Paul

by Howard Brenton

  A beat.

  For we know only imperfectly, and we prophesy imperfectly; but once perfection comes, all imperfect things will be done away with. W . . . w . . . when I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and see things as a child does, and think like a child; but now that I have become an adult, I have finished with all childish ways.

  A beat.

  Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles, but then we shall be seeing face to face. Now, I can only know imperfectly; but then I shall know just as fully as I am myself known.

  A beat.

  As it is, these remain: faith, hope and love, the three of them; and the greatest of them is love.

  A silence.

  All are still. PAUL and BARNABAS are looking at each other.

  1ST CORINTHIAN. Amen.

  CORINTHIANS. Amen!

  BARNABAS. Sing ‘If we have died with Him’.

  They sing in a canon. See hymn at 2 Timothy 2, 11-12.

  ALL (sing).

  If we have died with Him, we shall live with Him.

  If we persevere, we shall reign with Him.

  They finish. PAUL and BARNABAS walk to each other and embrace.

  PAUL returns to the prison scene.

  Scene Nine

  Rome, AD 65. Prison. PAUL and PETER.

  PETER. Yes. Your sermon on love at Corinth. When you wrote it out in a letter to the congregations, we were all moved. I wept.

  PAUL. Well, there you have it. That truth was revealed to me, Peter. Directly, by the Holy Spirit, sent by Christ. He was with me in Corinth as He was with me on the Damascus road.

  A beat.

  PETER. I’ve lived with two things in my head.

  PAUL. What do you mean?

  PETER. Two truths, two Yeshuas, the man I knew and your Christ! It’s my fault, my fault, I went along with it.

  PAUL. Peter, what’s the matter with you?

  PETER. After you saw James in his house, when you came to stay with me . . .

  PAUL. Wonderful days.

  PETER. For me they were terrible.

  PAUL. But you told me about being with Him, the life on the road, the arguments with priests, the faith of the people . . .

  PETER. You don’t know your strength, Paul. You never stand any contradiction. The force of your faith, it was a wave, drowning me. At the end of those fourteen days, I believed in everything you believed in. How does the mind do that? Believe two things at once!

  PAUL. You’re not making sense.

  PETER. Paul, I have a terrible secret.

  PAUL. Tell it to me.

  PETER. I can’t, it’ll destroy you.

  PAUL. Let’s try to die in the full knowledge of our faith.

  PETER laughs, bitterly.

  PETER. ‘The full knowledge of our faith.’ (To himself.) What am I about to do?

  A beat.

  Very well.

  A beat.

  I was with you on the road to Damascus.

  PAUL. You mean in spirit . . .

  PETER. No, I was there! So was James. We were with Yeshua.

  PAUL stares at him.

  I argued against doing it to you but . . . I’ve never been the strongest.

  PAUL. You were with Him on the road?

  PETER. Yes. This is what happened.

  PETER stands, shedding his chains, and walks from the prison scene.

  This is the secret behind your ‘truth’.

  Scene Ten

  Off the road to Damascus, AD 36.

  Enter JAMES and PETER.

  JAMES. Yeshua!

  PETER. Yeshua!

  JAMES. Yeshua!

  PETER. Yeshua!

  YESHUA enters, stumbling then falling onto all fours, standing again.

  JAMES. There he is.

  PETER. Rabbi!

  They run toward YESHUA who collapses. JAMES cradles him, pieta-like, in his arms.

  JAMES. Did you speak to him?

  YESHUA looks at JAMES without comprehension.

  Did you speak to Saul?

  PETER. Rabbi, drink some water . . .

  YESHUA looks at PETER. He takes the water but passes out. PETER takes the water back.

  JAMES. Yeshua!

  PETER. Let Him sleep. He could always sleep, that calm about Him.

  JAMES. We must know what happened.

  PETER. We shouldn’t have made Him do this.

  JAMES. It was his idea.

  PETER. We shouldn’t have let Him! Confronting a thug like Saul of Tarsus, alone out here, desperately dangerous.

  JAMES. We are desperate.

  PETER. Saul could have killed Him.

  JAMES. He’s been killed already. He’s ‘come back from the dead’. Haven’t you, my beloved brother?

  PETER. James . . .

  JAMES is bitterly upset.

  JAMES. My Holy brother. Never did anything simply. Always the ambiguous saying, the complex parable, the meaningful gesture. Washing the feet of prostitutes. Why did he have to wash the feet of so many of them? Even when he came to be crucified, did he hang there, scream and choke to death like any other religious rebel branded a criminal? No no. He had to survive.

  PETER. He’s my master, He’s my teacher. I know He’s your brother but you shouldn’t talk about Him this way.

  JAMES. Peter . . .

  He collects himself.

  I’m glad he survived, of course I am.

  PETER. James, you know what people are beginning to believe. We must talk about it.

  JAMES. I don’t know if we dare.

  PETER. When you showed Him to all the followers, nearly five hundred of us . . . so many did believe.

  JAMES. It wasn’t intended . . .

  Hugging YESHUA.

  Oh my brilliant brother, touched by God, you didn’t want to preach this, did you?

  He scoffs.

  Resurrection.

  PETER. That wonderful day when He stood there, showing us His wounds . . . for a moment I believed it.

  JAMES. On no, not you!

  PETER. I believed He rose from the dead.

  JAMES. He survived his crucifixion!

  PETER. But they speared His side.

  JAMES. He didn’t die!

  PETER. The tomb was empty.

  JAMES. He was never in the tomb!

  PETER. The stone was moved.

  JAMES. The stone was never moved because the tomb was never closed!

  PETER. I know I know I know! But in my dreams I see it moved by an angel.

  JAMES. Stones moved by angels . . . where do these stories come from, they get everywhere, poisoning minds.

  PETER. God talks to us in stories. Stories are religion.

  JAMES. Peter, I know the truth of my brother’s so-called death and resurrection. You weren’t there but I was, standing there on the execution ground in the rain.

  PETER. I couldn’t bear . . . no, I was frightened. I hid. I was so ashamed.

  JAMES. We were all frightened and ashamed. He was a few feet away from me, hanging there, screaming, fighting for breath, screaming again.

  They look at the unconscious YESHUA. The pieta still holds.

  PETER. You should have let Him die.

  JAMES. Yes. God forgive me, perhaps I should have.

  PETER. You’ve never told me what actually happened.

  JAMES looks away.

  Of all people, I deserve to know.

  JAMES. It was the rain. The centurion was bored with the execution. He decided to finish it. He ordered the guard to spear Yeshua in the side. I despaired. But when they took him down . . . he opened his eyes. Looked up at me. Out of the mud in that terrible place.

  PETER. Maybe that was the miracle!

  JAMES. No miracle, just someone with money. Joseph of Arimathea bribed the guards to say nothing. We wrapped Yeshua up and took him to Joseph’s house. Smuggled him out of the city that night.

  PETER. Never in the tomb.

  JAMES. Never.

  PETER. People have begun to die becau
se they believe He was. Remember Stephen? He was the first. They say Saul was there, holding coats, when they stoned Him.

  JAMES. Saul the demon, gloating, sucking at the last breath of the young martyr. He’ll destroy all the followers.

  YESHUA. Saul is dead.

  A beat.

  PETER. Rabbi . . .

  YESHUA. Give me some water.

  PETER lifts the skin of water.

  JAMES. Yeshua . . .

  YESHUA. Water.

  PETER helps YESHUA drink.

  PETER. You’ve got a fever.

  YESHUA. It’s the wound.

  PETER (to JAMES). We must get Him back to the caves . . .

  JAMES (to YESHUA). What do you mean, Saul is dead?

  YESHUA. He’s reborn.

  JAMES is horrified.

  JAMES. What did you say to him?

  YESHUA. Only what he wanted to hear.

  JAMES. That you rose from the dead?

  YESHUA. All I said was that I am what he said I am.

  JAMES (to himself). Why does this lie want to live?

  YESHUA is near fainting again and distressed.

  YESHUA. James, you tell me what I am, tell me, tell me.

  PETER. We must go. I’ll carry Him.

  PETER goes to lift him but YESHUA has a rush of strength and grabs JAMES.

  YESHUA. Did God abandon me?

  JAMES. No Yeshua, he’s always been with you.

  PETER walks into . . .

  Scene Eleven

  Rome, AD 65. Prison. PAUL and PETER.

  A silence.

  PETER. You have to realise how desperate James was to stop you.

  PAUL. It wasn’t James who stopped me, it was the Lord.

  PETER. Try to understand.

  PAUL. There is nothing to understand. The risen Christ appeared to me.

  PETER. You’re blinding yourself.

  PAUL. No, I was blinded on the road, by His glory.

  PETER. You were persecuting us. That’s why He confronted you.

  PAUL. Yes, He did confront me! He asked me why I killed His followers. I couldn’t answer, with Him standing there before me in the light.

  PETER. What light?

  PAUL. The light of His glory! The light of Heaven, that surrounds His Father.

  PETER. There was no light. It was in your mind.

  A beat. For a moment PAUL hesitates.

  PAUL. In my mind.

  PETER. The whole thing, in your mind.

  PAUL. It’s true I . . . had an attack.

  PETER. You’d had a fit, that night, on the road?

  PAUL. I was at my lowest, cut in half and He made me whole.

  PETER. Paul, maybe your illness made it seem more than it was.

  PAUL. What are you saying?

  PETER. There was nothing mystical, nothing visionary about your meeting on the road.

  PAUL. No! You’re saying that Jesus was a kind of fever in my brain.

  PETER. It was a desperate measure to stop your campaign. We were scattered to foreign countries or hiding in cellars, we couldn’t preach, we could hardly meet. And now you were going out of Judea, to Damascus, where so many of us had fled.

  PAUL. Why are you trying to make the Lord appearing to me sound like some kind of political trick . . .

  PETER. Because it was! And it was Yeshua’s idea. He took it on Himself to confront you, despite never having truly recovered from His wounds.

  A beat.

  So we let Him do it.

  PAUL is watchful, guarded, trying to deal with the information rushing at him.

  PAUL. You let Him?

  PETER. Yes.

  PAUL (to himself). Is the world . . . tilting sideways? Is truth sliding toward a precipice, falling into the darkness? (To PETER.) If . . . what you say is true, He survived . . .

  PETER. Yes yes, that’s it . . .

  PAUL. Where was He hiding?

  PETER. In the desert, the Qum’ran caves, with the Essenes.

  PAUL. Those fanatics?

  PETER. Paul, Yeshua did preach the truth. You met Him, you felt His strength. Even though He was a shadow of what He was before His ordeal, you couldn’t withstand that mind. That purity. He was a great teacher, Paul, a great prophet. But He wasn’t the son of God and He wasn’t the Messiah. He was a man who suffered greatly for us, but a man.

  A silence.

  Then PAUL, slowly, to himself.

  PAUL. He told me He had risen from the dead.

  PETER. Did He? Are you sure?

  PAUL. He showed me His wounds and told me He had risen from the dead.

  PETER. Paul, think, did He say it, or did you want Him to say it?

  PAUL. He asked me why I kicked against the truth.

  PETER. Paul, you have got to listen to me . . .

  PAUL. He told me the end of the world was coming.

  PETER. But it hasn’t.

  PAUL. It will. In the twinkling of an eye. When we don’t expect it. Jesus will return like a thief in the night.

  PETER. He hasn’t, Paul.

  PAUL. This is blasphemy, Peter . . .

  PETER. Fine fine, then I blaspheme! But look, I know you’re the theologian and I’m just a peasant fisherman, but I must point out that after thirty years of day after day, even hour after hour, preaching, praying, desperately trying to believe that the world is about to end . . . nothing has happened.

  PAUL. He told me!

  PETER. Yeshua always wanted to provoke belief, not force it on His hearers. Except with divorce: to that He always gave a strong ‘no’. Probably cos of his wife.

  PAUL flinches.

  He was a man, you know. Great, but just a man. I mean, we all wanted Him to give her up. But He wouldn’t. No, He wouldn’t admit He’d made a mistake. He was committed to her and that was that. She was diseased, you know.

  PAUL, to himself, shaking his head.

  PAUL. No no no no.

  PETER. But apart from His views on divorce . . . there was always something . . . twisty in what He said. Someone in crowd, a drunk, a fanatic or whatever, would say something outrageous . . . even ‘You’re the Messiah’ . . . and Yeshua would reply, ‘Is that what I am?’ Always throw it back on the questioner. Often people would laugh.

  PAUL. ‘Is that what I am?’

  A beat.

  But I saw Him again in Jerusalem!

  PETER. Yes, we were hiding Him in James’s house. There were rows with the Essenes, they called Him ‘the man of a lie’. So we took Him at night to James’s house. It was dangerous but we were making arrangements to get Him out of Judea.

  PAUL. When do you say He died?

  PETER. Ten years ago. In Syria. He’s buried in a very secret place.

  A beat.

  PAUL. No. This is wrong. No! Peter the rock, the slippery rock. I had to warn you once before, at Antioch, remember? You refused to eat with Gentiles.

  PETER. I lost my way there . . .

  PAUL. Haven’t you again? With this wild story?

  PETER. No!

  PAUL. Peter the denier.

  PETER. No!

  PAUL. When faith goes, all kind of phantoms flare in the mind. Ignore them, keep on the thing before you: the clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified. Can’t you see it, right in front of your eyes?

  PETER. I’m trying to tell you the truth.

  A beat.

  PAUL. No. He appeared to me on the road to Damascus, He appeared to me again in Jerusalem.

  PETER is angry.

  PETER. Oh your second vision in Jerusalem. Do you know what was going on in Jerusalem? In the next room? We were working out how to never hear of you again.

  PETER walks from the prison into . . .

  Scene Twelve

  Jerusalem, AD 39. YESHUA, MARY, JAMES and

  PETER. YESHUA sits on one side. MARY is at the back.

  JAMES. When the hotheads in the congregation know he’s here, I won’t be able to control them!

  PETER. We must convince him to leave.

&n
bsp; JAMES. Convince that lunatic?

  PETER. We could tell him the truth.

  JAMES. Then he’d return to persecuting us. And what propaganda he’d have, that we’re liars, frauds . . . We brought this upon ourselves, I’m at a loss to know what to do.

  YESHUA. Let him preach to the pagans.

  They turn and look at YESHUA.

  He’ll take my teaching to the world.

  PETER. No Rabbi, it’s too risky . . .

  YESHUA. God hasn’t abandoned me. I won’t abandon my apostle.

  JAMES. He’s not your apostle!

  YESHUA. I have said he is.

  JAMES. All I am trying to do is protect your teaching!

  MARY touches YESHUA’s hand.

  MARY. Why do any more? Why do anything? Why don’t you just rest?

  He leans forward and speaks to her intimately. JAMES and PETER look away, embarrassed.

  YESHUA. I can’t, Mary, because of what they think I am.

  MARY. I hate what they think you are.

  YESHUA. Don’t blame them.

  MARY. I have no life.

  YESHUA. Nor do I.

  MARY. What will happen to us?

  YESHUA. We’ll disappear into the stories they’ll tell about us.

  MARY. Lies.

  YESHUA. Yes. But very beautiful lies. So beautiful in a way . . . they’ll be true.

  MARY stares at YESHUA then lets go and looks away.

  For a moment it seems JAMES is going to prevent YESHUA leaving the room but then he lets him pass.

  YESHUA exits.

  PETER. Is He beginning to believe what Paul says about Him?

  JAMES. I don’t know but what matters is, this could be the solution. Paul will set off to preach around the Mediterranean and we’ll never hear from him again.

  PETER. I’m not so sure.

  JAMES. Can you imagine an ugly man ranting about a crucified Jew being the Saviour of the world in Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, in Rome? They’ll laugh at him. He’ll be one more religious crank amongst hundreds. No, we’ll send him on his ‘mission’ and never hear from him again. But first, take him to your house.

  PETER. Please not. What’ll we talk about over breakfast? Sin?

  JAMES. He was impressed by you.

  PETER. What if I end up agreeing with him?

  JAMES. You have the tradition, you knew Yeshua when he was preaching. I think tradition matters to him, he yearns to be part of it. Tell him what Yeshua really said and did. Try to smooth his fanaticism. And we’ll set a condition. He can travel with our authority if he collects money for us. He won’t of course. Who’d give money to a lunatic preacher?