“Give him to us,” said the leading soldier in heavily accented Aramaic. “He is accused of treason. He must be taken for trial.”
He nodded to two of his deputies, who came forward. One of them took Yehoshuah by the arm. And then it began.
One of Yehoshuah’s friends raised his cudgel and struck the soldier a glancing blow on the side of the face. Iehuda, hanging back, remembered Yehoshuah saying, “If a man strikes you on one cheek, give him the other to hit,” and thought: why, then, are they fighting? But they did fight.
The soldier fell to the ground. Shimon thrust Yehoshuah far behind him as the leader of the soldiers barked three words at his men and they advanced in formation, holding small shields before them, a forest of blades. Two of the soldiers lashed out with their weapons and two of Yehoshuah’s men fell—one with a gaping wound to his neck pumping rich red blood, the other clutching his side.
Yehoshuah’s men looked less certain now, but their anger was up and some ran forward, flailing and yelling. In a lucky strike Jeremiah pulled one of the shields forward and leapt over it, hacking at the face beneath the helmet with his knife, and suddenly blood was spurting from the soldier’s face, and Jeremiah was shrieking because he had cut off the man’s ear. It flopped limply in his hand. A piece of gristle cut from an undercooked joint. He brandished it, grinning. Another soldier hit him hard in the stomach with a shield and he fell to the ground.
They were outmatched, Yehoshuah’s men. They were dealing the odd blow to the soldiers, but more of them, five, six, had been felled already. There were awkward wrestling matches, soldiers attempting, as far as Iehuda could tell, not to kill if they could avoid it. Several men were knocked out by a heavy shield blow. One of them, a young man Iehuda did not know, was attempting to fight although he was wearing only a wrapped linen sheet. Two soldiers grabbed the garment, trying to throw him to the ground, but he wriggled out of it altogether and ran away naked.
Angry, the soldiers returned to using their swords, and more men would have been cut down if Iehuda had not raised his voice above the din and shouted, “No! More soldiers will come! They have told me! All of us will die if we do not give Yehoshuah to them.”
It was then that they realized.
“You,” said Mattisyahu, “it was you who brought the soldiers.”
The shock of it made them stare.
Ah, thought Iehuda, so there is no going back for me now. No returning to the person I was. Now they know.
He had to walk with the soldiers as they took Yehoshuah away. What else was he going to do? He could not stay with the other disciples. They would have torn him to pieces.
They walked as far as the Temple. There was a form to these things. First a hearing in the civil court of Israel, then justice at the hands of Rome.
Yehoshuah was quiet as they walked. They did not have to bind him or carry him or prod him with the points of their swords.
At the gate of the Temple, he clasped Iehuda’s shoulder and said, very softly,
“Now we will see.”
And as much as Iehuda has thought of that since, as much as he understands the world of dreams that spoke in those words, he cannot experience it as anything but courage.
They led his friend away through the dark doors. He tried to follow but Caiaphas, standing at the doorpost, shook his head. Thus far and no further. His job was done.
As he left the Temple, the head of the Levite administrators, kinder than the rest, pressed a purse into his hand. He shook his head, but the Levite frowned and said, “You cannot go back to your friends now. Use this to go home. Buy a piece of land and begin again. Forget everything that happened here. You have done a good service to keep the peace, remember only that.”
He had thought about it, what he would do if he were free. And suddenly he was more free than he had ever been or ever thought to be. What is freedom, in the end, but that no one cares any longer to try to restrain us?
In the marketplace, he bought a sharp blade of the kind the Romans use to shave themselves, a jar of good sheep’s fat and a pail. And he walked out of the city to the north, until he came to a place he knew, under the shade of three fig trees, with a fast-flowing brook of icy water.
At first, he pulled great tufts of the hair of his beard out and cut them with the blade—remembering Elkannah wriggling on his lap and feeling that sorrow which would never now leave him. When the bulk of the beard was gone he filled the pail and let the water go still, so he could look at his own face in the reflecting surface. He looked different already. Not a pious man, not a good Jew. A madman, with sprouting clumps of hair on his face. No longer a person who believed in anything.
He rubbed the sheep’s fat onto his face. It smelled half delicious, like a good meal, but with a rancid edge. He massaged the fat into the coarse beard hairs with the heel of his hand, feeling the bristles and tufts scratch his skin. And then he began to scrape the blade slowly, carefully, down his cheek.
He had never done this to himself before, but he had watched with interest as some of the Greek and Roman hangers-on at Yehoshuah’s camp had made their toilet in the morning, so he had a rough idea of how the thing was accomplished. When he had scraped half a cheek of hair off and rubbed the bristle–sheep fat mixture on the dry grass, he looked at the smooth patch in the mirror of still water. It was like the skin of a woman’s face. Soft and pink, though a little raw in places from the blade. Suddenly, he desperately wanted a woman.
He shaved the rest of his face more quickly. He had the knack of the blade now, keeping close to the skin but not piercing it. He cut himself once or twice, but they were only small nicks. His face felt cold and the skin was stinging. And when he was done he stared at himself again in the water and saw a different man. He had not seen his own face thus since he was fifteen years old and his beard came in. But the face that looked back was not that of a boy. It was a Roman man. An idol worshipper. The man he had been was as dead as if he had cut his own throat with that razor. Good.
This new face did the work for him when he returned to the market. He had passed through the invisible veil separating Jew and Roman. The Jewish men scurried away from his gaze, the Romans met his eye approvingly. The whores by the market wall called to him as they had never addressed a word to him all those years when he was pious.
He paid one of the whores—a woman about his own age, with dark eyes and gray hairs streaked through the black—he gave her a small coin and had her in a small tented enclosure at the edge of the wall. She did not undress, just bent over the straw bales and flipped up the back of her skirts to show herself to him. The power of it was overwhelmingly arousing, the absolute lack of consequence, her lack of interest in him. As he fucked her, he remembered his wife and knew that what he had grieved for all along, when he thought he grieved for her and his God, what he had grieved for all along was the young man he had been who would never now return. The whore didn’t even see his circumcised cock, that young man’s last trace. He could be a Roman now, if he wanted.
He waited by the gates for news of Yehoshuah, and when he heard what had happened he went to the crosses. He wore a wrapped scarf like the tent-dwellers, shielding his face, and one of their cloaks bought for two small coins, more than its value. But he need not have bothered. Few of Yehoshuah’s friends were there, and those who were could not see him. Their eyes glided over his face as if he were just another Roman, or Jew-turned-Roman.
Even Yehoshuah gave no sign of knowing him. He was near death—the day was hot and several of the men around him had already died. Iehuda wondered whether, if he had come hours before, Yehoshuah would have berated him, or screamed at him. But by this point his eyes were glazed and the flies were settling at the corners of his mouth. He would not have recognized his own mother if she had come then.
Iehuda waited there until he saw the light go out of his eyes. Even till then, though it took until the sun was low in the sky. He squatted on his haunches and watched it out. And even till that m
oment he had thought that perhaps God would make some miracle. But he saw his friend die. And at the moment that the limbs went limp and the head slumped forward and the chest became still, he thought: well, then, now we know. The Messiah becomes king, he does not die as a traitor. So now we know.
He should have known the moment he saw the nails through the wrists. Or when he had arrived at the Temple. Or when the snake first began to twist inside him, he should have known that nothing was keeping his friend alive but the faith of those around him. And he went and slept in an apple orchard near the walls of Jerusalem.
He stayed in Jerusalem a few days after that. He went to his friend’s grave, hoping to take the body and bury it on that ridge where they had talked, but one of the boys playing with a spinning top at the side of the road told him that the body had been stolen. There was a trade in such things for magical purposes—the dried heart of a man who had died by violence, the fingers or toes, all these things could be used to cast spells. Or, he thought, to fool the gullible and line the pockets of one of Calidorus’s fakers.
He wept a little, thinking of his friend’s long bones and brown skin going to such a purpose. With the weeping, he touched the corner of his sadness inside his heart. It was like dipping his hand in the ocean, allowing the waves to run through his fingers, thinking for a moment that he had caught the whole sea in his palm, understanding at last that it was a sadness deep enough to drown in. He closed the box in his heart on that sorrow. It is the only way to continue.
He waited for the last possible day to leave Jerusalem safely, when the final pilgrims were returning home after the festival. And he struck west with a band of travelers—Syrians and Egyptians and Jews and Greeks mixed—heading for Caesarea. It was not hard to find Calidorus’s house. The man, to do him credit, welcomed him and sent a slave to wash his feet.
Nothing ever happens except that God wills it. This was the teaching of Yehoshuah which Iehuda remembers every day. It is the truth. Everything that happens has been willed by God.
This is not how he ends the story he tells to Calidorus’s guests. For them, he is witty and clever enough to make them feel vaguely flattered by the way he tells the story. He brings up Greek myth, tells them that he would have gone down into Hades to find his friend except—he winks—the Hebrew god frowns on such love between two men. The guests roar with laughter. They are in their cups now.
He jokes that perhaps, like the Emperor Augustus, his friend is already transformed into a god by his death. The men grow a little quiet at this—even to suggest that a criminal is on a par with Augustus is faintly seditious.
“But of course,” says Iehuda, “just as Augustus, who died in majesty, now reigns in majesty on high, I’m afraid my friend Yehoshuah will still be dragging his cross around with him in the heavens!”
This is the best joke of all. One of the men falls on the floor he laughs so hard and pulls himself up still wheezing. Pomponius chokes on his own laughter and has to take more wine, which sets him off in another fit of giggles.
When the men leave, they agree that it has been an excellent party. Calidorus smiles. Iehuda wonders how long it will be until he has told this story to all of Calidorus’s friends and business associates, and what his use will be then.
It is not long after this that the thing is broken forever.
Iehuda sees the woman again in the marketplace. Her red hair flames under the modest veil which covers the length of it. She is looking at some glass lamps—very pretty but impractical. He stands beside her, close enough to sense her body through her clothes and his. She does not notice him until he speaks.
“You could never light it,” he says, his voice low, pointing at the lamp. “The heat would shatter the glass.”
She looks up. Her eyes are green. She shows no surprise that it is him. A wry smile is on her lips and he remembers his wife, suddenly and with a sharp pain.
“Perhaps,” she says, “I do not intend to light it. Aren’t those the most beautiful things of all? The things that cannot be used without breaking them?”
She is poised. She holds her shoulders just so.
“Like a woman’s maidenhead,” he says, without thinking. It is a very forward remark to make to a woman in a public place.
She blushes a little, but her expression does not change.
“Like a man’s unwarranted faith,” she says. And pauses. And then. “I know who you are. My husband is a friend of Calidorus. Any man who has a fortune or wants one in Caesarea is a friend of Calidorus, you know.”
“Ah,” he says. “And who is your husband?”
“Pomponius,” she says. “He knows you and your funny little story.”
The thought of the arrogant self-satisfied prick of Pomponius thrusting inside this woman makes him hot and angry and, again, aroused. And the little smile playing on the mouth of the woman when she says “funny little story,” this stirs him too.
“Did you know it was me in the temple that day?” he whispers low in her ear. “Was it my funny little story that made you so wet?”
He grabs her arm, his fingers digging into her soft flesh so that she gasps, and this he finds even more exciting.
Her eyes flick to the stallholder, who is watching them curiously. They are in a busy marketplace. She has only to call out and a dozen men would be on him, for she is a respectable Roman matron and he, if they cared to examine him, would be found to be only a Jew.
She does not call out. She looks at his hand around her upper arm, at the place where the skin is white because his grip is so strong.
She says, “Yes.”
He fucks her in a disused stable not far from the market, where the musty smell of horseflesh is in the damp straw, and as she reaches her height she bites him on the shoulder so hard that her mouth comes away red with his blood.
She does not leave immediately this time. They sit together, leaning against the wall of the stable, listening to the sounds of the busy street outside: the vendors calling their wares, hooves striking stone, children playing and shouting, the mad-eyed preacher who stands at the corner of the market telling out the end of days.
She sits across his knees and fumbles with the garments at his waist until she has uncovered his exhausted cock. She cups it in her hand, thumbing the rim of the head where he is circumcised. She smiles.
“I heard that some Jews hang weights from it, to try to grow the foreskin back.”
He shrugs. “Some men plunge their hands into a nest of bees hoping thereby to gain honey.” His hand finds her, under her skirts. His thumb begins to work. She gasps. “Most men are not so foolish.”
“And what do you think Calidorus’s house is?” she whispers in his ear, leaning close to him.
After a little while he fucks her again: frantically, insatiably.
There is an evening when he sits drinking and talking with Calidorus. Everything now reminds him of something else, distorted and confused. Calidorus is a parody of Yehoshuah. Pomponius’s wife is a stirabout of his own wife. This evening with Calidorus is a broken tessellation of another evening, long ago. Once a man has lived long enough, every moment is a reflection of some other moment.
Calidorus says, “My father was a freed slave. He was over fifty when I was born, and his first forty-five years he was owned.”
Iehuda had heard something of this sort about Calidorus. It is not exactly a mark of disgrace, but neither is it a thing to boast about. Calidorus has drunk a little wine. So has Iehuda. The slaves have withdrawn. They are alone in a private chamber with a good fire and Calidorus’s little house gods lined up on a side table.
“The master freed him because he saved his life. From a fire. He ran into the burning building to save his master. He had scars on his face and his body all his life, because his clothes caught fire as he ran and he did not stop to put them out until his master was safe. A long tight patch of red raw skin from here”—Calidorus motions to his waist—“to here”—he touches his right temple. “The h
air never grew back on the right-hand side. That is how he won his freedom. That is why he was permitted to take a wife and why I was born. But until the day he died, although he was free, he still called that man ‘Master.’”
Iehuda nods.
“And now I am a wealthy man,” says Calidorus. “If I were so minded, I could become interested in politics, take a seat in the Senate. An able man can rise and rise in Rome, with no one telling him he has not the right father to be a High Priest, or the right lineage to be considered for king. That is what makes us strong. You are still waiting for your ‘rightful king,’ the son of David. We take for a king any man who has the will and strength to govern. There is no law to say that a freed slave may not become emperor; it may happen one day.”
Calidorus clears his throat.
“I have heard from friends in Rome,” he says, “that the Emperor Tiberius has run mad. He spends all his days on the island of Capri, fucking children.” Calidorus raises an eyebrow, stretching the skin across his bony forehead. “If I uttered this in Rome, you know, someone would inform on me for a few copper coins and I would be taken and killed.”
“It is because every man needs a father,” says Iehuda slowly. Calidorus narrows his eyes. “Or a master,” Iehuda continues, “it is all one. Without a father we look for another master: a teacher to follow or a patron to please or an emperor to fear. A man like your Tiberius has his head open to the sky, with no master to obey. That is why he has run mad.”
“And what of you?” says Calidorus. “You have killed your master.”
Iehuda shrugs. “God alone is my leader and my master.”
Calidorus barks out a laugh.
“The gods will not keep you from madness. They have not helped the old goat of Capri.”
And Iehuda could not say what was in his heart: that his God was the true God, and those little statues of squabbling deities were just pieces of stone.
The Liars' Gospel: A Novel Page 13
