“I did not lie with him,” she says.
And he shows her the wineskin of bitter waters. And tells her what it is. She starts to laugh.
“At your foresight,” she says when he asks. “At the plans you have made when Jerusalem was burning around you and men were slain in the streets.”
“It is the same thing,” he says. “It is all part of the same thing. All the different lies, and the plans, and the men we give them.”
“Yes, I know,” she says, shaking her head. “Do you think I have not heard all this before from my father? I know how it is. To keep the Temple standing, we do this and this and this, and—” She breaks off. Stretches her arms behind her so that he is reminded for a moment of Hodia’s daughter.
She snatches the wineskin from his hands. Looks into his eyes.
She says, “My father told me about applying this curse to women suspected of adultery. He said that often they never had to drink the water at all. That women who were guilty would start to weep and shake when they saw the bitter waters and confess. And those who were innocent would drink it down without fear.”
She says, “I swear I am no adulteress and may all the curses of heaven fall on me if I am.”
She meets his gaze as she drinks and drinks, gulping it down, some water spilling over her chin, drinking it all until the wineskin is empty and she takes it from her mouth and her mouth is full of water. She does not look away from him as she takes the last gulp. She wipes her mouth and chin with her forearm. She throws the wineskin at his feet.
They walk back to Jerusalem together, not talking. She does not help him when he stumbles. He does not give her an arm over the high stone wall of a farm. The silence between them is as thick as woolen fleece. But still they walk together. For there is a presence howling and prowling on these hills and, if they separated, they would become prey for the wolves.
Nothing is settled forever. Every peace is temporary.
The dove sellers come before him again, this time one with a blackened eye and another with a tooth missing.
It is a man in his forties who brandishes the tooth like a nugget of gold.
“Do you see what they’ve done to me? Do you see? Those mongrels, those monsters, that pack of dogs!”
This time he bans several of the men from the Temple courtyards altogether, and tells them to make reparations for the disturbances amounting to more than a talent of gold in total. It cannot go on like this, and yet there is no other way for it to go on.
The brother of Eliken—the eighteen-year-old priest who died in the riot in the plaza—comes to visit him. His name is Shlomo, the brother, he had not thought to ask that before, or perhaps he had forgotten the name. Shlomo’s wife has given him four living sons, thank God, and the eldest is now approaching thirteen, when it will be time to begin his Temple service. The son belongs to the Temple, as do all male children in the family of the priests.
“Perhaps,” says Shlomo, “you would be prepared to meet the boy? To offer him some guidance? He remembers his uncle Elikan with great fondness.”
And Caiaphas knows what Shlomo is asking.
“Is he with you?”
Shlomo brings the boy in. He is gangly and nervous, with a voice on the edge of breaking which wavers from high to low pitch within a single sentence. He does not speak much.
“What is your name?” says Caiaphas, trying to be kind.
“Ovadya-Elikan,” says the boy.
“He took on the name himself, after his uncle died,” says Shlomo proudly.
“Come to see me Ovadya-Elikan,” says Caiaphas, “when you begin your service. And we’ll make sure you get to know everyone in the Temple.”
Shlomo is grateful. He himself serves his turns at the Temple offices but has never had a friend in such a high position before. Much good may it do him, thinks Caiaphas.
Natan the Levite tells him that Darfon, son of Yoav, will set out this very afternoon for the north, where his strong arms will be of the greatest use in loading barrels of wine and oil onto carts and his cunning brain will be most welcome in figuring the accounts. Caiaphas feels a certain relief at that, but then at once his mind starts to seek out whom his wife might turn to now, in Darfon’s absence. He cannot send every man in Jerusalem to the north.
“And Pilate wants to see you,” says Natan. “No,” he continues, before Caiaphas can ask the question, “he didn’t say why and I didn’t ask.”
They look at each other. Every peace is temporary.
Pilate is full of himself. The rebellion has been quashed; Rome surely sent disapproving words merely to placate their own guilty consciences. But he has acted strongly and rightly. This is how a Roman man behaves.
He greets Caiaphas warmly. There is no soldier standing guard today.
“Can you sense the mood in the city, Caiaphas?” he asks. “They have felt the touch of my power. They know who is their master now, and they have given up all resistance like obedient slaves.”
Or like clever slaves, who will heal their wounds and gather their resources before beginning to plan the next rebellion.
“Yes,” says Caiaphas, “you have shown them what you are willing to do.”
“They cannot help but respect it, Caiaphas! Like a woman, they long to be governed.”
Like a woman. Yes, exactly like a woman. Who has labored and survived, who has raised a child. Similarly fearless of pain, careless of self in protection of something greater than herself.
“I think I will bring the golden images of Tiberius back from Caesarea. He is their lord and high master, he is their god and rightful king. They should kneel before his statue and kiss his feet.”
“Exactly as you say, Prefect.”
“This is not a bad country, you know. A few rotten apples in the barrel, but mostly decent hardworking families. They will be grateful to me for rooting out those bad elements. I will turn around the lives of those families. With this rioting on the streets, your society has become morally degenerate, but I will repair it!”
A memory skitters across Caiaphas’s mind, as if he has heard a speech before delivered with the same shining eyes, the same absolute self-assurance. But the memory is gone before he can recall the dingy robes and the glowing clouds of heaven.
“Certainly you are right, Prefect,” he says, “but I do not know if the people of Jerusalem deserve your love. Look at how they rebelled: not only against you but against me! Lavish your praise rather on Caesarea, on the Decapolis, on the loyal regions.”
“Come, come,” says Pilate, “you’re letting your injured pride get the better of you. And yet you are right…perhaps this city is not yet worthy of the statues of Tiberius, their God-Emperor.”
The conversation continues. This, here, is the work of Caiaphas’s life. This.
There are only two outcomes to the ritual for a man who has a suspicion about his wife. She must drink the bitter waters. And if she is guilty the curse will fall upon her and she will die. And if she is innocent she will conceive a child. And if neither of these things happens?
Caiaphas’s wife does not die. She does not talk to him any longer except about matters connected to the family and the running of the house. She sits and comments on his conversations with Annas and gives her opinion. Her belly does not swell and her thighs do not wither.
But nor does she conceive a child. How could she, indeed, since he does not lie with her for several months? He waits, and no sickness falls upon her and no child grows in her womb. In the end, without conversation, he begins to lie with her again in the nights. If she conceives a child, then at least he will know, he thinks, as he plows her again and again. She does not resist him. It is fierce between them now, as it never was when they lied and pretended to love one another.
There is another option. The rabbis tell us that if a woman has studied Torah in great detail, the merit of her learning may delay the enactment of the curse on her body. Her knowledge is a shield, keeping her husband’s will from blight
ing her. If a woman is learned enough, the curse against adultery may never kill her. This is why it is vitally important never to teach a woman Torah.
Caiaphas doubts whether Annas bore these strictures in mind when deciding upon his daughter’s education. She does not conceive a child. She does not die. He reminds himself that he did not perform the ritual entirely properly: that she should have made a meal offering at the Temple first, that it should have been done in front of several priests. Nonetheless. She drank the bitter waters willingly, having accepted the curse on herself. Perhaps Annas taught her a great deal of Torah. But perhaps there is another reason.
Something has gone now. The presence of God that howled like a whirlwind, that spat blood and fire upon the Egyptians, that stalked by the side of the Children of Israel through the desert, protecting and terrifying in equal measure, that is gone. There was a time when every man saw God face-to-face at Mount Sinai, there was a time when His wonders were as clear as the edicts of Rome and when His might toppled mountains and destroyed nations. There was a time when He raged for us and nothing could stand before Him.
But not now. Not since that first stone tumbled from the wall and Jerusalem was breached. We must have done something wrong, for that almighty righteous power to have withdrawn itself, to have become so small that it sits, alone, in the Holy of Holies inside the Temple, and does not bestir itself to protect us even from faceless men following their leader’s orders. The only explanation is that we did something terribly wrong.
Natan the Levite comes to inform him that, all being well, Hodia’s daughter will be betrothed after Yom Kippur is over. She is older than the previous girl, it is not right to make her wait much longer. They have found a good man for her—he names a man over twenty years her senior who is thought much of in the Temple. Caiaphas holds the man in his mind, trying to recall him exactly.
“Itamar? That dried-up husk?”
The man is nearing forty and has never married, nor ever shown much interest in women. Caiaphas cannot imagine that Hodia’s daughter will take much delight in the marriage, though it will cement a solid bond of loyalty for her father, for Itamar is the brother and cousin of important men.
Natan nods his head slowly with a rueful smile. “I know. A girl like that. So…” Natan moves his hands unconsciously, as if imagining squeezing her breasts.
“Ah, well. It will happen only if my wife should chance not to die,” he says, with that practiced smile.
Natan the Levite laughs. “Yes, only if the faint possibility comes to pass that your young and healthy wife does not die.”
She will not die. Someone has done something terribly wrong, but he does not know who.
Later, in the autumn, it is Yom Kippur again. He is sequestered for seven days. He fasts and prays. On the day of Yom Kippur itself he, like all the Jews, does not eat or drink even water from sunset to sunset, so that they may pray for forgiveness of their sins. He dons his golden robes for part of the ceremony. He sacrifices the bull. And then he wears the pure white linen garments, for it is time for him to go into the Holy of Holies, to risk death in order to secure the Lord’s forgiveness for His people.
He balances the shovel with the glowing coals on its blade in his armpit and on the crook of his elbow. He plunges both his hands into the basin of incense, bringing out two thick, sticky handfuls. He walks slowly—the body moves more slowly when it has taken no food or water—towards the Holy of Holies, the place where he will meet God. Two of his priests, with eyes averted, draw back the curtain.
He enters the room. The curtains close behind him. The only light is the dull red glow of the coals. He relaxes the grip of his shoulder muscles, placing the shovel on the raised platform where the Ark of the Covenant once stood.
Perhaps it was different when those holy items were here: not only the Ark, but also the stone tablets on which the Lord had written the laws in letters of fire, the jeweled breastplate whose stones illuminated to give messages from the Lord, a jar of the manna which fell in the wilderness, still miraculously fresh and delicious after so many centuries. We know that these things were here because our tradition is clear on the matter. It was so, but somehow the things were lost when the Babylonians invaded the country and burned the Temple and took our people into slavery more than five hundred years ago. This generation—obsessed with wealth and status—does not, perhaps, merit the miracles vouchsafed to our ancestors. So perhaps it was different then. It must be that it was different.
He drops the incense onto the shovel. The room becomes full of the scent of the burning resins and gums and spices at once, a thick choking heady multilayered aroma. He breathes through his nose. He kneels. He prays, using the words he has learned by heart, words of the psalms of David, who found favor in the eyes of the Lord. He begs the Lord for His forgiveness for His people, he gives his service faithfully and holds the love of the Lord in his heart. This is the moment for which the whole edifice was constructed: not just the holiest place but the priests and their courtyard, the men and their sacrifices, the women and their prayers, the Temple herself. And not just the Temple, but the whole holy city of Jerusalem. And not just Jerusalem but the whole of the land of Israel. For this moment here, when he will speak to God face-to-face.
And it is true that other men have died in this place, that their fellow priests have had to pull them out by the rope that is even now tied around his own ankle. But he does not know what has killed them. He prays here until the incense smoke has filled the whole chamber. And his heart yearns to the Lord, as it does when he prays to Him every day, and his mind is full of the love of the Lord. But there is no crackling light, no sounds that are also shapes and colors, no miracle and no mystery. No force pushes him to the floor, no voice rebounds in his head. He prays, and that is all.
And when the room has filled with the thickly scented smoke, he pulls back the curtain and leaves the empty chamber. And the people rejoice, for he has returned from death to life and so they know that God has forgiven their sins. And his own experience of the moments is entirely irrelevant.
Bar-Avo
THERE IS A Roman sport. It is called “one of two will die, and the crowd will decide which.”
They love this sport. It is their most glorious entertainment. They play it with slaves and captured enemies, they roar and cheer at the spectacle of it. They set up two men—perhaps one with a sword and shield, the other with a net and trident—in a round patch of burnt sand with the smell of other men’s sweat and blood still in the air. And they say: fight. And if the men say: we will not fight, they say: then we will kill you both. If you want to have a chance to live, you must fight.
And when one man is beaten and bloodied and breathing in ragged gasps on the floor, the first man raises his sword and looks to the Governor or the Prefect or the Emperor, who listens to the shouts of the crowd. Mostly, the people like to see a death, but if the crowd shout loudly enough for some beloved gladiator, the man may be spared to fight another day.
In this way, the Governor or the Prefect or the Emperor seems to have the gift of life in his hands. In this way, he appears to be rescuing one man from death. Rather than the truth. Which is that he has condemned both men to die someday, in some place if not in this, for no better reason than that the sport and the sight of it please him and the crowd. It is a good trick, to kill a man while still appearing to be the one who saves a life.
When the time comes for Bar-Avo to look into the face of the Prefect, he knows that he sees a man who, like him, has killed so many men that he can no longer remember their names or count the number or think of how each death felt as it escaped between his fingertips. Men like these recognize each other, and Bar-Avo sees the same sense in Pilate of looking back and thinking: so many and still not done yet? So many dead and still the business is not finished?
But Bar-Avo rarely looks back, if truth be told. For a man like Bar-Avo, everything is a constant present. Like a fight, where each blow must be landed or do
dged now, and now, and now. The life that he lives is like that. He is always looking into the face of the Prefect, and he is always listening to the crowd calling out, “Barabbas! Barabbas!” and he is always, always feeling the knife in his hand and advancing on the old man and attempting—he knows not exactly why—to comfort his shuddering as he brings the blade towards his throat and bleeds him in less time than it takes to draw one in-breath.
There is Giora to his left, and Ya’ir to his right, and they are roaring at the soldiers. Ya’ir is shorter, stocky, already sprouting hair across his chest although they are only fifteen. Giora is tall, athletic, nimble. He, in the center, is neither particularly strong nor particularly fast, but he is brave and clever.
“Come on!” he shouts to the soldiers, and it’s easy because he knows Giora and Ya’ir will back him up. “Come and get us if you’re not too fucking scared!”
It was like those dare games they’d played as children. Dare you to climb that tree. Dare you to walk into the dark cave alone. Dare you to dive from that rock.
“Did you leave your balls back home, Samaritan scum?”
That one’s his too. It makes Ya’ir and Giora crease up laughing.
He starts a chant: “No balls! No balls! No balls!”
“I dare you to throw a pebble at those soldiers’ shields. Just a pebble. I dare you,” he says to Ya’ir.
A boy, dared to do something, can he refuse? Would he even want to refuse? When the pebble is so shiny and smooth in his hand, and the sea of shields is so gleamingly tempting. Ya’ir stares at the pebble, feeling it with his fingertips. For a moment they think he won’t do it. Then he throws it. It bounces off the metal and pings on the ground. And nothing happens. Behind their helmets the soldiers are impassive.
A few other boys are watching them now. Standing behind them on the street. Maybe backing them up, maybe ready to run if something kicks off.
The Liars' Gospel: A Novel Page 20
