The Liars' Gospel: A Novel

by Naomi Alderman

  And yet when she stands, the daughter of Hodia, her black hair around her shoulders and her dark skin next to her white clothes, he can detect, somehow, the shape of her breasts under this modest garment. When she stretches her shoulders, pulling her arms back, he can see the nipples outlined for a moment against the fabric, as hard as dried beans and ringed by the raised zone of bumps he could read with his fingertips like words carved into stone.

  And then he cannot help himself any longer. He pulls her towards him by her arm and she utters a little squeak but does not struggle, acquiesces softly and warmly, and he places his hand between her legs, cupping her where she is so hot, she is a furnace and he had forgotten what young girls are like, giving off so much heat.

  She begins to move against his hand. This is overwhelming.

  He pulls at her tunic, releasing a breast, and the excitement of feeling that warm softness and seeing the dark bruise-colored nipple makes him hold his breath before he descends on her with his mouth.

  She is soft and she is warm and she is wet and she is hard. She smells of cloves and rain.

  If he fucked her and did not marry her, she would be forbidden to any other priest of the Temple. This would be a terrible disgrace. She is the daughter of a wealthy man of the priestly class. She is expected to marry a priest. And he cannot marry her while he and his wife are yet married, for the Cohen Gadol, the High Priest above all, may truly have only one wife.

  He stops short of entering her, and is astonished at himself, at his own maturity and composure, at the way that he almost, almost, straining towards her, almost does so but then remembers and pulls back. He finds that what he wanted after all was to consume that body, not to be consumed by it. That his desire had been to feel out every part of her, to see the gentle undulations of her soft belly and the way her breasts fall back when she lies down, and to hear her pant and cry out, and it would not have been right to go further, he knew that before he began. They may still have a wedding night. It is not entirely impossible.

  He lies with her in the stillness of the hot afternoon on the floor of his chamber.

  He says, “You were really never with any man before?”

  She shakes her head gently, the sweat glistening on her cheek.

  “Never a man,” she says.

  Hmm, he thinks. Then: oh.

  “Oh,” he says. It is the secret dream of the priests when they see the women’s enclosure and the curtained-off places where the women go. He allows this thought to grow in his mind, relishing the way it almost overwhelms his control. Almost, but not quite. If he wanted, if he were willing to relinquish certain other things, he could have this woman, she could be his wife. It is not impossible for a High Priest to divorce, just, in his case, unwise.

  A thought occurs to him.

  “Tell me,” he says, “I do not know your name.”

  Her smile is mocking.

  “You have never thought to ask one of your many servants and advisers?”

  He shakes his head.

  “What would you have called me on our wedding night? ‘Hodia’s daughter’?”

  He reaches a hand to her soft breast again.

  “Beloved,” he says, “I would have called you beloved, as in the Song of Solomon. And kissed you with kisses of the mouth, for you are sweeter than wine.”

  She does not seem displeased by this, but there is a thinking mind behind those dark eyes.

  “Did you ever love a woman without noticing whose daughter she was?”

  He looks at her, while his hand kneads at her breast and the desire rises in him again, pleasingly.

  “No,” he says. “Did you ever love a man without noticing his power?”

  “Never a man,” she says. And try as he might, he never gets more of the story than that from her.

  She leaves before it is time for the evening service. Though he is sad to see her put away her dark and comely body, he knows that it must be so.

  At the door, she pauses and says, “Batsheni.”

  He frowns.

  “My name,” she says.

  “Ah.” It is not a respectful name for a woman like this. “I think I would rather call you ‘beloved.’”

  “Nonetheless,” she says, “Batsheni is my name. ‘Second daughter.’ In case my father ever forgot which order we came in, I suppose. The boys are called ‘God will make me strong,’ ‘God will enrich me,’ ‘God approves my right hand’ and so on.”

  She closes the door softly as she leaves and the scent of her oils still hangs sweet in the room.

  And that evening, when he visits the sanctuary, the chamber next to the Holy of Holies, for solitary prayer, he bends down and picks up a pinch of dust from the floor. He folds it into a scrap of linen and tucks it into his waistband. He keeps it safe.

  Every morning and every evening, a yearling lamb makes sweet savors for the Lord—the perpetual daily sacrifice. And after that, between the many sacrifices brought by the people for sins and to make peace, to give thanks to the Lord for saving their life, in between all that at some point, every day, Caiaphas makes the offering on behalf of Rome. Every day, he sacrifices a pure white-fleeced lamb for the glory of the Emperor far beyond the Great Sea.

  It is a compromise. For Rome has found it cannot operate in Judea in the same way that it franchises out its business to all its many other conquered states. There is an accepted routine which has worked well in these many other nations.

  “Congratulations,” says Rome, after its armies have torn down the defending walls and set alight the pointed fences and killed the fathers and husbands and sons and brothers who had gone out that morning painted with war paint and screaming battle cries, “hearty congratulations to you, for you are now part of the Roman Empire. We will defend you against barbarians and bring you roads and aqueducts and various other civic amenities. In exchange you will give us tribute and we will take some of your people as slaves and exhibit your king and your precious objects in a triumph in Rome.”

  “Yes,” say the conquered people, barely able to draw their eyes away from the smoldering heaps of men and animals and timber and stone, “that seems…yes.”

  “Very good. And one other thing,” says Rome, “tell me, what is your local god here?”

  “Why,” mumble the people, “we worship the Great Bull of the Mountain,” or it might be the Heron King, or Almighty Ba’al along with the Sea God Yam, or Mother Isis and her son, who dies and is born again each year.

  “How charming,” says Rome, “we worship our current Emperor, Tiberius, and various members of his family, both those living and those forever alive, for they have conquered death. Here are their statues. Place them in your Temple and worship them as you do your Great Bull. That will be all.”

  “Yes,” say the conquered people, as the stench of burning enters their nostrils and their eyes begin to water.

  This approach, so helpful in tying conquered peoples into Rome in all other places, was surprisingly ineffective in Judea. It was because of the particular laws of the people: not to make an image of their one God, not to accept that His powers could be divided into separate entities, not to create any statue even of their most revered prophets or to allow any such emblem to be placed within their Temple. No man, say the Jews, can become a god and that is an end of it.

  They attempted it, early on. Just a little statue of, let us say, the Blessed Augustus. Just one, here in an outer courtyard. The battles were so long and so bloody that even the Romans became sickened by the slaughter necessary to keep that little figure in its place. These people would rather die, each one of them, even the children, than give up the sanctity of their holy places. It is an unusual and puzzling level of dedication to a god who cannot be seen or touched or felt.

  But Rome is nothing if not flexible. Within limits. Annas, who was High Priest at the time, suggested a way around so many difficulties.

  “We cannot worship your God-Emperor,” he explained sadly to the Prefect, “the people w
ill not tolerate it. But we can dedicate some of our worship to him.”

  And Rome sighed and said, “Very well.”

  So, instead of the forbidden statue in a courtyard, there is this. Caiaphas slaughters a lamb every day, just one sacrifice among many, but this one dedicated to the health and well-being of the Emperor Tiberius, whose reach stretches even to this distant province.

  And there are those who call him a traitor for this. In general, the young priests are so eager to perform Temple services that they race to compete for them, or draw lotteries to see who will get the honor. But not for this sacrifice. They go to it grudgingly, having to be summoned repeatedly. Even the lambs do not behave, bucking and bleating and kicking out.

  But what can one do? One lamb among so many, to keep Rome happy. But, say the mutterers, nothing can keep her happy. But we must try to keep her happy. This is my task, he says to himself as he brings the knife towards the lamb, this is my duty, this is how we keep the Temple standing and the services being offered. This, this, only this.

  In the private predawn light when the household is sleeping, Caiaphas takes a horn of ink and a quill and a strip of vellum cut from the end of a letter he had written to save it for another occasion. He dips the sharpened feather into the rich black ink. Holds it so that the bead of excess liquid drips back into the horn. Tamps it against the silver-rimmed edge so that his first stroke on the vellum will be clean and clear.

  He holds the parchment still with his left hand and begins to write with his right. It is the words of the curse against adultery. “If you are defiled by a man who is not your husband, the Lord shall make you a curse and a watchword among your people. And the bitter waters of the curse shall go into your bowel and make your belly swell and your thighs wither.”

  He takes particular care over one of the words. The short horizontal line of the yud with its tiny tail at the right, like a tadpole. Then the house-like structure of the letter hei: a solid horizontal line held up by a long vertical coming down on the right, and a small vertical line inside, as if it were sheltering from the rain. Then a vav, proud and tall, like a yud grown to manhood. Then the final hei. The pen scratches on the parchment. The black ink runs minutely into imperfections in the vellum. It is done. There is the name of God.

  He waits and watches for the ink to dry. It seems wrong to leave the paper. He has turned it into one of the holiest things on earth. So he just waits, as the ink soaks in and changes color slightly. He blows on it a little. It does not take very long. The sun is just peeping over the horizon when it is done. The ink is dry. He holds the vellum in his hand. This thing is so holy now that, if it were to become worn or tattered, it must be buried in a grave, like the body of one whose soul is departed.

  He places the ink horn and the quill back on their appointed shelf. He goes to the well in the courtyard of his house. He fills a small slender-necked jug with water. He sits beneath the vines and fruit trees as the birds begin to call out with joy for the start of a new day.

  He looks at the parchment for a long time, taking in the letters. The curse which cannot harm unless harm has already been done. The name of God. An impossible tense of the verb “to be,” which suggests somehow at the same time something which is and was, something which has been and will be. It is entirely forbidden to destroy this name once it is written. Except for one sacred purpose.

  Without thinking too hard, at last, he plunges the paper into the water. Waves it to and fro. Watches as the letters dissolve until there is nothing on the paper at all. The name of God is now in the water. The curse is in the water. They are bitter waters. He takes from his belt the folded-over piece of linen he keeps with him always. He retrieves from it the pinch of dust he took from the outer sanctuary. Drops it into the water. Shakes the jug to dissolve it.

  He brings an empty wineskin from the kitchen—the servants are just beginning to rise, he can hear them moving slowly upstairs. He pours the holy water into the skin. Holds it close to his beating heart, as if he can feel the name of God inside it. It is done.

  A week goes past with no disturbance. Then two, then three. Shops and market stalls begin to reopen. The barber in the road next to Caiaphas’s city house sings one morning in the late summer as he used to do. The maker of pots produces a new design of interlocking wheat sheaves, very pretty. No one fulminates in the market square or passes seditious notes from one hand to another. It is like the silence after a thunderclap.

  It has been a little while since Annas came to visit. He comes now cheerfully, as if that moment of self-doubt is entirely expunged from his mind. He bears scrolls of parchment with some good news. The harvest in the north is successful. And Pilate has received a sharp note from Syria about the massacre in the square.

  “They have warned him that if this continues he will be recalled,” says Annas, as his daughter pours for them the wine of the evening.

  And the daughter, Caiaphas’s wife, looks up suddenly and says, “If this continues? So you are saying we will have to have another massacre before he can be sent home?”

  If she were another man’s daughter, or merely Caiaphas’s wife, Annas would have raged at her. Caiaphas has seen his rages: terrifying and cold when they arrive, and sudden. Caiaphas prepares himself for the onslaught, feels the muscles of his shoulders tensing and his thighs bunching and his heart beginning to race.

  But there is no rage. She has taken the fire out of him with a few words. As a man’s daughter can, sometimes, if she knows him well.

  Annas stares off into the distance. His face crumples. He looks older suddenly than he did. He is becoming elderly, he is nearing sixty.

  “Yes,” he says, his voice deep and rumbling. “Yes, I think we will have to have another massacre before they recall him. I think that is what will happen.” He looks at her. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “I wanted to know that you knew it.”

  She brings another wooden chair from the covered part of the garden and sits with them. She sits closer to Caiaphas than to her father. She covers Caiaphas’s hand with hers and squeezes it. There is a reason that he married her. Not just because of who her father is, but also because of who she is for being his daughter. He did see her, when he agreed to marry her. He could not see through her skin, but he did see something.

  “You’ve put Caiaphas in a hideous position,” she says, “I suppose you know that.”

  “Is it my fault?” starts Annas, and then, “No, you are right. In the southern kingdom they’ve already sent word that they want you removed, Caiaphas. They have their own man for the job.” He shrugs and chuckles. “He wouldn’t be any improvement, let me tell you.”

  “Removing you solves nothing,” she says to Caiaphas, “I think Pilate will trust you a little more after all this. Because it ended so badly, because he lost control of his own men. He thinks you’re in it together now. Despised by your own side. Neither of you wanting to admit how it happened.”

  Annas nods slowly. “He thinks you miscalculated. Good.”

  Caipahas wants to point out the obvious thing, but cannot. For fear.

  His wife says it instead. “He doesn’t know it was you, father, who miscalculated.”

  Annas shrugs his shoulders. “Let him think he has a friend. You can play that part, can’t you, Caiaphas?”

  Caiaphas, whose special gift is to lie so well he does not even notice himself doing it, says, “Everyone thinks I am their friend.”

  The next day, he takes his wife on a long walk in the hills.

  “Come,” he says, “while the countryside is safe and the bandits are quiet. Let us walk in the quiet of the hills and today another priest will perform the daily sacrifices.”

  She looks at him oddly. For he is speaking oddly. And it is an odd request. But they used to do so when they were newly married. He brings wine with them, and a little dry bread and hard cheese. And skins of water, including one which he is very particular to keep separate from
the rest.

  The hills are stepped and dotted with cypress and twisted olive trees. The earth is red and yellow, and the path is dry. Lizards sit basking on rocks, blinking as they approach, too lazy to move. Their feet become dirty from the dust, but it is good to walk and walk, as if their bodies could outpace their minds. They talk of the children and the family.

  He finds a shady place for them to sit. His wife is smiling now, puzzled, as if she did not know him. He does not know himself.

  He passes her some of the bread and the cheese. They eat. They drink the wine. They are softened by the sun.

  He says, and he had not known he would begin like this, “I have seen you with Darfon the Levite.”

  Her whole body stiffens. Like the turning of the crowd when Pilate raised his hand and gave his signal and the soldiers showed themselves. He has revealed the traitor in her midst.

  “I do not know who that is,” she says slowly and at last.

  “I could take you to the Temple,” he says, “and bare your breasts in front of the high altar and accuse you of adultery. I could put that shame on you.”

  She says, “You would not dare to do it.”

  He shrugs. “I have never known you at all, I think,” he says. “You were only ever Annas’s daughter to me, and perhaps I was only ever a man suitable to be High Priest to you.”

  She looks at him, her eyes dark and angry.

  “If I were a man,” she says, “I would be High Priest and make a better job of it than my brothers.”

  He gives a little nod to show that he agrees. This is not the matter at hand, though.

  “I could divorce you,” he says, “but it would bring shame to the children and we want Ayelet to be married next year.”