Chapter 5

As for his loyalties and enthusiasms, Simon, though stridently irreligious, possessed a passionate love of his race. Not to be a Jew was equivalent to not being anybody at all. In his regard all nations except Israel were of one ignominious category. If they were in any way different, their distinctions were trivial. Never having travelled more than twenty-five miles from home—and privately sensitive about his provincialism—he had accumulated quite a lot of prejudices about the world beyond little Galilee. He spoke derisively of people who lived in cities, even Jewish cities. The Greeks foolishly pretended to be better scholars than the Romans, when the fact was that they were only lazier than the Romans and idled their time away on such fripperies as stone statues and the spinning of arguments concerning theories on which one man’s guess was as good as another’s; with nothing to come of it, no matter who was right. The Romans had proved themselves better fighters than their weaker neighbours, but so were dogs better fighters than conies, when it came to that. The Egyptians were in decay and thought only of building tombs to house their bones. And Arabia had never been anything but a murderous horde of liars, cheats, and robbers. Israel was not only the Chosen Race but the Human Race. The rest of the people were no better than animals. Simon could and did discourse on this subject by the hour. He was an Israelite indeed!

And he was loyal to his comrades. From boyhood he had shown an extraordinary talent for making friends among all classes of people. He had an instinctive love of common justice and fair play, though he was not always himself a cheerful loser. He liked practical jokes but preferred not to be the object of them; and, sometimes, when finding himself at a momentary disadvantage, the Big Fisherman would display a childish petulance that seemed amusingly incongruous when exhibited by a man of his heroic stature.

In short, success had turned Simon’s head a little. Having come up through many tribulations into a conspicuous prosperity, he was intolerant of other men’s failures to achieve. He liked to be complimented upon his accomplishments and was not reluctant to speak pleasantly of them himself. But—for all his vanity, his intolerance, and his wide assortment of showy weaknesses, his employees idolized him, worked long hours for him, applauded his strength, laughed immoderately at his clumsy witticisms; and, when off duty, imitated his swagger.

By the time the Big Fisherman had won his prowess as a fleet-owner, saintly old Jonas and his mousey wife Rachael had been summoned from their cottage in Capernaum to an abode Elsewhere, leaving him free to marry young Abigail of Bethsaida, who lived with her widowed mother Hannah. Andrew, who rarely offered any unsolicited advice to his more resourceful brother, perhaps because he was an employee, had gently cautioned Simon against this marriage; for Abigail, though winsome and pretty, had no health at all. Doubtless it was her very flower-like fragility that had attracted the big, brawny fellow whose latent talent for tenderness had never been given a chance to develop.

He had been very considerate of Abigail. As she slowly faded, the common solicitude and sorrow shared by Simon and Hannah greatly endeared them to one another, and when his girl-wife died he continued to live with his much-cherished mother-in-law in her commodious home on a quiet, shady corner in the northern suburbs of Bethsaida. Andrew joined them; though, unwilling to burn his bridges until satisfied that this arrangement was mutually agreeable, he kept the old family residence in Capernaum intact and often went there to tend the flowers.