Read Online My Glorious Brothers by Howard Fast - Free Book Online

slipped away unobtrusively, so as not to break up the warm flow and spirit of the folk, but fearing that one of the jackals from the hills might be in the corral. I went through the back door, the court, and up the hillside to the stone enclosure where the beasts were kept. It was not a goat, after all, but two rams locked in the horns and one of them crying with pain. I separated them—and then the evening was so cool and pleasant, the moon so round and bright, that I was loath to return, but sat myself under an olive tree where I could watch the moon and smell the clean sea breeze.
    It must have been a half hour that I was sitting there before I heard someone call my name, “Simon, Simon?”
    â€œWho calls for Simon?” I asked, although I knew well enough, my heart pounding and my hands suddenly wet.
    â€œA moonstruck lad ,” Ruth said, coming around the edge of the corral, half-singing the words of the song, “ who sits and dreams of a lovely lass— were you bored, Simon?”
    â€œI thought there was a jackal in the corral. You shouldn’t be here with me.”
    â€œWhy?” She stood in front of me, her bare toes playing with my sandals, smiling impishly. “Why shouldn’t I be out here with you, Simon, who came to protect the goats from a jackal? And if it were not a jackal but a lion, such as David found?”
    â€œThere hasn’t been a lion in Judea these three hundred years,” I answered sullenly.
    â€œYou never smile, do you, and nothing is ever funny, is it, Simon ben Mattathias? You are the unhappiest man in Modin—in Judea, I think—in the whole world, I suppose. I think I would give years of my life if a lion were to step out from behind me and swallow you.”
    â€œIt’s hardly likely,” I said.
    â€œIf you will spread your cloak, I would like to sit down,” she laughed.
    Shaking my head, I spread the cloak, and she sat down beside me. Apparently, she waited for me to speak, and I didn’t know what to say—so we sat there silent, as the moon climbed into the sky and the moonlight flowed like molten silver over the Judean hills. And at last she said:
    â€œYou once liked me, Simon—or I thought so.”
    I stared at her.
    â€œOr I thought so, and for so long,” she mused, “every time I came into the house of Mattathias, I asked myself—Will Simon be there, will he look at me? Will he smile at me? Will he speak to me? Will he touch my hand?”
    Sick with rage and frustration, I could only say, “And Judas is gone four days!”
    â€œWhat?” She turned to me, incredulous.
    â€œYou heard me.”
    â€œSimon, what have I to do with Judas? Simon, what’s wrong with you—what did I do to you? You’ve been like stone, like ice—not only to me, to your father, to Judas!”
    â€œWith no reason?”
    â€œI don’t know what your reasons are, Simon.”
    â€œAnd when you went out with Judas before he left—”
    â€œI don’t love Judas,” she said tiredly.
    â€œDoes he know that?”
    â€œHe knows it.”
    I shook my head helplessly. “He loves you,” I said. “I know it. I know Judas, every gesture, every look, every thought. He’s never had anything but what he’s wanted to have. I know that damned, cursed humility of his—”
    â€œIs that why you hate him?”
    â€œI don’t hate him.”
    She took both my hands in hers, rocking them on her lap, telling me, “Simon, Simon—Simon ben Mattathias, Simon of Modin—oh how many names I have for you!—my Simon, my strange, beautiful, wonderful, wise and foolish Simon, it’s always been you, no second one, no third one, only Simon and a dream that he would love me someday—no, not to love me, but to be near me, to look at me sometimes, to speak to me sometimes; and even that I can’t have, can I, Simon?”
    â€œAnd Judas