by Gerald Kersh
‘I have seen many things that were supposed to be frightful. In the course of a lifetime largely spent in an endeavour to allay an unappeasable curiosity, I have made it my business and my pleasure to involve myself in many matters of a more or less unseemly and shocking nature – so many of which have to do with the gods, as it happens. I have been present at the fertility-orgies of the Baalim – which are tedious. I have witnessed the forbidden “nameless” rites of Hecate – which, to the dispassionate observer, are almost comic. Paulus alone has succeeded in disgusting me …’
Chislon’s cellar, Paulus demonstrated, was a commodious one, about eighty short cubits long and twenty wide; not high, but large enough to hold at least two hundred people in addition to the wine and cheese that were stored there. The cellar was approached from the warehouse by a ponderous double door of oak that was fastened from the outside by means of a strong beam. It was exactly as Nun had described it. From the doorway, ten stone steps connected the ground level with the cellar, at the other end of which another flight of steps led to a large trap-door which was bolted from within. This opened upon a walled yard, with a gateway large enough to let wine-carts through. This gate, again, was barred at night on the inside, but Nun was to leave it unlocked.
Half an hour after midnight, a spy reported to Paulus that he had counted fifty-three men, thirty-one women and nine children, who had gone into Chislon’s warehouse. Paulus waited another eternal hour, then tapped out the signal. Nun was there. The outer doors opened silently on oiled hinges. Paulus and Afranius went in, followed by four soldiers.
The cellar doors were not completely closed. Lamps were burning down there. Paulus put his eye to the little space between the doors. Afranius did not need to stand on tiptoe to look over the little man’s head. There, in a great dimness, all the worshippers knelt in silence, while Stephanas blessed them in a cool, deep, strong, buoyant voice, in the name of Jesus, the Son of God, the Saviour. Afranius caught a glimpse of a strongly-made man with what he called ‘an elegance of manner and an easy confidence of bearing’. Then, without a sound, Paulus pulled the doors shut and, obedient to his gesture, one of the soldiers lowered the massive barrier-beam into its brackets.
There was a space of half a hand’s breadth between the bottom of the doors and the stone floor. The soldiers produced some bundles of unwashed wool, which they arranged near this aperture. Oh, Paulus had thought of everything – like an assassin, like a woman! Now, they sprinkled this wool with oil. Paulus himself took a lamp and set fire to it. A stinking, choking smoke arose, hissing. This the soldiers fanned towards the door with their cloaks. What poured into the cellar must have been as dense as the wool from which it came. Then, at a signal, one after another, the soldiers cried ‘Fire!’ – separately, at first, each in his different voice, and then together as in a mounting chorus, at the same time beating their shields with the shafts of their spears and running noisily to and fro. One bellowed: ‘Water, water!’ – two others yelled: ‘Help, help!’ – while another bawled: ‘Run for your lives! The house is burning!’ And no doubt they enjoyed themselves immensely, as soldiers will when playacting comes in the line of duty.
There was a pounding at the cellar door. Over the shrieking of the women Afranius heard a man cry, ‘The doors are barred!’ Stephanas’s voice then commanded: ‘Be calm, children. There is a door overhead’ – pointing heavenwards, I daresay, and beckoning – ‘Steadily, now, and let the women and children come first.’
Paulus plucked Afranius by the sleeve and, bounding like a hare, ran with him to the other side of the building and into the walled courtyard. It was lined with soldiers, both Jewish and Roman, and several cloaked figures grimly waiting.
‘Now, watch,’ said Paulus. The two halves of the heavy trap-door rose, creaking, and fell apart with an echoing double crash that shook the night – exactly at which moment Paulus, in his excitement, beat a fist into his palm, so that there were later witnesses to swear that he carried thunderclaps in his hands – and the Nazarenes came coughing and weeping out of the cellar into the moonlight. The last to emerge was Stephanas, half-carrying a crying woman.
So Afranius reported: ‘… Not counting Stephanas and the wine merchant Chislon and his wife, a good bag: of men, fifty-three; of women, thirty-one; of children, nine. I beg pardon – a correction – of children, nine and a half….’
For the woman whom Stephanas dragged up the steps had been near her time, and fright and the wild jostling had brought on her pains. Convulsively, she gave birth there in the walled yard. Everyone stood hesitant. The Chinese say: ‘The perfume of a rose may stop a clock.’ But the outland prostitute Selma drew a knife from her sleeve, daring anyone to come near her; tugged the half-born child out into the light of the moon, wiped its mouth and eyes with her kerchief, and cut and knotted the navel-string. Then she swung the red and dripping infant up by the heels and shook it, saying to Stephanas: ‘Bless it.’ He blessed the babe in the name of Jesus, while his hands were being tied, and it drew its first breath and began to wail; at which everyone assembled seemed to come with a start out of a kind of stunned daze, and the order was given to take the prisoners away.
It was a melancholy procession. Stephanas led it, bound like a felon; and in its wake came He, She and It, led by Little Azrael. The night-birds of Jerusalem slunk away as they heard them all coming.
I remember that at this point I wrote in the margin: ‘The fact of the matter is, that Afranius’s “disgust” is mere boredom. Life has spoiled him by presenting him with too many events ready-made. Has he lived forty-five years without learning that it is the drill, not the battle, that breaks the soldier’s heart? He is simply tired of watching a zealot on manoeuvres.’
When the prisoners were penned, Paulus sent for Blind Nun. He had been tied, as he requested, and for good measure some guard had bloodied his nose. He fell at Paulus’s feet.
‘Master,’ he asked, ‘have I done well?’
‘Yes,’ said Paulus. ‘And I have a promise to keep.’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘I promised you – let me see – the full protection of the law, steady employment in canditions favourable to your general condition…. You prefer a dimmed light, I think?’
‘Yes, thank you, master.’
‘Regular meals and housing for life, and your enemies in chains. Something away from the city of Jerusalem. Yes?’
‘Oh yes, Master.’
‘Did you, by the way, satisfy your lust for the harlot Selma?’
Nun hung his head. ‘She cast a spell,’ he muttered, ‘she bewitched. She took my money. She took me to her bed. All my soul cried out for her. But I was struck limp as a worm. All night I tried. At dawn she kicked me out. As soon as I was in the street, I was a stallion. I knocked at her door. She let me return. And behold, I was a worm again.’ Paulus let out a bark of laughter.
‘Poor Nun,’ he said, ‘but never mind. You like sea air? Travel?’
‘Yes, Master. It is my heart’s desire.’
‘I am very happy for your sake, then. You will find it dim enough for you on the low bank of a trireme, I have no doubt, and there you may travel your fill.’
‘Master?’
‘I am having you sent to the galleys, blind man.’
‘But, Master, I served you!’ cried Blind Nun, numb with horror.
‘I paid you silver for serving me. The other payment is for having served the dog Jesus. Take him away!’
Afranius said to him, coldly: ‘Far be it from me to come between your youthful high spirits and their expression in a charming joke, Paulus, but it should have occurred to you that Diomed might have use for a fellow like Nun in Tarsus.’
‘It did occur to me,’ said Paulus. ‘But Nun is exposed as an informer, and an exposed informer is worse than none at all. Ask Diomed.’
‘Diomed would have let Nun “escape” to Tarsus and go into hiding there.’
‘He sickens me, with his worms and his lusts,’ said P
aulus, dismissing the matter.
The trial of Stephanas was short and uncomplicated, for the man was evidently guilty of blasphemy a hundred times worse even than that of Jesus his master. A kindly old judge, of Hillel’s school, put it to him that the ritual of the bread and wine was a symbolic act, and understood as such. But Stephanas said: No – the bread was the body of God, and the wine was God’s blood in truth, by a holy and mysterious transubstantiation. ‘This is my body,’ Jesus had said; and Jesus was God’s only begotten son, flesh of God’s flesh, blood of God’s blood, spirit of God’s spirit walking in God’s own image. Several of the judges tore their garments for even having heard such blasphemy and afterwards did penance to avert calamity. Stephanas was sentenced to be stoned, and Paulus was appointed as Official Witness to the execution.
Impelled by his fever of inquisitiveness and followed by Afranius, he went to talk to Stephanas in his cell. The prisoner, full of solicitude for Paulus, rose courteously, offered him his stone bench, and said: ‘My poor young friend, you should take better care of yourself. You are tired out in a lost cause.’
Taken aback by such cool effrontery, as it seemed, Paulus said: ‘Lost cause? I?’
‘Yes, child. You make me think of the way certain Dacian shepherds catch wolves, in the winter time. They rub a knife with rancid fat and fasten it to a stone under the snow. The wolf smells the fat and starts to lick the knife. Licking the knife, he cuts his tongue. Tasting blood, he licks all the more hungrily. The more he bleeds, the more he drinks; the more he drinks, the harder he licks. So he dies of drinking his own blood, with a gorged belly and empty veins. You are drinking your own blood, Saul. How can a man be unhappy in the cause of righteousness? And you are so sad, poor Saul, that my heart bleeds for you.’
‘Save your bleeding for tomorrow.’
‘Yes, it is a sad thing indeed, to be stoned.’
‘I am told that it may be the most painful of all deaths,’ said Paulus.
‘Oh it is, it is! If I were to be burned, now, let us say – then there would be only one executioner. But to stone a man is to make a thousand executioners. That is the worst part of it. Even kind-hearted people throw a stone because they fear the censure of their neighbours. As for my personal discomfort, I must put up with it, and try to set a good example. Christ Jesus forgive me! I might have managed matters better. But what is done is done, and I alone am to blame. Christ’s lambs in captivity, and all those poor people tomorrow throwing stones! Alas, alas!’
‘Did you know Jesus?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘What did he look like?’
‘My son, in asking such a question, always remember this: that he who inspires love is beautiful. Looking at Jesus, then, some might see a nondescript figure of a man, almost undersized, not much taller than yourself, standing with his hands behind him, his shoulders stooped like a slave’s waiting for a beating. And another might look at Jesus and see the Son of God with a countenance of glory, hunching himself under the weight of all the wrath of heaven, with only his back between it and the world.’
‘We shall see how you take the weight of the wrath of God tomorrow, charlatan,’ said Paulus.
‘You mean, the weight of the stones? Yes, I am very sorry about that. Still, the wine is the soul of the grape, and you can’t get it without crushing the fruit. A sowing is a kind of funereal interment of seeds, if you choose to regard it in an unenlightened way. The body is nothing in itself, really. Why do you attach so much importance to it?’
‘I?’ cried Paulus.
‘Yes, son. You are taking some pleasure, I see, in mortifying your own body. I can tell by your breath – if you will excuse me – that you are fasting. And I see the marks of your nails in your palms. Which comes perilously near the idolatrous vanity of self-mutilation, so rightly prohibited by Moses —’
‘Come, Afranius!’ cried Paulus.
‘Is your name Afranius?’ asked Stephanas, as they turned to go. ‘Allow me to bless you, Afranius.’
‘If it will make you feel any better,’ said Afranius.
‘Thank you,’ said Stephanas, ‘you have a kind face.’
So Stephanas blessed him. Paulus was already on his way down the dark passage. Afranius gave the jailer a piece of silver and said: ‘See to it that the poor gentleman gets a good hot supper, anyway.’
‘Oh, that’s not necessary, sir,’ the jailer said, pouching the coin nevertheless. ‘I generally get ’em something tasty and a jug of wine to see ’em over the River, if they behave themselves. Besides, this is the first Nazarene to die for Nazarenery, or whatever they call it, so it’s a kind of special occasion…. He won’t be wanting any breakfast anyway, sir. Friend of yours, perhaps?’
‘No, just an acquaintance,’ said Afranius. ‘Why?’
The jailer whispered: ‘Because if he was, I know a Greek who sells a Powder for two gold pieces. Take it in a mouthful of wine before you go out, and you don’t feel those stones any more than so many dried beans, sir.’
Afranius hesitated. Then – he never knew why, for it was not on account of lack of money or sympathy – he said: ‘No. He won’t need that.’
Lamely enough, he wrote: ‘There is something base in drugging a man who has made himself ready to die. It is in a way like making a virgin drunk in order to take her to your bed. Do not imagine that I was restrained by any respect for law and order. Touching the matter of which, I am glad to inform you that the dancer Selma – probably by praying in the right quarter with those unequivocal lips she spoke of – has escaped; and I wish her good luck wherever she may be, for she is great of heart!’
He added: ‘Besides, I am sure the jailer was lying – a man must be a damned rascal, or he would not be a jailer. I do not believe there is any such powder. In any case, if a man chooses to face the agony and die like a gentleman, he has the right, the inalienable right … How so be it, poppy was never pricked nor wort uprooted under Saturn that could alleviate such sufferings as were Stephanas’s when they stoned him next day. Oh bloody, bloody rabble! A man, alone, may be sublime. In a crowd he becomes a component part of a slavering beast. A man apart may sometimes be a man. A thousand men together make nothing human …’
Strange words, these, from the gregarious, liberal-minded Afranius? But he was writing under stress of emotion. The inveterate bystander had been caught by a current and swept into the heart of the affair, and learned that the Voice of the People is the Voice of Chaos. For different kinds of men take the same ideas and passions, much as I, hating the stuff, partake of a dish flavoured with asafetida at a public dinner: to make myself stink as foul as my neighbour so that his breath will not make me sick.
9
I REMEMBER pausing, here, to ask myself: ‘Now exactly why is Afranius so disgusted?’ For disgust involves, in some tortuous way, private shame; there is no such thing as a purely objective disgust. True disgust can exist only in connection with guilt – it is a kind of reluctant self-castigation. It is a very personal emotion, for a disgusted man is one who smells in another something of himself that ought to have been buried. Disgust is an uncovering of a nakedness.
I read on:
A rumour that Tiberius was dead had got abroad in Jerusalem, Afranius wrote, and there were whispers – propagated by Paulus himself, he believed – that because of the Nazarenes and their ‘King’ Jesus, the wrath of the new Caesar would fall on the Jews. He was quoted as having said: ‘King Jesus, is it? Why, then, I’ll give these croaking frogs a King Stork – I’ll swallow them whole, the malcontents!’
Street-corner analysts foresaw ruinous taxation, forced labour, another Captivity. Nobody knew who this new Caesar was supposed to be, but the rumour took hold and overnight Jerusalem seethed like a cauldron. A rabbi of the tolerant school was pelted with refuse in the market-place. One group, with the tacit encouragement of some zealot nationalist rabbis, called for the blood of Gamaliel himself.
But artful, benevolent old Hagith remonstrated: ‘G
ood Jews, in God’s holy name, who has stolen away your reason? Pharisee, Scribe, Sadducee, Nazarene, Galilean, Jerusalemite – whatever you be, all are Jews to Rome, bless her! And to Rome this is nothing but another Jewish sectarian squabble. For your own sakes, keep the peace, and save your stones for Stephanas!’
And that is how the cry, ‘Save your stones for Stephen!’ originated, and it is used to this day in admonition, when acrimonious dissension breaks out among the sects. It was one of those little catch-phrases which, cried at the right moment, work wonders: all the terror and anger in Jerusalem seemed to run into one hot flood which directed itself against Stephanas. He, as Hagith must have reasoned, was doomed to die anyway; and the catharsis of his stoning would leave the populace flaccid for a while. Hence, with three words, he pacified a city, pleased Rome and the Temple alike and, at the same time, averted the mob’s blind rage from the Nazarenes and their supporters – for everyone who did not call for a general massacre of the Nazarenes was suspected of being in league with them, in Jerusalem at that time. People said: ‘We are deep enough in God’s bad books for the sins of our fathers, without incurring something extra for condoning blasphemy.’
So, Stephanas was taken out to be stoned.
Afranius, riding with the soldiers, felt that he was being carried, hip deep, through a clinging swill of humanity, a hot lentil pottage of round covered heads, bobbing and steaming before and behind him; and that if he should chance to fall, only his boiled bones would be found after the mass had bubbled and hissed away. There was a strong guard at the waste-ground which was the place of execution: one of those patches of barrenness that defy both god and man, treacherous to the feet and murderous to the back of the wayfarer; too shifty to build upon, too shallow to till and not worth watering; perfidious by night, treacherous by daylight – a spiny, spiky, flinty place in a shallow hollow.
