2 The Judas Kiss (25 page)

             
I didn’t know any of that.  For the first time I felt apart from the people I’d been born into.  For the first time I felt that sting of oppression and fear as a Roman soldier walked by, staring down at me with hard, tired eyes.  For the first time it didn’t occur to me that this man had a family somewhere, and he was alone, hot, out of his comfort zone and all he really wanted was to go home.

             
I found myself clinging to Maryam’s hand and she gave me a gentle pat as we entered the city walls, Yehuda and Yeshua standing close by their father.  “It’s going to be okay, Makabi.  It’s not as bad as Yosef makes it sound.”

             
I nodded, swallowing dryly, and found I couldn’t make myself speak.  I took in the city with wide eyes and wonder, and felt part of it.  It was dry and hot, so far away from the sea that it lacked any moisture in the air.  It smelled, but not the way Alexandria did of rich spices and sweet fruits.  Jerusalem reeked of fear, of death, and while people gathered to speak, to learn and sell things, they were dark.  They were afraid and bitter, and no one felt free.

             
We found the home of Yosef’s cousin not far from the city center and we settled in to their small room, prepared for our arrival.  Maryam, away from the young ones for the first time in so long, excused herself for a short sleep.  Yehuda, Yeshua and I were permitted to step outside while Yaakov stayed behind to help Yosef reacquaint with his family, and the three of us sat on the low wall in front of the street.

             
“What do you think?” I asked Yeshua, who was watching the city with half-lidded eyes.  Yeshua and I didn’t often talk, but I felt a kinship with him, a sort of protective nature I’d adopted from the rest of the family.

             
“It’s ugly,” he said, shaking his head softly.  “I don’t understand it.  Everyone is so…”

             
“Terrified,” I said.

             
He nodded and gave a little sigh.  “They wouldn’t feel that way if they could understand their fears.”

             
I didn’t quite know what he meant, and I looked over at Yehuda who simply shrugged and looked away.  “Do you think we’re safe here?”

             
“For now,” Yeshua said in that same, still, quiet voice.  “There will come a time, I think, where great injustices will be done here.  There will be blood spilled, and our people will be lost.  But for now, we’re safe.”

             
His words chilled me to my very core, and my skin broke out in tiny bumps.  Yeshua frightened me sometimes, the way he spoke, the things he seemed to know, though I couldn’t always understand him.  He was different, and I realized why Yosef and Maryam were so often frightened, and not just for him, but sometimes of him.

             
Pesach lasted a week, and being truly just a young child, I didn’t understand a lot of it, but we were told the stories of our Hebrew fathers, and their escape from Egypt.  Part of me felt wrong for being there, because although my true father was Hebrew, these were not my people.  I didn’t fully understand their trials and tribulations.

             
Yosef allowed me to abstain from sacrificing the lamb, and from the temple, though I watched with keen eyes, trying to take in all that I could.  The city was packed full of pilgrims and, to my surprise, many what the Hebrews called Gentiles.  They were not of Hebrew faith, but they came to see the city, and the celebration of the holiday.  The Roman guard was out in full force, reporting back to the governor, a man called Gratus, who was a quiet man, or so said Yosef as we surveyed the Roman soldiers on crowd control.

             
“The Romans don’t want to be here,” Yosef said to me quietly as the crowds wandered by.  We had finished with the nightly routine, consumed our meager meal, and while Yehuda and Yeshua were inside attending to their mother, Yosef had taken a place beside me as I watched the city with curious eyes.

             
“Why are they here?” I asked.  Remembering when I was younger, my father had been sent off to battle, but never forced to live in a desolate city.  He had lived in places of grandeur, often sending word to my mother who later claimed he was merely trying to make her jealous.

             
“It’s told that they’re forced here.  They’re part of the legions who lost battles or disobeyed.  I can’t say for certain, Makabi,” he said sternly, but when I looked up at him, he winked at me and smiled.  “Soon we’ll be back to Galilee and we can return to our work.”

             
“Is this it?” I wondered quietly as I listened to the stamping feet of the pilgrims passing by.  “Is this life?  We live, we worship Yahweh, we live in fear of the Romans, we beg for mercy and we die?  Is there nothing else to accomplish?”  My mind was flashing back to my grand dreams of the Library of Alexandria.  Of all the things I might know there, of the people I would talk with and debate.  Of the young ones that I would instruct when I was old and wise and brave.  I thought of the places I had been determined to travel, the seas I’d cross, and lands I’d explore.  This could not be it.  Not for me.  Not Rome, not Jerusalem could hold me in.  May the gods have mercy on me; let this not be my fate!

             
“This is my life, my future,” Yosef said with a sad sigh, but he fixed me with a curious gaze and cocked his head to the side.  “Perhaps grander dreams wait for you, Makabi.  There is no telling what the future holds.”

             
Pesach felt like the longest week of the bland foods, of lamb, of painted blood and unleavened bread.  Of crowds that made the city feel hotter than it normally would have, and the ugly smells of so many bodies crammed together.  When it was over, I breathed a sigh of relief as the guards thinned out, the governor was less present, and the pilgrims began to gently file their way out of the city.

             
Yosef declared we should stay an extra day, to keep from being stuck on the overcrowded roads back home.  He agreed to help his cousin, a man who was so wary of me that I never learned his name, and the boys and I were allowed to roam freely, though close to the home.

             
It was Yeshua who came up with the idea of visiting the Pharisee school for the scribes.  It was a place, he said, for the young scholars to go.  To debate philosophy and God and religion and life.  It was a place where the grandest minds met and came up with the most fantastic ideas.  “A messiah will come from there,” Yeshua said quietly, “so says my father.”

             
“What’s a Messiah?” I asked as we casually strolled down the street.

             
“The warrior who will come free our people,” Yehuda said, though there was a hint of bitterness in his voice.  Nearly thirteen, he was already corrupted and angered by the oppressive world he was living in, and I remember even that young, I feared for him.  “It’s a tale, a story, and one will never come.”

             
I paused there in the street, leaning against a wall and looked at Yehuda.  The words sounded so tired and bitter and I couldn’t understand what had made him this way.  The boy had grown up so far from this place, far from the fear, in the city where people flourished, near the open sea, and their family had been left alone in peace.

             
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said firmly, taking him by the wrist.  “Yehuda, anything can happen.  Anything could happen.  We could make it happen.”

             
“Easy for you to say,” he spat suddenly, his eyes flaring brightly at me.  “Easy for you to say,
Markus
,” he sneered my name like a swear word.  “All you need to do is tell them who you are.  All you need to do, and you’ll be back in your palace with your slaves and your money, and we’ll be left here to rot in this city.  We’re told to shut up or die, and if you disobey, if you displease the officials they nail you to a stake and leave you out there to rot.  That won’t ever happen to you.”

             
He’d been angry with me like this before, his jealousy over my standing and position, but it was the first time I truly understood it.  Years before I had simply told him no.  I would protect him.  I would keep the big bad Romans from hurting him.  I said it because I didn’t believe in the big, bad Romans.  I didn’t think that my people would harm anyone just for the sake of harming someone.

             
That was before I saw those crosses in the distance.  It was before I saw these people, this dirty city, smelled this fear and bitterness.  Even as a boy I understood it and I, too, was afraid.  “That doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference, Yehuda,” I all-but whispered.

             
Rolling his eyes, he turned from me and at the same moment we both realized that while we had stopped, Yeshua had continued on.  Panicked, the pair of us ran through the streets, scanning the roads, the buildings and alleyways for the lost brother.

             
“Let’s get to the city center,” Yehuda said, grabbing my hand, all thoughts of anger and jealousy gone.  We did just that, but there was no sign of him.  No one in the courtyard of the school had seen him, and after two hours, we had to return home empty handed.

             
I expected the pair of us to get a beating, but while Maryam cried, Yosef said that Yeshua was far too old to require his brother to mind him, and he merely led the way, completely silent after that, into the warm afternoon.  We searched for him for hours on end, and it was at the point that Yosef was ready to turn to the Roman authority that I spotted him in the court yard, speaking almost harshly to a young man just a few years older than he was.

             
I didn’t know where Yosef was, but Yehuda was next to me and I nudged him, nodding in Yeshua’s direction.  Yehuda called for his father, and rushing past us, he raced to the boy’s side, grabbing him by the shoulders, berating him in front of the Pharisee teachers.

             
I wanted to go forward, to listen to what the teachers were saying to Yosef who stood by his son, red-faced and trembling, but Yehuda shook his head, holding me back.  “That is not a place we want to be.”

             
I stepped back and as I found a clear spot to crouch down, I saw them.  They were men, short, bald, skin tan and wearing the most brilliantly orange robes I’d ever seen.  They were standing beside the tall building overshadowing the school, waiting, it seemed, and watching the exchange between Yosef and the teachers.

             
They looked different, like travelers I’d often seen in Alexandria, and after a moment I realized who they were.  They were the men from the East.  They had come for Yeshua, and my suspicions were confirmed when they approached Yosef and his face went white.

             
Yehuda tensed next to me, rising to his feet but not daring to take a step.  I closed my hand on his arm and compelled him to look at me.  “Who are they?”

             
He swallowed thickly and shook his head.  “They’ve come for Yeshua.”

             
“Your father won’t let them take him,” I whispered, but fear was growing in my belly like a fire, spreading through my bones, making my face numb and hot.  “He can’t…” but even as I spoke those words, one man had pulled Yeshua aside and was speaking to him rapidly, gesturing wildly with his hands.

             
And it was in that moment that something miraculous happened.  As the man spoke, his eyes trained up to the sky, Yeshua smiled.  He smiled, and it lit up his whole face and he turned to speak to his father.

             
It was like a terrible dream, really, being cemented to the spot, unable to say or do anything as we watched Yosef fall to his knees.  Yeshua was gone before we realized that anything was actually happening, and by the time we got to Yosef’s side, there was no sight of Yeshua in the streets.

             
“Why did you let them take him?” Yehuda nearly shouted.  “Why?  Father!  Go and stop them!”

             
Yosef stared at his son with a deadened expression, his eyes muted, hands shaking as he eased himself up from his knees.  He brushed the yellow sand from his front and started out ahead of us, sullen, silent, and crying.

             
I was completely lost, without a clue as to what really happened, but I knew then that everything would be different.  We reached the house where Maryam waited and were instructed to wait outside, given a bit of bread and wine to hold us over. 

             
Several moments passed and it was when we heard her wailing that we knew there was nothing to be done.  Yehuda and I sat outside in the warm afternoon, our backs against the wall, and we waited.  By the time Yosef came for us, the sun was already low in the sky, and we were starved and exhausted.

             
I was more than happy to learn we wouldn’t be traveling that night, and we were able to have a hearty meal and an early sleep as Yosef and Maryam mourned quietly in the corner of the home.  Yeshua hadn’t died, but from the bits of conversation I’d caught, he was lost to them.  Twenty years, Yosef had said, that they wouldn’t see their son, and it was up to Yeshua after that if he wanted to return home.