Judas (7 page)
After my mother declared me dead, I left the House of Darcas and made the streets my home. The sale of Darcas’ copperware enabled me to expand my money changing enterprise. Within a year Amelabib was gone. He fell behind in his bribes and the gangs wrecked his stall and ruined him. Later, I switched from money changing to money lending, a less risky occupation. It did require some bribes, but what does not? And I required help to collect debts. Fortunately, the empire produces many slow men suited for that work and who ask little in return by way of wages. I practiced that trade, and one or two others I prefer not to recall, in several cities.
The empire exists through the delegation of decreasing power through its rigid class system. Senators, patricians, equestrians, on down to the meanest farmer are accorded respect by virtue of the wealth and position they have, acquire, or inherit. At the very bottom are the slaves, who have no rights of any kind, including the right to life. Slightly above them are people like me, the
humilores,
and so on, up the ladder. I came from the brothels and streets of Corinth. To climb from the ranks of the
humiliores
to
honestiores
—peons to honorable men, I needed to advance my education. So, I invested a modest portion of my earnings in Patros, a Greek scholar made superfluous by Rome’s cultural pillage. I hired him to give me some polish. Brilliant when sober, which was not often, he instructed me in the finer points of life and culture so that I passed as a man of substance and breeding, that is, if you did not look too closely.
I would have stayed in Cenchrea except for the family of Leonides. From Patros, I learned about the goddess, Nemesis, who sees to the business of retribution. Leonides’ family wished revenge, blood for blood. Nemesis never stops, never gives up. I would be pursued by these men for the rest of my life. I tried changing my name. I shaved my head, dyed my hair, everything I could think of, yet these merciless men kept finding me, driving me from one city to another. In my darker hours, I sometimes wished they would find me and put an end to it.
***
I traveled to Sepphoris armed with letters of credit, gold and silver coins safely sewn in my cloak and tunic, and determined to unravel my history. It seemed strange, walking into the land my mother once called home. In the years since she left, Sepphoris had been rebuilt. A few noticeably charred walls remained here and there, and the buildings lacked the style they once had, if I believed my mother’s description, but the city lived on and the people prospered. Galilee has a way of healing its own. If things had been different, if Grandfather had not responded to an ancient yearning to be free, Sepphoris would have been my home. Now, I came as a stranger. No one had ever heard of Judas Iscariot, the grandson of Judas of the Galilee. And my mother was, at best, only a dim memory.
***
“You must talk to Nahum the Surveyor, he will know,” the old woman said and pointed south and east.
“Where will I find him?”
She scowled and pointed again, back toward Nazareth. “He is working out there.”
I looked down the road I’d just traveled on my way to the city. I saw nothing.
“There,” she said again and shook her head, “on the hills.”
Finally, shifting my gaze from the road, I saw three or four men on the parched hillside a mile or so away.
“Those men?”
“They are laying out the course for the aqueduct. It will be a good thing, the aqueduct,” she said, “water.” She peered at me with rheumy eyes. “Water,” she repeated.
I thanked her and walked toward the workers. They were handling a series of poles. One man, Nahum, I guessed, seemed to be in charge.
As I drew nearer, I saw him sighting along a straight bar loosely fastened to one of the poles. It had another thin bar attached to it at right angles and that one pointed to the ground. He waved his arm up and then down and then held his hand out flat. A second man, two hundred paces away, stood next to a second pole set firmly in the hard clay. As the first gesticulated, the second slid a crosspiece up and down the pole. With the last signal, he placed a mark on the pole where the crosspiece had come to rest. I looked back and saw there were a series of those poles stretching across the hillsides, back toward Amatai, and each had a similar mark on it.
“Nahum?” I said. The man looked up from the bar.
“I am Nahum.”
“They told me you would be the one to talk to.”
“Yes? Talk about what?”
“The uprising here—eighteen years ago.”
“I do not know any more than anyone else about that,” he said and turned back to his work.
I pointed back toward the city. “They said, ‘talk to Nahum, he will know.’”
He mopped his brow with the back of his hand and inspected me, one eyebrow cocked, whether being careful or suspicious, I could not tell. “And you are…?”
“Judas. I am named for my grandfather. Perhaps you knew him.”
“Roman legionnaires crucified the Judas I knew—over there.” He pointed toward the road I had just traveled. “Are we speaking of that Judas?”
“He died over there?”
He nodded.
“I would like you to tell me about that, if it is not too much trouble.”
Sweat trickled down my back under my tunic. He squinted at the sun and at his men, then at me.
“It is nearly the sixth hour. We will stop then and eat a little something and rest in the shade of those olive trees. Wait for me there. I won’t be long.”
I thanked him and walked to the grove of trees. I sat with my back against the rough bark of an old olive tree and wondered if it had once been my grandfather’s. The shade provided a welcome relief from the heat and the sun.
***
Nahum limped toward me and collapsed in the shade. He unfolded a cloth containing his meager meal. He offered to share but I declined. He had barely enough for one.
“So, you are the grandson of Judas of the Galilee? Except for young Menahem, I did not know his sons had sons and surely none that could be as old as you.” His eyebrows framed an unasked question.
“I am the son of his daughter, Miriam,” I said. I stared at the dusty road in the valley where Nahum said my grandfather had been crucified.
“Miriam? But she is dead.”
“Perhaps now, not then. Soldiers carried her off. I am the result.”
“Ah…yes. Well…” He waited for more. I said nothing. What purpose would be served by telling him that Judas’ daughter worked as a prostitute? He stared at my red hair and then nodded. “Yes, I see.”
“I would like to know what happened here.”
Nahum leaned back against the tree and gazed at the sky. Finally, his mind made up, he turned to me. “It is a long story and a brutal one. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
I nodded.
We sat in silence for a long time, he staring backward into time, and I forward, toward what I must do. He’d told me the whole of it, my grandfather’s brave and foolish idea to free the country and the horror that followed. I realized, too late, I had greatly underestimated my mother’s strength. No wonder she seemed so short with Dinah.
“You say you were part of the uprising. How can that be if the men were crucified?”
He showed me his wrists and the ragged scars where the nails had been driven through and his deformed ankles. I recalled his limp.
“It takes time to die on the cross. Our Roman conquerors were called away the next day. Not all died. Usually they will break the legs of those still living. Then death comes quickly. But they were in a hurry, so they ordered our people not to bring us down, to let us die. Who would follow such an order? It was Friday and Shabbat would begin. The dead must be in the ground, so we were taken down. I was one of the lucky ones.”
What could I say? I closed my eyes and tried to see it, to take it in.
After a while he asked, “Are there others…brothers, sisters?” I hesitated, my gaze shifted westward, toward the sea, toward Corinth.
“No, none.”
“Well, you have uncles in the area but—”
“But they would not welcome me under the circumstances.”
“Unfortunately…it is our way.”
“Yes.”
“It would be best if you kept what you have told me to yourself, Judas. These are difficult times and some of the people here have not forgiven your grandfather, and with the circumstances of your birth…”
“I did not come here to find family. I do not want anything from them. If they had any interest in my mother or me, they would have saved us, they could have helped.”
“Your uncles were only boys…children.”
“And my mother’s uncles?”
He dropped his gaze. “Why did you come here?”
“To find out what happened, and to measure the people’s will. I am the grandson of Judas of the Galilee. I intend to pick up where he left off.”
He looked at me, sadness etched his face. Finally he pointed to the hillside just to the south of where we were seated.
“This water system will connect springs and wells in these hills to provide good water for Sepphoris. The first well in the system once belonged to your grandfather. People here think it is the least he can do to atone for what he did nearly twenty years ago. Do you understand?”
“You are telling me that these people will not fight for me. Will they fight for anyone?”
“We live in expectation of a messiah.”
“Messiah?”
“You do not know your scriptures? Surely you know about the messiah.”
“You forget. No one ever invited me to share them.”
“Yes, that is so. Some believe a new David will come and set us free. Some believe he is near.”
“How near?”
He closed his eyes. Then, a decision made, he rose to his feet.
“I must finish this line today. I would be honored if the grandson of Judas of the Galilee would stay with me while he visits the land.”
***
The Galilee is the provisioner of all of Israel. The soil is dark and fertile. From it comes such abundance that those who work it can support their families and, in a good year, have sufficient surpluses to attain a small measure of wealth. Anything that can be grown will be found ripening on one of the terraced plots in the hills around the sea. Grapes, olives, pomegranates, figs, and dates of every size and variety hang heavy on branches. Flowering fruit trees bring the bees and their golden combs. Land that is not cultivated supports flocks of fat sheep and goats. Wines, oils, and dried fruit are shipped everywhere from this valley, through the port of Caesarea or on the backs of dusty camels and donkeys in caravans that crisscross the land.
In the center of this rich land lies the Sea of Tiberias—the Sea of Galilee, its greatest source of income. Fish is a staple food for the surrounding countryside and, more than that, one third of all the salt fish consumed by the legions of Rome comes from Galilee. This prosperous corner of the world is, indeed, “the land of milk and honey” promised to our ancestors. Perhaps it is this abundance that creates a yearning to be free, perhaps not. But more than its fish, fruit, oil, or flocks, the export, for which the Galilee is most famous, is rebellion.
Rebellion, I have discovered, does not always arise from political oppression or crushing poverty. It is just as likely to rise up in the hearts of prosperous and comfortable men who yearn to be free. The whole of our history is about such men, not conquest or overriding righteousness, but the endless pursuit of the Covenant, to live in the land God willed to us. In the Galilee the ideal burns like holy fire. Sometimes it seems no more than a flicker, sometimes a conflagration, but always there.
The only thing needed to kindle it anew? The long expected messiah, the new David. I wondered if I sought him, might I find him.
And where?
I lingered with Nahum. He told me he followed the practices of the Essenes. I did not know what that meant and his explanation did not help. If you have no knowledge of the books of Moses and God’s prophets, variations in interpreting them mean little or nothing, not that ignorance has ever stopped anyone from trying. He began my education in the holy books my mother quoted but did not understand. If I proposed to ignite a fire, I needed to learn and learn all this, and quickly.
After weeks of searching, it became obvious to me the men I sought were not in the hills around Sepphoris, but east and south in the prosperous towns rimming the Sea. Nothing remained in my mother’s hometown but bad memories. Nahum urged me to stay. “You have much to learn, Judas. Stay a while. This is your land and when you know it as I do, you will come to love it.”
“Yes, I am sure you are right. But I must go. I thank you for your hospitality and your confidence. I wish you to have this.” I handed him a letter of credit, a small one, but for him it must have seemed like a fortune. He inspected it carefully. His jaw dropped.
“It is too much. I cannot accept so much for so little. Even an innkeeper would not expect this.”
“Take it for the future. Someday if I need you, you will have the means to respond.”
I headed to Tiberias and, I hoped, one step nearer to my goal, one farther away from my nemesis.
***
I moved about the country for another month. Tiberias reminded me of Caesarea, a place for the wealthy and their hangers-on to be seen. Herod Antipas made it his capital and imported people to live there. More pagan than Jewish, he filled its streets and houses by offering freedom to slaves in exchange for their pledge to stay.
I made discreet inquiries, but no one would admit to knowing anybody. I spread some money around and learned I should seek out a certain Jesus Barabbas. But more money could not induce anyone to admit knowing him.
Then one afternoon a voice whispered in my ear, a voice from the shadows, “Go east toward Bethsaida and look for a man.”
“What sort of man?”
“You will know him when you see him.”
Not a very promising reply, but I had no alternative. I looked again but the shadows had no substance.
***
I picked my way carefully among the smooth, black stones that line the sea shore. As I did so, I saw a lone fisherman hauling in his nets. At first, I guessed his awkwardness at the task resulted from his having to work alone. If I had been told the truth about how families dominate the occupation, this fisherman, struggling with his nets, represented a rarity, or he plied some other trade.
When I drew abreast he signaled for me to wait. He sculled shoreward.
“You are easy to spot,” he said, eyeing me with disapproval. “Your hair. If you wish to fight Rome, you must do something about that hair.”
“And you, old man, should do something about your fishing technique. I am from the other side of the world and even I can see you are no fisherman.”
“That is as may be, but Romans know less about fishing than you. What they do know is watching and remembering. No one passes through a Roman checkpoint without being noted and reported. You have been noted and reported.”
My face flushed with embarrassment. “But if I have been noted and reported, why am I still at liberty?”
“Probably because they decided you are not important or, and this is more likely, they expect you will eventually lead them to someone who is. You have been asking for Barabbas?”
“Yes.”
“And if I know that, who else knows?”
It had not occurred to me that I had been indiscreet.
“You know, of course, you are not the only one looking for a notorious evil-doer.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but I knew the answer. The house of Leonides had picked up my trail again.
“There are men asking about you,” he said. He pulled on his long oar and the boat pivoted. “Men are known by their enemies. You have powerful ones, it seems. That is what bought you this meeting. Go to Scythopolis, the Greek city, and wait at the turning of the road. Someone will meet you there. And for heaven’s sake, do something about your hair.”