The Liars' Gospel: A Novel

by Naomi Alderman

  Up on the hill, although they do not know it, Ananus has looked out at the approaching storm and taken a message from it too. God is saying, in words as clear as fire, that no one will stir from their houses this night. The rain has given them a night of peace, while the thunder is His voice shouting His presence over the land. They are safe, they are well.

  “Tell your men to sleep,” he says to the Levite head of the guards. “Leave a few men to stand watch, but let the rest of them sleep tonight.”

  And Ananus takes to his own warm bed in the Temple enclosure, sends word to his wife in the city that all will be well this night, gives his prayers to God for a good night and that his soul will be returned to him in the morning when he awakes. He plugs his ears up with soft wool to drown out the noise of the storm, pulls his pillow under his head and sleeps.

  At the gates of the outer courtyard of the Temple, Bar-Avo’s men gather. They are sodden already. The driving rain which the wind sweeps in all directions has poured on them like buckets emptied over their heads and flung at their bodies. This is not the gentle rain of blessing. It is the rain of anger, of the God who knows that His terrible will is to be done this night and who is already full of rage at those who dare to carry out His plan.

  There are ten of them at this gate. There will be others elsewhere. Even with the protection of the storm, the work must be done as quickly as possible. Bar-Avo is not here yet—this is work for young men. The team at the gate is headed by Isaac, who will one day distinguish himself gloriously in battle but today is simply extremely competent, directing the men to cut through the five iron bars of the main gate.

  They bring out their saws. There is no other way. The saws shriek, metal biting metal. It could not have been done on any other night—a single howling cut would have wakened a dozen men from the deepest slumber.

  The rain drives and they are soaked through and dripping and their fingers slip. One man makes a deep cut in his own hand with the serrated saw blade, filled with flakes of rust and iron from the gate. They wrap it up and continue to work. A lone guard makes his solitary round of the ramparts at the top of the Temple wall. They press themselves into the shadows as he passes. Soon enough, one bar is free, then another, then another.

  The skinniest of them presses himself through the gap and they can work the saw two-handed, so it goes faster. The fourth bar is out when a guard dozing in the outer courtyard thinks he sees something hazily, through the rain, moving at the gate. He is a large man, fat and tall, carrying a stout belly proudly before him and a stout club by his side. As he sees the men at the gate he shouts back behind him and breaks into a heavy run.

  There is not enough space for the others to get through yet. The skinniest of the men at the gate—his name is Yochim—freezes, his shirt and cloak plastered to his skin by the rain. He is shuddering. The guard grabs him by his clothes, hurls him against the gate, shouting and calling through the storm, but the thunder crushes his words. He bellows again for the other guards, as he picks up Yochim and then roars into the boy’s ear, “Where are the others? Where are your fucking friends?”

  Yochim, dazed, blinded by the rain, deafened by the blow, lashes out with his hand, which he finds is still holding the saw, and the guard goes down, his face raked and his eye sliced in two. He is screaming and writhing as one of the other men passes Yochim a sword through the gate and, after a nod of confirmation, Yochim brings the point down through the guard’s throat.

  The body jerks and trembles and is still. Yochim sinks to his knees for a few quiet moments while the wind whips up again around them and the thunder roars and there are three quick flashes of lightning one after the other. Then he scrambles to his feet again, wipes his face, leaving a long smear of bright red blood on his wet cheek, and they begin to saw again.

  The bars pop free one after another. Isaac squeezes through the gap, scraping his arm on a protruding tongue of metal. Ariel and Joseph follow him, then the others, carrying their swords now openly in their hands. They walk towards the guards’ gatehouse. No one could see them if they looked out of that window, the rain is driving too hard and the night is too dark. They might see a shadow moving, but it could as well be a barred cloud moving across the face of the moon.

  They stand by the door of the gatehouse. Inside it is warm and dry. Isaac boldly places his ear to the door. If someone inside opened it now, they would have his head off before any of the others could stop it. But no one opens the door. Isaac listens for a moment and holds up three fingers. Three guards.

  They burst in, swords drawn, shouting with the raging voice of the storm that batters on the Temple. They slay one man before he has even been able to look around, a sword digging down into his neck from the top of his shoulder and dragged out again, leaving his head toppled at an awkward angle. The other two throw down their mugs and draw weapons to fight, but the numbers are too great.

  One of them is a boy not much older than Yochim. He fights like a demon, whirling his arms and screaming and yelling. It is Isaac, the leader of the band, who steps in and cuts him with an upward thrust as his arms are raised, coming in through the armpit and slicing into the chest. The other man, older, in his fifties with a beard of pepper and salt, fights well and honorably. He backs himself into a corner of the room when he sees the numbers, forcing them to come at him one at a time. He manages to take an arm off one of the Edomeans—Haron—before they bring him down, bubbling blood from his mouth, falling to his knees and then onto his face.

  There are more deaths. Six guards in the inner gatehouse. A dozen priests asleep in their beds—they surround them in the dormitory with raised swords and bring the blades down at the same moment so that all twelve die without waking. A man returning in the night from the privy dies with his head half in a dream he’d had of a woman—not his wife—bearing a garland of flowers. They give him a red necklace before he even knows who they are.

  When they have taken the inner courtyard, they send for their eminent leaders—the men who are too old now to fight but will wish to see the glorious victory. They slit the throats of two guards posted at the door to the High Priest’s house in the Temple when one of the men goes to take a piss and the other comes to see where he went.

  They think that the High Priest will have escaped into the Temple building. But he is waiting there in the upper chamber of his small house. Perhaps he did not think it could come to this. Or perhaps, like his father, he believes so strongly in the power of the office that he knows no harm will come to him. Who would hurt the High Priest? And perhaps he can still reason with them. Perhaps it is not too late for peace.

  It is then that Bar-Avo comes, a warm fur robe around him and four strong men by his side. They have saved this for him. He is an old man, but still commands the respect he did in the prime of his life—Av-Raham taught him how to do that. He comes wrapped in layers of warm clothes and with one of his men holding a hood above his head to keep him dry.

  As they cross the threshold of the Temple, through the gates that are now thrown open, Bar-Avo finds himself thinking again of that man who was crucified in his place by Pilate, half a lifetime ago. Of how certain he was that the world was coming to an end, and how perhaps it is coming to an end, perhaps it has always been his place to make it come to pass.

  They enter the chamber of Ananus. He has been the son most like his father, the one most fit to take Annas’s mantle as far as the business of accommodating Rome goes. He has tried to keep this worthless peace, he has apologized for Rome and made excuses for her. He has made the daily sacrifices to Rome in the holy Temple. Bar-Avo has already had his elder brother Jonathan killed. Ananus does not know Bar-Avo’s name, but he knows whom to fear.

  When he sees who is there, his body tenses. He begins to shake. His lips become pale. He tries to call out for the guards, then stops himself, saying, “No, no, they’re dead already, aren’t they? Dead, for you have killed them, haven’t you? Yes, I know you have.”

  Bar-Avo hits
him across the face. It is not a hard blow. But no one has struck the High Priest in quite some time, probably since he was a little boy. He turns very white. Does he begin to understand now the seriousness of his situation?

  “What do you want?” says Ananus.

  Bar-Avo smiles. “Just to talk, High Priest. For now, only to talk.”

  “I have nothing to say to a man like you.”

  Bar-Avo strikes him again. It is like a game between them. Bar-Avo’s composure does not alter as he hits the High Priest, or as he sits back in his chair and says, “Very well, then. I shall say a few things to you.”

  He reminds himself suddenly of another interview, where he was the one standing, and his interlocutor was sitting just so, composed, behind a desk. Is he Pilate now? Is any man with enough swords at his disposal Pilate?

  They have the usual dance.

  Bar-Avo requests information about the strongholds of the city, about the weapons in the Temple. Ananus refuses to answer.

  Bar-Avo flatters, suggesting that the High Priest has a great deal of influence with the people and that a speech from him could convince them to fight against the Romans.

  “If every man in this nation took up swords against them,” says Bar-Avo, “they could not stand against us. United, we cannot be defeated.”

  “You will kill us all like this,” says Ananus. “You and your fucking faction, you and your army of ten thousand men—don’t you know there are fifty thousand who serve the Temple? Don’t you think they’re more important than you? Them alone. Not even beginning to count all the others.”

  “Traitors,” says Bar-Avo, “collaborators. Rome would control Jerusalem for ten thousand years if they had their way. The land must be free. The people thirst for freedom!”

  “The people don’t care!” Ananus is shouting now. “They support you because you bring them bread and water and willow bark for their fevers.”

  “It’s more than you do.”

  Ananus inclines his head, a little.

  “We distribute bread also. And we give them a place to talk with the Lord. Most people…listen, ordinary people”—and Ananus has never sounded more patrician than now—“out of a thousand men, do you know what nine hundred and ninety want? A good price for their crops, a good husband for their daughter, good rain in its season and good sun in its time. They don’t care who rules. They don’t care about who controls holy Jerusalem as long as they can still go to their Temple and worship in peace. Most people want us to find a way to live peacefully with Rome.”

  “Rome who slaughtered their sons? Rome who raped their daughters?”

  “Even so. There will be more daughters and more sons, thank God. And shall they also be sacrificed to fight an unwinnable war?”

  “We shall win,” says Bar-Avo, “for God is with us.”

  Ananus shakes his head. He is so old now, though his eyes are still sharp and his mind is not clouded. Once he had been as tall and as strong as his father. The best of the brothers, people said, the best of the five of them, with those muscles in his shoulders like hard knots of old rope. But the power in his mind is not in his body now. He could not fight these men off.

  “God is with the victor,” he says, “that is all God has ever done. Listen”—he places his hand palm down on the table, as if he concealed a trick underneath it—“it is not too late to make your peace. People remember my father. The men who were his friends are my friends now. I have a great deal of influence. I could speak on your behalf. Perhaps some arrangement can even be brokered. Your forces are strongest in the east, are they not? Perhaps we can make an agreement with the Roman captains in the east to give you some control of that region—”

  Bar-Avo slams the heel of his hand onto the table.

  “We do not negotiate,” says Bar-Avo, “with the occupying force. The whole of the land is ours.”

  Ananus will not give up. No one who longs for peace can ever give up. Not even now, with the knife on the table before him.

  “There will come a better day than this,” he says, “there will come a better way. God has promised us this land. Don’t you think it’s for Him to fulfill His promises in the time and in the way He sees fit?”

  The storm whips up again and around Ananus’s little chamber the wind moans and the great gouts of rain like the blood of the lamb scattered to the four corners of the altar splatter in through the open window and the thunder crashes and the lightning cracks because God is angry with the land though Ananus does not know how he could have done differently.

  He has lived his whole life under the words of his father, the same words the whole family lived by: keep the peace, keep the Temple working, keep the sacrifices which allow us to speak to God every day. It is he who has oiled the relationship between the new governor and the Temple, who has maintained his father’s old relationships with Syria and Egypt, with informants in Rome and along the coast. Every man must choose what to dedicate his life to and he has chosen this: only peace. Not justice, because peace and justice are enemies. Not vengeance, not loyalty, not pride, not family, not friends, not—on occasion—dignity. Only ever peace, which demands the full load of a man’s life. But his life has not been enough.

  He is calling out loudly for his guards as they approach, although he knows his guards are dead, although the wind whips his words away and the thunder drowns them out.

  Bar-Avo touches the spot on the man’s forehead, between the eyes, but it does not calm him. He places a restraining hand on the forehead and their eyes meet.

  “I dedicate your death to God,” says Bar-Avo.

  “You condemn all of us to bloody war,” says Ananus.

  “Rather everlasting war,” says Bar-Avo, “rather everlasting flight and battle and flight again, than surrender now.”

  And he remembers the crowd shouting, “Barabbas! Barabbas! Barabbas!”

  There is that Roman game called “one of two will die, and the crowd will decide which.” If that game had fallen out the other way round, he would not be here now to complete this task, and that other man, Yehoshuah, would have continued his own curious work. And everything would have been different. But the world continues as it is and it is not given to us to see the contrary outcome. And Bar-Avo does not play that Roman game. It is he who decides who will live and who will die.

  Ananus begins to say, “You are wrong,” but he does not complete the sentence.

  And Bar-Avo puts the knife to Ananus’s throat and bleeds him like a lamb.

  Epilogue

  “I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city, and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs.”

  —Josephus, The Jewish War, V, 2

  THERE IS A way to break a city, if a city needs to be broken. It is not a magnificent spectacle. It is no swift victory with an easy triumph to be taken in Rome before proceeding to greater glory in other lands. The people will be so ruined that they will have little worth even as slaves. The treasures of the city may be destroyed before you can parade them in glory. Nonetheless, sometimes there is no other way.

  First, encircle the city with a great host of men—this kind of victory is expensive, also. One should attempt it only on a city, like Jerusalem, which has rebelled so flagrantly and with the spilling of such a quantity of Roman blood that no other option is available.

  The people of Jerusalem had killed the High Priest whom Rome had set over them. They had appointed their own High Priests and minted their own currency and made every appearance of becoming again a sovereign nation with her capital in Jerusalem. Titus, the son of the Emperor Vespasian, was dispatched to deal with Jerusalem, along with four legions—that is, twenty-four thousand men—and in addition double that number of auxiliaries.

  The honor of Rome must be preserved. Once Rome owns a city, that city cannot simply declare that it is free. It has to be retaken with such force that the news will echo around th
e world. Titus, the son of the Emperor, therefore, with a force of seventy-two thousand men.

  Second, see that no man can leave or come into the city. Even if the city is encircled by men, you must take care to guard the high mountain passes and the places that seem impassable. It is these people’s native land. They know its secret passageways.

  Allow no food in, no wagons delivering grain, no fresh-pressed oil from the northern olive groves. Take those wagons to feed your own soldiers with. It will be a slow process. Stocks take a long time to run down. Hunger takes a long time to build. Be sure to keep your soldiers occupied, well fed and entertained. You would not want them to think of mutiny. Remind them often of the treasure that awaits them inside the holy city.

  Then it is wise to build a high wall around the city. It will be your sentry if your lookouts are overwhelmed by attackers. Hunger makes men desperate and mad. They say that during the siege of Jerusalem women stole food from their children, men killed each other over a handful of barley. Stop up the watercourses into the city. The siege of Jerusalem lasted from March to August, the hottest months of the year. When hunger comes, it is without mercy. They say that men ate the dead. They say that a woman’s house was found by the smell of roasting flesh and they discovered that she had cooked her baby in an oven and was eating its leg daintily.

  If you are lucky, wise heads will prevail, urging surrender on the people before destruction comes. The zealots of Jerusalem had killed their wisest heads. Men attempting to desert were killed. Some flung themselves off the walls, preferring to die quickly rather than suffer the agonizing slow torture of starvation.

  Your soldiers will be bored. Allow them their head a little, to release their energies. Soldiers building the platforms which would allow them, in time, to scale the walls of Jerusalem used to enjoy showing their food to the starving prisoners of the city. They allowed the sweet scent of roasted lamb to drift across the walls, so that every person in the city looked hungrily at every other one. Titus, a wise leader, also gave his soldiers captured escapees from the city to crucify in a variety of amusing positions. This one upside down. That one as if dancing. Another two nailed together as if locked in an embrace. Such simple entertainment will occupy them usefully.