The Liars' Gospel: A Novel

by Naomi Alderman

  They are coming from three sides. There is little time to do anything. He and Judith knew this day might come, that is why only the baby is with them, strapped to her body. The other children are safe with his mother. Judith kisses him hard, white with determination and anxiety, and runs to the horse. She is away and clear of the reach of arrows before he joins his men for the battle.

  Someone must have given away their position, it is the only explanation. Someone sold them out for a handful of silver. As the soldiers close in, Bar-Avo looks at the faces of his men. One of them, with his guilty expression, will show himself a traitor. Not his dear friends, surely not, not Ya’ir, not Matan, not Giora? He watches them, while his men fight with the soldiers and he fights alongside the rest, even though he knows they will lose. He watches for men who seem to be hanging back in the fight—one of them knows he will not get his money if Bar-Avo is freed—and at last he thinks he spots who it is, though his heart breaks open. Ya’ir. Open-faced, strong and handsome, and the one he loved the best of all. Ya’ir is the one hanging back. Ya’ir is the one who, he remembers, took care to embrace him last night at the banquet and address him by name even though they all knew not to do so.

  His men kill four soldiers, but the soldiers kill three of his before they reach him. There are young men—about the age he was when he started to riot—throwing themselves onto the backs of the soldiers and beating their heads to keep them from him. They know to make for him, it seems, presumably to cut off the head of the beast and leave it wriggling on the floor. He fights off two with his short sword, taking one with a slice to the throat, another with a jab to the groin, but more come and more, and someone wrests the blade from his hand and pushes him back.

  As the soldiers reach him, he cries to his men, “Do not deal too harshly with Ya’ir!” and he sees the fear grow on the man’s face as he turns to run. They will kill him if they catch him. Good. And if they do not, and if he escapes, he will kill Ya’ir himself, for if the man wanted money he could always have come to Bar-Avo.

  And now they are here, three men from Samaria, bought by Rome to fetch him to their dungeons and their Prefect. They will not take him easily. There is a dagger in his boot and he stoops, seeming to let his head go down, beaten, but draws out the blade in one easy motion and slices through the back of the ankle of the man nearest to him. He falls to the ground at once, and in the gap he leaves there’s a break in the wall of men. Bar-Avo calculates and thinks: I could run now and regroup the men in the forest. But as he takes one step forward, there is a starburst at the back of his head and black spots before his eyes and then he knows nothing at all.

  The next thing is the closest he ever comes to death, although death has always walked beside him like an old friend.

  Before this he imagined he would meet death in battle, or that death would catch him when he tried to leap from one building to another and misjudged it and so fell into the waiting palm of death instead. Or that death would be a wolf on the road when he was alone and had left his knife in the camp. Or that death would be a Roman sword where he did not see one coming, the one he failed to dodge. He had never imagined capture.

  When he wakes in the cell and realizes what has happened, he tests out how it feels. His head thumps, his arms and legs ache, there is a twisting in his belly. Very well, this is what it feels like to be injured in battle and not to take any food or water. He needs a woman with warm water to bathe him and a boy with a pitcher of cold water to quench his thirst, but neither of those things is here.

  It does not feel like a disgrace, though. He had thought it might. It makes him angry and it makes him cunning. While he lives, there is a way out. He has learned that from the countless skirmishes with the Roman soldiers. The only man who can never escape is a dead man—while he lives, even surrounded by a ring of swords, he can look about him, identify what there is to use here and make good his escape.

  He sits up and sees for the first time that there is another man, weaker than him, in here. He can tell from the way the man moves that he is not a trained fighter, or trained to endure many blows. The other man coughs and shivers but otherwise is so still that Bar-Avo would not have known there was anyone else in this small stone room with dirty straw on the floor.

  “You,” says Bar-Avo, “what’s your name?”

  The man remains silent. Bar-Avo can see his dark eyes staring at him, hungrily he thinks. With great intensity. Bar-Avo is not daunted.

  “I am Bar-Avo,” he says. “I command some of the zealous forces around Jerusalem. Tell me, friend, have you fought alongside us against Rome? Or have you battled for freedom in some other way?”

  This is an obvious gambit, but in the context it is more likely to succeed than not. Men in Roman jails have often been rebels, or might like to style themselves so after the fact. At the very least, men in Roman jails have no love for Rome.

  “I am going to die,” says the man slowly.

  Ah. Yes. It takes some men this way.

  “That is certainly their intention,” says Bar-Avo, “and they surely aim to carry it out. But if you have made your peace with God there is nothing to fear from death. Do not be afraid.”

  “When I die,” says the man, “the whole of creation burns, and God Himself descends from heaven to judge the righteous and the guilty.”

  Hmm.

  “I can see you are a great teacher,” says Bar-Avo after some thought, “and that the spirit of God is in you. Tell me, do you have many followers?”

  “All of the earth are my disciples, but it must not be spoken. Do not speak of it.”

  It is very possible that this man will be of no use whatsoever. Nonetheless, he must sound him out. He has heard strange men like this before and knows their usual preoccupations.

  “The time has not yet come for you to be revealed, I understand.”

  The man nods slowly and shifts his hands. The shackles clink.

  “The world will burn,” he says apropos of nothing, “when the abomination that causes desolation is in a forbidden place, then there will be great earthquakes and famines. It is then that I will come in clouds with great power and glory. Only then will my name be known.”

  There is something about him, it is curious. Although the things that he says are nonsense and Bar-Avo has met ten times ten of his kind, nonetheless there is a conviction to his voice. Perhaps a hundred times a hundred such madmen have merely ordinary skill of rhetoric and so they are not believed and people see in them only a sad wreckage of a confused mind, but one in ten thousand are gifted with this combination: the calm manner of self-assurance, the penetrating gaze, the low commanding voice, the particular way of holding his limbs even now, even shackled. God throws such a one together from time to time: an arresting man. If he had not been thus mad, he could have been a great man.

  “I know who you are,” says Bar-Avo. “I have heard about you. You are Yehoshuah of Natzaret. You have near six hundred men with you, they say.”

  He had not heard that the man was captured. But he had heard that there was such a man: a healer, a caster-out of demons. Some of his own men had gone to seek healing for a wound that would not knit or a deaf ear.

  “There will be more,” says Yehoshuah, “there will be many more. Listen”—and Yehoshuah leans forward and Bar-Avo, despite his mind, despite his sore limbs and his aching head, cannot help leaning forward too—“listen Bar-Avo, son of no one, don’t you think that God Himself will take his revenge for what has been done in this city? You make your plans and gather your forces to you, and you hope to overturn His will, but don’t you know that He has sent the Romans to scourge us so that we’ll repent and return to Him before the end of the world comes? Bar-Avo, king of bandits, God is angry with His creation and the time has come to fold it up and put it away. You are as much a tool of His will in this as any Roman soldier.”

  Bar-Avo shivers. He has thought this himself, alone, late at night. Where is the Lord in all this? When he is fighting to rid
the country of Rome, when he wants to see the holy Temple purified of their unclean bodies, isn’t their presence a sign that God has turned His face away? And if He has turned His face from Jerusalem, it can mean only one thing.

  “Are you a prophet?”

  Yehoshuah smiles.

  “I may not tell who I am.” He pauses. “It is no accident that you and I are in this cell together.”

  Bar-Avo struggles. There are more false prophets in Jerusalem than seeds in a pomegranate, and he cannot say why this one is striking him so forcefully. Perhaps it is just that his head is sore and he knows this may be his last night on earth.

  “If you are God’s prophet, why not tell your men to join with ours? To fight with us and drive the Romans from Jerusalem and set up God’s house again?”

  Yehoshuah smiles and wipes his dirty face with his dirty, shackled hand.

  “Bar-Avo, murderer and leader of murderers, do you think God needs help to do His work?”

  Bar-Avo is stung and impatient. This is the same rhetoric he has heard a thousand times from the people who support the Temple, who preach moderation, who don’t trust in God but in their own full bellies and warm beds.

  “God has told us what He wants already. He says that no idol shall be tolerated, that we shall destroy all those who make graven images. He has given us work to do already and we are too cowardly to do it. Join with us, do the work God has commanded, turn the heathens out.”

  “We are far beyond that time now,” says Yehoshuah. “God has cast His judgment on the land.”

  Bar-Avo looks at him. His head throbs, his vision pulses with beads of light at the corners of his eyes. He knows he may die tomorrow on a cross set up by Rome.

  “Shall we not try?” he says, and his voice is cracked and he longs for water although he knows they will not bring it, for he is already dead in a sense. “Shall we not strive with all our might to do what is needed, and if God in His wisdom decides to slay us all, shall we not then die knowing that we fought as hard as we could, that we tried for freedom?”

  Yehoshuah says nothing.

  “Shall we not strive to live? That is all we know, that life is good. Shall we not fight to gain our own lives?”

  Yehoshuah says, and he smiles as he says it, “God’s will, not my will be done.”

  And Bar-Avo, who has always been a fighter and a survivor, who has crawled out of holes not quite as dark but almost as dark as this one, finds himself thinking: very well, then. If this is your choice, you make my choice easier. Because he has a notion of what might happen next, since it is getting close to Passover and Jerusalem will be full of angry men and Pilate is a damned coward.

  They come for them early in the morning. One guard places an earthenware vessel filled with dank, warm water in front of Bar-Avo. He drinks it greedily to the bottom before he even checks whether a similar jar has been given to Yehoshuah. It has, but the man drinks sparingly, and washes his face. Bar-Avo rubs at his face with the corner of his garment. He knows what is coming.

  The guards kick at them to make them stand and, despite their shackled arms and legs, hustle them along the passage towards the light. The breath of wind is a cool kiss to the forehead. The sky is bright and clear with early-morning streaks of feathered cloud. Yehoshuah does not look up at the sky, but Bar-Avo cannot keep his eyes from it until they are dragged into the house where Pilate has his office.

  They bring both the men in to see the Prefect, one after the other. Bar-Avo waits in the outer vestibule—he stands with his legs shackled and his hands now fastened behind him and his back aching and his knees aching and his shoulders aching, and he listens to the conversation taking place inside the room as best as he can hear it.

  Pilate says, “They tell me you’ve been going around calling yourself the King of the Jews.”

  Silence. The sound of birds singing in the courtyard outside and of a maid clanging pots downstairs.

  “Well, out with it. Are you the King of the Jews?”

  “Those are your words.”

  This is not a good answer, though it will make Bar-Avo’s task considerably easier. It would have been better at this stage to blame the priests, to imply that they had encouraged him to declare himself to foment rebellion against Rome. It would have been better to say that he would lay his men’s loyalty, however much that is worth, at the feet of Pilate. It would have been better even simply to deny it. “No, I am not,” would have been a better answer for a man who wanted to live.

  There is a sigh and a sound of rustling paper.

  “You understand that this is gross sedition and if you do not deny it and swear loyalty to your Emperor I will be forced to execute you?”

  Pilate sounds tired and irritated. This is useful information which Bar-Avo might be able to turn to his benefit.

  The man still says nothing when there is so much he could say that might save his life. Pilate doesn’t trust the priests any more than he trusts the people. There is always a crack to work a knife into, to twist the blade, to break open.

  “Very well. Take him away.” This to the guards. They half drag, half bully Yehoshuah out the door directly past where Bar-Avo is sitting, but the two men’s eyes do not meet. Some men give up their lives for nothing, but Bar-Avo is not likely to do so.

  They bring him in. He is standing, with his hands bound behind his back. Pilate is sitting at his ease, sipping on a cup of hot soup, for a little chill is in the air this morning. The whole thing will have to be played as carefully as a game of knives.

  “Do you think he has run mad, that man Yehoshuah?” says Bar-Avo, before Pilate has a chance to ask his first question.

  It is a bold maneuver, to speak first, but it is a calculated risk. This way he sets the tone: reasonable, thinking. But he asks a question also, deferring to Pilate. It is a risk. Pilate could have him killed here, for insolence.

  Pilate looks surprised. Looks at him full in the face. Says at last, “You were with him in the cells, weren’t you? Was he mad then, or as sane as day?”

  “He has moments of clarity and moments where he falls into insanity. I am not sure he knows what he’s done, or why. Everyone is looking for a Messiah. Every leader has followers who tell them that they are the Messiah. I think he’s started to believe them.”

  Pilate shrugs and raises one eyebrow.

  “Well,” he says, “Jerusalem won’t suffer for having one fewer of those. Now. You have brought a great deal of harm to this city and this nation. The sooner the people learn that no rebellion will stand against us, the better it will be for them. I propose to put you to death. However, if you are willing to give up your co-conspirators, I will give you an easy death by the sword. If you refuse, we will torture you and then crucify you.

  “We will, for example, slice your tongue to pieces and pierce your eyes with nails. And we will, of course, arrest some others of your followers whose faces we know anyway, so that whatever you do it will be put about that you betrayed them. Do you understand? There is no chance for glory. Either torture and ignominy, or ignominy but a quick and merciful death. I only need a handful of names and locations. Let’s start, for example, with Giora. Tell me where he is now.”

  “I do not know,” says Bar-Avo.

  Pilate sighs. “You may be surprised,” he says, “by how much you will start to tell us when the branding irons are applied to your flesh. The ears, they tell me, are surprisingly sensitive. And the bottoms of the feet. Quite brave men find themselves babbling like women after having hot coals and iron scourges applied to the bottoms of their feet.”

  It is time to take back this conversation. Pilate’s lines are too practiced now; he is in a rhythm which will be hard to break.

  “Do you think any one of us tells the others where they are to be found?” says Bar-Avo. “Prefect, you know better than that.”

  He lets it hang in the air for a second too long. The insolence of it catches Pilate short.

  Bar-Avo pushes on: “You might as well
ask that Yehoshuah where all his followers are now, all that rabble he brought with him from Galilee who fled as soon as he was captured. Every meeting place will have been changed the moment they knew I was taken alive. Every man I ever knew will have moved to another home. Every family will have been told to deny their sons. Prefect, you can beat me and scourge me for as long as pleases you, but don’t think for a moment that my bruised body will do more than excite greater hatred of you. Even if they think I am a traitor, they will still hate you more.”

  Pilate looks at him. He knows that what he says has the ring of truth to it.

  “A true leader,” says Pilate, “does not care whether he is hated, as long as he is feared.”

  “And has it stopped them rising up? You’ll never hold Jerusalem like this,” says Bar-Avo. “Every man and every woman and every child will fight you. You can’t take us by fear, only by love.”

  And he knows that this is the right thing to say, because his men have intercepted some of the letters from Syria and Rome, and he knows that this is what Pilate’s masters have been saying to him for months now. These exact words. Not by fear, but by love. Bar-Avo is not stupid. He is not ill-informed. He is the leader of many men.

  “Do you want them to remember you like this, Pilate? As a bloody tyrant? A man who made the streets run red, not one who brought the civilization and order of Rome?”

  This is a gamble too.

  “They will remember me for discipline. Rome does not bring marble and gold only, Rome brings order and obedience.” Pilate is talking to himself now, for the most part. Bar-Avo has him. The right words at the right moment and Pilate is his now.

  “If I were you,” says Bar-Avo, “I would release that man Yehoshuah and put me to the sword.”

  Pilate stares at him and nods, as if he has said something tremendously wise and interesting.