be somewhat jealous of the fact that Thomas had a friend (and a rich one) and he did not. "I may not be rich," John said to himself, "--at least not very rich--" (he was proud of the fact that they were quite prosperous), "but I know how to fish, and I will wager Thomas's friend does not--and I know how to read, also!"

And sure enough, Samuel passed a few moments with him the next time they happened to meet at the market. He was not a very loquacious individual, and John had to carry most of the conversation, discussing different places for finding fish and different techniques for catching them, and so on. But he found Samuel quite an attractive person: strong and muscular like himself, because he also did the rowing in his boat.

And they seemed comfortable enough in each other's company, and John was glad to have a friend who was not a partner in his own business, with whom he could speak without feeling that he was being taught something by his "elders and betters." True, they never tried to lord it over him, but the fact was that they were older and more skilled than he was, and, like most people, could not keep themselves from giving advice even when the advice was obvious and clearly already known to the target of it.

This fact that John was not really as good a fisherman as most of the rest of them (he was better than two or three of the hired hands, to be sure) made the business rather less attractive to him than he thought initially it would be. This was, of course, exacerbated by the progress he was making in reading, which was becoming more and more magical as the days and especially years went on, and reading became more and more like listening to someone, and less and less like decoding a puzzle.

One day, he was reading Ezekiel, which he had never heard before in the synagogue, and was completely entranced by the fantastic imagery of the animals with four different faces and wings, and wheels within wheels, and the sapphire throne with the amber humanlike figure sitting upon it, with a rainbow glowing about him. "How glorious!" he said aloud, prompting his mother, on the other side of the room, to pause with her distaff and say, "What?" whereupon he answered, "Oh, it is nothing; simply something that I was reading." She glowed as if there were a rainbow emanating from her.

She was convinced that John was going to be a great scholar, and was subtly insinuating as much to her husband, trying to induce him one day in the not-too-distant future to see if he could study with Annas, perhaps, to become a rabbi. He could not, of course, be a priest, because they were not of the tribe of Levi, let alone descendants of Aaron; but there was nothing preventing him from becoming learned in Scripture. Because here he was, teaching himself!

John devoured the book of the prophet, if one can say "devoured" to someone who had to puzzle painfully through practically every word. But every word was magic, and worth the effort. When he finished, he asked his tutor if there was another book of the same sort, and the tutor answered, "Well, you might be interested in Daniel. There are some rather nice adventures in it."

So he began on Daniel, and found out about the three young men who were ready to brave a fiery furnace rather than repudiate the Master, and who were miraculously saved; and then how Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall, and then there were more fantastic visions. John was enthralled, and determined to do something like that himself one day.

And when he met Samuel a few days later, he said confidentially,"I know what I am going to be when I get old enough!"

"What?" said Samuel.

"A prophet! A great prophet like Ezekiel or Daniel!"

Samuel laughed. "You sound like Thomas. He never said he wanted to be a prophet, but he thinks he is going to be a scribe or a law-expert or something."

"Well, why not?"

"Why not? Us?"

"Why not indeed! David was merely a shepherd, and they are a far lower class than fishermen. And Amos, I think it was, was a dresser of sycamores! Can you imagine someone shepherding trees?"

"Who is Amos?"

"One of the prophets. I read something he wrote the other day, and my teacher told me about him."

"You read?"

"I--well, I am learning. But the point is--"

"The world is full of people who want to be scholars!"

The tone of contempt (jealousy?) of this stung John a little, and he said, "What is wrong with it?"

"What is wrong with fishing?"

"Nothing. But the point I was trying to make is that what we are when we start out matters little. I see no reason why Thomas could not be a scribe or a law-expert, or why I could not be a prophet. One never knows."

"Oh, I suppose I have no problem with it. And in a way, I am rather proud of Thomas. He seems to read well, and perhaps will do great things some day. I hope so."

This was rather a long speech for Samuel, and John could see that he was really more proud of Thomas than he admitted, and so he said, "So now you have two people, a brother and a friend, that you will be able to point to some day and say, 'I knew them when they were but fishermen.'"

Samuel did not answer for a while, and finally said, "I truly hope so."

"What? I something wrong?"

"Oh--it is nothing."

"There is something wrong!"

"No, not really. I think. I hope not."

"Tell me about it."

"I cannot, John, I cannot. It might be nothing at all. Perhaps some day I will tell you."

And that was that, at least for that day and several other days. Samuel was clearly worried about something, and apparently something connected with Thomas, but John could elicit nothing from him. He thought about it while he was fishing with James, but not knowing what the problem was, he could find nothing to satisfy himself.

In any case, the next morning, he had a new worry. He had had a dream that night, in which Samuel came to him and told him about Thomas, and then hugged him and, instead of weeping on his shoulder, held him tight and looked earnestly into his eyes. Their hips were pressed together, and John experienced what is called a "wet dream." He had had some before this, of course, but this was the first time that he had paid attention to the fact that the one who in the dream caused the explosion was a man.

His father had haltingly told him about such things, but it was in the context of women, which set John to wondering if something was wrong with him, and what he had done to bring it about, and what he could do about it. There was nothing effeminate about Samuel; he had no mincing ways, and was strong and bigger even than John.

John was aware, of course, of effeminate men and boys; some of them were quite conspicuous in their delicate movements (and, it must be said, in their ogling of muscled boys like John). They disgusted him, and it shocked him to think that he might at heart be one of them.

He could not consult anyone on this; he burned with shame and chagrin even at the thought of bringing up the subject. The only thing he could think of was to pray over it, and to redouble his efforts at developing his manly body.

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