Testament

by Nino Ricci

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust when we came out into the temple square, the white of the marble and the snow making it seem as if we’d come up into the clouds. Then when my mind finally took the place in, it wasn’t what I’d expected, mainly empty space stretching away in every direction. Way off in the distance, it seemed, was the temple itself, with a little plume of smoke coming up out of it. It didn’t look as impressive as I’d expected, huddled there in the middle of all that space, and this for a god Jesus said was greater than all the rest. I felt my heart sink a bit then, and saw that I’d been hoping to believe, and that Jesus wasn’t one of those who thought his own the best simply because it was his own. But then the scale of things in that square skewed your view—there were thousands of people there, the groups like us that had come for their prayers and then the families and the rich men with their slaves and the dozens of servants who were sweeping up every flake of snow that fell and carting it off to a big mound they’d made behind the temple, but still it didn’t seem crowded there and you could move freely, the space as big as a city.

  I’d made up my mind to follow Jesus’s advice and stay close to him. But we weren’t up there long before Jerubal, looking around, started to get other ideas. At the southern end of the square was a huge barracks of a place running the whole width of the Temple Mount that looked to be some sort of market, hawkers shouting out from the steps and large crowds moving through the arcades. Jerubal said he just wanted a look inside and like a fool I agreed to go with him, thinking we’d come right back to our group. But we’d hardly gone a few strides before I looked back and Jesus was already lost in the shifting crowd.

  Inside, the place was cavernous and cold and filled with a hollow buzz from all the conversation and noise. There were aisles and aisles of pigeons being sold for sacrifice, all lined up neat and orderly in their cages, and then a place for lambs, and another for scrolls, and in each place the peddlers stood there with the same wares as their neighbours, at the same prices, but still each seemed to be making his living. Then all along the arcades were the moneychangers, since you couldn’t pay with Greek or Roman coins, on account of the images, but had to use special ones that you bought for a small commission.

  At the far end of the building people had lined up in front of tables where men in scarlet robes and pointed hats took a handful of money from them and then slowly wrote their names on a scroll. They were paying their temple tax—it seemed every year they did the same, whether they lived in Jerusalem and used the place daily or came in once a year from the other side of the Nile. There were great stacks of coins just sitting there on each of the tables, and only a couple of guards in the place, the special temple ones in red and blue who had only little clubs for weapons. I saw Jerubal’s eyes go to the stacks and thought he couldn’t help but think how to get his hands on them, and knowing there wasn’t a thing so mad that he wouldn’t try it, I grabbed him right then and dragged him through the first doorway I saw. We ended up in a dim staircase going down to I didn’t know where, but I just pulled Jerubal along by the elbow until we found ourselves on the street again.

  We had ended up at the south end of the Temple Mount, overlooking what seemed an older part of the city, the houses black from years of smoke and their stones more worn. But there were more gates here that led back up to the temple square—the Rat Gates, they were called—and Jerubal said he wouldn’t leave until he’d had a better view of the temple. It was true we hadn’t even got close to the thing—I couldn’t see what harm it would be, if we were careful to watch where we went. But when we came up into the temple square I got a sick feeling, because we were on the inside of a marble fence that ran all through the square to make a smaller square around the temple. I expected the guards to come rushing for us then. But no one seemed to pay us any mind, and I thought, We’ll just steal a quick look and be gone.

  I had a better sense now how everything on that hill, from the colonnade that ran right around it to the fence that ran inside to the courts that closed in the temple itself, was planned to make the temple a home, square inside square inside square as if each one was a room that brought you that much closer to Yahweh. With each step we took, the temple loomed up higher, looking so much larger up close than it had from a distance, a bit of sun coming through the clouds now to catch the gold all around the roof and glinting from every part. The curl of smoke I’d seen from a distance was a great billowing cloud now, rising up over the walls of the temple courtyards with a stench of burning flesh. Then while we were still craning our necks to try to get a proper view of the place, shielding our eyes from the glare of marble and gold, we were suddenly right at the courtyard gates. There were a few guards standing there in their uniforms but they didn’t give us a second look, and almost without thinking about it Jerubal and I just followed the crowd right through.

  It was a revelation to go through those gates. We passed through a courtyard and then there was the temple right in front of us, so large now it filled your head to look at it. A huge doorless gate opened into it that looked exactly colossal enough for a god, so high you practically had to lie on your back to see to the top of it, and then coming from inside was a golden glow, somehow dim and bright at the same time, that you almost had to turn away from, for the richness of it. I had a catch in my throat then—it seemed it wasn’t until that minute that I’d understood what a god was, since I looked at that doorway and thought that whatever was on the other side was larger and more strange than anything I could imagine.

  It was a moment before I took in all the activity going on in the temple’s shadow, the priests and their helpers doing their work at the base and then the hundreds of men watching them from behind a railing and the hundreds of women, who weren’t allowed past the first courtyard, craning for a view of things from balconies in the courtyard walls. Just to the side of the doorway into the temple was the altar, a large thing of marble perched over a massive firepit that was sending out a blast of heat and the smoke we’d seen, a ramp leading up to the altar so the priests could walk up and throw what they had to into the fire. Over on the other side was where the animals were being slaughtered, men lined up with their pigeons or their lambs and the priests’ minions, all in scarlet, taking one after another and slitting its throat, collecting some of the blood in pots so it could be sprinkled up against the altar and letting the rest drain off into runnels cut into the pavement. You could smell the cold tang of blood in the air and the burning offal and the smoke, and you’d have thought the place would look worse than a stable. But instead it was spotless, without even a lick of snow to be seen anywhere near, and the few flakes still falling seeming to disappear before they so much as touched the pavement.

  At a certain point I started to sense that people were looking at me and Jerubal a bit strangely. Two fellows were staring over at us and whispering to each other, and then one of them leaned in to talk to a third one, and then this one went over to speak to a temple guard who was standing nearby. Who knew how they’d spotted us—Jerubal might have been a Jew as much as anything, the way he looked, and my own beard had grown out so much since I’d left home I could easily have passed for one as well. But the guard took one look at us and he started to come over, and then one by one everyone around us stopped talking and turned to stare.

  The guard looked a little wary, not mean but just wanting to do his job. But right off he said something I couldn’t follow, which must have been in Hebrew, to test us. To my amazement Jerubal answered him right back, and for a moment they had a conversation going, the guard still looking skeptical but Jerubal just grinning his grin. I thought we might actually get through the thing when suddenly the guard turned to me, starting to talk though I didn’t understand a thing, and that was when Jerubal leaned in close and whispered just the one word, “Run.”

  Pandemonium broke out then, everyone suddenly realizing we weren’t Jews and sending up a shout that couldn’t have been worse if we had murdered their mothers
and children. They might have beaten us to our deaths then if Jerubal hadn’t had his wits about him, grabbing my arm and dragging me through the crowd back into the women’s court. The women, not knowing what to make of us, fell over themselves to get out of our path, making it harder for anyone to follow. There were only a couple of gates out of the court, and all the guards were making for them to stop us there. But they hadn’t reckoned on Jerubal—he headed up the stairs that led to the women’s balconies instead, which no one had thought to block. And again because of all the women stumbling and swooning on those narrow stairs as we went by, it was difficult for anyone to come after us.

  I was afraid we were trapped. But from the balconies Jerubal got us up to the top of the walls that closed in the temple courts, and even the walkways there had been cleared of snow, and then, as if he knew exactly where he was going, he led us along until we were right at the temple’s back, hidden from everyone’s view, with just the temple’s back wall rising up behind us, as solid and unfriendly as the cliffs on the Jericho road, and the city stretched out in front of us. I could already hear footsteps and shouts behind us on the walls, and knew in a moment we’d be caught. But Jerubal got right up on the parapet then, and he held his arms out, and he jumped.

  I might have thought this was mad, since it was far enough to the pavement to break every bone in you, except that it came to me what Jerubal was thinking—the snow. We’d seen it as we’d come in—this was where the temple workers had piled up the snow they’d carted away from the square, behind the back wall of the temple courts. I didn’t have time to think, so following Jerubal’s example I climbed up on the wall and closed my eyes and jumped as well. It seemed I was in the air a long time, and it was more pleasant than I would have imagined, as if I were floating. But then I hit the snow and went a good ways into it, and I felt the shock through every part of me.

  We could hear the crowd on the wall run past the spot we’d jumped from, simply assuming we’d continued to the other side of the temple. When we were sure they’d gone we burrowed our way out of our mound of snow and then just slipped quietly back into the crowd and out the first gate we came to. It was all I could do to keep from running then. But out in the streets of the city we might have been anyone, just going along with the traffic, and it wasn’t long before we’d passed through the city gates and were safely back at our camp amidst the olive trees.

  Jesus and his group were already back at the camp. They hadn’t got wind of what had happened with us and had just supposed we’d gone off on our own, and I was happy enough not to say a word of the thing, taking a place next to the little fire that was going and trying to get my hands to stop shaking. Jerubal already seemed his old self again but I didn’t have the stomach any more for his adventures—it didn’t seem such a joke to me, to take your life in your hands.

  Simon the Rock had returned, having left Mary and some of the others to stay in town to get ready the room we’d rented. But by mid-afternoon there was still no sign of John and Jacob with our sheep. The Rock got up a group to go look for them and I joined in with it, thinking it would be good for me to get in less with Jerubal and more with Jesus’s men. The snow had stopped by then and the weather had turned warm, all the snow on the ground slowly turning the dirt underneath into mud. It was a slog to get out to the highway, and then there was so much traffic on the road from the pilgrims coming in we had to move at a crawl.

  The crowd at the sheep market spilled well out into the road now, the place a devil’s feast of mud and jostling limbs and bad tempers. Even so, we thought our group ought to have finished long before, seeing how early they’d come. But then we saw there was a system going on—before you got to the pens you had to pass by a line of temple officials, all in their scarlet robes, who were managing the whole affair, and were letting Judeans through before the rest. We finally found John and Jacob shunted off in a corner, and it turned out they’d somehow got herded aside almost the moment they’d arrived and been left to rot there. They were fairly angry by then, waiting there in the muck since early morning with nothing to eat or drink, and there were some others in the same situation as they were, Galileans like them, who were even more angry. There was a group of them nearby, rough-looking fellows, who I could hear cursing those officials under their breaths, hating them and afraid of them and hating them more for that.

  They were at the end of their patience. Finally one of them said, “I’ve had enough,” and went over to talk to one of the officials.

  “We want our sheep,” he said, in the blunt way of a Galilean but also as if he was willing not to bear any grudge over the thing. And if the official had had any sense he would just have let him through—he must have known how long he and his friends had been waiting there. Instead he said, “Go back and wait your turn.” But those Galileans had been waiting their turn from the break of dawn, and their turn had come and gone a hundred times over since then.

  Something burst in the man then. Quick as lightning, he knocked the official to the ground. In an instant the official was screaming for help and the Romans had come in swinging their clubs, breaking the bones of anyone who got in their way. For a moment, from the commotion, I was sure there was going to be a bloodbath. But the soldiers were so quick and their clubs so well aimed that there wasn’t much chance of fighting back, and people just stood there stunned as they came through, hoping to get out with their lives. We were still a bit at the edge of things, and it was easy for us to get out of the way. But others weren’t so lucky. That Galilean, for instance—one of the soldiers cracked him so hard on the head he split it open, so that he was likely dead by the time he hit the ground.

  Somehow the sight of a man lying there in the mud with his skull cracked seemed suddenly to quiet everyone down. The soldiers, for their part, were apparently satisfied they had their man now—their captain barked out an order and in an instant, as if it was just the one mind that controlled them all, they put away their clubs and lined up on the double in rows of a dozen or so through the crowd to keep it cordoned off and in order. And it had hardly been more than fifty breaths from beginning to end before the disturbance was over and the place was calm again, and people were already carrying away anyone who’d been hurt and even the man who’d been killed had been wrapped up in a cloak by his friends and carted off.

  The Romans, though, weren’t taking any chances—they were closing the market. When they made the announcement, there was so much railing from the crowd it seemed there’d be another riot. There were thousands of people still waiting there to get their sheep, and this was the special day, according to their rules, that it had to be bought. But the Romans were quick—some reinforcements had already arrived from the fort and had lined themselves up in front of the sheep pens, so that finally the crowd started to disperse. And we had to leave along with the rest, as empty-handed as them, and John and Jacob and the Rock looked miserable at how they’d failed Jesus.

  To our surprise, though, when we got back to camp and told Jesus what had happened he said it didn’t matter about the sheep, we’d find the way to make do. What about the laws, his men said. But Jesus, getting angry, said, “What kind of a god do you think we have, if he cares more for your sheep than for somebody’s life?”

  We had just started supper when a boy came running out of the dusk, gasping for breath, and said he’d been sent to fetch Jesus. Someone was sick—it turned out it was the Rock’s cousin, who lived nearby in a village on the other side of the hill. It was dark by the time we got to it, just some fires showing here and there from people’s yards and the occasional lamp through a doorway. With the dark the cold had come back, breathing off the snow that still lay over everything and giving a smell to the air like water from a mountain spring.

  There were people standing at the roadside as we came to the house, and then two women at the door, wringing their hands.

  “You’re too late, he’s dead!” one of them cried, but half-raving, so you didn’t know whe
ther to believe her.

  Jesus went straight into the house. It was a small place and we couldn’t follow, but a moment later he said we should bring the man out to the cooking fire in the courtyard to warm him. Simon and Jacob carried him and set him down on a carpet next to the fire, which one of the women, the calmer one, shored up a bit. The two women were his sisters. The younger one, Mary, was the prettier of the two, and the more level-headed. The other was Rachel, hair pitch-black and coarse as wool, who had cried that her brother was dead. And when I saw the man in the firelight, not moving and his face grey as stone, I had to think she might be right.

  His name was Elazar. As near as we could gather, he’d been at the sheep market that afternoon when the riot broke out, and had taken a blow to the head. From what he’d told Mary the blow hadn’t even knocked him down, just made him bleed a bit, and he’d got home fine on his own. But after a while he’d started talking some kind of nonsense, so his sisters didn’t know what to make of it, and then in the middle of it he’d just sat down on the floor and passed out. They’d called some neighbours in to look at him, but when they came he’d started to shake like a devil had got hold of him, and that was when they’d sent someone down to fetch Jesus.

  When I heard all this I thought there wasn’t much hope. To look at the man he seemed stiff as a beam, and then when Jesus knelt beside him and put a palm up to his nose to check for breath, he didn’t seem pleased with the result. He lifted the fellow’s eyelids then, one and then the other, and from the way his eyes stared out at nothing, the darks of them different sizes from each other like I’d never seen, I would have said he was already dead.

  Jesus, though, didn’t balk at any of this.

  “Get a blanket on him,” he said, “and keep the fire up,” and then he took the fellow’s head in his hands and started to feel all around it, softly, as if it was a baby’s. This went on for quite a while, and we all stood there holding our breaths. And looking at Jesus intent the way he was, I had the feeling that he could save the man, that he could bring him back.