The Gospel Of Judas (33 page)

Paradise is a garden.

Leo walked round the little hut, to the back where you can still see the actual rock, the place where the Copts have their pitch. The least favoured of the various sects who squabble for control of the Holy Sepulchre, the Copts have trumped the whole lot by removing a bit of the marble cladding to reveal the bare limestone beneath. For a dollar or two they will draw a curtain aside for you to see the living rock behind. ‘Candle lit at the tomb of God?’ they ask. ‘One dollar.’ And before you can move, a new wand of wax has been lit from their own lamp, and just as swiftly blown out and handed over. It is like a conjuring trick, a sleight of hand so fast that you are not quite certain what has happened.

He stood up with his still-smoking taper and looked down at the crouching monk and a voice behind him said, ‘It adds a certain drama to the proceedings.’ He turned and there was the Frenchman standing in the gloom of the rotunda with a faint and ironical smile on his face and his own taper (but no tell-tale curl of smoke) in his hand.

They walked. Out of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre through the narrow alleys of the Old City, past Jews in ringlets and homburgs, past Arabs carrying bales of cloth and bags of beans, past Christians overburdened with guilt, beneath arches as old as Islam itself, past a battered sign that warned the orthodox that it was forbidden by the Chief Rabbinate to trespass on this ground because of the utmost holiness of the place, to a gate where police officers were checking documents, searching handbags, running hands over pockets. There was a bright light ahead and an air of suppressed excitement amongst the waiting people,
as though something startling was about to happen, the Prophet about to descend from heaven on his steed Barek, perhaps, or Messiah come down on clouds of glory. Leo Newman and Father Guy Hautcombe passed through the gate and climbed wide stairs on to the great open space, up out of the tunnels of the dark city into the sharp sunlight where, mounted on a box inlaid with turquoise and ivory, the golden dome dreamed of the ineffable glory of God.

They found a stone bench in an avenue of cypress tress and sat down. ‘So tell me,’ said Hautcombe. ‘Tell me what you have to say.’

So he told him. Was the Frenchman his last chance? He told him, and the Frenchman heard him through without interruption, with an expression of calm consideration on his face. It might almost have been a confession, the one failed priest opening his soul to the other. ‘And you think this is all genuine?’ Hautcombe asked at the end. He pronounced the word
genuine
as though it was French, with a soft
g
.

Leo opened the envelope and took out a cardboard folder. The Frenchman raised his elaborate Gallic eyebrows. Leo opened the folder, and there was the final sheet, the broken ragged thing the colour of biscuit, the colour of tobacco, the colour of the earth. With its straggle of grey lettering.

He held it for the Frenchman to see. ‘I am sure it is genuine,’ he said. ‘I am sure that the scroll is more or less what it purports to be.’

Hautcombe shifted on the bench, partly to see the thing, partly to shield it. ‘The light, for God’s sake be careful of the light,’ he cried. He craned to see. ‘How can I make a judgement like this? I need time, time.’

‘You don’t have time. And I’m not really expecting a judgement. I have made a judgement already.’

Hautcombe’s finger glided along just above the surface of the sheet. Without looking up he asked, ‘Does anyone know you have taken it?’

Leo ignored him. ‘Look,’ he said; and he leaned over the Frenchman’s shoulder to point to the word ΠEIΛATΩ. Pilate.

Hautcombe nodded.

‘And here.’ Leo pointed once more, and caught the smell of the man, the fusty smell of celibacy that surely he himself had once possessed. He read the lines out loud rapidly in his clumsy, Anglicised Greek: ‘
The body that was taken was buried secretly by the town of Joseph that is Ramathaim-zophim beside Modin and to this day no one knows the place of his burial
. Maybe they wanted to stop the tomb becoming a focus for further disturbance—’

‘It did not work, did it?’ There was a note of defiance in the Frenchman’s tone.

‘They couldn’t possibly have foreseen what would happen, could they? They couldn’t have predicted a resurrection story. The god who rises from the dead is not a Judaic myth. There’s no precedent for that idea in the whole of Judaism.’

There was a long pause. Tourists herded past towards the Dome of the Rock, towards the El Aqsa Mosque, Japanese with bewildered expressions, Americans with an air of studied piety, people consulting guidebooks, people listening to guides, people preserving everything on videotape and seeing nothing with their eyes: a motley collection of witnesses up there at the navel of the world.

‘There’s another thing.’

Hautcombe looked up from the text. ‘Another thing?’

Leo pointed. ‘There. One of the helpers at the removal of the body. One of Judas’ assistants. Saoul.’ The Frenchman
looked back at the letters. ‘Look where it is damaged: Saul the Tarsian, it says. The final couple of letters are damaged, but there’s no doubt about the first four. Tau-alpha-rho-epsilon … Tarseus, the Tarsian. Paul of Tarsus.’

Hautcombe sat with his lips pursed, almost as though he was tasting something. Maybe he was trying to change the meaning, alter the wording by dividing the line differently. Maybe he was praying. Probably that is what it was: he was praying, praying for guidance, for help, for wisdom, all those things that every one of us needs and so few get. ‘A piece of anti-Christian propaganda,’ he said eventually. It was as though he was delivering a judgement after due consideration. ‘If it really stands up to critical examination, that is how it will be judged. A piece of early anti-Christian propaganda. Probably Ebionite. Written in Greek, trying to damn Paul, so probably Ebionite. Important, of course. But not truly significant except in so far as it confirms the gospels.’

‘Confirms the gospels?’ Leo almost shouted. There on the Temple Mount, a place charged with the beliefs of three religions, he almost shouted. ‘This scroll is older than any fragment of the New Testament. It is virtually complete. Yes, of course there are holes in the story. There are bits that don’t add up. There are lacunae. But that is only what you might expect. The overall impression is
conviction
. And it’s older than any gospel fragment and older than the whole gospel story. It even reads as though it might be the
source
of much of the Synoptic account. For God’s sake, this is a nightmare!’

‘It won’t hurt people with a powerful faith,’ Hautcombe replied. ‘It won’t hurt the educated. From what you tell me they will be able to find ways around the difficulties.’

‘They’ll always be able to do that. But what about the rest? What about the ordinary life of the Church?’

The Frenchman looked at him. His expression was a deliberate blend of surprise and accusation. ‘What do you care about the Church?’ he asked.

And Leo wondered, what did he care? Why should he care about the Church, he who was excommunicate and had accepted excommunication? He cast around for some kind of answer. ‘It’s what Paul said, isn’t it?’

‘Paul said many things, not all of them to the taste of the modern liberal.’

‘Or the orthodox Catholic. Perhaps one passage in particular, from Philippians.’ Leo recited it, and the words stung hard, stung his eyes and stung his mind, so that he couldn’t tell what he believed or thought any longer: ‘Whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just – you know the passage.’

‘Of course.’

‘Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.’

The Frenchman laughed at him. ‘Newman, you are one of those sentimentalists, who see Jesus Christ as a kind of social worker and the Christian faith as a series of conveniently liberal moral precepts. No wonder you abandoned the Church.’ He got to his feet. ‘The Almighty is not a liberal, Monsieur Newman,’ he said. ‘The Almighty is the driving force for the entire universe and the universe is not a very liberal place. That is what the modern world seems not to understand. I don’t give a moment’s credence to your papyrus, Newman. Go ahead with it. Publish it and be damned. The Church will survive this just as it has
survived every other attack throughout the centuries. The Church will survive you.’ And then, in the act of walking away, he paused. ‘Do you know what they call you? Your former brothers in Christ, I mean. Do you know?’

Leo tried to shrug the question aside, but Hautcombe warmed to his theme, coming back towards him to deliver his parting shot: ‘You know how important names are in our work. You know that. Jesus means
Yahweh is salvation
, doesn’t it?’ He reached out and pointed his finger at Leo’s face. ‘They call you Judas, Newman. That is what they call you. A second Judas. And do you know what they do?’

‘What do they do?’

‘They pray for you.’

Solitude up there on the Temple Mount, on Mount Moria, at the axis of the world. He walked out of the shade and into the sun, out on to the platform that surrounds the Dome of the Rock. The dome dazzled in the light, a great golden blister, a ball of fire, golden, liquid fire. Looking up he saw the clouds and the sky circling about this point, as though the whole world was turning on this pivot, the place where the Temple had stood, the place from where Jesus had driven the profane, the place where Mohammed’s steed Burak had planted a single hoof before leaping up to heaven, the place where Abraham had grabbed his son’s neck and held him down against the rock. The sky swirled. Leo looked up and the sky swirled round him and voices babbled in his ear, a hundred voices, a thousand voices, babbling just behind him, just out of sight so that when he turned there was no one there. The light glared at him like a single, malevolent eye. He couldn’t tell if it came from outside or from deep inside his brain. The light glared and the voices babbled and the sky turned round and round overhead, and the
polished pavement, polished by thousands and thousands of pilgrims, polished and burnished in the sun and the wind and the rain, came up to meet him …

Voices babbled. Hebrew and Arab and English. The word
American
came out of the noise, the word
English
, the word
doctor
. A blue uniform stood above him and hands struggled him into the shade.

‘My envelope,’ he said. ‘My envelope.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘It is here.’

Something was thrust into his hands. They shuffled him into the shade and asked questions of him, as though he was under interrogation. Where was he staying? Was he a visitor? Was he German? Did he understand English? Did he have a telephone number? Did he want a doctor? How did he feel? Someone pushed a glass of water into his hand, the friendly one, the one that gains your trust while the other rants at you, the one that gives you comfort while the other rails against you. A face looked right into his, bearded, moustached, the eyes dark. All right? Did he feel faint? Did he want a doctor? Did he want to call anyone? Did he want anyone?

‘I want Madeleine.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She is your lady wife?’

‘Is she here?’

‘She’s dead.’

Later he was in a bar, a small, dark place with three or four indifferent customers. There were two soldiers outside the bar and a policeman, some kind of Arab policeman, watching him. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. He clutched his envelope to his chest. ‘I’m all right.’

‘A doctor is coming.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘The sun. You Americans don’t know the heat of the sun. Because here is high up and the air is thin.’

‘I’m all right.’ He got to his feet and this time they let him. The customers just watched. ‘I’m all right.’ In the background someone babbled on the radio, voices babbling, someone singing that bloody song.

‘You all right?’ the policeman asked.

‘I’m all right. Just a headache. I want to go home.’

‘You get a taxi or something.’

‘A taxi, yes.’

He walked out of the bar and into the narrow space just inside the gate, a gate he recognised, the Sheep Gate where they had brought in the sheep to the sacrifice, thousands of sheep, hundreds of thousands of sheep, and the paving running with blood and the smell of blood and the burning of flesh. Saint Stephen’s Gate, where the first of the martyrs had been led out to his death outside the walls in a hail of stones, with Saul watching. The Gate of the Blessed Virgin. The Lion Gate. So many names for one hole in the wall.

He stood outside the gate looking out over the Kidron Valley with his envelope clutched to his chest and his heart pounding. Was he dying, he wondered? There were graves on the hillsides, white tombs like teeth or pearls. And a dusty Mercedes taxi coming up the hill towards him.

An ordinary day in the world of textual analysis, if you could ignore the graffiti scrawled on the walls outside the Bible Center, the exhortations to repentance, the imprecations, the cries for damnation, and the clutch of protesters camped on the pavement. The Children of God. They changed in identity but not in appearance, these guardians of the true faith: four or five adults, each face dressed in the drab and sanctimonious uniform of belief. Opposite them there was the usual security van. The police had taken their own guard away after the first few days of protest. The government had decided that there were more important security issues in the Land of Israel than a squabble over the origins of the Christian faith. The World Bible Center would have to pay for its own protection.

There was a small stir of interest amongst the protesters as they caught site of Leo beyond the gate. They knew him. They know that it was he who had given voice to the Judas scroll, that he was the figure of the seer in the Book of the
Apocalypse. BEHOLD THE BEAST, said one of their placards;the numerals 6–6–6 were written on another. They began to sing a hymn:

‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord?’