My Glorious Brothers Read Online Free PDF

the sweetest, largest figs in Modin. “A fruit of her father’s tree,” they said of Sarah—and the pride of Modin was such that eight of the twelve slaves in the village were given their freedom, well in advance of the sabbatical, when they could have claimed it. That day, Modin was packed with our kinfolk—from as far as Jericho, for when you come down to it, who is there in Judea who cannot claim kin with someone else? Forty lambs were slaughtered and set to cooking. Zalah filled the whole valley with its smell, and pots of that savory sauce, merkahah, bubbled on every hearth. A veritable flock of chickens were killed and plucked, stuffed with bread, meat, and three kinds of old wine, and set to roasting in the common oven. I call it to mind because it was the end of something, the end of a whole life. There was a horn of plenty, flowing with grapes and figs and apples, cucumbers, melons, cabbages, turnips. The fresh baked bread, round, golden loaves, like the discus the Greeks throw, was stacked in pillars, then broken all through the day, dipped in savory olive oil, and then eaten. Four times during the day, the Levites danced, and the girls still unmarried played the reeds, singing, “When will I have a fair young man? When will I have a suitor bold?” And then, in the common meadow at the end of the village, they joined hands and danced the marriage dance, a circle of laughing, swirling girls, while the men stamped their feet and clapped their hands to time.
    I found Ruth after the dance. I was two years younger than John, and I knew what I would tell her. I found her in the courtyard of her house, in the arms of Judas.
    ***
    It seems I hunger to search for and seek out fault in Judas—whom no man ever found fault with; but the fault and the uncertainty and the confusion, fear, and terror were in me, not in Judas. I, Simon, long of arm, broad and ugly of face, balding already at twenty, slow of movement and almost as slow of thought—I, Simon, accepted and considered only how we laid our hands one on the other. Neither of them knew. Yet for all that—may God forgive me—I was filled with such hatred that I went out of Modin, away from the dancing and drinking and singing, walking for hours, even after night set in. I had the thought, and for that surely I will not be forgiven, that I could have slain my own flesh and blood—and at last, when half the night had passed away, I came back. Before the house of Mattathias, the old man, the Adon, stood, and he said to me,
    â€œWhere were you, Simon?”
    â€œWalking.”
    â€œAnd when a Jew walks alone on a night like this, there’s no peace in his heart.”
    â€œThere’s none in mine, Mattathias,” I said bitterly, calling him by his name for the first time in my life. But he did not react. He stood there in the moonlight, the venerable and ancient bearded Jew, wrapped from head to foot in his white cloak, the black stripes making an awesome pattern as they fell first lengthwise from where his head was covered, and then girdling him round and round until finally the earth rooted him, beyond passion and beyond hatred.
    â€œAnd so you’re no longer a boy but a man to stand up to your father,” he said.
    â€œI don’t know if I’m a man. I have my doubts.”
    â€œI have no doubts, Simon,” he said.
    I started to go past him into the house, but he stopped me with an arm that was like iron. “Don’t go in there with hatred,” he said quietly.
    â€œWhat do you know about my hatred?”
    â€œI know you, Simon. I saw you come into the world. I saw you suckled at your mother’s breast. I know you—and I know the others.”
    â€œThe others be damned!”
    There was a long moment of silence; and then, in a voice that almost shook with grief, the Adon said, “And ask me now if you are your brother’s keeper.”
    I couldn’t speak. For a