or to trade and were regarded as the full equal of anybody except a born Roman citizen.
“No,” Eliezer said; and he lifted his eyes and looked Balthazar straight in the face.
“It is written, it is the Law as given by God to Moses. No man, maimed as you are, can enter the congregation.”
The forked yoke of the slave trader had fallen upon his neck, the gelder’s knife had agonised him; but neither had hurt him as these words did. This was the final blow, because he had been all ready to give his heart, his whole being to this god of Eliezer’s, who was a spirit and who answered prayers by gifts to the spirit and not to, the body. He had been ready to say, with Eliezer, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him’, and “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil’. That was how he had always wanted to feel, how he was prepared to feel. And now … “Your god is a very unjust god, Eliezer. And inconsistent, too. If, as you claim, he is a spirit, concerned with men’s hearts and minds, that is a senseless rule. This thing,” he said, in an angry voice that was in sharp contrast to his ordinary mild utterance, ‘was done to me without my wish or consent. No reasonable man would hold that against me, far less a god who, as you claim, sees and understands all.”
“I am sorry,” Eliezer said, ‘but I cannot help it. It is the Law.”
After that Balthazar had finished with gods.
About a year later the Greek came home from the docks where he had been supervising the unloading of one of his ships, on a hot day, and complained, in the counting house, of a headache and feeling of stiffness in the neck. His wife had sent for a physician who prescribed some remedies and rest in a darkened room. But next day he was worse, with high fever and pains in all his limbs. Downstairs in the slave quarters somebody said: “Cleo, bring your ball and look into it and tell us, will he live or die?”
Cleo was a young Nubian girl, recently brought into the household; she was a skilled hairdresser and spent most of her time in the bedchamber of the Greek’s wife. She owned a ball, about the size of an egg, but rounded, of black obsidian, and she claimed that by looking into it she could see events that were yet to happen.
Balthazar, from the first, had regarded her as a fraud, and her fortunetelling as a means of gaining attention. But twice—this was undeniable—she had been right; once when one of the master’s ships was overdue she had cradled the ball in her hands and looked into it and said, “It is wrecked. It has gone down in the sea.” And once she had foretold the sex of an unborn child. Everyone else was much impressed but Balthazar considered these prognostications to be lucky guesses.
On this evening she brought her black globe, warmed it between the palms of her hands, stared fixedly at it and at last announced in a flat, dull voice:
“He will die.”
There was a general groan, for the Greek merchant was, as masters went, lenient and conscientious.
“All men die,” Balthazar said, a little sharply, the verdict being unwelcome to him, too.
“He will die on the second day,” the young Nubian insisted. Then she pushed the globe into Balthazar’s hand and said, “See for yourself.”
He stared and was overcome by amazement; there, pictured in the polished black surface, was the bedchamber of the Greek, his dead body on the bed and the embalmers busy with it.
After a long silence, during which he stared and stared, Balthazar protested:
“Yes. I see him dead. But there is nothing to show whether he will die on the day after tomorrow or in twenty years hence.”
“Look closer. How many white rings enclose the picture ?”
“Two,” he said in exactly the voice he would have used if asked a question in the counting house.
“So!” the girl said.
“He will die on the second day.”
As she spoke the picture faded from the globe, and standing there with it, blank, in his left hand, Balthazar realised that he had just experienced something new and strange; he had seen something that had
not yet happened as though it were alreadypast. The obsidian was cold and heavy in his hand; he gave a little shudder.
“Put it away,” he said.
Two days later the Greek died and the house was filled with the mourning wails of the slaves, to which were added, for a short time those of the widow. But she recovered rapidly and began in a level-headed way, to turn all the assets she had inherited into cash so that she could return, wealthy and independent, to her native Corinth. She had always, she said, felt an exile in Tyre.
The slaves began to plague Cleo to look into the ball again and see, if she could, what would happen to them who were to be marketed in just the same way as the ships, the storehouses and the pack animals: Several times she made unsuccessful attempts; “I see nothing.” But one evening, having warmed the ball carefully, she looked into it, gave a moaning cry and fell senseless. The ball-rolled from her limp hand and somebody picked it up and gave it to Balthazar.
“You saw our master dead. See what is in store for us.”
“It is better not to know,” he said, remembering how Cleo had cried out. But they insisted and he was curious, in a way, himself. So, almost flinchingly, he looked, and he saw himself, rather finely dressed, riding a camel in company with two other men who wore peculiar hats; one round, the crown running steeply into the brim, very much, in shape, like the roofs of the huts of his own tribe, the other a kind of cap with a white crown and a black brim. On his own head he wore a turban, made from a silk scarf, and his robe was richly red.
“You see something,” the slaves cried.
“Tell us. Tell us what you see.”
“A happy future for all,” he said, wondering about the meaning of what he had seen concerning himself. They crowded round, demanding details, individual forecasts. In his hand the ball had gone blank again and cold and heavy.
“I had no time to see small things,” he said, handing the thing to one of the women who stood by Cleo.
“I can only tell you that you were all happy.”
But Cleo hanged herself from a beam some time during the night and what became of the black ball nobody ever knew.
The widow retained Balthazar to the very last; there was a great deal of reckoning to be done; he knew about the business, and her husband had considered him to be honest. Several times in the ensuing months he was able to save her from those who would have taken advantage of her sex and her ignorance. Every time this happened and every time he made a shrewd or useful suggestion, she said, “You shall be rewarded,” and he would think about the money piling up, how enormously rich she was, and dream that in the end she would write him his paper of manumission and set him free. In the globe he had worn the clothes, ridden the camel, of a prosperous freedman and he knew that could he once attain his freedom he could become prosperous. He could set up as an accountant and scribe, and charge for his services. Perhaps the two men with whom, in the vision, he had been riding, were clients of his, merchants from far away, glad to make use of his knowledge of languages and of currencies.
All this pleasant speculation ceased when the widow, wearing the aspect of one who has performed a good action at some cost to herself, told him that she had sold him to a Roman.
“I could have obtained a better price for you,” she said, in warm, complacent tones, ‘but I bore in mind how well you have served me lately, and the state of your hand. With your new master you will not be required to write so much, or so small. Theodor Metellus is growing old and losing his sight. You will have an easy life with him, just reading to him and writing a few letters. I hope you are pleased,” she added, changing her tone as she saw the sagging disappointment in his face.
He was bitterly disappointed, and also dismayed. The Romans, as slave-masters, had an unsavoury reputation. Hardly two generations had passed since the Roman world had been rocked by a great uprising of slaves, led by Spartacus. It had been put down with the utmost severity, but it had not been forgotten; Romans still regarded their slaves as potentially dangerous and behaved to them