Ben-Hur Page 4

  A wagon rolled past, leaving billows of dust, and Ben-Hur stepped back into a doorway, brushing down his white linen tunic. He glanced at his sleeve, where Amrah had clasped his arm, but the creases were set in the fine fabric. He shrugged and told himself that Messala wouldn’t notice.

  Minutes later he reached the meeting place, a marble bench near a pool in the palace gardens. They were empty at this time of day as the sun poured over the marble terraces and the palm trees dropped long-stemmed shadows. No Messala. Ben-Hur sat on the bench. Was that a pebble in his sandal? He wriggled his toes. Maybe a thorn. He slipped off the strap and slid his foot out. But before he could find the thorn, he heard Messala’s footsteps on the gravel and stood up to see his friend.

  A man now! The distance in their ages had always been important. Two years is an eternity when one friend is twelve and the other fourteen. Ben-Hur knew he had changed. He had grown, developed; his voice had changed. The face he saw in the polished bronze mirror was no longer that of a child. But Messala! Urbane in his thin wool tunic edged with red. Taller, solid. Tanned by the sun, but elegantly groomed. As they embraced, Ben-Hur caught a whiff of some exotic pomade. Then Messala held his friend at arm’s length to look at him. Ben-Hur suddenly felt gauche, standing on one foot with his sandal in his hand.

  “So here we are again!” Messala said heartily and sat on the bench. “Come, sit. Get that pebble out of your shoe and make yourself comfortable.”

  Judah sat and pulled the long thorn from his sandal where it had become wedged between strap and sole. He held it up to Messala. “I suppose your paved Roman roads are always perfectly clean.”

  “Always.” Messala nodded. “We have slaves sweep them. You could walk over them barefoot in comfort.” Then his face changed. “I was sorry, Judah, to hear about your father’s death. He was a good man.”

  “Thank you,” Judah answered, looking at his hands in his lap. “He was. We miss him.”

  “I’m sure all of Judea misses him. How did it happen?”

  “A storm at sea,” Ben-Hur said. “There were no survivors, but some of the wreckage washed up on the coast of Cyrenaica. There were reports later of a sudden tempest. Some said a waterspout.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Three years now,” Ben-Hur replied.

  Messala (Stephen Boyd) and Judah (Charlton Heston) reunite in this scene from the 1959 MGM production.

  “And your mother?”

  “She grieves.”

  “And what about little Tirzah? How old is she now?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “A young lady, then! She must be very pretty.”

  Ben-Hur nodded. “She is, but she doesn’t know it. She is still almost a child.”

  “Time to be thinking of marriage, though,” Messala said. “Has your mother chosen a husband for her?”

  “Not yet. I think my mother would like her company for a while yet.”

  “Because you, my friend Judah—you will be going out into the world soon?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ben-Hur temporized. “It’s not easy. My mother doesn’t say anything, but I think she would like me to start thinking about my father’s business. We have a manager, but my father worked so hard. Someone in the family should take an interest.”

  “And keep the shekels rolling in,” Messala said sardonically. Judah looked at him in surprise. “Well,” Messala went on, “everyone knows how much Jews care about money.”

  Judah felt himself blushing but managed to retort, “That’s ridiculous! Especially coming from the son of a tax collector. Don’t I remember your father with his strongboxes of coins and his ledgers?”

  Messala was silent for a moment, then said, “You’re right. I’ve been away too long. Such things can’t be said in Jerusalem.”

  “Or thought, I hope,” Judah added.

  “Oh, certainly not,” Messala said, standing. “Let’s walk. I’d forgotten how hot the sun is here.”

  Judah hurriedly buckled his sandal and leapt to his feet. “What is Rome like?” he asked. “As a city, I mean.”

  “You’ll have to go see for yourself sometime,” Messala told him. “There’s nothing like it in the world. Not just because it is beautiful—though it is. You never saw such magnificent buildings.”

  “More so than the Temple?”

  “The Temple Herod started to build here is fine for a provincial capital with a primitive religion,” Messala began.

  “No,” Judah said, standing still. “Remember? You can’t say that.”

  “About the provincial capital?” Messala asked. “Or the primitive religion?” He clapped Judah on the shoulder and gave him a little push to get him walking again. “All right, I’m sorry. It’s just the way everyone talks in Rome.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s right or true,” Judah argued. He thought he might sound sulky, so he added, “I’m your friend, so I know you don’t mean it. But if you were overheard . . . There’s strong feeling against Romans. You need to be more careful.”

  “Fine,” Messala said breezily. “Where should we go? The bazaar?”

  “Yes, of course,” Judah answered, “though it won’t be much cooler.”

  “At least there will be shade,” Messala said.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. Judah eyed Messala, comparing his old friend to the man who strode along beside him. Finally he said, “I know what it is! You walk differently!”

  Messala burst out laughing, and for the first time Judah recognized the young man he had known. “That’s exactly what I remembered about you,” he said. “You are so observant!”

  Judah shrugged, but he liked knowing that Messala had an opinion about him. “Well . . . I hope you aren’t offended.”

  “Not if you explain what you mean.”

  “Oh, nothing important. But you walk . . .” Judah drew himself up and pulled back his shoulders. “Like a soldier, I suppose.”

  “Well done! You guessed without my telling you!”

  “What, that you’ve joined the army?”

  “I have,” Messala said. “Remember? I always wanted to.”

  “I do,” Judah answered. “Everything we found we turned into weapons.”

  “Especially swords. You could make a sword out of anything. Do you remember those massive leaves? Huge leathery things from the roof of your palace?”

  Judah laughed. “That we cut into sword shapes, yes. And then old Shadrach, the porter—he’s still there, by the way—helped us stiffen them. With, what? Slivers of wood?”

  “Yes, because the gate was being mended!” finished Messala. “They were lethal! Look, I still have a scar.” He held out his arm, where a tiny line of paler skin ran from his shoulder halfway to his elbow.

  “The one time I got lucky,” Judah said. “Is it all you hoped, being a soldier?”

  “It is,” Messala said. “It’s a glorious thing, the Roman army. Better even than I could have dreamed.”

  “Real weapons, anyway.”

  “Real weapons, real drilling, real officers. And real opportunities, Judah! You’ll see—I’ll explore; I’ll conquer new lands for the empire. When I’m done, I will rule all of Syria! And you can sit at my right hand, my old friend.” He linked his arm through Judah’s as they left the palace garden and started in the direction of the bazaar. “That’s what being in Rome really taught me—ambition. Ye gods, the world out there! Did you know that there are places in the north where it rains all the time and the natives paint themselves blue? There are Romans there, building roads and subduing those wild men. And in the sand hills south of Libya, they say there are cities built entirely out of gold. Why should they not be Roman too?”

  ACTORS WHO HAVE PORTRAYED MESSALA

  William S. Hart—1907

  Francis X. Bushman—1925

  Stephen Boyd—1959

  Duncan Fraser—2003

  Stephen Campbell Moore—2010 (miniseries)

  Toby Kebbell—2016

  Judah beg
an to feel uneasy again. “And why should they be Roman?”

  “The gold, for one thing. Which Rome can make better use of than a horde of barbarians. And Roman rule brings benefits: Law. Roads. Buildings. Water. Protection from warring tribes. You know about the Pax Romana.”

  “What if people don’t want it, though?” Judah asked. “This Roman peace. Here, for instance. Jerusalem isn’t populated by savages. There was a city here when Rome was still a swamp.”

  “Judah, you have no idea,” Messala countered, shaking his head. “Jerusalem is just an outpost. Not even a very important one. What do you have here? The Temple. Your dry hills. Your quarreling tribes. The doctrine of this and the ordinance of that. Men bending over books, running their fingers down columns of your backward script, muttering about this prophet and that law, shaking their beards—that’s what Jews produce. No art, no music, no dancing, no rhetoric, no athletic competitions, no great names of leaders or explorers. Just your nameless god and his lunatic prophets.”

  “Lunatic?” Ben-Hur protested.

  “Oh, all that nonsense about burning bushes and parting seas . . .”

  “This from a man whose people turn their own rulers into gods!”

  “Ruling Rome and the empire is a task for gods,” Messala answered coolly. “If you stay in Jerusalem, you’ll end up as a nearsighted rabbi, hunchbacked from crouching over your books. I can see it now, Judah. There’s nothing else here for a boy like you.”

  Judah slipped his arm away from Messala’s and took a step back. The two were at the edge of a narrow street, with high walls on each side and a constant rumble of wagons passing.

  “Why did you come back, then?” he asked Messala. “Why not just stay in Rome?”

  To his surprise, Messala blushed. Judah wasn’t sure at first; an ox cart rolled by and its shadow slid across Messala’s face, but once it was past, Judah saw clearly the evidence of his old friend’s embarrassment.

  “My father wanted me here,” Messala said curtly. “He sent for me. There are always new cohorts coming out here from Rome. He arranged it.” Judah studied him. Messala went on, more fluently. “My mother was worried. She would like me to be nearby for some months. There’s no telling where I’ll be sent next. I’m sure your mother worries about you, too.”

  “No,” Judah answered, “I don’t think she does.”

  “You probably haven’t given her any cause,” Messala answered, and Judah was surprised by the bitter tone in his voice. “You were always a studious, rule-abiding boy. A typical Jew, in fact.” He watched Judah as he said this, with frank malice in his eyes. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction.

  But Judah was too stunned to answer. Was this even the same person who had been his friend? Messala had been constantly at the Hur palace. He had teased Tirzah; Judah’s mother, Naomi, had sung for him. Even the servants had liked him, though Judah now remembered that Amrah had always held herself aloof. Had she sensed something about Messala’s character that she disapproved of?

  The silence between them lengthened; then Messala turned on his heel and began to walk away. But before he had taken three steps, he turned back. “I looked forward to seeing you today, but I see we can’t be friends. My father warned me of that. He said it would be different now and he was right.”

  He paused. Judah waited for his friend to say something about regret, lost friendship . . . something kind. Instead, Messala went on. “The new procurator arrives today. Did you know? You must hate that. Hearing the troops marching around your old shambles of a house—seeing them fill the streets from gutter to gutter with their polished weapons. You must have to wait, sometimes for several minutes, as they march past the door, before you can even step outside. That’s what life in Jerusalem is these days. And you know, Judah, you do not live in the glory days of Solomon and his Temple. You live now, under the reign of Caesar Augustus and his successors.”

  Judah stood still, willing his face into a mask. Messala was leaving. Let him go. Ignore him; make him vanish. Reacting would just keep him there. Messala stared for a few seconds longer, then spun around and walked away. The sun glinted on his black hair and his blue gauze mantle.

  Messala turned a corner and was lost to view. Judah stood by the side of the road, leaning against the wall, looking at the ground, until a small boy came past with an unusually large flock of goats. The goats pushed him out of the way.

  CHAPTER 5

  DISASTER

  Judah Ben-Hur did not go right home. In the Hur family palace there were too many sharp female eyes that would notice his mood. And he needed to think, so he walked.

  Was Messala right? Was Jerusalem provincial? Or was it a stronghold for the chosen people? Could both things be true, perhaps? And what was wrong with being provincial, anyway? He, Judah, had not traveled. He had seen the sea once, before his father’s death. They had gone together to Joppa to visit one of his father’s ships, and Judah had been enchanted by the water extending beyond the horizon. But in Messala’s view, Joppa barely mattered. Judah knew the maps. He knew that Rome sat at the center of the Inland Sea. Messala dreamed of fighting and exploring at the distant edges of the Roman Empire. Judah could almost imagine it: foreign men in startling climates, tamed by the Roman yoke. There had been some truth in what Messala said: Jerusalem raised men to study, not to fight. Was fighting always wrong?

  Judah roamed around his city all afternoon, looking and thinking. His feet grew sore, so he stopped for a while and sat on a half-hewn building block watching the masons at the Temple. The air was filled with dust and the chorus of tapping hammers while the priests and worshipers picked their way along paths to and from the sanctuary. He grew hungry and bought some figs from a roadside stand. He wandered to the Damascus Gate to watch a camel train enter, followed by several herds of long-haired goats. A merchant near the gate had the skin of a lion hung over a wooden frame, and a scrawny dog barked at the pelt. Judah’s hands felt sticky, and sweat prickled along his spine. He turned for home, thinking of the fountains in the courtyard and a cool beaker of fresh water, drunk in the shade.

  Why was Messala so different? Had he always been that sure of himself? Had he always been so cruel? Judah felt so much smaller now than when he had left the Hur palace that morning. Jerusalem felt smaller too. He could almost feel it shrinking under his feet, reduced from the Holy City to a landlocked trading post—or a Roman toy! And the Romans were everywhere with their shiny helmets and short, swinging skirts of leather strips.

  The closer he got to his home, the more Roman soldiers crowded the streets. Messala as a soldier—Ben-Hur could imagine it easily. Messala was tall and strong; he already had an air of command. An officer strode past Ben-Hur, shouldering him into the corner of a building, never even looking back. Dust clouded Ben-Hur’s eyes for a second and all he could see were vague brown shapes punctuated by spots of Roman red. When his vision cleared, he saw that there were groups of soldiers converging on the Antonia Tower, the great imperial fortress. Messala had told him that the new procurator was adding another cohort to the legionaries already garrisoned there. Judah had heard that news days earlier without reacting. Now, though, it made him angry.

  Twilight was settling into night by the time Judah finally returned to the family palace. He opened the wicket gate quietly, wishing he could enter unnoticed, but of course that was not possible. The old porter Shadrach bowed low and greeted him and had just latched the wicket closed when Amrah rounded a corner with a pitcher and a towel. She nodded toward the low bench near the porter’s booth and Judah sat. First he held out his hands and Amrah poured the water over them. It had been sweetened with herbs and sharpened with lemon, Judah noticed. Then Amrah knelt and pulled over the basin that always stayed by the gate. Judah took off his sandals and let Amrah wash his feet, though the lemon stung on his various blisters.

  “What’s this?” she said, fingers running over the laceration from the thorn.

  “Nothing. There was a thorn.”


  She looked up at him. If he had been watching, he would have noticed her face soften. She had been prepared to scold, but his faraway gaze stopped her. “Your mother is on the roof,” she said instead. “Let me bring you some supper.”

  “No, thank you,” he answered. “I will change my tunic and join my mother shortly, though.”

  “A man needs to eat,” Amrah said, drying his feet. She clambered to her feet and bent down to empty the basin, but Ben-Hur forestalled her. He picked it up and tossed the water into the garden behind him. A chorus of indignant squawks told him he had disturbed the birds nesting there for the night. Amrah took the basin from his hands and said, “Go, Judah. She has been worried.”

  BEN-HUR’S MOTHER

  In this novel, as in the 2016 MGM film, Judah’s mother is named Naomi. But in Lew Wallace’s original novel, the character is unnamed. She was called Miriam in the 1959 film and in the 2003 animated version. 1925’s silent picture followed Wallace’s original, calling her simply “Princess of Hur.”

  Wallace’s own mother died in 1834 when he was seven. His father, who was serving as the lieutenant governor of Indiana, traveled a lot, and the children were farmed out to a neighbor—a fairly common practice. But when David Wallace married again less than eighteen months later, Lew initially refused to acknowledge the union and ran away from home for a few days.

  By the time Ben-Hur arrived at the summerhouse on the palace roof, his mother, Naomi, knew what there was to be known. Judah had left the palace early, had been gone all day, had returned exhausted and grim. She lay back on her cushioned divan, glad of the darkness. It might be easier for Judah to tell her his troubles if he could not see her face. For the thousandth time she wondered how her husband, Ithamar, would have handled Judah. He was a boy of such intensity and such potential! Surely it wasn’t just a mother’s love that made her believe Judah could be a great man. But could a Jew be great in Roman Jerusalem?