Highlander - Donna Lettow [100]
“Avram,” Constantine acknowledged, friendly but wary.
He was standing just outside the arch, studying the tableau that was carved into the face of the gateway. “What kind of sick joke is this, Marcus?”
“What do you mean? It’s no joke.” Constantine passed through the arch to the side where Avram stood, concerned that someone had graffitied or vandalized the reconstruction, but the faux marble was just the way he had commissioned it.
Avram’s face hardened. “Then you deliberately meant to exclude the Jews?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s the rape of the Temple, Marcus!” He gestured angrily at the frieze carved into the arch, where members of Titus’s victorious legion were systematically stripping the Great Temple of its holy treasures to carry away in triumph to Rome. “For two thousand years, no Jew in Rome has willingly walked under this obscenity, and now you’ve left us no choice!”
Constantine was horrified. “Avram, I had no idea.”
“No, you just didn’t care,” Avram shouted over him. Constantine was even more horrified at the violent reaction his unintentional insult had provoked in his student. Avram had never been one to wear his anger openly, not when mocked and attacked back in the streets of Rome, not even under the reign of the Inquisition. This man was no longer the Avram Mordecai that he’d once known.
“Which one were you?” Avram pointed bitterly to the image of a Roman officer supervising a gang of Jewish slaves carrying off the menorah from the sacred altar. “Is that you looting the Temple, Marcus? Or is that you defiling the holy vestments?” He turned on his teacher with hate in his eyes and venom in his voice. “Or were you too busy defiling the Jewish virgins with the rest of your legion?”
“You know I wasn’t like that, Avram,” Constantine said carefully, trying not to inflame him further, but he could tell it was far too late.
“You were like that, you were all like that! The Romans, the Crusaders, the Turks, the Nazis. You were all alike. Butchers, rapists, destroyers—every one of you determined to wipe us from the face of the earth. But we’re still here. I’m still here.”
“And now it’s the Palestinians?” Constantine beseeched his student. “Avram, why are you doing this? Why did you try to kill all those people today? All they want is peace.”
“Peace?” Avram couldn’t believe he’d heard the word. “This isn’t peace—it’s surrender. This is rolling over and closing our eyes and hoping that if we give the murderers half of what we have, they won’t come and kill us for the other half in the dead of night. Well, ‘make nice and hope they go away’ doesn’t work, Marcus. You and your kind keep coming.” His anger and his voice were escalating to a fevered pitch. “You take the other half, and you take our families, and our homes, and our people, and our God, and all you leave are ashes!” He screamed out the word, and it ricocheted like a gunshot from the marble walls of the vast exhibition hall.
Before the echo died away, Avram continued. “There will be no surrender. No compromise. I have been fighting for Israel for two thousand years. I’ve watched a hundred generations bleed and the for her—and I’ll be damned if I’ll see her handed over to them, no matter what.”
“Even if that means becoming a butcher yourself?” Constantine wondered, full of sadness for him.
“I finally know my purpose. Now I know why I’m still here—I am her champion. Don’t you understand? I do whatever I have to do. And there’s nothing, nothing you or MacLeod can do to stop me!”
“What’s happened to you? You were never a murderer.”
“You made me a murderer. You and Silva and your damned legion. What I’m not any longer is a victim.”
Constantine understood him all too well. “The best defense is a good offense?” He touched Avram on the arm, friend to friend, teacher to student. “Avram, listen to me. That’s not a way to live your life. It will eat you up inside and destroy you.”
Avram slapped his hand away. “Are you going to be the one to try and stop me, Marcus?”
Constantine, resigned, “I