The Liars' Gospel (13 page)

Iehuda’s heart leapt out of his body when he saw that boy, and his spirit flew over to him and touched the boy’s heart. He
felt it. This poor crippled child needed the love and mercy of God more than anyone he had ever seen. He felt the sore places
as if they were on his own leg, and the crooked bone as if it were his bone, and the stiff, aching, oozing joint as if it
were his own body crying out in pain.

He prayed to God as he had learned as a child, calling him “Father.” Father, he said, heal this child, take his suffering
from him, make him whole as I am whole. Do not refuse, as a father would never withhold water from his thirsty child if he
had it. Father, you have the healing of this child in your hands. He felt the power in him, the tingling in his fingertips,
the heat in the palm of his hand, and he knew that when he touched the boy the power would flow out of him, and as he lowered
his hand he was already saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He thought of the men and women he had seen Yehoshuah heal with his touch, how the demons of pain fled from their bodies,
how their backs unbent and their flesh became whole. And the boy on his mother’s knee, both of them looking at him with such
trust because everyone had seen the power of God working through Yehoshuah to cure any affliction.

“Thank you,” said Iehuda under his breath as he lowered his hands onto the twisted limb, “thank you, Father, for making me
your conduit to do this holy work.” And he grasped the leg with his hands so full of warmth, as if his arm were the outstretched
arm of the Almighty, as if his fingers were the mighty hand of God.

Later, when they gathered again as Yehoshuah had told them, the disciples sat around the campfire and told their tales. Mattisyahu
told how he had cured the boils of a man afflicted for ten years with this horrible skin disease. A good storyteller, he made
them all imagine the suppurating wounds, the pus flowing out from every sore place, the stench of rot on the man’s clothes
and the contortion of his face every time he moved and the cloth rubbed against one of his agonizing pustules. Mattisyahu
said that he had called upon the name of God, that he had prayed as he had been taught, and when one of the women bathed the
man’s legs they found that the sores came off as they washed and that the flesh underneath was new and whole and without pain.
“Like the skin of a new-shorn lamb,” said Mattisyahu.

There were other stories like this. Netan’el had cast out seven demons from a woman in Be’er Sheva who had previously spat
like a camel and cursed and screeched at anyone who tried to approach her. He had seen the demons rise from her like smoke,
he said, like white ash flying up from a fire made of very old dry wood. The demons rose into a tree and went into a flock
of birds nesting there, who shat mightily upon the people gathered to watch. But the people were handy with their slingshots
and stones and brought the birds down, so then the demons were no more.

Yehoshuah listened to these tales calmly, nodding when one of the disciples mentioned a prayer he had used, or a way he had
found to bring greater faith to the people watching.

When it came to Iehuda’s turn, he told his story quickly. He had none of Mattisyahu’s gift with a yarn.

“There was a boy,” he said, “he had a bandy leg, and I called on God by name as my father and the boy’s leg was healed.”

The others clapped him on the back and thanked God for the great miracle.

Yehoshuah looked at him shrewdly and said nothing.

Iehuda wondered how many of them had lied as he’d done. Was Mattisyahu’s tale, full of incident and detail, just an elaborate
deception? Was Philip’s simple story of a blind woman given sight a sign that he, like Iehuda, was too embarrassed to say
more than a few words?

Iehuda had laid his hands on the boy’s leg. He felt the power in him, in his heart and his hands, a warm tingling rush inside
his whole body, the spirit of God moving him, so that he understood why God is called a terror as well as a love. He felt
the power go into the boy, and praised the name of God, the one who is and was and will be.

And the boy smiled, and shivered, a shudder going through him. And the leg twitched. And the boy said, “It is so warm!” And
he moved his leg and said, “It moves more easily.” But it was not healed. They could all see it. It was still bent, and the
sore place in the skin was still raw and he could not put his weight on it.

The boy’s mother looked at Iehuda.

“You may be a man of God,” she said, “but there is no power in you.”

The boy’s father shushed her, and the boy protested that the pain was a little easier, that it would surely mend. But the
mother, who knew her son’s body better than her own, knew that nothing had changed.

They offered him a bed for the night still, a place by the fire and a meal for his trouble. And in the morning, when he woke
by the ashes of the fire in the lean-to, he saw the boy limping across the yard, dragging his leg. When the boy saw Iehuda,
he tried to straighten himself, to smile.

“It is easier already!” he cried, and Iehuda gave a sickened smile in return.

But the mother looked at them both from the door of the house with dark and angry eyes. And Iehuda left, not stopping to break
his fast.

He thought, on the slow, dragging walk back, of what Yehoshuah would have done. Had he been there he would have said, “The
cure is not in me but in God,” or he would have said, “God has not chosen to bless you in this way, I am sorry for it,” and
he would have told them a tale that proved that those who suffered were the most beloved, that God had them close in his heart.
Yehoshuah would have told him that the power was not for him to command.

And if Yehoshuah had said those things to him, he still would have known that his faith had been weak, and that was why the
boy was not healed. He had seen Yehoshuah do it. The other disciples said they had done it. And the worm chewed at his heart,
because he knew that God had not favored him.

He could not sit with the others that night as they shared bread and oil and talked of the great miracles that God surely
had in store for them in the future. He wandered down to the camp of the foreigners, where the non-Jewish people interested
in the teachings of Yehoshuah slept. It was an accident that he happened to speak to Calidorus. It could as well have been
another as him. He did not even know what he was looking for. Maybe only someone to whom he would not have to lie.

Calidorus and some of his friends were playing a dice game by a low-burning fire. When they saw Iehuda approaching, they stood
up and offered him the place of honor, but he refused it, preferring to sit and watch them play for a time. “Venus!” called
one, when he had thrown a specially lucky set of numbers, and the others cursed him good-humoredly and poured more wine from
a leather flask.

As the evening wore on, more of the friends took their bedrolls and made camp, until only Calidorus and Iehuda were left by
the last embers of the fire. And Calidorus spoke of his travels and the interesting people he had encountered. He was a scholar
of the writings of the Greeks, spoke highly of the Roman Republic—this dream of government by the people had died when Julius
Caesar took imperial power, and even to speak of it was to show a measure of trust. So Iehuda, in the end, told him his troubles.

“Ah,” said Calidorus, “I have seen this trick performed. By a man in Shfat, who seemed to plunge his hand into the center
of a boy’s chest and pull out a piece of black sticky stuff which a demon had placed inside him. I paid him all the gold in
my purse to show me how he did it and the coat on my back to sell me the mechanism.”

He said it matter-of-factly, so that Iehuda showed no surprise on his face. They were men of the world, discussing something
everyone knew.

“Would you like to see how it was done?” said Calidorus.

Iehuda nodded slowly.

Calidorus sent a slave to fetch something from a leather bag in the back of his tent and had Iehuda turn away while he prepared.
When Iehuda turned back, he showed him the trick. Calidorus concealed a sheep’s bladder in the sleeve of his robe, near the
wrist. When he pressed it, a red liquid spurted across his arm and up to his hand.

“It is dyed water,” said Calidorus. “It is better if you use fresh sheep’s blood, though. And a piece of burnt wood resin—it
goes sticky and black like this—concealed in the palm.”

He showed Iehuda the piece of tacky material. It looked like the sort of evil a demon might place in a man.

Calidorus shrugged. “If you’re willing to pay enough money, you will discover how a thing was done. I expect your friends
did some trick like this, if they did anything at all.”

Iehuda felt afraid, suddenly, in the center of his chest. How many times can a man lose his faith before he ceases to believe
in faith itself?

“I saw a holy man once bring a swarm of frogs out of a girl who suffered from the palsy,” he said.

Calidorus smiled.

“Did he lean very close into her?”

Iehuda thought on it. He had been only a child when that gray-bearded preacher came to Qeriot, but now he remembered it, yes,
the man had embraced the girl, caught her up from her bed, and then when he let her fall the frogs had begun to swarm, seeming
to come from every part of her.

“He had a bag of frogs concealed in his robe,” said Calidorus. “When he pulled her close he emptied that bag into her clothes,
so the frogs seemed to come from her when he released her.” Calidorus looked at Iehuda’s face and made a wry half smile. “I
was young once too,” he said, “don’t be ashamed. Children believe the stories.” He frowned. “Surely you must have thought
this yourself already?”

Iehuda thought: I am entirely alone. Anyone like Calidorus who sought this knowledge out already disbelieved. Why else would
one look to learn the truth, except to be proved right in unbelief?

“It hurts me,” he said.

Calidorus’s mouth twisted a little. He clapped a hand on Iehuda’s shoulder, but the gesture was immediately awkward and he
withdrew it.

“Ah well,” Calidorus said, “he makes a fine spectacle, your friend.” He laughed. “I am certainly enjoying his story. And some
of the things he says are fascinating.”

Iehuda felt a pain rising in the center of his chest. His heart was heavy and he thought: could I be like this man? Could
I take it all as an entertainment, a pantomime? There were five hundred people in Yehoshuah’s encampment, some of them talking
as if he was the promised Messiah, some of them debating his teachings and some, like Calidorus, simply enjoying the performance.
Calidorus’s way seemed easiest—the man’s presence was like a cool spring of fresh water in the fires of Iehuda’s mind. He
knew he could not be like Calidorus, but he also knew he could not now unknow the things he knew or unsee the things he had
seen.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“What am I now?” he said.

And Calidorus seemed uncomfortable.

“Come and stay with me,” he said, “when you grow tired of following your prophet through this wilderness, come and be my guest
in Caesarea. Ask anyone there for my house and they will tell you. When all this is done, come to me.”

He came back to the inner circle changed. He found that he listened differently. He watched differently. He noticed, again
and again now, Rome. And how Yehoshuah’s words, and the words of his friends, were a provocation to Rome.

There was an angry tone to him now. Had it always been there? Had Iehuda only just begun to notice it?

On the road to Shomron, men and women ran out of their homes and across the fields to see Yehoshuah. In one place—a rich and
fertile land, where the soil was tilled in great soft waves and the barley was growing high and strong—a man was kneeling
by the side of the road, waiting for them. He was a prosperous farmer, one could tell immediately by the quality of his boots
and the thick wool coat around his shoulders. But he was kneeling at the roadside, tears falling from his cheeks, mumbling.

Yehoshuah bent down to talk to the man. And Iehuda saw that old Yehoshuah, the one whose very presence soothed the heart.

Yehoshuah shook his head softly.

“Do not weep my friend,” he said. “God has told me that He has chosen you to walk with us. Come now.”

This was a great deal to ask. The farm behind them was good. On the hills, a flock of brindled sheep grazed, guarded by a
shepherd boy. The boy was probably the man’s son, the sheep probably his flock.

“My father has died,” said the man, the tears still falling silently. “He died this morning, just as you approached. Teacher,
give me a blessing.”

Yehoshuah placed his hands on the man’s shoulders.

“You are already blessed,” he said. “Our Father has blessed you with this call. Come and walk with me. We are traveling to
Jerusalem. Come now and do not look back.”

The man stared Yehoshuah full in the face. A man who has lost his father is like a man felled by a mighty blow. The death
of a mother is the loss of love, but the death of a father is the loss of certainty. The tallest tree that will ever stand
in the forest is fallen.

“I must bury my father,” he said. He spoke, Iehuda thought, without hearing his own words. It was not an answer, it was a
realization. He said it again. “I cannot walk with you now, for I must bury my father. Let me go and bury my father first.”

Iehuda heard one of the other men—he thought it was Jeremiah—whisper to his fellow, “Is this how he speaks to the son of David?”

If he could, Iehuda would have hit that man in the face, but he realized suddenly that if he did that, it would be dangerous.
How had he not known that they had come to this pass, where dissent was dangerous? If he hit the man, the others would say
that he did not believe that Yehoshuah was the son of David—that is, the rightful heir to the throne in Jerusalem. And then…he
did not know what might happen.