Nine

The week was finally over, and John was rather relieved. He knew he had to say his farewell to Annas, who would give his own opinion of whether he should come back after the month was over; but he had no fear, since he was pretty well convinced that he was seeing the last of the school no matter what.

And, when he was ushered into the room where he had originally greeted Annas, Annas rose and embraced him, as was customary, and said, "So you will be leaving us, at least for a time, then, John."

"Yes, Master," he replied.

"What think you? I know you will be pondering it, but you must have some impression about whether you want to devote your life to what you have seen."

"Of course, Master, I am not sure. It is a wonderful life in many respects, but as Daniel told me, I seem to be more of an outside person than a scholar."

"Daniel is a very intelligent man. I have, of course, had reports about you, which are, I think I can say, mixed. Your colleagues recognize your intelligence; your interventions, with so little experience to guide you, reveal an acute mind, which, if trained and directed, could perhaps perform adequately the tasks you would be required to do. They have said, however, that you seem not to--shall I say, take kindly--to the approach we have here. Comment?"

"I have great respect for what you are doing; it is clearly very meticulous. I just wonder if it is the kind of thing that really excites me."

"Well put. Well put. That was what we noticed. Well, I have written our impressions to your father, who doubtless will enter into your reflections in the month to come, and you can ponder them and weigh them against your own impressions of yourself and us; and I am sure that you will come to a conclusion that is suitable. We ourselves have concluded that if you do wish to return, we will accept you on a provisional basis for a year or two; and if at the end of that time, you have progressed sufficiently in our rather stodgy enterprise, we will take you as a permanent student. I have a second letter in which I have included the cost of this week's stay with us, as well as the tuition per year in the future. That, of course, will also be a consideration for you and your family; though I believe that you will be able to meet the expense."

John was shocked. It had not occurred to him that it would cost anything to study here. He said, "Thank you, Master," to prevent there being a stunned silence.

Annas, fortunately, did not give a sign that he noticed anything. "It was a pleasure having you with us--and I think I speak for everyone here, but particularly myself. I consider you a very personable, polite young man; your mother and father should be very proud of you."

"They are more proud, Master, than I deserve."

"Well, that shows what good parents they are--not to mention that it is a good example of what I was saying. But you deserve much in your own right. Much. I will be very happy to see you back again should you decide to return, though I am inclined to think it somewhat unlikely. And if you do not return, consider that whenever you are in Jerusalem, my house will always be open to you if you wish to see me."

"You are very kind. Thank you, Master." And with another embrace, John was dismissed.

The students knew, of course, that he was leaving, and those who had become his friends also embraced him and wished him well, Adam in particular. Daniel was not in the group.

John looked about for him, puzzled, as the students left, and he suddenly appeared from a room at the side. He had been waiting for John to be alone, it seemed. "So we are seeing the last of you, then," he said, sadly.

"I am not certain of that; but it seems likely."

"May I give you a fond--but friendly--embrace?"

"Of course." And Daniel held him for a bit longer than was necessary. And John, it must be said, appreciated it somewhat more than he wished, but then loosed his own arms, and Daniel dutifully dropped his.

"I give you much thanks, Daniel. You have been a good friend."

"The thanks go the other way, to my mind. If ever you are in Jerusalem, do come to visit for a few moments; it would do my heart a world of good if you did so."

"I will remember," said John, whose own heart would be gladdened by another sight of Daniel.

"Farewell, then."

"Peace."

John left, wondering if he was wrong in fighting against his feelings. Daniel, clearly a good man, gave no sign that he saw anything wrong with what he wanted to do with John, nor evidently did the two or three others who looked rather greedily at him--when he thought of it, it still disgusted him, except now not so much in the case of Daniel.

But there were clear injunctions against it, were there not, in Scripture? He seemed to recall that somewhere in Leviticus it said that a man who lay with a male was to be put to death. He wondered what the analysts made of that; it seemed clear enough to him; and he assumed that that was what Daniel was driving at--though he wondered how in fact it was managed. Certainly, all the men he spoke with except people like Daniel regarded that sort of thing with abhorrence. He concluded that Daniel's orientation deluded him, somehow; and he saw how easy that would be, based on the fact that he himself had begun to doubt based on his own inclinations.

That perhaps was a very good reason for his not returning. If this had happened in a week, what would years with Daniel bring? Or if someone like Andrew happened to join them? Though in that case, he could imagine Daniel and he competing for his attention. He shook his head in disgust. But again, there was something about the disgust itself which it would be wise not to explore. Inclinations!

"I would I had them not!" he muttered aloud to himself as he walked through Jerusalem to the Temple, causing those passing by to look strangely at him. He realized he had spoken aloud, and thanked the Master that he had given no verbal hint of what it was he wished he did not have. Well, he certainly had no wish to have them, if the Master condemned what they inclined him toward, and he hoped that the Master would take into account that they were against his will.

At least for the moment.

As he was pondering this, he entered the Temple area and walked, faster and faster, toward the corner where he was to meet Simon and Andrew--and there they were! They did not see him as yet, and he ran, dodging people in the way, toward them, his pack bouncing against his back, calling their names. Andrew looked up, and opened his arms, into which John flew, and they embraced.

This was, of course, more powerful for John than the embrace of Daniel, and he withdrew with some trepidation that Andrew would notice something, and then embraced Simon.

"It is a joy to see you, youngster!" exclaimed Andrew and Simon together, and John answered, "You have no idea how happy I am to behold both of you!" and all laughed from sheer joy, Simon holding him at arm's length, and looking into his face. He was glad that it was not Andrew, and wished it were Andrew.

They still smelled--rather faintly, after all this time--of fish. It occurred to John that he liked the smell of fish, and had been missing it.

"So the scholar has not forgotten his old friends," said Andrew. "You smell of--what?"

John laughed. "Soap. They had me bathe and wash my clothes as soon as I entered the house. But how could I forget you?" Little did Andrew realize how difficult it would have been.

"Oh, I suspect it will be quite easy as the years go on. But you will at least be spending a month with us, is it not?"

"Probably a good deal more than that."

"Oh? You found the life not to your liking? You miss rowing the boat and smelling of fish?"

John became serious. "Make no jokes about it, Andrew. It is a good life, and one which in many respects I love dearly. And when I met you, I realized I actually like the smell of fish."

All laughed. "No, but," said Simon, "you do not think you were intended to be a rabbi? Or was it--" He realized that it would be indelicate to suggest that the school did not consider him qualified.

John caught what he was driving at, and laughed again. "Oh, they would--probably--accept me if I decided to return. At least, provisionally, for a year or two; but if I did decide to return, I think I could make it permanent; it is not all that difficult."

"But you rather think," said Andrew, "that you will not do so."

"At the moment at least," answered John. "There is much there to like, but there is something--" he did not know how to finish the sentence.

"Something not what you expected," said Andrew, doing it for him.

"Let us leave it at that. I must think about it. There is also the fact that it will cost my father a good deal of money."

"Indeed?" said both of them in surprise.

"Oh, yes. When one thinks of it, of course it is expensive to keep and educate a person; it simply did not occur to me, and I was--I almost knew not what to say--when Annas mentioned it to me as a matter of course. It is not inexpensive."

"Do you think your father can afford it? I realize, he is doing well, but we are but fishermen, after all."

"I looked at the fee, and I think he could manage it rather easily. I know not, but I think so. Still, it is a consideration. If it is really the life for me, then it is probably worth it, and I can pay him back when I finish; I gather that students of Annas do rather well after they graduate. Some of the ones in their last year have mentioned their prospects, in order to tempt me to stay, I think. But if it is merely something I can do, then it seems to me that the remuneration should not be something I should take into account. Why make my father pay for a career that I find not really--not really mine, if you know what I am saying."

"Then you prefer fishing to rabbizing?" asked Andrew.

"I know not. I think that fishing is perhaps not my life either; but the problem is that I know not what is. But if I am going to do something that does not completely suit me, then at the moment at least, my inclination is to go back to fishing rather than to 'rabbize,' as you say."

"Well, we will certainly welcome you, whether or not your whole heart is in it," said Simon, and Andrew nodded enthusiastic assent, "especially now that we are definitely a team with Zebedee."

"Oh, then whatever it was you were doing was successful?"

"As far as one can call anything that lawyers do 'successful,' said Andrew sardonically. "Thank God for Simon! Many a time I was ready to smash the table with my fist, but he simply went calmly on, asking them to explain themselves, after which they turned sentences into tighter and tighter knots, more tangled than a net that had caught a shark." His look made John wonder whether this admission about Simon's skill was something of an effort.

"They knew--or at least they thought--that they could out-talk us," said Simon, "and at first made a game of it. But I decided that I was not going to let them make us frantic, and I simply went on and on until they condescended to spell out what they meant in Aramaic that meant something, and I would not let them go until they got it clear. I mean, the whole thing was simple enough, really; but they wanted to make it a maze of whereases and therefores and so on, and I--who was it that the Greeks said gave somebody a thread to carry into a maze so he could get out?"

Neither John nor Andrew had any idea what he was talking about.

"It matters not. I made them spell out in simple terms what they were saying--and it was amusing to see the difficulty they had in doing it--"

"Amusing! It was infuriating!" said Andrew.

"That was because you let them have the upper hand," remarked Simon. "I knew that we were the ones finally in control. We knew what we wanted, and we knew we could do it without any legal agreement if we chose, and so, in spite of the fact that they kept telling us we could not, when all was said and done, we had them put the whole thing into legal language that we could understand. Zebedee will have no problem."

"And all was said and done," said Andrew, "only yesterday! But we are free of them! We have the documents! Zebedee needs only to make his mark upon them."

"Well, I am glad that you were successful." said John.

"But let us pay our respects to the Master," said Simon, "and then we can return to where we are staying." They suited the action to the words, after which Simon said, "There is room for you, of course, if you do not mind sleeping on a mat on the floor."

"Of course not."

"No doubt it will seem primitive after the luxury you experienced in the High Priest's palace." remarked Andrew. "I saw the outside of it three days ago, when I could not tolerate another moment of those discussions."

"A good deal of the palace is quite luxurious, to be sure," answered John, "but not my room. By any means. Students are even lower there than servants." The others raised their eyebrows, and John went on, "Not that we were abused; but our comfort was not uppermost in the minds of the establishment. I have no complaint, really."

As they were saying this, they were walking through the, to John, rather confining streets of Jerusalem, trying to stay together, but being elbowed out of the way by people going in the opposite direction and those behind them who all seemed in a frantic rush to pass them and get somewhere. John had thought that the frenetic pace of Jerusalem he had experienced in the past was due to the crowds for the Passover, but he now discovered that there were always crowds, and they were always frenetic; it was simply that the city held ten times as many people as the streets were designed to accommodate. And at Passover, when it held thirty or forty times as many, there was not that much difference; too many was too many, and many too many was barely noticeable from the normal intolerable situation.

They finally arrived at the modest accommodations the two had selected, and John realized how easy it was to become spoiled even in a week. The room was even more barren than his room in the palace, and there were no ornate rooms to go to from there, and certainly no courtyard with well-kept palm trees. It was what he expected, of course; but now he had a point of comparison. He said nothing to the others.

They went out and sat outside a shop that had what Andrew called, "fairly decent food" and ate the evening meal and drank the rather sour wine, which John mixed with a good deal more water than usual to take away the taste. The students ate well, he realized, now that he had returned to ordinary fare.

"We could leave on the morrow," said Andrew as they were eating, "but I thought I would like to see this John we spoke of, as long as we are down here. Do you remember?"

"Of course I remember! How could I forget a prophet named John?"

"Of a certainty! He would be a rival, I suspect. So we are to have two prophets named John, then."

This hit close to a nerve, and John reddened, at which Andrew said, "Oho! Now we know why you went to that school! But you found they were not a training-ground for prophets!" and he gave John a playful punch in the shoulder.

John was silent. What was there to say? Finally, he said, "But seriously, I would like to hear what he has to say myself." And he also remembered that Jesus's mother had said that Jesus might be around there, and that in some way, he might be able to help John with his troubles about Samuel and especially poor Thomas, whom John had barely thought of for a week. Perhaps Jesus knew this John, and could recommend John to him. He had washed the fishiness from himself, but perhaps John could bathe away the impurities from his soul.

As he lay down on his mat to sleep, the troubles he had put into a box in his mind spilled out; Daniel had driven Andrew from his thoughts, and all the rest had erased Thomas from them. He felt guilty that he had forgotten him; but on the other hand, had Mary not told him not to concern himself, that all would somehow be well?

He wondered if anything would ever be well.

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