Lamb (5 page)

“Thanks,” Joshua said. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

“I for one, am excited,” I said. “I’m ready to cut some stone. Stand back, Josh, my chisel is on fire. Life is stretched out before us like a great bazaar, and I can’t wait to taste the sweets to be found there.”

Josh tilted his head like a bewildered dog. “I didn’t get that from your father’s answer.”

“It’s sarcasm, Josh.”

“Sarcasm?”

“It’s from the Greek,
sarkasmos
. To bite the lips. It means that you aren’t really saying what you mean, but people will get your point. I invented it, Bartholomew named it.”

“Well, if the village idiot named it, I’m sure it’s a good thing.”

“There you go, you got it.”

“Got what?”

“Sarcasm.”

“No, I meant it.”

“Sure you did.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“Irony, I think.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“So you’re being ironic now, right?”

“No, I really don’t know.”

“Maybe you should ask the idiot.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

“What?”

“Sarcasm.”

“Biff, are you sure you weren’t sent here by the Devil to vex me?”

“Could be. How am I doing so far? You feel vexed?”

“Yep. And my hands hurt from holding the chisel and mallet.” He struck the chisel with his wooden mallet and sprayed us both with stone fragments.

“Maybe God sent me to talk you into being a stonemason so you would hurry up and go be the Messiah.”

He struck the chisel again, then spit and sputtered through the fragments that flew. “I don’t know how to be the Messiah.”

“So what, a week ago we didn’t know how to be stonemasons and look at us now. It gets easier once you know what you’re doing.”

“Are you being ironic again?”

“God, I hope not.”

It was two months before we actually saw the Greek who had commissioned my father to build the house. He was a short, soft-looking little man, who wore a robe that was as white as any worn by the Levite priests, with a border of interlocking rectangles woven around the hem in gold. He arrived in a pair of chariots, followed on foot by two body slaves and a half-dozen bodyguards who looked like Phoenicians. I say a pair of chariots because he rode with a driver in the lead chariot, but behind them they pulled a second chariot in which stood the ten-foot-tall marble statue of a naked man. The Greek climbed down from his chariot and
went directly to my father. Joshua and I were mixing a batch of mortar at the time and we paused to watch.

“Graven image,” Joshua said.

“Saw it,” I said. “As graven images go, I like Venus over by the gate better.”

“That statue is not Jewish,” Joshua said.

“Definitely not Jewish,” I said. The statue’s manhood, although abundant, was not circumcised.

“Alphaeus,” the Greek said, “why haven’t you set the floor of the gymnasium yet? I’ve brought this statue to display in the gymnasium, and there’s just a hole in the ground instead of a gymnasium.”

“I told you, this ground is not suitable for building. I can’t build on sand. I’ve had the slaves dig down in the sand until they hit bedrock. Now it has to be back-filled in with stone, then pounded.”

“But I want to place my statue,” the Greek whined. “It’s come all the way from Athens.”

“Would you rather your house fall down around your precious statue?”

“Don’t talk to me that way, Jew, I am paying you well to build this house.”

“And I am building this house well, which means not on the sand. So store your statue and let me do my work.”

“Well, unload it. You, slaves, help unload my statue.” The Greek was talking to Joshua and me. “All of you, help unload my statue.” He pointed to the slaves who had been pretending to work since the Greek arrived, but who weren’t sure that it was in their best interest to look like a part of a project about which the master seemed displeased. They all looked up with a surprised “Who, me?” expression on their faces, which I noticed was the same in any language.

The slaves moved to the chariot and began untying the ropes that held the statue in place. The Greek looked to us. “Are you deaf, slaves? Help them!” He stormed back to his chariot and grabbed a whip out of the driver’s hand.

“Those are not slaves,” my father said. “Those are my apprentices.”

The Greek wheeled on him. “And I should care about that? Move, boys! Now!”

“No,” Joshua said.

I thought the Greek would explode. He raised the whip as if to strike. “What did you say?”

“He said, no.” I stepped up to Joshua’s side.

“My people believe that graven images, statues, are sinful,” my father said, his voice on the edge of panic. “The boys are only being true to our God.”

“Well, that is a statue of Apollo, a real god, so they will help unload it, as will you, or I’ll find another mason to build my house.”

“No,” Joshua repeated. “We will not.”

“Right, you leprous jar of camel snot,” I said.

Joshua looked at me, sort of disgusted. “Jeez, Biff.”

“Too much?”

The Greek screeched and started to swing the whip. The last thing I saw as I covered my face was my father diving toward the Greek. I would take a lash for Joshua, but I didn’t want to lose an eye. I braced for the sting that never came. There was a thump, then a twanging sound, and when I uncovered my face, the Greek was lying on his back in the dirt, his white robe covered with dust, his face red with rage. The whip was extended out behind him, and on its tip stood the armored hobnail boot of Gaius Justus Gallicus, the centurion. The Greek rolled in the dirt, ready to vent his ire on whoever had stayed his hand, but when he saw who it was, he went limp and pretended to cough.

One of the Greek’s bodyguards started to step forward. Justus pointed a finger at the guard. “Will you stand down, or would you rather feel the foot of the Roman Empire on your neck?”

The guard stepped back into line with his companions.

The Roman was grinning like a mule eating an apple, not in the least concerned with allowing the Greek to save face. “So, Castor, am I to gather that you need to conscript more Roman slaves to help build your house? Or is it true what I hear about you Greeks, that whipping young boys is an entertainment for you, not a disciplinary action?”

The Greek spit out a mouthful of dust as he climbed to his feet. “The slaves I have will be sufficient for the task, won’t they, Alphaeus?” He turned to my father, his eyes pleading.

My father seemed to be caught between two evils, and unable to decide which was the lesser of them. “Probably,” he said, finally.

“Well, good, then,” Justus said. “I will expect a bonus payment for the extra work they are doing. Carry on.”

Justus walked through the construction site, acting as if every eye was not on him, or not caring, and paused as he passed Joshua and me.

“Leprous jar of camel snot?” he said under his breath.

“Old Hebrew blessing?” I ventured.

“You two should be in the hills with the other Hebrew rebels.” The Roman laughed, tousled our hair, then walked away.

The sunset was turning the hillsides pink as we walked home to Nazareth that evening. In addition to being almost exhausted from the work, Joshua seemed vexed by the events of the day.

“Did you know that—about not being able to build on sand?” he asked.

“Of course, my father’s been talking about it for a long time. You can build on sand, but what you build will fall down.”

Joshua nodded thoughtfully. “What about soil? Dirt? Is it okay to build on that?”

“Rock is best, but I suppose hard dirt is good.”

“I need to remember that.”

We seldom saw Maggie in those days after we began working with my father. I found myself looking forward to the Sabbath, when we would go to the synagogue and I would mill around outside, among the women, while the men were inside listening to the reading of the Torah or the arguments of the Pharisees. It was one of the few times I could talk to Maggie without Joshua around, for though he resented the Pharisees even then, he knew he could learn from them, so he spent the Sabbath listening to their teachings. I still wonder if this time I stole with Maggie somehow represented a disloyalty to Joshua, but later, when I asked him about it, he said, “God is willing to forgive you the sin that you carry for being a child of man, but you must forgive yourself for having once been a child.”

“I suppose that’s right.”

“Of course it’s right, I’m the Son of God, you dolt. Besides, Maggie always wanted to talk about me anyway, didn’t she?”

“Not always,” I lied.

On the Sabbath before the murder, I found Maggie outside the synagogue, sitting by herself under a date palm tree. I shuffled up to her to talk, but kept looking at my feet. I knew that if I looked into her eyes I would forget what I was talking about, so I only looked at her in brief takes, the way a man will glance up at the sun on a sweltering day to confirm the source of the heat.

“Where’s Joshua?” were the first words out of her mouth, of course.

“Studying with the men.”

She seemed disappointed for a moment, but then brightened. “How is your work?”

“Hard, I like playing better.”

“What is Sepphoris like? Is it like Jerusalem?”

“No, it’s smaller. But there are a lot of Romans there.” She’d seen Romans. I needed something to impress her. “And there are graven images—statues of people.”

Maggie covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Statues, really? I would love to see them.”

“Then come with us, we are leaving tomorrow very early, before anyone is awake.”

“I couldn’t. Where would I tell my mother I was going?”

“Tell her that you are going to Sepphoris with the Messiah and his pal.”

Her eyes went wide and I looked away quickly, before I was caught in their spell. “You shouldn’t talk that way, Biff.”

“I saw the angel.”

“You said yourself that we shouldn’t say it.”

“I was only joking. Tell your mother that I told you about a beehive that I found and that you want to go find some honey while the bees are still groggy from the morning cold. It’s a full moon tonight, so you’ll be able to see. She just might believe you.”

“She might, but she’ll know I was lying when I don’t bring home any honey.”

“Tell her it was a hornets’ nest. She thinks Josh and I are stupid anyway, doesn’t she?”

“She thinks that Joshua is touched in the head, but you, yes, she thinks you’re stupid.”

“You see, my plan is working. For it is written that ‘if the wise man always appears stupid, his failures do not disappoint, and his success gives pleasant surprise.’”

Maggie smacked me on the leg. “That is not written.”

“Sure it is, Imbeciles three, verse seven.”

“There is no book of Imbeciles.”

“Drudges five-four?”

“You’re making that up.”

“Come with us, you can be back to Nazareth before it’s time to fetch the morning water.”

“Why so early? What are you two up to?”

“We’re going to circumcise Apollo.”

She didn’t say anything, she just looked at me, as if she would see “Liar” written across my forehead in fire.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “It was Joshua’s.”

“I’ll go then,” she said.

I suppose I should have considered the exact nature of what we were doing before I invited Maggie to join us. I mean, there is some difference between the circumcision of an eight-day-old baby boy, which she had
seen before, and the same operation on the ten-foot statue of a Greek god.

“My goodness, that is, uh, impressive,” Maggie said, staring up at the marble member.

“Graven image,” Joshua said under his breath. Even in the moonlight I could tell he was blushing.

“Let’s do it.” I pulled a small iron chisel from my pouch. Joshua was wrapping the head of his mallet with leather to deaden its sound. Sepphoris slept around us, the silence broken only by the occasional bleat of a sheep. The evening cook fires had long since gone to coals, the dust cloud that stirred through the city during the day had settled, and the night air was clean and still. From time to time I would catch a sweet whiff of sandalwood coming from Maggie and I would lose my train of thought. Funny the things you remember.

We found a bucket and turned it upside down for Joshua to stand on while he worked. He set the tip of my chisel on Apollo’s foreskin and ventured a light tap with the mallet. A tiny fragment of marble flaked away.

“Give it a good whack,” I said.

“I can’t, it will make too much noise.”

“No, it won’t, the leather will cover it.”

“But I might take the whole end of it off.”

“He can spare it,” Maggie said, and we both turned to her with our mouths hanging open. “Probably,” she added quickly. “I’m only guessing. What do I know, I’m just a girl. Do you guys smell something?”

We smelled the Roman before we heard him, heard him before we saw him. The Romans covered themselves with olive oil before they bathed, so if the wind was right or if it was an especially hot day you could smell a Roman coming at thirty paces. Between the olive oil they bathed with and the garlic and dried paste of anchovies they ate with their barley, when the legions marched into battle it must have smelled like an invasion of pizza people. If they’d had pizzas back then, which they didn’t.

Joshua took a quick swipe with the mallet and the chisel slipped, neatly severing Apollo’s unit, which fell to the dirt with a dull thud.

“Whoops,” said the Savior.

“Shhhhhhhh,” I shushed.

We heard the hobnails of the Roman’s boots scraping on stone. Joshua jumped down from the bucket and looked frantically for a place to hide. The walls of the Greek’s bathhouse were almost completed around the statue, so really, except for the entrance where the Roman was coming, there was no place to run.

“Hey, what are you doing there?”

We stood as still as the statue. I could see that it was the legionnaire that had been with Justus our first day in Sepphoris.

“Sir, it’s us, Biff and Joshua. Remember? The kid from the bread?”

The soldier moved closer, his hand on the haft of his half-drawn short sword. When he saw Joshua he relaxed a bit. “What are you doing here so early? No one is to be about at this hour.”

Suddenly, the soldier was yanked backward off of his feet and a dark figure fell on him, thrusting a blade into his chest over and over. Maggie screamed and the figure turned to us. I started to run.

“Stop,” the murderer hissed.

I froze. Maggie threw her arms around me and hid her face in my shirt as I trembled. A gurgling sound came from the soldier, but he lay still. Joshua made to step toward the murderer and I threw an arm across his chest to stop him.

“That was wrong,” Joshua said, almost in tears. “You are wrong to kill that man.”

The murderer held his bloody blade up by his face and grinned at us. “Is it not written that Moses became a prophet only after killing an Egyptian slave driver? No master but God!”

“Sicarii,” I said.

“Yes boy, Sicarii. Only when the Romans are dead will the Messiah come to set us free. I serve God by killing this tyrant.”

“You serve evil,” Joshua said. “The Messiah didn’t call for the blood of this Roman.”

The assassin raised his blade and came at Joshua. Maggie and I leapt back, but Joshua stood his ground. The assassin grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him close. “What do you know of it, boy?”

We could clearly see the murderer’s face in the moonlight. Maggie gasped, “Jeremiah.”

His eyes went wide, with fear or recognition, I don’t know which. He released Joshua and made as if to grab Maggie. I pulled her away.

“Mary?” The anger had left his voice. “Little Mary?”

Maggie said nothing, but I could feel her shoulders heave as she began to sob.

“Tell no one of this,” the murderer said, now talking as if he were in a trance. He backed away and stood beside the dead soldier. “No master but God,” he said, then he turned and ran into the night.

Joshua put his hand on Maggie’s head and she immediately stopped crying.

“Jeremiah is my father’s brother,” she said.

Before I go on you should know about the Sicarii, and to know about them, you have to know about the Herods. So here you go.

About the time that Joshua and I were meeting for the first time, King Herod the Great died after ruling Israel (under the Romans) for over forty years. It was, in fact, the death of Herod that prompted Joseph to bring his family back to Nazareth from Egypt, but that’s another story. Now you need to know about Herod.

Herod wasn’t called “the Great” because he was a beloved ruler. Herod the Great, was, in fact, a fat, paranoid, pox-ridden tyrant who murdered thousands of Jews, including his own wife and many of his sons. Herod was called “the Great” because he built things. Amazing things: fortresses, palaces, theaters, harbors—a whole city, Caesarea, modeled on the Roman ideal of what a city should be. The one thing he did for the Jewish people, who hated him, was to rebuild the Temple of Solomon on Mount Moriah, the center of our faith. When H. the G. died, Rome divided his kingdom among three of his sons, Archelaus, Herod Philip, and Herod Antipas. It was Antipas who ultimately passed sentence on John the Baptist and gave Joshua over to Pilate. Antipas, you sniveling fuckstick (if only we’d had the word back then). It was Antipas whose toady pandering to the Romans caused bands of Jewish rebels to rise up in the hills by the hundreds. The Romans called all of these rebels Zealots, as if they were all united in method as well as cause, but, in fact, they were as fragmented as Jews of the villages. One of the bands that rose in Galilee called themselves the Sicarii. They showed their disapproval of Roman
rule by the assassination of Roman soldiers and officials. Although certainly not the largest group of Zealots by number, they were the most conspicuous by their actions. No one knew where they came from, and no one knew where they went to after they killed, but every time they struck, the Romans did their best to make our lives hell to get us to give the killers up. And when the Romans caught a Zealot, they didn’t just crucify the leader of the band, they crucified the whole band, their families, and anyone suspected of helping them. More than once we saw the road out of Sepphoris lined with crosses and corpses. My people.

We ran through the sleeping city, stopping only after we had passed through the Venus Gate, where we fell in a heap on the ground, gasping.

“We have to take Maggie home and get back here for work,” Joshua said.

“You can stay here,” Maggie said. “I can go by myself.”

“No, we have to go.” Joshua held his arms out to his sides and we saw the bloody handprints the killer had left on his shirt. “I have to clean this before someone sees it.”

“Can’t you just make it go away?” Maggie asked. “It’s just a stain. I’d think the Messiah could get a stain out.”

“Be nice,” I said. “He’s not that good at Messiah stuff yet. It was your uncle, after all…”

Maggie jumped to her feet. “You were the one who wanted to do this stupid thing…”

“Stop!” Joshua said, holding his hand up as if he were sprinkling us with silence. “If Maggie hadn’t been with us, we might be dead now. We may still not be safe when the Sicarii realize that three witnesses live.”

An hour later Maggie was home safe and Joshua emerged from the ritual bath outside the synagogue, his clothes soaked and rivulets running out of his hair. (Many of us had these mikvehs outside of our homes—and there were hundreds outside the Temple in Jerusalem—stone pits with steps leading down both sides into the water so one might walk in over one’s head on one side, then out on the other after the ritual cleansing was done. According to the Law, any contact with blood called for a cleansing. Joshua thought it would be a good opportunity to scrub the stain out of his shirt as well.)

“Cold.” Joshua was shivering and hopping from foot to foot as if on hot coals. “Very cold.”

(There was a small stone hut built over the baths so they never got the direct light of the sun, consequently they never warmed up. Evaporation in the dry Galilee air chilled the water even more.)

“Maybe you should come to my house. My mother will have a breakfast fire going by now, you can warm yourself.”

He wrung out the tail of his shirt and water cascaded down his legs. “And how would I explain this?”

“Uh, you sinned, had an emergency cleansing to do.”

“Sinned? At dawn? What sin could I have done before dawn?”

“Sin of Onan?” I said.

Joshua’s eyes went wide. “Have you committed the sin of Onan?”

“No, but I’m looking forward to it.”

“I can’t tell your mother that I’ve committed the sin of Onan. I haven’t.”

“You could if you’re fast.”

“I’ll suffer the cold,” Joshua said.

The good old sin of Onan. That brings back memories.

The sin of Onan. Spilling the old seed on the ground. Cuffing the camel. Dusting the donkey. Flogging the Pharisee. Onanism, a sin that requires hundreds of hours of practice to get right, or at least that’s what I told myself. God slew Onan for spilling his seed on the ground (Onan’s seed, not God’s. God’s seed turned out to be my best pal. Imagine the trouble you’d be in if you actually spilled God’s seed. Try explaining that). According to the Law, if you had any contact with “nocturnal emissions” (which are not what come out of your tailpipe at night—we didn’t have cars then), you had to purify yourself by baptism and you weren’t allowed to be around people until the next day. Around the age of thirteen I spent a lot of time in and out of our mikveh, but I fudged on the solitary part of penance. I mean, it’s not like that was going to help the problem.