2 The Judas Kiss

by Angella Graff

  “These dreams,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “They’re a plague, Makabi. I don’t know what they mean. These things, these creatures speak to me, and none of it makes any sense.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “They’re without form, just beings surrounding me, whispering things to me. They’re frightened, hovering just beyond my reach and I can’t help them. Sometimes I wonder if they are the souls of the afflicted waiting for me to heal them.”

  I said nothing for a while, watching his face in the light of the fire. He seemed healthier, his ruddy glow starting to return, and the dark circles under his eyes had receded some. But he still looked tired, his eyes still haunted by the visions none of us could see, and I didn’t think there was anything I could say or do to help him.

  “It’s worse, you know, when I heal them,” he said softly after some silence between us had passed. “It feels like they’re pulling something out of me when I touch them, and the voices in my head become louder. Sometimes it hurts, like I can feel their pain, their afflictions. Afterwards I feel so weak, my body wants to lie on the ground for days, but there is no peace from the constant noise. They want and want, and they take, but I get nothing back. It’s driving me mad, Makabi. I don’t know how to stop it.”

  “I wish I could help shoulder your burden,” I said, and that was true. No man deserved to carry a burden like that. I wasn’t sure how much was true and how much was in his mind, but it was clear, Yeshua was suffering. He was my brother, and I loved him, and watching him suffer like that was painful.

  He said nothing else, and when the night passed into morning, he slept again. A few days later was when it happened, when the most notorious moment of Yeshua’s life in recorded history took place. The power shift.

  Yeshua was sleeping, having been up again the previous night, and Cephas was worried about his brother. Andrew had fallen ill, shivering and coughing up bits of blood. None of us knew what to do, and Yeshua wasn’t waking up from the commotion.

  Cephas, in a near panic, moved to Yeshua and took his bare arm, giving him a tug. It was strange, the way it happened, and almost indescribable in words. There was a sort of humming that rushed through the room, loud and encompassing, but the sound seemed to come from nowhere. Yeshua gave a gasp then, his back arching, and Cephas flew backwards, landing on his backside, holding his hand as though he had been burned.

  He stared up at the cave’s ceiling for some time as we all stood in shock, unable to move or speak. Yeshua continued to lay on the ground, his body arched slightly, eyes closed, and Cephas seemed almost paralyzed.

  Then, as we all stared, Cephas rose, his hand outstretched. Approaching his brother, he knelt down, put his hand on Andrew’s forehead and closed his eyes. A stillness passed over everyone, an unearthly quiet, like we’d all suddenly gone deaf, and then Andrew sat up, gasping, his skin dripping with sweat, and as Cephas fell backward, Andrew’s eyes blinked open and he looked around.

  I took us only moments to realize that Andrew had been cured. The fever was gone, he no longer coughed, and he seemed, if possible, stronger than he had been before the illness. I was frightened, to tell the truth. I’d heard of the things Yeshua could do, I’d been around him, touched his hand, and I knew he was different.

  But this, seeing it first hand, the miracle of healing, something I couldn’t explain, it frightened me. I had an inexplicable urge to run, to abandon everyone in the cave and disappear, never looking back.

  I was brought back to myself when Yehuda approached me, grasping my forearm in a tight grip. His face told me that he was just as frightened as I was, and he nodded toward the entrance of the cave. We moved away from the men who grew increasingly louder with their exclamations of wonder and surprise, and the fresh air seemed to soothe my nerves as we stepped into the sun.

  “What happened in there?” Yehuda demanded as we moved out of earshot.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “You saw what I did.”

  “I can’t take this, Makabi. I can’t sit back and watch this madness any longer. My brother has gotten something inside of him that I can’t explain and can’t understand, and it’s going to drive me mad if I stay here another day.”

  He had a point, and the fear had gripped me enough to agree with him completely. Enough was enough. We were not part of this world, of Yeshua’s path, and this only brought us closer to madness. We both agreed that it was time for us to go, and neither of us found ourselves surprised when no one, not even Yeshua, protested our departure.

  The journey back home seemed to take far less time than the journey to find Yeshua, and when we arrived back in Galilee, we were welcomed happily. I spent the entire first night awake, lying in Rachel’s arms, listening to the quiet of the evening, knowing I was safe in my home and that strange world couldn’t touch me again.

  It took us some time to get back to work, back to our routine, to forget the things we’d seen, but it happened eventually. More months passed, and though we heard rumors of Yeshua’s following, his teachings, and the increasing agitation by the Sadducee counsel, we felt safe and apart from it.

  All of us in the family worried, of course, but there was little we could do. It wasn’t until just before Pesach that everything fell apart, and by the time things got out of control, we were helpless to stop the events from unfolding.

  It was Cephas who came for us, face weary and drawn. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and his hands trembled as he lowered himself down into a chair at my home. Rachel was over with her sister, the children were away, and it was only Yaakov, Yehuda and I in the room with Cephas as he told us of what happened.

  “They rioted,” he said, pausing to gulp the wine Yehuda brought him. “We were in Bethlehem, word had gotten around that a soldier’s daughter had died and Yeshua wanted to bring her back. He’s been… out of sorts lately, like he was just before he disappeared on the mount. The dreams have robbed him of sleep, and although he shares his powers with us, his own have been growing. He brought that child back without touching her, without even nearing the home. The crowds were closing in, and someone started shouting for his arrest.

  “The crowd nearly trampled us to get to him, and we only barely made it to the safety of some caves in the hills nearby. It took days for it to die down. Some boys found us and started throwing rocks, screaming about Yeshua being a blasphemer. Andrew had been in Jerusalem and when he returned, he told us that the High Priest has threatened Pilatus. Arrest Yeshua or they’ll riot. Pilatus is on warning from Caesar, one more riot and he’ll be stripped of everything and exiled. He’s not talking sense anymore, your brother, and I’m not even sure he hears us when we’re speaking. We’re all terrified for our lives. We never thought it would end like this, Yehuda. When we followed your brother, he promised us peace. He promised the way of non-violence. Now we face arrest and execution if we can’t stop him.”

  “And what exactly do you want us to do about it?” Yehuda demanded.

  “We must bring him home.” That was the firm, present voice of Maryam who none of us realized had been standing in the door. She was much older now, but not too old to care about her boys as only a mother could. She was worried, her face devoid of her usual smile, and she folded her hands into her sleeves. “I don’t care how we do it, but we must.”

  “Everyone here will riot against his return,” I warned her, knowing that even our little village didn’t want that sort of attention from the Romans. None of us wanted to be accused of sedition. That was most certainly punishable by death, and no one was brave enough to face that sort of ending.

  “I don’t care,” she declared. “None of us tried to really help him, and we may have missed our chance. But I’m not going to let my son be murdered by those Romans because he’s slipping into a madness that we might have been able to prevent. Prepare for the journey, we’re leaving tonight.”

  “He’s heading to Jerusalem,” Cephas said, sounding relieved and terrified all at the
same time. He rose from the table, his hands trembling less from the wine, and he wiped the back of his arm across his brow. “We can head him off if we try, but we must move swiftly. I’m sure word has reached those in Jerusalem, and we must apprehend him before the Romans do. What is one mad Hebrew to Pilatus, if it can stop the rest of us from displacing him?”

  Cephas was right, and though Pilatus was not a particularly bad man, he was a stupid man, and like most of the Romans, didn’t understand the concept of sacrifice above self-preservation. It would not occur to him that Yeshua had a family who loved him and executing one silly Hebrew would not cause him to lose any sleep.

  The journey was swift, despite Maryam and Yosef’s slower pace, and though we had to stop several times, we made it to Jerusalem faster than the journey had ever taken us. The city was bustling with people, as the holiday was near, and the pilgrims began to filter in.

  It was so much like the first time I had ever set foot in the holy city, yet so different. I looked at things from older eyes, no longer with a sense of naivety and wonder. I’d lost that child-like fascination with the world around me, and now everything appeared as a threat.

  Those belonging to the High Priest were easy to spot, and were terrifying, like the monster of a child’s nightmare. The Romans, walking through the streets, their tired eyes searching for any sign of disrupt, so different from the person that I was now. I wondered what my life would have been like, had I chosen to return to my grandfather’s household in Rome. Would I have given in and joined the army? Would I be a man patrolling the streets for the one known as Yeshua, the man threatening to disrupt the peace for the Roman prefect? Could I have ever been like them, seeing death as something callous and easy?

  Those questions would never really be answered, because my life would never be like theirs. My life would never be typical or easy, and there would be nothing I viewed as carefree. Even without knowing my fate, I knew that about myself.

  We stayed with a distant family member, Yosef, Maryam, Yehuda and I. Yaakov went with Cephas to search, but they kept as quiet as possible, trying to hide their faces lest they become recognized as family or follower of Yeshua.

  Yehuda was terrified, but determined, and I could tell something in him was shifting. He’d turned away from his brother so often, but there was something different now. He didn’t speak much, but he scanned the crowd, and he spent so much time in thought that I wondered if he, too, was slipping into the madness.

  “They’re going to take him no matter what, you realize,” he said to me once the house had gone quiet and the sun began to set. “Whether or not we find him, he’s caused too much discord.”

  “We’ll do what we can, Yehuda, I swear it,” I vowed.

  Yehuda shook his head. “He has to die. There’s no other solution. There’s no escape from them, and if Yeshua isn’t punished, they’re going to come after us. After Yaakov, myself, you and your children and your wife.”

  “You’re paranoid,” I said stiffly, but fear was getting the best of me. Were Yeshua’s crimes so great that they would punish us if he didn’t turn himself in? I couldn’t let myself believe that. I just couldn’t.

  “I have a plan,” Yehuda said. “And I need you to vow with me now, Makabi, that you will go along with me, no matter what.”

  “What is the plan?” I asked with a frown. There was something in Yehuda’s voice that was making me nervous, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like it.

  “I promise I’ll tell you, but first we need to find my brother.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  He did, it seemed, and it was then I realized Yehuda had always known where his brother was. There was a bond there I could never hope to understand. Stripped of childhood bitterness that bond, and his real desire to find his brother, led us unerringly to Yeshua’s side. We stole through the streets, out of the city and up the small mount that lay just to the north west. It was a lusher place than some of the deeper desert, and the brush was difficult to navigate through. We reached a place where I couldn’t even see the stars above us, and I smelled smoke from a fire before we were able to see the flames through the brush.

  It was a gentle clearing where they all gathered, Yeshua and his followers. There were far more now, than the fishermen from Galilee and the handful of others he’d picked up along the way. Men of all ages and social standing, they gathered in clusters, some around the fire, others keeping to the shadows in hopes that if they were raided, they could make a quick get-away.

  They all looked petrified, clearly on alert, as Yehuda and I stepped through the brush. Several of them drew swords, and I wondered why men on the path to non-violence and peace needed such weapons. Things had obviously gotten out of hand, and I wasn’t sure how we were going to pull off an escape, no matter what Yehuda had in mind.

  Yeshua was there, sitting by the fire. He hadn’t moved during our approach, and only when his brother knelt beside him did he look down at his twin and smile. “I knew you would come. The one who will lead them to me with a kiss. The kiss of betrayal, and you don’t even understand it yet.”

  Yehuda frowned, looking back at me, but I had no answers for him. “Yeshua, come home now.”

  Yeshua laughed, shaking his head, his long hair whipping into his face just a little. “Oh brother, so like me yet so unlike me. You see, they’ve made a mistake, and I only had to listen to the voices in order to understand it. It was supposed to be you.” Startling all of us, Yeshua grabbed his brother’s face in his hands, holding it steady, his eyes boring into Yehuda’s without remorse. “I was on my path, and they made a mistake. Don’t you see it?”

  “No,” Yehuda said miserably. “I’ve never been able to see the things you have. We can end this, you know. If you come home.”

  Yeshua dropped his hands and laughed, his chuckle sounding weary and worn. “Oh but you know as well as I do that can’t happen. You understand the consequences better than any of these men. They see so much yet so little, and you, my angry bother, see it all. Whether you want to, or not.”

  Yehuda dropped his hands to his sides, letting his backside fall to the dirt, and he shook his head. “You’ll never make sense to me.”

  Yeshua looked over at his brother, his face darkening. He shook his head, like he was listening to a voice no one else could hear, and then he sighed. “Your name in Latin, in the Roman tongue, is Judas. Judas. How strange it sounds. The Judas Kiss, they’ll call it.”

  “Call what?”

  Yeshua smiled and looked at me. “And you. You, at least, have choice, though I already know your answer, Makabi. Markus, as you were called when we first met. The boy with the fruit, and the Roman riches. The boy who would absorb all of the knowledge in the world. How jealous I was of you, how I wanted to be like you. To be free of fear and consequence.”

  I bowed my head as his words struck me like a blow. To hear him speak of it so raw, so full of emotion, every single feeling from my past, from childhood to now, came rushing at me all at once and I nearly dropped to my knees. “What can we do?” I begged. I could feel it, the icy grip of death so nearby, waiting to take him, or all of us, if it was the will of the gods. I was terrified, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted my old life back. I had no idea what Yeshua was talking about, yet his words rang oddly true.

  “I must be alone for a while,” Yeshua said, and rose, ignoring Yehuda’s attempt to hold him still. “I won’t be far, and you’ll see me again before they take me.”

  “No one is taking you,” Yehuda said.

  Yeshua smiled sadly, but walked away without answering his brother. Yehuda sounded so determined, and I wondered again what his plan was. If it wasn’t a rescue, if Yehuda believed so strongly that Yeshua had to die, what could he possibly do?

  Hours passed, and with the night, all of the men began to drop off. Even Yehuda succumbed to his deep exhaustion and he slumped by a tree, his head falling to the side, body slowly shaking with his deep snores. I could
not sleep, the very idea eluded me, and instead I listened to the night. There were no sounds of animals, just a gentle wind through the rich, thick trees, and I could just make out the slivered shape of the moon and stars through the canopy of leaves above us.

  It was closer to dawn when I first heard it, the mournful cries off in the distance. It was human, and my instincts told me it was Yeshua. Fearing he may have been caught or attacked, I jumped up, rushing through the thick brush until I came to another small clearing. The canopy of trees was broken there, letting the full moonlight in, and I could see him slumped over an old, half-burn tree stump, sobbing.

  I rushed to his side, and when I pushed him upright, I saw his face was covered in blood. There seemed to be blood coming from every pore, and I jumped back in fear. My hands were covered, just by touching him, though as I examined them, it seemed the blood was mixed with water, like it had been coming out with his sweat.

  “What is happening to you?” I gasped, trying to keep him upright.

  “It hurts,” he said, his voice hoarse, barely above a whisper. He slipped forward, twisting out of my grip and he slumped further against the tree stump. He gave a whimper of pain and swiped the edge of his robe along his bloodied forehead. “It’s too much. I can’t hold it all in, Makabi. I can’t…”

  “Is there anyone who can help you?” I asked. I went down to my knees, leaning over him. The blood seemed to have stopped flowing and was drying at a rapid rate across his pale skin. He looked weary, broken, and scared. “Who can I find?”

  “There is no one. No one to shoulder this burden. No one to carry this, to take this cup from my lips.” He grasped at my front, twisting the cloth in his hands and he pulled me close to him. “I’m so terrified. My fate… what lies ahead. No one to save me, Makabi, and there’s going to be so much pain.”

  I closed my hand over his wrist and willed his fingers to relax. He slumped down further into the dirt, his head resting on the side of the stump and his eyes started to slip closed. “Yeshua, please, let me help you,” I begged. I didn’t understand what was happening, where the blood was coming from. Fundamentally I could not understand his fears, or what he was trying to tell me, but I ached to. “What can I do?”