Agrippa's Daughter by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online

ritual, on the streets of a Palestinian city, was new to her. She turned from the window, clucking in indignation, and told Berenice that in Jerusalem or in Mizpah or any other Jewish city, these heathen abominations would be torn limb from limb.
    “Then you should be grateful that we are not in Jerusalem,” Berenice said. “In Jerusalem there is no theater, and if not for this celebration here, how would a wretched little animal like you ever see the inside of a theater?”
    “Is the theater like this?”
    Berenice shrugged. “It could be. And even more so. I remember a comedy of Afranius where the actors performed intercourse openly—on the stage.”
    “Oh!” cried Gabo. “Oh! How terrible!”
    “Why?”
    “Don’t you see that it’s terrible? For a woman to subject herself to that—openly—”
    “Foolish girl,” Berenice said loftily, “no woman subjects herself to it. There are no women on the stage. The role of the woman is played by a man who wears woman’s clothes and a mask.”
    “No?” Gabo gasped.
    “Of course. You don’t think everyone is as silly and narrow about these matters as Jews.”
    “But two men—”
    “Yes, two men. You act as though this is new to you,” Berenice said impatiently. “It’s late, and I must dress.”
    “But openly—in sight of everyone—”
    “You are impossible,” Berenice snapped.
    “But, mistress,” Gabo insisted, “your brother, the noble Agrippa, spoke of the women in the company. What—”
    “Of course there are women. But not to appear on the stage. That wouldn’t be proper. They are there for the pleasure of the men in the company—”
    In time to come, in a tomorrow that was still many years away, Berenice would cease to mock at her father. She would come to understand that the “good” king is a thing that nature itself derides and deters—even as it would be a derision to all the natural laws of things for water to flow uphill. Her own people, the Jews, had suffered a thousand years of kings, and if one was wicked, the most cursory reading of history turned up another more wicked. And since iniquity is always unstable and risky, justice appears to be done in the end.
    “Woe unto thee!” cried the prophets to their rulers, and time proved the logic of their predictions. No one stood up against time, and the good had only to wait patiently for the evil to be overthrown. Of course, they had to survive the period of waiting, and that took considerable talent—but a talent in which Jews were already incredibly experienced.
    When Agrippa was struck down, the Jews gathered in the synagogues, not only to mourn the passing of a good king in the eyes of Israel, but to spell out the logic of God’s justice. For of all things that were dear to them, the implacable justice of God was dearest. Thus, they totaled the score: was not the theater an obscenity? And was not the prince of darkness, the Emperor Claudius of Rome, an obscenity? And was not the play he had written an obscenity? And were not the pagan players an obscenity? And was not the whole pagan city of Caesarea an obscenity? Proof begat proof, and if God forgave Agrippa much in his days of wickedness, He forgave him little in his days of holiness. For a contract made is not to be broken; and this was very much in the way of Jewish thought and very Jewish indeed.
    But Berenice had yet to face herself as a Jew, and as superstitious as she was, she knew better than to place the death of her father as God’s judgment. There were simply too many human beings who desired him dead, not wholly excluding herself and her brother. Yet there was no hatred in her today. She loved the kind of pagan holiday that turned into a citywide bacchanal, and she would dream of herself as a part of it, dancing in the streets, drunk with the wine of strangers, and giving herself with pleasure to what was no pleasure to her.
    In reality, sex was a frozen lump in her heart and her groin; she was a combination of