Children of God

by Lars Petter Sveen

  “I’m in you,” he says. “I’ll never leave you, I hear your story. Even if it’s your own story, it’s ours, it’s the story of our land and our people.”

  “Master,” says Mary, “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Jesus takes his eyes off Peter and looks up at Mary. “Sorry,” he says. “I made a mistake, I was elsewhere.” Then he starts speaking with them again, and Peter is left sitting there with his hands in his lap, feeling a strange warmth from his fingers.

  “You’re with us, you’re with me,” he whispers.

  Andrew’s left his side and is with Anna now. She gives his brother strength, he’s sure of that; Andrew’s changed since they found each other. Peter gets up and makes his way between the others until he comes to Judas, and Judas smiles. He takes one of Peter’s hands, and Judas’s fingers are warm too. Somebody claps their hands, everybody falls silent, and Judas suddenly starts singing. He has the most beautiful voice, as high as a bird’s song, and then everybody joins in. Peter can hear his own voice, and Andrew’s, the voices swimming together in the room. Judas’s voice is so high, it’s as if it soared above the others, as if it were the only voice that could still sing songs the way they all learned to sing them.

  He doesn’t know where he is. He was standing in the middle of all of them. He was singing, holding hands, and then he was out in the night, where everything is silent and full of noises at the same time. He must have walked out of the city, beyond the city walls, as there are trees and bushes, and a faint smell of flowers.

  Peter sits down, his fingers still filled with a peculiar warmth. Once again he hears a hyena howling, he remembers the last few days, and his fingers twitch. They begin to move, crawling up his stomach, up his chest, his neck, pulling at his lips. He sits there in the dark, feeling the fingers open his mouth and crawl in. They enter his mouth, pushing their way down his throat, and he lifts them back out.

  “It’s you, Master,” says Peter, but nobody answers. “I know it’s you, Master, I’ll tell you a story.

  “There was a man who could see through everything,” Peter whispers. “He found the fish in the sea because he could see through the water where they swam. But when he pulled the fish up, he could see through them too, and he said it wasn’t right to take their lives. He began building houses, but when they were finished and other people were living in them, he could see through the houses and said it wasn’t right that people like that should live in his houses. Then he started to grow fruit and vegetables to sell at the market in Bethsaida. He sold them to everybody, and everybody bought them from him, as he could see right through them and knew what kind of food people needed. But one day, some soldiers came who’d been drinking the evening before, and they started bothering the man. He told them to go away and not to bother an honest man. Then one of the guards grabbed him and called him a thief. They punched and kicked him and trampled the food he was selling, they dragged him out of the city and threw him at the side of the road. The man went up to the mountains, where he met people who believed in a different world. He joined them in their struggle against the occupiers, and when they were cut down, one by one, he could see through them all, and he could see that they were all the same, even the enemies, there was no difference between them. So he dropped his weapon and let himself be cut down.

  “Two children found him lying in one of the valleys not far from Bethsaida. The youngest child didn’t recognize him at first, but the eldest saw that it was their father. They dragged him away and buried him not far from where he fell.”

  The fingers are warm against his neck.

  “There’s nothing they can’t kill,” says Peter.

  He hears the hyena again, and it doesn’t sound like a cry or a howl anymore, it sounds like laughter.

  They all feel heavy when they wake up in the morning. There’s a smell of rot, and the sky outside is gray. Peter gets up and wipes drool from his face. Next to him, Andrew and Mary are helping two young boys up on their feet. The boys say sorry and ask for forgiveness, but Andrew just ruffles their hair and tells them to stop it, go outside and get some fresh air. Judas has fetched some water and is washing it over the floor. Jesus is nowhere to be seen. It’s cool inside, but Peter’s sweating. He presses his fingers against his stomach. They’re cold.

  “Come on, brother,” says Andrew, putting his hand around him. “We’ve got to tidy up, it’s a sorry sight in here. You’re a bit of a sorry sight too, go and get washed.”

  After they’ve tidied up and helped each other to wash their faces and hands, they all sit down on benches or on the floor. Thomas tries to speak but is silenced. John wants somebody to go into the city with him to see what’s happening at Passover, but Peter asks them to stay. Mary agrees, nobody gets up, and so they sit there. It’s only when Peter slowly gets up to find some water to drink that Jesus appears among them. Peter has no idea where the Lord appeared from, which room or door he came from.

  “Brothers and sisters,” says Jesus, “we’re going up to the Temple.”

  Peter closes his eyes, and when he opens them, he meets Andrew’s gaze. His brother’s standing there with his arms around Anna, and he seems younger now, as if the last few days and hours hadn’t happened, as if time weren’t added to his age but subtracted from it, and it’s a very youthful Andrew standing there now, looking at his big brother. Peter turns toward Jesus.

  “Master,” he says, “we stand together, if something should happen, we’ll be there. But there are guards and soldiers, they’ll seize us immediately.”

  Jesus says, “I don’t know what will happen.” And then more quietly: “I don’t know.” And then louder: “Believe in God and believe in me.”

  “Listen to our Master,” says Thomas, but his voice is faint, and he coughs. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. Mary tells everybody to get ready, and they start to stir, hugging and kissing each other, praising the Lord.

  Peter goes over to Andrew and Anna. He puts his hands around his brother and pulls him close.

  “Andrew,” he whispers, “if we get separated, we’ll meet in Capernaum.” Peter looks at him, waiting for a sign that he’s got the message. Andrew nods, and he and Anna leave Peter and head out to the children playing outside. Peter stands there while everybody around him darts back and forth, their voices like insects in a jar. Jesus stands next to Peter and puts his hands on his shoulders.

  “I know you follow me, Simon Peter,” he says, “but this time you must follow the others if they take me.”

  Peter opens his mouth, but Jesus puts a hand over his lips.

  “I want to be there with you,” says Peter.

  “No,” says Jesus. “If anybody’s there with me, it can’t be you. Nobody should be there with me.”

  Jesus leans forward and kisses Peter on the cheek. He kisses Peter and walks away from him to Mary. He says something in her ear. Mary shakes her head and is about to speak, but Jesus puts his fingers over her mouth, leans forward to kiss her, and walks on, this time to Thomas. Then Mary looks at Peter, but Peter turns away, walks toward the doorway, goes out, and stands there just outside, beneath a gray sky that looks like a veil hanging over the world.

  “Lord,” he says, but he has no more words, so he says “Lord” again, and once again: “Lord.” Others push behind him, and everybody comes outside. They crowd around, talking softly, whispering to each other, before they suddenly fall silent and stand still as Jesus steps out from the crowd. He walks among them, seeming tired, worn out. Peter doesn’t know what, but something’s different. Jesus doesn’t stop, he walks between them, and they follow him up toward the Temple Mount and toward the Temple.

  II

  “What?” says Peter. “Say that again.” John is sitting next to him, trying to explain how he saw Thomas and Andrew push and pull them along down from the Temple Mount and out among all the other people.

  “Where are they now?” asks Peter.

  John shakes his head. “Aren’t you listening to what I’
m saying? Don’t you get it? We scattered, nobody knows where anybody is.”

  Matthew comes running into the stable, and Peter spins around, holding his knife up in front of him.

  “It’s me,” says Matthew. “Peter, it’s me.”

  “I know it’s you,” says Peter. “Where are the others?”

  “It’s Jesus, Philip, and Judas,” says Matthew, breathing heavily, with sweat running down from his hair and through his beard.

  “Philip and Judas?” says John.

  “Just the three of them?” says Peter, and Matthew nods. Peter closes his eyes and leans back against a beam. They’re hiding in a small stable, and the dry air in there makes him cough. His clothes are torn, and one of his feet hurts.

  “I’ve got to find out what’s happened to them,” says Peter, spitting and wiping his mouth. Matthew and John look at him.

  “There are soldiers everywhere,” says John. “You can’t go out there now, we’ll have to wait until darkness, we’ve got to get out of the city.”

  Peter gets up to feel his foot. He can walk, but it will be difficult to run.

  “Wait here,” he says, and John and Matthew sit there in the hay, staring at the tall, bearded man as he leaves them.

  There are people everywhere, and where there aren’t any people, there are animals and walls and openings in walls and the clatter of the soldiers’ armor and weapons. Peter tries to follow the flow of the crowd, but there are currents moving in different directions: one carries him along for a time, and then another carries him along again, and eventually he breaks free and walks toward the steps up to the Temple Mount, where he can see several soldiers gathered. Peter goes up to two soldiers sitting on the ground, with their helmets down next to them. He asks what’s happening, and the soldiers look at him without saying anything.

  “Rebels in the Temple,” one of the soldiers mutters, waving his hand at Peter. “Move along.” Peter stands there. The other soldier, who hasn’t said anything yet, starts shaking his head.

  “They all look the same to me,” he says. “We could’ve chosen anybody, whoever they say we should take.” He looks around him, but Peter’s the only one listening to him.

  “Who have you taken?” Peter asks.

  “A rebel or a Jew,” says the soldier. “Or two or more, I can’t tell the difference. A few days ago, we cut down a few of them planning to storm the Temple. We surprised them while they were trying to sneak in at night. They put up a fight, quite a lively one. We hanged some of them. If it was up to me, I’d have let them tear down the whole place on top of themselves.”

  “Shut up,” says the other soldier. “Nobody’s listening to you. Who the hell are you talking to?”

  “These things happen, you know, and what about you?” says the soldier, who just keeps on talking. “Have you got anybody to talk to?”

  Peter stands there, looking at the man sitting in front of him. The soldier is talking out loud to himself. His hands are large and coarse, his head is shaved bare, and his eyes are small and pale.

  “When are they going to be crucified?” Peter asks, unable to recognize his own voice. He needs water, where can he find water?

  The soldier coughs and laughs simultaneously. “There’s only one left to string up,” he says.

  “Shut up,” says the other soldier again, who’s now started staring at Peter.

  “They’re on their way,” the chatty one goes on. “An example for you lot during this festival of yours, what is it you call it? Passing over or something?”

  “Shut up,” says the other soldier for the third time. “I can’t stand listening to you.”

  “I don’t care,” says the soldier.

  Peter turns to go, leaving while the soldier behind him is still talking out loud to himself. He pushes his way past people, trips over a goat, gets up again, and walks into a man who’s holding a cockerel tightly in his hands and tells him to move. Peter steps to the side and tries to see how he can get back to the stable. He tries to spot somebody he knows, someone from their own group. He goes into a gateway, where the walls let off a cold odor.

  “Lord,” he says, there’s that word again, he hasn’t got any other words. He spits and kicks sand over the spittle. Two soldiers suddenly appear, calling him a pig, a slob, telling him to clean it up. Before he can say anything, they strike him in the throat and between the shoulders and shove him to the ground. They spit on him and move off. Peter gets up and brings his hand to his throat. It’s difficult to breathe, but he doesn’t dare to spit, he doesn’t dare to cough. He lowers his head and tries to move along as calmly as possible.

  John and Matthew greet him with an embrace. They sit together in the cramped stable and see the light fall outside. Peter holds his fingers up in front of him, they’re ten cold bones with flesh and blood and skin around them, and he lowers his hands to whisper a prayer, but he can’t say it like it should be said, and he tells the others that it’s time to go.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he says.

  They walk out of Jerusalem, down to the Well of En-Rogel, and sneak through the Valley of Hinnom. Peter’s foot hurts, so Matthew props him up. They walk around the city walls until they get onto the road that leads all the way up to Caesarea. They turn back in the evening, but the light has gone, and the night is getting darker and darker. There’s nobody to be seen, only the glow of torches on the city walls, and the outlines of soldiers at the entrance. Matthew mumbles something about going back, but he’s cut off by the sound of dogs, and he starts to cry. He punches himself in the face, and Peter has to help him.

  “We can’t go there,” says Peter. “The soldiers are there, the dogs are already there, it’s too late, it’s over.” Matthew tries to break free from Peter, but Peter holds on to him tightly. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he says.

  The night envelops them, and they stop to rest only when daylight comes.

  They walk all the way up through Samaria until they get to Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee.

  Some arrived before them, others arrive later, and they all stay there.

  Peter finds Andrew, who holds out his arms, and Peter embraces him.

  “You came back,” says Andrew. “It’s the water, it calls out to us.”

  Peter tries to get Andrew to tell him what he saw, what he’s heard, but Andrew just wants to hold on to him.

  “Everything’s been torn away from us, our dreams too,” Andrew whispers to him one evening.

  They all live in the same house. They tell each other stories about what happened in the Temple, how every one of them got away. Some women say they saw an angel who spoke to them as they walked through the night. One of them, with open sores, says that he has new wounds in his hands and around his ankles, and that he felt a pain in his legs. Thomas says that Jesus told him the secrets of his kingdom. Peter doesn’t listen to them.

  He only sits up and leans forward slightly when one of them starts telling of Judas’s and Philip’s death.

  “Did you see it?” he asks. One of the ones with open sores tells him that the soldiers let him go, as they didn’t want to be near him or talk to him. He found the remains of the bodies of both Judas and Philip. They’d been buried under stones that dogs had removed before they started eating their flesh. John tells them to be quiet and gathers everybody together in prayer where they’re sitting, and they pray to the Lord.

  It’s evening, the daylight is fading, and something closes up above them where they’re sitting to eat. They light oil lamps, it turns colder, but Peter stays outside, sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall, not saying anything. When Andrew and Anna put out bread and dried fish for him, he won’t eat it. His hands are pale, and the others try to get him to taste the food, to get up, to say something. But only when it’s time to go to bed for the night does Peter get up and say, “I’m going out to fish.”

  The water’s black, but it glimmers. The sky sparkles. The slight rocking and the sound of the water la
pping against the boat. As they set out from land, Andrew murmured next to him, “All we have is the water, it never changes.”

  They draw up the net, cast it back out, and draw it up again. Peter tries to move his fingers, but they’re wet and cold, he can’t feel them, so he leaves it. Every time the warmth comes back to his fingers, he draws in the net and casts it out.

  They sit there the whole night, nobody saying anything, and they don’t catch anything either.

  Day breaks, and they start to row back to shore. Peter is sitting astern. He can’t feel his fingers anymore, they’re not dirty or white, they’ve taken on another color, and when he knocks his hand against the side of the boat, a soft thud is all that can be heard. He leans out over the water, he closes and opens his eyes, but nothing happens. The others turn toward him. Andrew opens his mouth to say something, but Peter can’t hear him. He sees Andrew’s open mouth, the eyes of the others, dark and white in the pale light of the morning. He follows their eyes and looks down at his hands. His fingers shine out at him. They shine as they crawl up his stomach, across his chest, and up his neck, resting on his mouth. Peter feels an immense warmth on his lips, on his teeth, on his tongue. The fingers caress his face; a cold fire spreads across his body.

  The others in the boat speak out loud now, and their voices reach him.

  “He’s glowing,” says one of them. “He’s burning.”

  “Forgive me, Lord,” Peter whispers. “I have a story, if you want to hear it.” His fingers cut him off, covering his lips again. “No, Lord,” says Peter. “I have a story, I have several, Master, don’t you want to hear them?” He feels the tears running down his cheeks and into his beard, and there’s something cold tearing itself out of him. “We’re alone,” says Peter, but his fingers carry on, stroking him before they lock together to lie in his lap like a warm jar of embers. “No more,” Peter prays. “No more will you be with us. You are with us, we are alone, no more, you are with us.”