by Nick Tosches
Because of the hour, the innkeeper could offer us only the remains of yesterday’s bread and mutton, and some wine and water. I saw to it that Jesus ate his share, then I saw him to sleep. I ate my share in my room next to his, then took my cup of wine and water out to a small paved circle round a well where there was an old but sturdy wooden bench.
This place of Jews, Samaritans, and gentiles was dead and unstirring in the darkness of the moonless night. I sipped from my cup of wine and water. Large clouds, outlined in part by slivery curved shavings of pale silver, passed by overhead, covering many stars. I became aware that I too was very tired.
I heard the slow approach of another, then tried to make him out as he stood near me in the dark. I saw that he was gray-haired, some years older than I, sleeveless in the warmth of the night. I saw that he had a withered arm.
“I seek Jesus,” he said.
His voice was almost a whisper, as if the night to him was a sacred place where spoken supplication should not be made.
“Your Lord is resting,” I said. “It would be wrong to wake him. He is very much in need of this rest.”
“Perhaps tomorrow,” the man whispered, and turned away with a sad bow of his head.
“The Lord cannot restore your arm,” I heard myself tell the man.
He turned back round.
“It is not my arm with which I wish to impose on the Son of the Father.”
“What is it then?”
“My daughter. A man does her harm in secret.”
“That is a matter for the authorities.”
“He is of the authorities.”
“A Jew or a Roman?”
“He is a Jew.”
“Then act according to your God’s law. Kill him. But not openly. Not with your good arm and a good blade. His fellow vermin would be upon you. You must kill him in secret, just as he has violated your daughter in secret.”
“But your master, whom I hold to be my master, has said to us only in the light of a few heartbeats ago that not only shall we not kill, but even anger is forbidden. This is why I seek his counsel. I cannot bear the suffering of my daughter, and yet I want not to sin.”
I felt much compassion for this man, and hatred for myself and the consequences of my careless rhetoric.
“But I say unto you, That you resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
How could I have conceived such wicked and harmful words? Why, of all lies, must the lies of religion be the most antithetical to the truth of the world? Why must religion instruct men to be false, to become hypokritai, actors and pretenders, to pursue hypokrisis, dishonest play-acting, while preaching against it? I felt shame and guilt for having been party to cultivating and furthering the ruinous lies of what fools and evil men held to be holy.
I felt that I must help this man. For what small amends it might make for the wrong I had done, I felt that I must help him.
“Our master,” I said, “would tell you that he meant killing without true justification, anger without true justification.
“Come,” I said, “follow me.”
With the innkeeper’s iron key, I drew back the night-latch of the manger door. I went to our good dun Faith and fetched a phial of liquid opium from one of the money-sacks of his packsaddle.
“Do you wish with all your heart to see mercy and justice brought to your daughter, and do you make oath unto God and his Son to remain forever silent of this?”
“I do.”
“This is the blood of our Lord,” I whispered then to the whispering man. “It is the blood of justice. It is the blood of love.”
I held the phial to him, placed it in his good hand, wrapped his hand around it.
The whispering man looked into my eyes.
“When he is very drunk, pour all that is in this phial into a cup of wine and see that he drinks it fast and fully. Then to yourself say the Lord’s prayer, as he has instructed it to you. Do you recall it?”
“ ‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in—’”
“Yes. Good. And feel no remorse. Never. As you would feel about ridding yourself of a despoiling rat, so much the less should you be concerned with this act of goodness you perform for God, our Lord, and your daughter.”
“Are you a priest of the Messiah?”
“I am, under him, the one true priest of the Word and the Way.”
Grasping the phial, he looked into my eyes, peering in darkness, through darkness, from glinting darkness to glinting darkness.
“Go now,” I said. “Go now in the peace that rightfully will be yours. I will tell the Lord of you, and of your good work.”
I felt better then, about myself and my fool, artful words, the whispering man with the withered arm and unfortunate daughter.
There were still wine and water in my cup. The sun was still far from rising above the black sphere of the earth. I had damned one to the hell he deserved, saved two from the hell they did not deserve. I felt good, and I slept well.
In the first full flush of the morning light, I saw that it had rained a great deal while I slept. But the sky now was good.
I led the three donkeys to a livery-stable, and rented a two-wheeled dray with sturdy shafts, traces, crossbar, and breast-strap. With the help of the stable-man, I harnessed it to good dun Faith, loaded the heavy packsaddles and sacks into the box of the cart, covered the load with an old blanket, and roped it well.
“Tell me, Gaius,” said our Lord. “How would you feel if it were I who were going forth alone with our wealth, to return with a report of having been robbed? Or to not return.”
“You can come with me—”
“You know that I cannot. You know that I am increasingly recognized wherever we go. There are shadows from my past in Caesarea who might tie this pious fraud to the Iesua they once knew.”
“Caesarea is a great city. You know it well. You could await me at a distance. If we entered the capital individually, we would not be seen as associated with each other.”
He smiled, turned, and strolled away.
The runt Andreas appeared and asked Jesus what we were doing. The Lord told him to remove himself to the rabbi, that he might learn.
“You are my only rabbi,” said the runt.
“Then I have taught you wrong,” said Jesus sternly. “I will not have your presence at this time. Go.”
The runt retreated, sulking, glancing to me as he passed. I exhaled a low laugh, more a snort than anything else.
Narbata was little more than sixty stadia from Caesarea, and the road was level and wide, with long stretches of good paving. It was a journey of but three hours or so.
The road was well-peopled; the sun, pleasantly bright. Still, I kept my thumb hooked uneasily on the hilt of my dagger more often than not.
It was long before the sun reached its noon zenith that the capital, and the Great Sea beyond, could be seen. Both shimmered where the plain ended: the domes of the city, with reflected colors whose rays were like gold; the sea, far bluer than the blue of the sky, with dancing light and argent spumes.
I made my way to the palace.
Producing the rolled document sealed with the mark of the princeps, I introduced myself in Latin to the two guards, saying:
“I am Gaius Fulvius Falconius, equestrian of Rome, son of Marcus, grandson of Lucius. I seek the proconsular auxiliary.”
One of them left his post, returned, and bade me follow him. We came to an antechamber of the praetorium. The guard turned and left me there, looking on a solitary figure in white finery who sat at a wooden table whose highly polished surface showed not even a speck of dust, let alone any object that might allow it to be called a desk.
I bowed slightly, and just as slightly extended to him the rolled and sealed letter.
He did not reach out his hand to take it from me. He merely let his eyes linger long—and sadly, it seemed—a
t the seal. He invited me to sit opposite him. He gestured to the rolled document.
“And what is it?” he asked, in a voice that possessed tired-sounding humor and a note of the sadness that was in his eyes. “A recipe for a stew of a creature of myth that he wishes to share with us? A dictum of a new self-bestowed deific title by which he henceforth commands us to refer to him?”
As he raised his eyes to mine, I did my best to show the same wearied humor and measure of sadness that were his. I dared not place the sealed letter on the gleaming dark surface at which we sat. I lowered it to my lap.
He had spoken to me in Latin rather than Greek, and so I spoke to him in kind. It felt good to speak again in Latin, one displaced Roman to another.
“It is a letter of introduction and little more,” I said, as if discounting it. “The princeps gave it to me in a moment of…”
I purposely did not finish my sentence, in a subtle show of wishing to avoid any disrespectful sentiment to him who still reigned, if in title alone.
“Madness?” said the adjutant, providing the word I had with purpose omitted.
“Yes. Strong lunar influence, you might say.” At this he laughed aloud and smiled on me.
“And how is it that you know our…?” And it was he who now did not finish his sentence, but, as I remained silent, it was also he who did in the end finish it, with the word “princeps,” uttered flatly and without spirit, except perhaps for the merest wisp of chagrin.
“I was, in better days, his advisor and speech-writer.” I paused. “For some years, a member of his court.”
“Before the increase of the… lunar influence, I assume. Before the reclusion to Capreae. Before the usurpation of the throne by Sejanus.”
“Yes. As I say: in better days.”
The adjutant audibly expelled a sigh from his long-haired nostrils.
“The last I saw of him, he gave me orders hence,” I said. I raised from my lap for a moment the rolled letter of assignment bearing the seal of Tiberius.
“We have no use of a speech-writer here,” he said. “The procurator gives but one speech a year, in Jerusalem, during Pesach, to express Rome’s amity toward the Jews. And it is always the same speech, year after year, and there is no need for a new one.”
“It has been my impression that he wished me to serve as a clerk, not as a flourisher of oratory.”
“That is even more absurd,” he said. “Financial matters are our only concern here. We collect taxes. We allocate revenues for public works. We administer sums. We assess. We levy. We impose duties and excises. We calculate tariffs. We pay salaries. We add. We subtract. We multiply.”
There was further audible breath from his nostrils. He gazed away, his fingers steepled.
“Our government of Judea is one of arithmetic. We count. We tally. We record. We report. We transfer income to Rome. There are more Roman clerks and tax-collectors here than there are Roman soldiers. That is a fact. This bureaucracy cannot bear the weight of another clerical reed-pen.”
“I had taken as much for granted,” I said. “This is why I have not until now intruded on you. It is not the matter of a position, or of any document given me by Tiberius, that is the cause of this imposition.”
His eyes seemed occupied with searching the dark polished surface for a possible mote of dust, or worse, a thread or smudge brought to it by me.
“So what is it, then?” he asked, his eyes still fully absorbed in their inspection of the immaculate gloss.
I told him that I had come to Judea with considerable funds, and that while here I had engaged in enterprises and endeavors that had proven to be quite profitable.
“What sort of enterprises and endeavors?” he asked.
“The representation of litigants in the Senate was what brought me to the attention of the royal court in Rome. I have here acted as a consultant to the scribal representatives in cases brought before the Jewish courts.”
At this, he raised his eyes and looked to me. “They allowed your involvement?”
“Not within the courts. I advised the legal representatives privately.”
“But their laws are strange, and surely as ill-understood by you as by me.”
“Yes, this is quite true. But oratory and logic and the power of persuasion are universal forces. Inventive premises and disjunctive or horned syllogisms produce dilemmas and verdicts alike. You might say that I was a shaper of soft, wet judicial clay on the spinning potter’s-lathe of innocence and guilt.
“In words to that effect, anyway, was I described by one of the consuls who brought me long ago to the attention of the palace on the Palatine.”
He stared at me for several moments, during which a smile slowly came over his face. Then he said:
“To hear you is to understand why.” He paused. “But you encountered no problems with the Jews?”
“No. As I said, I never entered their places of judgment. And I never acted in consultancy to proceedings in Jerusalem. The high council there advised me against it, and I deferred to their wishes. I did not much venture at all into the southern region.”
“This is good to hear. Beyond the endless arithmetic and registering and ledgering of our clerical duties, our making of buildings and roads and aqueducts, our primary duty is to keep Judea placated and well-disposed toward Rome. The fine line between ruling and riling is to be kept in mind at all times. Discontent and revolution are the bane of empire.”
Then, with little pause—just enough to let a brief smile appear and disappear—and as if continuing in the same course, he said:
“And so, you are in need of an argentarius.”
“Precisely. I need to deposit my money here for collection in Rome. I plan to soon return there, to my home and family.”
“I wish I could say the same,” he said, and there was yet another sighing through those nostrils of his. Then his voice was again one of business:
“Here,” said the adjutant, “where such transactors are overseen by the provincial prefecture—that is, by us—rather than by the urban prefect of Rome, the proper term is mensarius, or often simply negotiator.”
The prefect of the city of Rome, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, was Sejanus.
“You cannot use our nummularius, who serves as assayer and officer of our mint here,” said the adjutant. “He is ours alone. I can, however, recommend his brother, who is the associate here of one of the leading argentarii in Rome. And I can vouch for him.”
“This is indeed very kind of you.”
“Yes, it is,” he reflected.
A tall gaunt man entered, as if, lost and wandering through the halls of the praetorium, he had found himself at this antechamber and decided to seek directions from those whose voices he heard. He had a certain benign but distinguished air about him. I soon realized that this dignified air was the result of his being bald and not trying to cover up his baldness with a wig, as was becoming the common practice among bald Roman men who felt their condition to be premature—that is to say, most of them. These wigs were as noticeable as they were ridiculous. I swore that I should never glue a wig to my pate should I go bald, and I never have done so. I write to you now completely bald but for three obstinate white hairs that seem intent on going with me to the grave. I am proud to have you know this of me.
The adjutant looked on the tall gaunt bald man with what seemed a familiar indulgence.
The tall gaunt man said to the adjutant: “Where are the most recent ledgers for Syria?”
The adjutant waved to a shelf among many shelves set into a wall across the room.
The tall gaunt bald man walked, apparently without purpose, to the shelf. He then ordered the more aloof man to have the ledger brought somewhere to be examined by a certain calculator.
“Bring me a piece of papyrus, a pen, the ink, and my writing-board from the corbel beneath that shelf,” instructed the adjutant, and the gaunt man did so.
“You have this beautiful desk here, and yet you use
this schoolboy’s writing-board,” said the gaunt man, shaking his head. “Never will I understand you and your desk.”
The adjutant glanced at him reprovingly. When he finished writing, he waved the papyrus in the air, allowing the ink to dry, and then he passed it to me. He told me the name of the financial agent, and where to find him.
“Just give him that note of introduction, and all will go well for you.”
The tall gaunt man looked on me with curiosity.
With a turn of his hand toward me, the adjutant said to him:
“One Gaius of Rome, a fellow equestrian, formerly of the court of Tiberius.”
“Very formerly, I hope,” said the man.
“Yes, as I have told—”
“Now,” interrupted the adjutant, to whom I was about to refer, “perhaps you two equestrians have matters to discuss. Horses, or horse-shit, or whatever indeed it is that distinguished equestrians such as yourselves do discuss when one of them comes upon another. It is time for my midday rest.”
“You do nothing,” said the other man, “and yet you require respite from it. Two hours of nothing, followed by an hour’s sleep; and on and on.”
The adjutant waved him away, stood, and, with the words “An honor and a pleasure,” left the room.
The other man, the tall gaunt man, smiled to me, then spoke. On hearing his words, I experienced one of those sudden lurching stillnesses in the chest that cause sleeping men to jolt awake with a gasp, and strollers in public to be overcome with sudden faintness.
“I am Pontius Paulus Pilatus,” he said, “equestrian of Rome, son of Septimus, grandson of Servius, of the Pontii of the Abruzzi. As you can see, I am the much feared and respected procurator of this province. I will call you Gaius, and you will address me as your god.”
Then he smiled to me affably, to coax from me a smile. I told him that the mother of my father was a woman of the Abruzzi.
“Do you know the region?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you know how much I miss the grain, the olive oil, the forests, the mountains, the fields.”
