Damascus

by Christos Tsiolkas

  Saul’s cheeks burn with disgust and shame. And from hate; the hate outweighs the shame and makes him forget his disgust. May he live to see the day that the Strangers are routed, the heads of the soldiers lopped, but not before they suffer violation, skull crushed against skull and bowels slit open.

  Saul stamps on the heads and hearts and loins of Strangers as he weaves down the path to the fires, the illicit camp, where men sit on their haunches, waiting, peering into the darkness of the tents. The sputtering lamplight within casts grotesque shadows against the canvas, spectres that writhe and twist. They reach out for him, serpents from the depths of Hades seeking to possess him. His righteous hatred is gone, strangled by the shadow hands and ghost vipers that graze his skin, coil around his head and whisper in his ears, a cold reptilian hand that has slid between the folds of his robe and settled on his sex. And he is possessed by the loathsome beast, inflamed by it: his putrid sex is hard. He squats in the line, covering his depravity.

  All around him, he sees his fellow sinners in the ravenous queue seeking the oblivion of fornication, the stench so palpable that it releases fumes: he can see the smoky vapours wisping off his skin and twisting up into the hideous night. He more than any of them, he stinks of lust. And yet knowing all this, he is too fearful to raise a prayer. He must not foul the words of the Lord by uttering them in such a place; and even though he knows the depths of his disgrace, he cannot rise and run, cannot leave these abominations behind: his betraying flesh will not let him.

  Saul peers over the heads of the men in front of him to look into the tent. A hairy arse, more goat than man, rises and falls in thrusting convulsions. The whore beneath him is hidden by the vileness of the exertion; whether a boy or a girl or a boy-girl, it is not possible to tell. The thrusting beast moans and collapses with a final stab. The whore rolls out from under him; she grabs a cloth, wipes feverishly at her naked flesh. The man stumbles through the flap of the tent, wiping at his wet loins, covering his shame. Already another has approached from the front of the line. A naked boy leaps from the shadows holding a copper dish. The wind rises in the valley, intensifying the flickering light coming from a lantern in the tent and revealing the boy’s heavily kohled eyelids. Near the bed a clay idol is suddenly visible: a squat, ugly form with seven flopping teats. The new man drops a coin into the dish, already pulling back his robe and dropping to his knees before the woman. In Greek she tells him to wait. She intones a prayer in Syrian and waves her hand over the idol, then lies back, opens her legs, and lets the man fall into her.

  The rancid smell of sweat and corruption has the thickness of blood on Saul’s tongue and mouth. He is no longer of the Lord, no longer of Israel, no longer of his people or the world. He is bloodless, a demon. He is death. The boy whore is walking along the queue of customers. Hands reach out to grope his stubby sex, clutch at his thighs and buttocks. One of the hands presents a coin and the boy snatches it, pulls the bearded man from the line and takes him by the hand into the tent. The boy also stoops and rushes through a prayer to the idol; and then they fall back into the black depths of the tent, behind the fornicating couple. Again the shadows leap and dance, they torment and goad.

  The line of men stir, impatient, their complaints indistinguishable from the moans of the rutters. The man sitting in front of Saul turns and offers him a wan smile. His face is boyish, his black beard still thin, yet corruption has begun its relentless desecration—Saul sees it in those sad hollow eyes. The lad is rubbing himself. Saul leans forward. To embrace him? To urge him to leave? To flee; to regain youth? Saul cannot move. The youth’s other hand has climbed Saul’s thigh, is scratching at Saul’s loins. Only then, his fingers tightening around Saul’s sex, does the youth look up again, a smile touching his lips.

  Saul closes his eyes. The evil is within him and he is possessed; succumbing is a glorious release. That flare of pleasure is worth death, worth the everlasting silence of his Lord.

  The youth has turned his back to the line, for discretion, and as skin brushes skin, the wicked odour of flesh, putrefying and decaying, fills Saul’s nostrils.

  He comes to at the sound of anguished howling. The youth is lying kicking in the dirt—every time he tries to clutch his hand, the base hand that reached for Saul, he screams louder: one long finger dangles, broken at the joint. The men have abandoned the order of the queue and form a ring around the writhing boy. Saul finds himself standing over the screaming youth, his wrist throbbing with pain, such was the force with which he snapped the other’s fingers. One man pushes Saul, another yells, ‘Go on, finish off the dirty man-cunt.’ From her bed, and over the back of the sweating beast still thrusting into her, the whore unleashes furious oaths in Greek and Syrian. From the distant camp, a soldier yells out for silence, threatening slaughter to the filthy Judeans and Arabs.

  Saul slips in the mud, so eager is he to flee.

  A spirit emerges from the night. It reaches out to him. ‘Coin,’ it cries, in scavenger Greek. ‘Coin!’

  He blinks and sees the condemned girl before him, unbroken, naked, the tiny mounds of her breasts, the puff of her emerging nipples. Her words in death split open his brow, storm into his head: If you are without sin, then cast your stone.

  He cannot move. He is not in his body. He is with her, they are both soaring in their abandonment to death.

  Again the squeal: ‘Coin, coin.’ Her small hands, the sharp blades of her long dirty fingernails, feed into his flesh. For the second time in this evil hour, he awakens. This girl is younger, darker, a Stranger. He fumbles under his tunic, finds the remaining coin, throws it to the ground. The girl falls upon it, a ravenous hound seeking meat. She grabs it and rushes to embrace Saul. He allows his arms to drop around her bony shoulders. Her hand reaches under the robes, finds him. He shudders, thrusts once, releases. The girl stoops and wipes him off her palm and into the dirt. Night then swallows her. Swallows him.

  The sun slices his eyes. He blinks. His lips are toughened hide, his neck cannot support his head.

  Channah is pouring water into a pot. ‘Wash,’ she orders. ‘Gabriel has already packed the mule.’

  She comes and sits beside her brother. And then shocks him; she kisses him on the brow. ‘Oof,’ she cries, flapping her hand, ‘you still stink of wine.’

  As he washes, he listens to her relating gossip shared at the well. He washes hands, feet and, turning from her so she can’t see, carefully washes his loins. He could wash for eternity and he would not be clean.

  ‘I thought you were the foul Strangers,’ she laughs. ‘When you smashed into the house in the middle of the night, I thought they had come to take our Gabriel.’

  She raises his hand and kisses it. ‘Thank you, brother, thank you for saving him.’

  As she prepares a breakfast of rye and milk, she continues her tales. ‘A group of Zealots attacked the Strangers’ camp last night,’ she whispers, so the children can’t overhear. ‘They went rampaging through the brothels, slitting the throats of the whores and their clients.’

  Saul has no words.

  ‘The soldiers retaliated. They murdered those poor boys.’ She thumps a fist against her breastbone. ‘Those young rebels are deluded but the Lord is just and they died righteous getting rid of that Greek filth. Their descendants will be proud for generations. They will live forever.’

  And I will expire with my last breath, thinks Saul. I have no heirs and I will not live. I don’t deserve to.

  Saul is waiting patiently with the mule when his nephew returns from his ablutions at the sacred pool.

  Gabriel kisses him on each cheek, a roguish grin on his face. ‘Are you suffering this morning, Uncle? Has the wine turned sour?’

  ‘Wine always turns sour,’ Saul answers gruffly.

  The youth goes to take the reins but Saul won’t let him.

  ‘I can wait, Uncle, go and wash. I’ll wait till you return from the Temple.’

  The older man shakes his head. ‘No, I have wasted enough time
.’

  Gabriel, shocked, begins to protest.

  His uncle pulls tighter on the rein and the mule brays in protest. ‘Come on, let’s go. We’re not wasting any more of this morning.’

  As Ebron kisses and farewells Gabriel, Saul hears him say in a hushed tone, ‘You must learn, son, to be cautious around a man being punished by wine.’

  Channah is weeping, and cannot let go of Gabriel. The children too begin to wail.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Gabriel says gently. ‘I’ll be back for Passover.’

  Channah has taken her son’s hand and places in it a tiny, knotted garland of hyssop. Saul pretends not to see the unholy trinket.

  His mother releases Gabriel. ‘Of course he’ll be back for Passover,’ she tells her younger children.

  She kisses her son one last time. ‘With a wife,’ she adds, ‘the Lord be willing.’

  As they begin the descent into the first valley, Gabriel keeps turning to look back at Jerusalem, at the glorious and commanding edifice of the magnificent Temple. Saul refuses to do so. He has no right. As they march past the judgement ground, he shudders, recalling the bloodied body of the stoned girl. Further on, they walk along the back wall of the Romans’ garrison, the brothel tents now collapsed and lying limp on the ground, spent grey ash all that remains of the fires.

  Saul steps on a patch of darkened soil. Is it the wind? Is it the wind in the valley calling: Coin, coin? He sees a blade carve the night, sees the knife slash the throat of the beggar girl, sees her blood weeping into the earth. His nephew keeps looking back, mouthing prayers until the city of David disappears in the brilliant haze of the defiant sun. Not once does Saul turn. He knows it was not the Lord who’d saved him last night. The Lord had intended him to be there, to face the Zealot’s blade, to suffer the Lord’s justice. Those demons that have tainted his blood—the Greek spirits, the temptations of the Romans, the evil music of the Strangers—the demons gloat. They want to keep playing with him, because they know they own him. He is their servant. The Sacred City, his world, all that is wondrous and true and pure, it is forbidden to an accursed man such as Saul.

  ‘Do you believe in God, Momma?’

  ‘I don’t know—why doesn’t He help me?’

  ‘You’re supposed to praise Him whether you’re in pain or not.’

  ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘Well, we’re not supposed to judge Him.’

  ‘I don’t want a God like that,’ she said.

  ‘If you believed what the Catholics believed, you could pray to the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘No woman made this world. I couldn’t pray to a woman.’

  —HAROLD BRODKEY, ‘A STORY IN AN ALMOST CLASSICAL MODE’

  I know what they call me. Witch. Sorceress. Hag. They fling their shit and they throw their stones and words.

  But they cannot hurt me. My son, my brother, my Jesus, he is always with me, he is always beside me. The boys and the old shepherds, the slaves who collect firewood from this hilltop, they curse me, condemn me to Hades and to the obscene tortures of their callous gods. I wipe their shit from my cheeks, brush their dirt off my rags. Nothing they do can hurt me.

  None of them dare to touch me, nor even to come close. The degradation of my work takes care of that. Their gods would demand a year-long ablution, their fathers would throw them out of their homes, their spouses banish them from their beds. The city gates would be closed to any who dared touch me. My corruption is absolute.

  I need neither house nor company. On this dark side of the mountain, these bleak crags and desolate caves are the rooms I dwell in, and the sparse cypress canopies are all the shelter I need. In the storm seasons I have seen lightning dislodge a tree, cleave it from its roots and shoot it far into distant thickets. The noise is the thunder of the earth splitting. But no lightning has ever touched me. I have no fear. I gave up the world and in that surrender I was made brave. I was released from servitude and I was released from being a woman. The rocks and the trees are my home now. Beyond is the desert and behind me is the world. I have no need for it. I am no longer part of it.

  ‘Witch, witch!’ they scream, thinking the word will hurt me. I smile and I say, ‘Thank you.’ A stone grazes my cheek. I repeat, ‘Thank you.’ Shit spatters my lips. I wipe them, and again say, ‘Thank you.’

  To this mountain they bring their children. On these ledges and in these caves they lay their newly born. Here they leave the blind child, the crippled child, the child born with a purple mark across its face. And here they abandon their girls. They light their offerings if they can afford them, and they chant their prayers to the Mother. Demeter, Isis, Al-at. We have virgins promised to you, Mother, may the next child born be a son. If they see me, they shriek and hiss. Witch. Sorceress. Hag. But they do not dare to come close. They abandon their infants and they flee.

  I wait. Till their chanting can no longer be heard. Till their scents have been banished by the wind. Till I can no longer hear their footsteps. Then, only then, do I go to them. To the children they’ve abandoned.

  This one has been born with no eyes. I kiss his brow. ‘Child, child,’ I whisper, ‘you I will name Fortitude.’ I tell him of a God who knows mercy and who loves justice. I tell him of a world to come that has a place for him. ‘It could even be tomorrow, child,’ I whisper. ‘Soon, very soon, he is returning.’ I go to the next infant. I kiss her belly, I lay my ear against her still-beating chest. I ask the wind and the birds to stop their songs. Faint is the beat of her heart but I can hear it. ‘You, child,’ I say softly, not to frighten her, ‘you, I will name Devotion. There is a God, child, who will make the last first and the first last. I promise you this, Devotion.’

  Night. Dangerous night. I could choose to leave, I could choose to turn my eyes away, flee to the other side of the mountain, where the cypress trees grow taller, where shepherds have seeded bushes of thyme and a wild yellow garden of chamomile. I could sit there, look down at Antioch. If there is a ripe moon I could raise my finger and trace the shadow outline of the city’s walls. Or I could look beyond to the river, winding silver in the moonlight. I could cover my ears, make myself deaf to the wretched cries.

  But I don’t. I stay to look. I stay to hear. As the wolf circles the crying infant, as it bares its teeth, growls and bites, as the infant offers one last cry, as the body becomes blood and meat. I crouch in the cave, hearing the slither of the snake, hearing the crunch of bone as the serpent’s jaws engulf the child. I do not look away; I stay, to be witness, to know what it is we do when we forsake our children, when we leave them on the mountainside. How can I bear witness to all of that and not be deranged? Because my son, my brother, my Jesus, he is with me, he is beside me. These are not my sobs, not my lamentations. They are his cries. This is his suffering.

  In the mornings I build a fire. The meat that remains, the bones, the hair, the torn clothes that swaddled the infant, I gather and place in the fire. I watch them burn. I recite his words as I watch the fire grow and feed. I recite the words my teacher Paul first taught me. In the kingdom to come, the last will be first and the first will be last. All that remains is burned. But to the charred bones and ash I whisper, ‘This I promise you: the last will be first and the first will be last.’

  I was not born a witch. I was born a woman. I was raised a Greek. When I first came to Antioch I said that I was born in Philippi, but my village lies over a day’s journey from there. My father’s blood is Macedonian and it is those mountains and those springs of pure water that are my true home.

  My father was a brickmaker and it was to that trade that our family was bonded. All my brothers bake the clay. Of my mother’s clan I know nothing. My father’s first loyalty was to his ancestors and to his gods. Once she was married my mother forsook her allegiance to the spirits of her home and she never saw her family again.

  ‘You are my oldest daughter,’ she would whisper to me, cradling me so I might fall to sleep, ‘and it is you who are now my family and my life.’ She wou
ld quietly sing songs from her mountain home, her fingers weaving through my locks, her kiss on my brow. When she thought me asleep, she would gently unwrap her arms. ‘Don’t leave me!’ I would cry—I was terrified of the dark. ‘Don’t be silly, Lydia,’ she would say. ‘I will never leave you.’ With that promise I could sleep.

  We all worked. I was the elder sister and as such the responsibility for my younger siblings fell to me. My father was stern and distant. He barely spoke to me. But he was generous to his two daughters and refused to have us work at the kilns. He was a hard worker, as was my oldest brother, Hercules—well named, for he was strong and fierce. All my brothers had to work. Every day was spent digging and then on the moulding of the clay: hard work—but the worst ordeal by far was working in the kilns. The ferocious heat that burst from them had scorched and prematurely lined their faces. In time my father’s dedication was rewarded by the gods, and he was able to hire two labourers to assist him and also to purchase three slaves. Two of them were men, who worked in the clay quarries and in the kilns. The third, Goodness, was a young maiden who helped us with the chores of the household.

  Of all my tasks, the one I enjoyed most was attending to the altars. There were three of them in the house. The first and the grandest was the altar to the Mother just inside the gate that opened to our courtyard. It stood on a dais that my father had built from the first batch of bricks he had ever fired. He had kept them with him through his apprenticeship and into his marriage, through the building of our home, in order to make this dedication to the Goddess. Her form had been sculpted in clay by an artisan priestess bonded to the Great Mother’s temple. The second altar lay just before the hallway to the night chambers, and was dedicated to Hermes, to ensure that He would bring us dreams of peace and dreams of providence in the night, and not punish us with visions of furies and monsters. And the third altar was within my parent’s chamber, in honour of the god Priapus, a likeness of His sex, erect and thick, carved from wood that came from an ancient pine tree on my father’s home mountains.