Luke's Story Read online

  Saul smiled. “And yet you are so engaging.”

  “Do you not see how patronizing that is? To you I am a dog, a pet. You would not consider one human, though you would feed it and scratch behind its ears.”

  “Is that what you would wish from me, Luke?”

  “You’re still making light of this?”

  “Only because I am warmed to see you take so enthusiastically to the discussion.”

  “But this has gone from discussion to argument, and now it threatens our very relationship.”

  “Then let’s not allow it to, Luke. Let’s enjoy this season at university.”

  “As a sort of break from reality?”

  “Exactly.”

  Luke was not as good at this as Saul was. He was at a loss and could only rush outside into the cool air of the evening, feeling as if he had already lost a friend he had only recently gained. The work at the university was both invigorating and exhausting. He was homesick and missed his master, his friends, his aul and being fascinated by his personality—and character—had made things easier.

  But what now? His misgivings, which he had only recently allowed into his consciousness, were being confirmed. He was merely tolerated by Saul. He served as recreation, distraction, a mildly interesting curiosity, in the end unworthy of true friendship.

  To Luke’s great relief, here came Saul, seeking him out. “This is not the Luke I know,” he said. “You have not struck me as one who backs away from a discussion, even an argument.”

  “Put yourself in my place, Saul. What if you were the one considered heathen, unworthy?”

  To Luke’s deep dismay, Saul was apparently unable to hide his dumbfounded look. Clearly he had never allowed himself to even consider himself subservient to any non-Jew. Saul was among the chosen, gifted with a remarkable mind, blessed to have been raised in wealth and taught anything and everything he needed.

  “Luke,” Saul cooed, parentally, “you yourself have told me you were born of slaves, raised a slave. Legally you are not even a full-fledged Roman citizen. Would you expect to be the equal of a freeman, a Roman, even if I were not a Pharisee?”

  So that was it. He had been presumptuous. He could serve as Saul’s attendant, his sidekick, but never his equal. “Let me say this,” Luke said, “I will not play the sycophant. I can admire you, but I will not worship you.”

  Saul fell silent and looked serious. Finally he said, “I do not seek worship. I would that you would worship God.”

  “But as a beginning practitioner of Stoicism, I do not believe in myths or gods.”

  “I am not speaking of Roman or Greek gods,” Saul said. “I am speaking of Yahweh, God of gods, Lord of lords, maker of heaven and earth, the God of my fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

  Luke shook his head and returned to the library to gather up his things. Saul followed. “What?”

  Luke turned on him. “You might as well be speaking a foreign language.”

  “I know several. Would you like me to try another?”

  “This is not humorous. I can see that you are not just a student of Jewish history, but that you are also a believer.”

  “I am more than a believer. I am a Jew.”

  “Fine. I am a Stoic.”

  “Don’t you see, Luke? You chose a philosophy of life. That’s admirable. But I was born a Jew.”

  “And that makes you better than I?”

  “I did not say that, but I will say this: God makes us what we are. If you are a true Stoic, you will passively accept the logic that you are who you are and I am what I am.”

  Laden with his study materials, Luke strode from the library, strangely warmed to find that Saul seemed to st pry, he realized that Saul could only fear losing an admirer.

  Luke took a somber tone. “Saul, do you have any idea how insulting and demeaning your view is?”

  Saul hurried along beside him back to the dormitories. “And your view is that we should be equals.”

  “That’s what friends are.”

  “No, I aver that that is what a Stoic believes all men are. The sad fact is that it simply isn’t true. My question for you is, can you abide it?”

  “Abide what? A pretend friendship with a man who sees himself as my superior?”

  “No, the privilege of a season of friendship with a man you would not qualify to engage in any other context.”

  Luke stopped and stared. “You truly believe this, don’t you?”

  “Truth is what it is. It does not change based on how we view it.”

  “Then I suppose you think I am stuck.”

  “I know you are,” Saul said. “If you fully embrace Stoicism, you must believe I am your brother. I can condescend to you as I wish or cast you aside based on the laws that bind me, but you must tolerate even this seeming boorishness.”

  “Seeming?” Luke said.

  And he rushed off into the night.

  TWELVE

  Luke could not bring himself to seek Saul out, to meet at their prearranged spots, to dine together, to study together, to discuss and argue until late into each night as they had done for so long. How he missed the man and his mind and the exercise of interacting with him! And yet Saul had been as clear as anyone could be. He was a man of God, a chosen one, and while he may have been amused, even impressed by Luke, to him Luke was subhuman.

  He saw Saul around, of course. The man was hard to miss. Despite being a first-year student, he had already become one of the most recognizable faces, and voices, on the campus. He inserted himself into student government, held forth on Tarsus politics, commented on religion, sin, and any issue of the day. He debated one and all on their responses to Roman decrees, defended Tarsus’ right to remain a free city, not taxed by Rome despite being under its jurisdiction.

  Saul continued to organize athletic contests, though nothing near as foolish as his beginners’ marathon. He seemed to be everywhere, and when he was not given an audience, he created one. Nearly every week Luke came upon him standing atop a crate or a rock and forcefully railing against some real or imagined ill on the campus. If the crowd thinned, Saul would shout some bold claim against some nearly sacred tenet of Stoicism, such as that it was impossible for a man to achieve either peace or virtue aside from the acknowledgment of God. And before Luke knew it, Paul would be surrounded by more students and even faculty.

  Strangely, this breach in a friendship that had barely been born had a positive influence on Luke nt respect. It seemed to him he had only two things on his mind every waking moment. He missed what he thought he had had with Saul. And he became obsessive about his studies.

  Not spending hours interacting with Saul allowed Luke uninterrupted time for his reading. And while he often discussed texts and academic pursuits with other students, he did not allow himself to become as invested as he had with Saul. Yes, he was aware he was afraid of being disappointed or cast aside again. And Luke also had to admit to himself that no one else argued in quite the same maddeningly cogent manner Saul did.

  That didn’t mean Saul was always right, but he was certainly hard to argue with—and that had made it all the more invigorating.

  Luke found himself becoming a loner, which he eventually decided was good for his studies. He could not, would not, lower himself to whatever position Saul needed to place him in for a relationship to work. On the rare occasions when he would p

  ersonally run into the man or catch his eye, Luke thought he detected regret and even sadness in Saul. Was it possible he missed their interaction too?

  Perhaps, but the man could not have been clearer that Luke had to know and understand and, as a Stoic, accept and keep his place. And that place? Luke was a pagan, a heathen, a slave, a Greek. Worse, he was a Gentile. Compared with Saul, yes, Luke was all those things. And while, as Saul said, Saul was born what he was while Luke chose his own philosophy of life (despite being born a slave), Luke decided that Stoicism surely seemed more humane than Judaism and certainly Pharisaism.


  The only way to reengage with Saul without accepting a thoroughly subservient role, Luke knew, was to play Saul’s game, to confront him, challenge him, argue with him, dispute his claim of superiority. The problem was that, while Luke could not accept Saul’s lofty image of himself—especially from a moral and religious standpoint—neither could he deny that the man’s intellect far outstripped his own.

  At times Luke felt so lonely and so missed the stimulation of arguing with Saul that he considered stepping out of character and tangling with him. But it just wasn’t in him. Confrontation just for the sake of interaction was not part of his makeup. Luke enjoyed being known as a compassionate, caring, listening sort. It suited him, confirmed his own view of himself. His parents had not been of a station that would allow them to be anything but subservient, and yet even among their peers, they had never been confrontational. His father had never hesitated to tell Luke or his mother what he thought, but otherwise he was polite and gentle, a hard worker and diligent. Luke was grateful for that example. But if he had to credit his own gentler personality traits to anyone, Luke looked to Theophilus. The man, though at times naive regarding how his own slaves viewed him, was nonetheless unwaveringly fair and kind and generous.

  THE EVENING before a holiday that would see him return to Antioch for the first time, Luke put quill to papyrus and wrote Theophilus. His plan was to tell his master just how much more he valued him and regarded him after half a year at university, and in the event the words would not come when they were face to face, the scroll would havehe ond all that had transpired with Saul and his resultant loneliness. “Do not fret over this,” he concluded, “as I have discovered the benefits of it for my studies, which remain my top priority here. My goal remains to make you proud and to affirm your faith in me. As I write this I await our reunion with eager anticipation and you have my every good wish that all is well there, including your health and that of your family and servants.”

  To Luke’s great distress, and yet it should hardly have been a surprise, none other than Diabolos showed up to retrieve him from the harbor. Fortunately the trip was a short one, because the driver had been directed to take Luke to the Mediterranean retreat rather than to the main estate in Daphne.

  “No trouble, I hope,” Luke said, as he helped Diabolos load the carriage.

  “Trouble for who?”

  “Sickness I mean, in Daphne. The master is not trying to avoid another plague or anything . . .”

  “Oh, no, your majesty. This is all for your benefit so you don’t have to rub shoulders with the likes of us.”

  “Oh, don’t Diabolos. I am the likes of you, and I looked forward to enjoying my own bed in my own quarters, among my friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends in Daphne anymore, Loukon.”

  “Please, call me Luke.”

  “Oh, you’ve given up your name now too? Well, Luke, the rest of Theophilus’s slaves are quite aware of the difference between us and you by now. You’re to spend your entire holiday with only the master and his family here, living in their house, eating at their table, watching their sunsets. And guess who has been awarded the unspeakable privilege of getting to live in the servants’ quarters and attend to your every need?”

  “No one, I hope. I need no such aide, and I prefer—”

  “Oh, no, no, it’s not up to you, exalted one. And it wasn’t up to me either or I might have declined.”

  “You? Oh, I’m so sorry, Diabolos. I will talk with the master and—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort. I assured him that if he had not assigned me, I would have volunteered.”

  “But I thought you said you would have declined.”

  “How like you to not listen. I said it wasn’t up to me. Unlike for you, nothing is up to me.”

  “Why do you torment yourself that way? Do you look for opportunities to betray me somehow, make my life miserable?”

  “I wish I had the power, but no. I’m merely trying to play the game, Luke. I need to be in the master’s good graces to get any privileges around here. I did myself no good by being so obvious against you last time.”

  “I did not inform the master.”

  “Someone did. He lectured me and told me that you asked for merc good by bs still red-faced and distracted. Luke wished he could get a message to Diabolos and decided he would somehow find a way to Daphne during the week under the pretense of wanting to reunite with friends, but primarily intending to clear the air with the slave.

  The handsome couple on the veranda turned out to be associates of Theophilus and his wife, apparently invited to meet Luke with the intention of eventually introducing him to their daughter. Luke was stricken dumb at the thought. This, he had heard, was how marriages were arranged, but surely not for a slave. Slave marriages were arranged too, but only among those of their own kind. He had no business talking with these people about such an idea.

  Luke quickly tried to assess the situation. The mother beamed at him from behind her husband. She was beautiful with a knowing smile and seemed to like what she saw in Luke. If the daughter looked anything like her, Luke would be a fool not to want to meet her.

  The husband bore a more serious visage as he clearly studied Luke from head to toe. Meanwhile, Theophilus seemed to be going through some trauma. He sat off to the side, out of their vision but fully in Luke’s, and seemed to be trying to communicate something to him with dancing eyebrows, winks, pursed lips, and the like. Luke was tempted to just say, “What is it, master? What do you want me to say or not say and why didn’t you just advise me when we were in the kitchen?”

  “So you are an adopted son of this father of many daughters,” the man said.

  Luke glanced at Theophilus, who nodded vigorously. It didn’t seem right to lie, so Luke said, “Well, yes, sort of unofficially, yes. I lost my parents to a plague and—”

  “That’s so awful,” the woman said. “It must have been terrible for you.”

  “It was. In many ways it still is.”

  “And what was your father’s business?” the husband said.

  “He was a tiller, sir. He tended the gardens, alongside my mother.”

  The couple seemed to freeze in place, their expressions locked. The man cleared his throat. “Tell me, Luke, are you a Roman citizen?”

  “Ah, no, not yet. I look forward to that very much upon completion of my university training.”

  “In medicine.”

  “Correct.”

  The man turned to Theophilus, who looked apoplectic. “You intend to free this man then, I presume.”

  “Yes,” Theophilus said, his voice squeaking. “He will serve as our physician for a time, then be free to pursue his own goals.”

  “One of which,” Luke said, “is to perhaps be a ship’s doctor, which would jeopardize my candidacy for husbandhood, would it not?”

  The woman scowled. “If you’re looking for a reason not meet our daughter, look nle div height="6">

  “Theophilus,” the man said, a whine in his voice, “you could have told us.”

  “He’ll be a freeman soon enough,” Theophilus said, “and he will make someone a fine husband.”

  “Someone, perhaps. But not our daughter.”

  They rose to leave, ignoring Luke. Theophilus’s aides shook their heads at Luke as the master escorted the couple out, and of course he soon returned and dismissed everyone but Luke.

  Theophilus sat heavily and pressed his lips together. Then, “Luke, I expected more circumspection.”

  “Lies, you mean? Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Of course I didn’t want you to lie. I didn’t lie. I just thought you’d be able to assess the situation and—”

  “Sir, forgive me, but you lied by omission. Are you ashamed to have become the patron of a slave? Is that why you have pledged to free me? Would it embarrass you to have a slave as a physician?”

  “You’re bordering on impudence, son.”

  “I apologize. I don’t me
an to. But frankly, your actions here disappoint me too.”

  Theophilus turned and gazed out to the sea, now dark, as the sun was disappearing. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just that I have met the young woman, and she is a treasure.”

  “Does she share her parents’ view of those beneath her station?”

  “Oh, they don’t really feel that way, Luke. They too are Stoics.”

  “As it suits them. They certainly don’t embrace the view of the equality and brotherhood of man, do they? Did you see the looks on their faces?”