The Liars' Gospel (17 page)

Her eyes flick to the stallholder, who is watching them curiously. They are in a busy marketplace. She has only to call out
and a dozen men would be on him, for she is a respectable Roman matron and he, if they cared to examine him, would be found
to be only a Jew.

She does not call out. She looks at his hand around her upper arm, at the place where the skin is white because his grip is
so strong.

She says, “Yes.”

He fucks her in a disused stable not far from the market, where the musty smell of horseflesh is in the damp straw, and as
she reaches her height she bites him on the shoulder so hard that her mouth comes away red with his blood.

She does not leave immediately this time. They sit together, leaning against the wall of the stable, listening to the sounds
of the busy street outside: the vendors calling their wares, hooves striking stone, children playing and shouting, the mad-eyed
preacher who stands at the corner of the market telling out the end of days.

She sits across his knees and fumbles with the garments at his waist until she has uncovered his exhausted cock. She cups
it in her hand, thumbing the rim of the head where he is circumcised. She smiles.

“I heard that some Jews hang weights from it, to try to grow the foreskin back.”

He shrugs. “Some men plunge their hands into a nest of bees hoping thereby to gain honey.” His hand finds her, under her skirts.
His thumb begins to work. She gasps. “Most men are not so foolish.”

“And what do you think Calidorus’s house is?” she whispers in his ear, leaning close to him.

After a little while he fucks her again: frantically, insatiably.

There is an evening when he sits drinking and talking with Calidorus. Everything now reminds him of something else, distorted
and confused. Calidorus is a parody of Yehoshuah. Pomponius’s wife is a stirabout of his own wife. This evening with Calidorus
is a broken tessellation of another evening, long ago. Once a man has lived long enough, every moment is a reflection of some
other moment.

Calidorus says, “My father was a freed slave. He was over fifty when I was born, and his first forty-five years he was owned.”

Iehuda had heard something of this sort about Calidorus. It is not exactly a mark of disgrace, but neither is it a thing to
boast about. Calidorus has drunk a little wine. So has Iehuda. The slaves have withdrawn. They are alone in a private chamber
with a good fire and Calidorus’s little house gods lined up on a side table.

“The master freed him because he saved his life. From a fire. He ran into the burning building to save his master. He had
scars on his face and his body all his life, because his clothes caught fire as he ran and he did not stop to put them out
until his master was safe. A long tight patch of red raw skin from here”—Calidorus motions to his waist—“to here”—he touches
his right temple. “The hair never grew back on the right-hand side. That is how he won his freedom. That is why he was permitted
to take a wife and why I was born. But until the day he died, although he was free, he still called that man ‘Master.’”

Iehuda nods.

“And now I am a wealthy man,” says Calidorus. “If I were so minded, I could become interested in politics, take a seat in
the Senate. An able man can rise and rise in Rome, with no one telling him he has not the right father to be a High Priest,
or the right lineage to be considered for king. That is what makes us strong. You are still waiting for your ‘rightful king,’
the son of David. We take for a king any man who has the will and strength to govern. There is no law to say that a freed
slave may not become emperor; it may happen one day.”

Calidorus clears his throat.

“I have heard from friends in Rome,” he says, “that the Emperor Tiberius has run mad. He spends all his days on the island
of Capri, fucking children.” Calidorus raises an eyebrow, stretching the skin across his bony forehead. “If I uttered this
in Rome, you know, someone would inform on me for a few copper coins and I would be taken and killed.”

“It is because every man needs a father,” says Iehuda slowly. Calidorus narrows his eyes. “Or a master,” Iehuda continues,
“it is all one. Without a father we look for another master: a teacher to follow or a patron to please or an emperor to fear.
A man like your Tiberius has his head open to the sky, with no master to obey. That is why he has run mad.”

“And what of you?” says Calidorus. “You have killed your master.”

Iehuda shrugs. “God alone is my leader and my master.”

Calidorus barks out a laugh.

“The gods will not keep you from madness. They have not helped the old goat of Capri.”

And Iehuda could not say what was in his heart: that his God was the true God, and those little statues of squabbling deities
were just pieces of stone.

“Do you know what I have heard, Iehuda?” Calidorus leans forward, mock earnest. “I had it in a letter from a business associate
in Egypt. There one of your old friends is preaching that Yehoshuah yet lives.”

“I saw him die,” says Iehuda.

“Oh,” says Calidorus, “certainly he died. But, as you say, every man needs a master.”

“The governors and prefects will kill them for saying it.”

Calidorus nods. “Most men would rather die, you know, than give up a master. In some kingdoms, the ruler’s slaves and wives
die with him, entombed in his grave. Most men have not the flexible heart you have. They cannot turn from one to the next.
They must remain steadfast, even unto death.”

“It is a little noble,” Iehuda says slowly.

“It is idiocy. Do you think I still call my father’s master’s family my betters? I could buy them a hundred times over. We
cannot cleave to the same thing forever. In this life, eventually, one is either a traitor or a fool.”

It is easy to leave, once you are used to leaving. Easy to feel the moment of it approaching, to sense the loosening of the
ropes that bound you to the earth. One becomes adept in noticing the absolute apex of love or belief from which it will inevitably
decline. There comes a point when one can even begin to love leaving, the only constant we carry with us. The man who wanders
forever is not cursed, he is blessed.

He leaves before dawn. He takes food for a long journey, and three rings Calidorus gave him freely when he had told a particularly
good tale, which will pay his way or be stolen by bandits, only the road will tell him in time. A few other necessary things,
including two good knives. A man with two fine knives, good shoes and strong arms is wealthy, or never far from wealth. He
will thrive as he has always, somehow, thrived.

He says to God, “Are you there?”

And God says, as God always says, “Yes, my son, I am with you.”

The pious would like to believe that God does not speak to the sinners, that one has to earn the right to hear His voice.
The pious are wrong. God speaks to Judas of Qeriot just as he spoke to Yehoshuah of Natzaret, just as he would speak to the
Emperor Tiberius of Rome if the twisted king had the wit to listen.

“What shall I do?” he says to God.

“Go west,” says the Lord. “You are in a port. Take passage on a ship and sail away.”

And he thinks he will. Here, this story is the only story of his life, the only thing he has ever done or will ever do. But
there is this to be said for Rome: a man can become something new. He is not tied to his birth or his ancestral lands. There
are great kingdoms yet to be seen. In the west the debauched Emperor Tiberius sits on his golden throne. In the west the Greeks
ply their trade in wisdom. In the west, he has heard, there are demons and witches and uncircumcised barbarians with beards
down to their navels and patterns on their skins. He is ready for them. And let them think in Israel that he is dead.

THEY TIE A
rope around his ankle so that, if he dies, they will be able to haul him out.

People say that, a thousand years ago, under the rule of King David or King Solomon, such a precaution was not necessary.
The High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies alone on Yom Kippur, perform the sacred rituals, burn the incense, sprinkle
the blood, and the Holy Breath would descend and the people would be forgiven.

Even five hundred years ago, after they had had to rebuild the Temple following the exile in Babylon, there was not so much
danger. Even then, under the fabled High Priest Shimon the Righteous, the thread on the horns of the goat would turn from
red to white and the people would know that they were forgiven.

But not now. Now, when they send a High Priest into the Holy of Holies, they know he may not come out alive. It happens not
infrequently.

The Holy of Holies, the chamber at the center of the Temple, is built on the navel of the world. It was the first piece of
land created when God said, “Let the land be divided from the sea.” It is from the earth of this spot that God scooped up
the dust to make Adam and Eve, the first man and woman. It is the place where Abraham went to sacrifice his son Isaac, and
where God stopped him and gave him a ram instead, which is how we know that the sacrifice of human life is not pleasing to
Him, and that He instead desires the sweet savors of animal flesh. In the end of days, it is from this spot that the word
of the Lord will radiate out like the sound of golden trumpets, so that all the nations will bow down before Him. It is the
holiest place in all the world.

The whole world is arranged in concentric circles around this spot. There is the world outside the land of Israel, and within
that there is the land of Israel. And within that the holy city of Jerusalem. And within that the Temple. And within the Temple
the courtyard of non-Jews, and inside that the courtyard of Jewish women, and inside that, closer yet to the holiest place,
the courtyard of Jewish men, and inside that the courtyard of the priests. And within that courtyard of the priests, at the
heart of the Temple, the reason for the whole edifice of marble colonnades, for the city, for the country, for the world.
At the heart of the Temple is this holiest place in all of creation.

The chamber of the Holy of Holies is a small perfect cube, ten cubits, by ten cubits, by ten cubits. Its walls are marble.
Its entrance is covered by two curtains. A raised marble platform shows where the Ark of the Covenant used to stand before
it was lost—or hidden and its hiding place forgotten—during the Exile. Other than that, the room is empty. Apart from God.
This is the place where God is.

And on Yom Kippur, when God brings his face very close to the earth, when he listens and observes His people most intently,
on that day the High Priest—the Cohen Gadol—walks into the chamber alone. Alone he burns the incense on the glowing coals,
and scatters the blood, and falls upon the stone dumbfounded in the presence of the Lord. Alone he mumbles his prayers into
the cold smooth floor and squeezes his eyes tightly shut and finds his whole body shaking. And his head is filled with the
smell of the incense and the speech of God, which is so far beyond words that when God Himself describes it in the Torah He
can only say that the people hear the sights and see the words, so inadequate is our language to describe the Almighty.

And often these days, the High Priest does not survive the experience.

And because the square chamber is so holy, because they themselves would die if they dared to enter it, for it is certainly
forbidden to them, they pull on the rope tied to his ankle to remove the body. This is always a terrible thing. If the man
dies, by this token the people know that they have not been forgiven.

It is since the Romans, of course. Since Pompey with his iron boots strode about the holy chamber. Since the wall was breached
and the treasures were examined by a Roman note-taker, wiping his nose on the back of his hand as he counted the golden vessels
that once were made for the hand of Moses.

And yes, it is because of the men themselves. The High Priests, who once were chosen by their fellow priests for their wisdom
and holiness and the force of the spirit in them, are now servants of Caesar, picked by Pilate the Prefect for other, more
practical qualities. There are men who have bought their way to becoming High Priest by gifts to Pilate.

They do not always survive.

It is this which Caiaphas carries with him every morning when he rises and scratches, and kisses the head of his sleeping
wife and goes to wash and put on the robes of his office and begin the services every day. Today is ordinary, and tomorrow
will be ordinary and the next day in all likelihood. But once a year he will stand in the full presence of the Almighty and
see if he is worthy to survive.

He has a suspicion regarding his wife.

He has seen her in the courtyard, her hair oiled with perfume but neatly covered like any modest woman, and a jar of water
under her bent arm. He has watched as she asks one of the Temple Levites, a man called Darfon, to pull down the branch of
the tree so she can pluck some of the sun-warmed dates. No, she smiles, not those ones, they are not quite soft yet. She does
not like the crunchy dates. She wants them from that branch, where they are dark and sweet.

The Levite, Darfon, jumps up and grabs the branch with both arms. His sleeves flap down, revealing muscular brown arms, the
hair wiry and strong like a young lamb’s. She smiles, and he can see her watching the man’s arms, and his sturdy legs kicking
against the ground, so she can reach her hand up bending only at the elbow and pluck a soft warm date. She plucks two. She
presses one to her lips, licking the brown skin with her small pink tongue. She gives the other to Darfon. He takes it coyly,
smiling at her under his eyelashes, biting into it with a small, careful, hungry bite.

Caiaphas, watching, finds himself imagining a wolf, down out of the mountains, lean and ravenous from the famine in the land.
Imagines the wolf stalking his wife, bringing her to bay in a grove strewn with rocks and broken pottery. Imagines the wolf
growling and leaping to rip out her throat.

Or he imagines bruises slowly spreading across her face, turning her eyes bloodshot and her neck scarlet and blue. Imagines,
and his hands feel how good it would be, throwing her to the ground, because it is not that he does not love her and desire
her, but a thing like this must be paid hurt for hurt.

He is not a violent man; he has sacrificed enough young bulls and yearling lambs to understand the precious delicacy of life.
He is startled by the strength of his feelings, how they leap up in him like a wolf he had not known was stalking by his side,
or within him, all his life.

It is high summer. Passover is long gone. The sun bakes down on the cool marble plazas of the Temple, and on the north gate,
where the drovers bring in their hot and reeking sheep for the slaughter. It heats the marketplace, where the fruit sellers
lazily beat palm fans to keep the flies off their wares and the donkeys’ tails twitch, raising clouds of gnats. It cooks the
houses of the wealthy and the hovels of the poor, it turns the swimming ponds into warm pools of bubbling algae and frogs.
In the minds of King, Governor, Prefect, soldiers, priests and farmers it raises the specter of famine, for what if the rains
do not come? They always come if God wills it and why would he not will it—yet there have been years when they did not come.
Jerusalem is languorous in the heat, unable to move, slow-witted but fretful. But just because Jerusalem does not move, one
cannot believe she is asleep.

The Prefect, Pilate, wears a ring with a wolf’s head. The wolf is the animal of Rome, of course: in another room Pilate has
his little shrine to the God-Emperor Tiberius, and above it a picture of Romulus and Remus suckling at the teat of their wolf-mother.
Like the wolf, Rome hunts with a great pack. Like the wolf, she protects her own but to those outside her circle she is nothing
but teeth. Pilate’s ring, on the third finger of his long bony right hand, is a great disc of amber with the wolf’s head carved
into it, snarling, showing fangs. When Pilate slams his hand onto the table, the bright summer light glints off the sharp
bevels and lines of the carving, making the teeth sparkle and the eye blink.

“Three months!” he shouts, and then, appearing to calm himself, although this is all for show and Caiaphas has seen it before,
he repeats again more softly, “Three months.”

Caiaphas stares at a point just behind Pilate’s head, to the niche where the man has his little statue of Mars, bearing a
sword. There would be a riot in the city if they knew he had brought this idol so near to the holy sanctuary. There had been
a riot four years earlier when he brought a new garrison of soldiers into the city bearing their banners showing Caesar’s
head. It is forbidden to bring a graven image or an idol or an image of any kind this close to the Temple.

“Are you so stupid, Caiaphas?” Pilate asks slowly. “Is it that you are stupid? Is it that you have not understood what I have
asked these three months? Do I need to ask you more slowly so you can follow my request? I. Want. The. Money.”

Caiaphas licks his upper lip.

“I have tried to explain…” he begins, and he hears his own voice wheedling like a child’s and the wolf in his own throat growls
at him and before he can stop himself he says, “It is forbidden. It is utterly forbidden. What you are asking is impossible.”

Pilate stares at him, and his nostrils flare and his mouth works.

He brings his hand down on the table again, so hard that the ink pot jumps and spatters.

“It is not impossible if I command it! The city of Jerusalem,” says Pilate, “is dying of thirst. There is fresh water in the
mountains, there are men ready to begin construction, there is stone in the quarries. Look!” Pilate opens his hands magnanimously.
“Look at your city.” Out of the window, Jerusalem bakes and shimmers. “Give me the money from the Temple so I can build the
aqueduct and bring the water from the hills.”

Caiaphas wonders whether, if he angered the man enough, Pilate would pull down one of those swords from the wall and run him
through. Remember, he says to himself, how vulnerable you are. Remember how swiftly the life would run out of you, like the
life of a young lamb under your blade. And yet the wolf in him will not hear it.

“The money that is given to the Temple is for its use alone,” he says. “It is a sacred trust, given to us by God.”

He remembers the widows and the orphans who bring their tiny offerings to the Temple, because they know God will be pleased
with their sacrifice, however small it is. They bring it freely. It is money they meant for the Temple. It is not his to give
away.

“Fuck on your God!” shouts Pilate. “That Temple is piled up with gold and decorated with marble, while not a single aqueduct
brings water to the south of the city.”

“They have their wells. No one suffers from thirst in Jerusalem.”

Pilate bangs his hand on the table again.

“Five hundred talents of gold! You will hardly miss it from your coffers. We could begin to quarry the stone this week!”

It is a power game, of course. Pilate could request the money from Rome, but his standing is not good enough to have any expectation
of receiving it. This Caiaphas has from various spies in the orbit of the Governor of Syria, Pilate’s superior. But he wants
to leave Jerusalem more like Rome than he found it. No Roman can see a city without wanting to drop an aqueduct on it, for
all that the well water is clean and plentiful. And if he persuades the Temple to pay for the project, he will report in one
of those dry military dispatches that the people are “beginning to understand the benefits of Roman rule.”

Caiaphas shrugs. It is a gesture calculated to irritate Pilate and he knows it.

“If you were to send the soldiers in,” he says, “I could not prevent them. My priests are not warriors.”

“Oh no,” says Pilate, “I know how this will go. You will force me to send soldiers into the Temple. And we will desecrate
some sacred urn or tread in the wrong way on a holy pavement, or distress the spirit of the blessed sheep or breathe improperly
in the presence of the consecrated midden heap. And then there will be another riot and I will have to call in troops from
Syria to quash it and that would make them say…” He blinks and stops himself. “That would be very inconvenient. These fucking
people!” He wipes the sweat beading on his brow with the sleeve of his robe. “One cannot walk from one end of the square to
the other without insulting an ancient tradition of some tribe or other.”

Pilate pokes his finger at Caiaphas. “You will give me the money and tell them that your God has commanded it. Tell them you
had a dream.”

Caiaphas inclines his head as if to say “an excellent idea,” or possibly, “I will try but I cannot promise,” or possibly,
“You are a fool and hold on to this city by a tiny thread.” He has been ending conversations this way for months now. Appearing
to concede, never quite consummating his promises.

Every morning and every evening, a lamb is sacrificed. But this is only the beginning. Every morning and every evening, incense
is burned on the altar in the Holy of Holies. Every day, there is the seven-branched candelabrum to be filled with pure-pressed
oil. On the Sabbath, a meal offering of flour and oil and wine. And at the new moon, two yearling bulls, a ram, seven lambs.
To say nothing of the particular sacrifices during the three yearly festivals of pilgrimage, and at New Year in the autumn
and Yom Kippur ten days after that. And the sin offerings brought to seek God’s forgiveness by penitents around the year.
And the peace offerings. And the thanksgiving offerings, for recovery from illness or escape from danger.

“And do you think this is easy?” Annas had said to him when he was a young man. It was when Caiaphas first began to be taken
notice of in the Temple and by his fellow priests. Annas was High Priest then; he had these conversations with many young
men who had been taken notice of. “Let us take the incense, for example. Do you think that when the servant from the house
of Avtinas comes to bring the incense that it has come from nowhere?”