Timothy shakes his head, his eyes beseeching. ‘No, brother,’ he insists, ‘you will live to see his return.’
Gently the prisoner lifts the young man’s hands. ‘I am tired, Timothy. Your generation and the generation born now will continue our worship. You will build our faith.’
Again he points to me. ‘This man’s children, they will be as the Israelites were in the desert. I have led you to them. You will lead others.’
‘I will not leave.’
The younger man is crouched into himself, denying the old man, refusing to listen. The prisoner is looking at me. Is that a nod? He is asking something of me.
I understand. He wants to die as a man. He is not father, not grandfather, not honoured—all that he has in the world is this companion, Timothy, and it is long past time for this silly young man to come to understanding.
I walk over to them. ‘You cannot stay, sir.’
Timothy doesn’t answer me.
He finally looks up as the old man continues. ‘Don’t you understand, Timos? I have chosen you to continue my work. Will you let our faith be stillborn? Go out to the world, tell them our good news!’
Timothy brushes away tears. He remains defiant. ‘You are not yet dead, Paul. Brother Peter is not dead, James is not dead, Magdalena is living and so is the Twin. You will all see the Saviour return.’
The old goat’s face is transformed. It twists with loathing. He spits out his next words. ‘All of them illiterate, all of them deaf and blind to the truth. They know nothing about the prophets, nothing about our Lord’s promises.’ And now he is glaring at his companion. There is no adoration there, only ferocity. ‘And the Twin? What use is he? Thomas doubts the resurrection and speaks against the son’s return. You betray the Saviour every time you speak his name.’
Such venom. In all the time I’ve been guarding this prisoner I have never seen him release himself so wholeheartedly to the gods of wrath. This Thomas he speaks off, this Twin—he feels nothing but hatred for him.
Timothy is still. ‘He was our Saviour’s twin, Paul, dearly loved by our Saviour. Thomas will be with us in eternity.’
The old man looks murderous. ‘We have no mothers and no fathers and no brothers and no kin.’ His words are heavy. ‘Being the Saviour’s twin won’t save Thomas. Thomas is dead and he will not rise. You know this—he says it himself. You have heard him. You will never see him again.’
He takes the younger man’s head in his hands. ‘Never. He will not rise. Thomas will not be born into the new world.’ With that final curse, he releases his grip on the lad.
Timothy takes deep, shuddering breaths as he gives in to weeping.
Both of us, guard and prisoner, watch him till his wretched heaving subsides. He wipes his eyes. When he speaks again, it is as if the mantle of his youth has been lifted. His voice seems older—it is weighted and weary.
‘You are hard, beloved—you are so unforgiving.’ There is a distance in his eyes.
Timothy stands, drawing his woollen shawl over his shoulder. He leans forward to kiss the old man. At first the prisoner turns away, but then, as if the very scent of the man dispels his anger, he is returned to what he is, a wasted and corrupt old man. Their lips touch and the kiss is long and tender.
Timothy draws back. ‘He is coming, brother.’
The old man smiles, relieved. ‘Truly, he is returning.’
Timothy takes his satchel and walks past me to the door. He turns one final time.
‘I will see you, Paul,’ he says defiantly. ‘I will see you when our Saviour returns. I will be with you and we will be there with our brother Thomas.’
The old man seems ready to argue, to be a man once more. Then, the smile diminishing but still visible, he raises his hand, places it over his chest and then holds it up to his friend, palm out.
Timothy returns the gesture.
When I return from letting Timothy out, the old man is seated on his bedding, his palm still outstretched. He looks up at me. ‘I pray he will be safe,’ he says sadly.
And though their ill-begotten yoke to one another revolts me and their mysteries and ways are corrupt and an insult to the gods, the grief in his eyes is brutal in its destitution. Before their love—though I know not what such devotion is, or even if it is proper—I cannot be cruel.
‘Uncle,’ I answer, ‘I pray too that he is safe and soon far from Rome.’
Though my brother-in-law is as useless a barren ewe, and less honourable than a swine’s arsehole, the idiot makes good wine. Bacchus has blessed his hands and the grape responds to his charmed touch. Past the most distant hill of the city, a nobleman of the equestrian class has a vineyard and this is where Ferros toils. I ask him to bring me some wine, and though he is a miser and a stranger to hospitality, he can steal like a beggar, and he brings me a half-flagon of blood-black wine. I dip my fingers into it, bring a drop to my tongue, and my mouth fills with the wine god’s kiss.
‘It is good, brother, is it not?’
I force myself to embrace him and thank him through unwilling lips. I pour most of the wine into three copper dishes I plundered long ago from an Illyrian farmhouse, and I offer libations to The God and to the gods for granting us a healthy son. I fill a skin with the remainder and bind it securely.
The prisoner is watching me as intently as a cormorant scanning the waters. I take the bloated skin and I carefully empty the wine into two cups.
‘What is this, son?’ he asks, his nostrils flaring at the scent of wine, his toothless grin widening. ‘What are we celebrating?’
I make no answer. I kneel and pour a handful of water into each cup. The purple becomes crimson. I give him his feed and he divides the soggy meal in two. He offers me half.
‘There is no need, uncle, I am sated.’
His good eye, the blood flecked white, watches me guardedly. ‘Is this to be a last meal, Vrasas?’
He’s a sorcerer—I swear he can see the future.
‘It is our last meal together, uncle,’ I answer gently. ‘Tomorrow morning I am taking you to a new home.’
I am shocked to see him become jovial. His eyes widen, he sets his food down and grabs my hand. ‘What great news, child! I will have my trial; I will be freed.’
The realisation comes to me like a blazing dawn: all his talk of death has only been words—the old man loves life and wants to live. Like all of us he is in denial of his fate. He is chattering now about the journeys he will take on his release, how he will secure passage on a ship, how he will take his teachings to Spain and all the way to Carthage.
There will be no trial. A decision must have already been made—I am sure of it. He is not a nobleman and he has not once recanted his allegiance to his odious and malicious corpse god. There will be no sea journey. The sword’s blade will be his end. His fate has been ordained.
The meat of his palm is callused with scars—even there they have beaten him. Our clasped hands are wet with sweat. I let go.
‘Don’t think me a fool, Vrasas,’ he says, his smile departed, his hand hovering over my cup, forbidding me to drink. ‘I know I have no influence. I know you think that judgement has already been pronounced.’
His voice trembles now, not with fear but with spirit and defiance. ‘And I know I am not a nobleman. But I belong to a kingdom that knows neither slave nor master.’
I allow him this sacrilege. I make no objection.
‘Can you dream this, son?’ he asks. ‘Can you imagine such a kingdom?’
He has half risen, his hands are outstretched over my head, casting his spell.
I bang my fist on the earth. ‘Uncle, this is the earth I know, this is my country and this is my city. Let’s drink to the fortune that we are not slaves but let’s not be fooled into believing we’ll ever be the masters.’
‘That is not what I asked.’
But my speech has quietened him; he grabs at his food, he lifts his cup of wine.
‘Will you allow me a prayer?’
> ‘Of course, uncle.’
He brings a finger of gruel to his mouth.
‘When we eat this, we remember the Saviour as a man who feasted and was amongst us.’
He brings the cup to his lips. ‘And when we drink this, we remember his sacrifice.’ The wine spills on his chin, his bare gums mash on the meal.
I turn away, sickened, my loins clenched. This is the most depraved of sects, flesh-eaters and lovers of death.
He is blind to my revulsion. ‘Son, eat with me,’ he urges. ‘Drink with me—share this mystery with me. Can’t you see? He is with us now.’
I silently call on my God, the True God, to erase the evil he has spoken. Released, I eat and I drink with him.
I embark on my journey deep in the heart of night and on the eve of Martius. There are still some of the very old that claim this the beginning of our new year. And leaving the city, entering the bosom of dawn, it strikes me that our ancestors are right, that the sky and the earth, the fields and woods are being reborn. Young and fragile sprouts shoot from the ground, there are pregnant buds on every tree, promising imminent, bursting spring.
I make my way carefully and slowly, as sheets of frost-hardened ice cover the ground before me. But with the ascending of The God the firm crust of the snow glistens, cracks and melts to slush. The further I go from the city, the louder the song of the returning birds. In the distance I can hear the rush of newly filled creeks and springs from the distant hillsides.
It will take two days to reach the grove dedicated to the God of war and, defying my accursed leg, I am determined to reach the sacred site in the allotted time. I am a soldier: I have sworn my allegiance to the Sun and with His assistance I will not fail. Though the day is only young, the sun already blazes with an intensity that blinds the eyes; I shade them and look towards The God. His form rolls and coils, kicking against the skin of his fiery husk. The snow has now melted, the bricks and stones of the road glisten in the wet, and the colours of life and the revitalised earth fill my lungs and eyes: the shimmering gold and bronze of the meadows, the perfume of the woods and scrub, the blue of sky and the silver haze of the horizon. With every step I take, one sure and one clumsy, I breathe in the world and listen to my blood singing. With every breath I give thanks to The God.
As I turn a bend I see the long-limbed shadows of four scarecrows. But coming closer, the elongated black lines take shape and are revealed as crucified men nailed to their rough gallows. I spit, I touch my chest five times, I pray to life to ward off death.
With the sound of my steps, the sky blackens with crows, the day filling with their relentless cries. They come to rest in a field beyond and form a thick black carpet. They wait impatiently for me to pass so they can return to their unholy feasting on the corpses. The air is rank with death, and I gag, covering my mouth and nostrils; but even so, the rancid and fermenting slaughterhouse stink seeps into my very skin. I walk faster, glancing up at the contorted bodies as I do. A collapsed ribcage has broken through the flesh of the first; his eyes are empty black holes, pecked clean by the crows. The sound of flies is louder than an ocean of cicadas at evening: I fear I will be deafened by the sound. I spit, I beat my breast five times.
A low and desperate sound makes me stop. I wind my cloak more tightly around my nose and mouth, and I approach. The condemned man still has his eyes, the birds have not yet pecked them hollow. The raw and still-bleeding slashes across his brow makes his crime clear: he is a runaway slave. I spit, I paw my chest five times, I whisper against death.
But I go near. The man’s body is slumped forward, his arms broken at wrist and shoulder, but there is the very slow rise and fall of his distended abdomen. He lives. The gallows are streaked with the dark stains of his emptied bowels, his sex has shrunk into its sheath, the black hairs there are damp with blood and sweat and piss.
The rise of The God is reaching its apex. By now my old prisoner will have been executed. I stare up at this abomination on the cross. I try to imagine a God flayed, raped, beaten, nailed and dying on such a gallows. I try, but the obscenity is a folly, an outrage: it mocks life itself but it also mocks valour and honour and city and country and caste. It defies life and blood and we who are the living. It violates my son and it violates my father and his father. It defies all that is sacred and calls for the end of time and the end of man. There is no honour in such a death. Only suffering. Only shame.
I prise loose a stone from the road. I take aim. The rock arcs, slams against the side of the condemned man’s head. There is a last cry, a final shudder. The man is dead.
I walk with the sun, I walk in the brightness and life of day, I leave the dead to the crows and to the flies. With every breath my blood is nourished by life. Those who pray to death hate this: that we are alive, that we experience joy, that we also suffer and that we know pain; but all of it, the pleasure and the endurance, all of it is worth it, for it is life: all we have is life. Those who call on a new world, a world beyond this world, hate us for our loyalty and our pride, our lovemaking and our fecundity, they detest us for our laughter and our singing, our vitality, our joy, our connection to the very ground we walk on. They despise our love of life and our love of earth.
I spit, beat my chest five times, and send a prayer to the old prisoner’s departed spirit. Foolish old man, living in death and forgoing the rapture of the fleeting moment. A foolish man with a foolish God. Yet, he was kind and he was loved: may the gods have mercy on his shade. I spit once more, I touch my heart and I make a final prayer.
I continue along the road, I walk day and night to reach my goal, my steps guided by the gods and The God of sun and light and valour. I offer the true gods my son, to make him strong, to make him fruitful, to make him love life.
I leave death to the carrion-eater, to the flies and the maggots and the worms.
I walk towards the sun.
‘There is neither Judean nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’
—THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS
‘He is wondrous, isn’t he?’
At the sound of Saul’s voice, Timothy turns around quickly, his face grimacing in shame.
‘No, he’s foul,’ says the youth, ‘a wicked idol.’
They are working in a secluded garden, perfumed by irises blooming along the terrace. The sickly odour of sap rises from budding myrtle trees. A vibrant mosaic decorates the bottom of a sunken pool, bringing to life a world of nymphs and their pursuers. A statue of a beautiful youth has been set into the pool, his slender marble arm reaching out as if to touch the enthralled Timothy who was gazing upon him. The statue is only small but the sculptor’s artistry is faithful to life: the fine pointed fingers, the gentle contours of the nose and the jaw, the sinuous neck and the faint swell of belly; one can believe that the boy is about to step out of his bath and join the living.
Timothy still wears an abashed smile on his lips. In the glare of the morning heat, his tawny curls appear forged by the very sun itself, his slight flush of beard glowing russet.
You are so much more splendid than that idol of cold marble, Saul wants to say. He swallows his words.
‘You think I’m an idolator,’ Timothy ventures.
No, lad, I am the idolator, I am making an idol of you.
‘No, no, of course not,’ Saul says impatiently. ‘I know you are faithful to the Lord.’
He is lying on a granite rock, its top levelled for a seat. The youth comes and squats beside the older man. He leans his chin against Saul’s knee. Saul runs his fingers through the youth’s curls. They are the only ones in the garden, blessedly alone. Saul knows that they will be like this, exactly as they are now, in the promised kingdom to come. They will be like this, pure, without sin, in an eternal garden.
It cannot be resisted: both pairs of eyes return to the boy climbing out of his bath.
In the years since his awakening by the Saviour, the power of such statues and images
to disturb Saul has abated. Once he reviled such idols and was disgusted by them and their abominable challenge to the primacy of the Lord. And their very presence attested to the fact that first Greece, and now the Romans, had conquered the world. His revulsion was not gone completely—he could still feel it faintly stirring in his belly and in his heart—but it didn’t explode as it used to. He has travelled far, into Arabia and to the foothills of Persia, and he has witnessed the monstrosities of four-winged demons and lascivious sphinxes, towering phalluses and many-breasted pregnant witches. All would soon be ground to dust. His hand rests on his beloved’s head; Timos’s hair warmed by the sun. This beautiful youth, the Lord’s creation, this is what is truly wondrous.
‘Shall we get back to work?’ says Timothy.
Saul doesn’t answer. All he wants is to stay there, lying next to each other in the lap of the sun. To believe in Creation renewed and reborn. But already the peace is receding. Beyond the line of pruned myrtle trees, beyond the wall, he can hear the frenzied sounds of Antioch. Sellers calling out in the markets, the clanging bell of a shepherd herding his flock down an alley. A mother is scolding a child. A beggar is cursing his fate. This is the world, the fallen world.
They return to their work. As always, Saul marvels at the sharpness and lucidity of his companion’s memory. The older man listens as the youth faithfully repeats the words Saul had composed only that morning. The words flow from Saul’s mouth and the boy listens and recites them back to him. In the evening, when they return to Astephania’s house, where their kind sister has given them shelter, his Timos will kneel before the kitchen table, and the stylo he holds will fly across parchment as he transcribes every one of Saul’s words. The letter will be written and his words will be unerringly copied there in the boy’s careful calligraphy.
Timos never presumes to correct the older man’s grammar, even though Saul encourages him to.
Damascus Page 19
