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Page 4
It was this white, shuddering creature that Zia remembered with the sick
chill of horror when he saw the spots.
"Unclean! Unclean!" he heard the cracked voice cry to the sound of the
wooden clappers. "Unclean! Unclean!"
Judith was standing at the door of her hovel one morning when Zia was
going forth for the day. He had fearfully been aware that for days she
had been watching him as he had never known her to watch him before.
This morning she had followed him to the door, and had held him there a
few moments in the light with some harsh speech, keeping her eyes fixed
on him the while.
Even as they so stood there fell upon the clear air of the morning a
hollow, far-off sound--the sound of wooden clappers rattled together,
and the hopeless crying of two words, "Unclean! Unclean!"
Then silence fell. Upon Zia descended a fear beyond all power of words
to utter. In his quaking young torment he lifted his eyes and met the
gaze of the old woman as it flamed down upon him.
"Go within!" she commanded suddenly, and pointed to the wretched room
inside. He obeyed her, and she followed him, closing the door behind
them.
"Tear off thy garment!" she ordered. "Strip thyself to thy skin--to thy
skin!"
He shook from head to foot, his trembling hands almost refusing to obey
him. She did not touch him, but stood apart, glaring. His garments fell
from him and lay in a heap at his feet, and he stood among them naked.
One look, and she broke forth, shaking with fear herself, into a
breathless storm of fury.
"Thou hast known this thing and hidden it!" she raved. "Leper! Leper!
Accursed hunchback thing!"
As he stood in his nakedness and sobbed great, heavy childish sobs, she
did not dare to strike him, and raged the more.
If it were known that she had harbored him, the priests would be upon
her, and all that she had would be taken from her and burned. She would
not even let him put his clothes on in her house.
"Take thy rags and begone in thy nakedness! Clothe thyself on the
hillside! Let none see thee until thou art far away! Rot as thou wilt,
but dare not to name me! Begone! begone! begone!"
And with his rags he fled naked through the doorway, and hid himself in
the little wood beyond.
Later, as he went on his way, he had hidden himself in the daytime
behind bushes by the wayside or off the road; he had crouched behind
rocks and boulders; he had slept in caves when he had found them; he had
shrunk away from all human sight. He knew it could not be long before he
would be discovered, and then he would be shut up; and afterward he
would be as Berias until he died alone. Like unto Berias! To him it
seemed as though surely never child had sobbed before as he sobbed,
lying hidden behind his boulders, among his bushes, on the bare hill
among the rocks.
For the first four nights of his wandering he had not known where he was
going, but on this fifth night he discovered. He was on the way to
Bethlehem--beautiful little Bethlehem curving on the crest of the
Judean mountains and smiling down upon the fairness of the fairest of
sweet valleys, rich with vines and figs and olives and almond-trees. He
dimly recalled stories he had overheard of its loveliness, and when he
found that he had wandered unknowingly toward it, he was aware of a
faint sense of peace. He had seen nothing of any other part of the world
than the poor village outside which the hovel of his bond-mistress had
clung to a low hill. Since he was near it, he vaguely desired to see
Bethlehem.
He had learned of its nearness as he lay hidden in the undergrowth on
the mountain-side that he had begun to climb the night before. Awakening
from sleep, he had heard many feet passing up the climbing road--the
feet of men and women and children, of camels and asses, and all had
seemed to be of a procession ascending the mountainside. Lying flat upon
the earth, he had parted the bushes cautiously, and watched, and
listened to the shouts, cries, laughter, and talk of those who were near
enough to be heard. So bit by bit he had heard the story of the passing
throng. The great Emperor Augustus, who, to the common herd seemed some
strange omnipotent in his remote and sumptuous paradise of Rome,
had issued a decree that all the world of his subjects should be
enrolled, and every man, woman, and child must enroll himself in his own
city. And to the little town of Bethlehem all these travelers were
wending their way, to the place of their nativity, in obedience to the
great Caesar's command.
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