Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (10 page)

My throat tightened. I was keenly aware of every eye upon me as he turned and walked into the water. Months ago, I had buried one hope to retrieve the ember of another. The Judas of last spring would not have followed the Baptizer into the Jordan.

But the Judas of this fall would.

Impulsively, I took off my sandals and pulled my tunic over my head, ignoring Simon's surprise behind me. Clad in only a loincloth, I staggered after the Baptizer into the water.

The silt of the Jordan slipped between my toes, and the hair stood up on my

arms. The sun was just rising over the far bank as I came to stand before John--and then, as I lifted my eyes, it crested and I was overcome with light.

I covered my face and whispered every unclean thing I could think of. From my anger at God himself for the death of Susanna, to the day I spat at Joshua . . . to the fears, plaguing me still, that the 78

Lord had left us forever--or worse yet, never existed. That, too, I whispered, my words falling to the water like so many insects skittering on its surface.

I uncovered my face, and spread my arms wide. The hands of the Baptizer were on my head. He pressed me back. My knees buckled beneath me.

Dark enveloped me, cool on my chest and over my face, which was sticky already with tears. And then I was sinking into the chill of the river rushing past me, the light pervading that darkness so that it was not nearly as dark as it should have been in those muddy waters.

So like the womb. Like that moment before birth where there is no awareness of wrong or evil or pain or hope or anything but that still voice that whispers merely: I am.

I stayed there for as long as I could, until I thought that if I wanted to, I might actually breathe that murky light in along with the cold unconsciousness of it, the unknowing innocence of soul unmarred by skin or blood or life.

And then I was rising up. My knees straightened and my back lifted and my face came through the surface of the water. I could hear John as though from a distance as the sun broke on my face, every droplet of water a prism of refracted miracles, a thousand voices singing the language of light, and I thought: I am made anew. At last. At last.

The Lord had not left me. The Lord had not left Israel. I believed it and knew it to be true.

If only for a moment.

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9

Levi arrived at my house before the city gates had even opened for the day.

"I'm leaving," he said.

"For the Jordan?" It was early winter, the hills verdant with the rain of the season, and we had spent every day we could at the river with the Baptizer.

"I'll go with you, but let me see to some food for us--"

"No. I mean I'm leaving. To follow John."

Now I saw the pack he carried over his shoulder, the simple tunic he wore in place of the usual linen . . . the lines missing from his forehead . . . the smile playing about his mouth.

Until now, I had never seen it be anything but sardonic.

"I've come to tell you that you'll soon correspond with my contact directly. As will I, from wherever I am."

"Leaving! So suddenly?"

"No, not so sudden. I've long been restless. Now I finally realize that I am meant to be out there." He jutted his chin eastward. "Not here, sheltered in the porticoes of the Temple engaged in meaningless debate. We inflate ourselves with our knowledge, honing the

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fine points of the law while people die beneath the burden of Rome, for hunger--not for the law, but for hope! They are dying, Judas, of despair that God has forgotten them or that we will ever be free." There was fire in his eyes.

"But when did you come to this decision?"

"Yesterday I heard the students of Gamliel denouncing John as a blasphemer. Don't you see? They'll fan the ire of the Pharisees against him.

John needs men like us who can smooth the way between him and them until more men have had time to join us. I believe, Judas. The kingdom is coming. And the eyes of our brotherhood need to be there. So I'm going. Will you tell Simon goodbye?"

I had not seen Simon in weeks, Levi and I having been more united in our mutual fascination with the Baptizer who only offended Simon's Pharisee friends.

All I could think to say was, "Are you sure?"

"I have never been so sure of anything. Give me your blessing and assurance that I will see you soon there."

I kissed him numbly and stared at the door long after he had left.

A moment before his arrival I had been thinking of going to the river as well. I thought myself impatient for the kingdom, but now in the face of Levi's going out to usher it in, I realized I had been far too content to rest in the cleansing of the river as one escapes to an imaginary world.

But now Levi's commitment assaulted my conscience, jarring me from the false dream of inaction. In the days to come, I made my own preparations. I checked on the loans I had made on behalf of Susanna's family, that my portion of the accumulating interest would be set aside in the Temple depository for my mother.

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I wrote to my new contact in the simple code Levi had shown me the night I went to his house. He had not needed to explain it; I knew it as the same cipher my brother had taught me once, learned from our father in what I had once thought was a game. It was a simple message, delivered to a name I did not recognize that was probably not even a real name, to an address in the upper city.

I am leaving after the Sabbath to follow John.

But the next night, before even the going out of Sabbath, a boy came to my door bearing a note. It read, simply: Wait.

Wait?

I stared at the wall of the front room, filled with frustration.

Levi had warned me once of the consequences of disobeying the Sons or betraying their initiatives. Would they threaten my mother or Nathan and his family if I disobeyed? Were I a man with no ties or family, I would have gone.

But I was not.

And so I waited, telling myself that Mother and Nathan needed me.

The Sabbath went out, and the days stretched into weeks.

Every day the Temple warmed and cooled beneath the rising and setting sun, beautiful but impassive. Every day I went into her courts to pray, thinking al the while of the wilderness where John preached repentance and that one greater than he was coming. I was there at the Temple the day a delegation of Sadducees returned from the river to report on John.

The news was all throughout the porticoes: They had gone demanding answers for their masters in the ruling houses--Hanan and Boethus in particular. I did not like any members of these

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families, and I cheered inwardly to hear that John had called them a brood of vipers. Could picture, even, the way he had flung out his arm over the river toward them as they stood on the low scarp overlooking the river in their linen robes.

Their report was rife with accusation.

How do you claim to forgive sins? Are you a priest? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us.

--I am the son of a priest, but what is that to you? Who told you to flee the coming wrath?

Wrath? There is no wrath for us! We are the sons of Abraham!

--The ax is at the root of that tree. Those who don't produce fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire! Or don't you know that God can raise up new children of Abraham from the very stones if he wants to?

You dare!

I knew then that the movement begun in the eddies of the Jordan had become a torrent. The Sadducees had not gone for answers but to gather evidence against him. To level killing accusation.

John and his disciples were in more danger than they knew. They had to go

north and leave Judea. I would observe the order to stay, but I felt compelled to at least warn them. And so I went up to the Jordan the very next day.

THE CROWD AMASSED BY the river had grown, teeming in the warmth of the valley. I noted the increased number of the lame and sick, of the painted, sinful women, even a few soldiers in uniform. What had this place become?

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When I finally found Levi, he seemed a changed man. The sun had weathered and tanned his skin to a dark russet brown. His hair seemed to have grown longer in the scant weeks since I had seen him, lending him a wild quality not unlike his master. Though it was not a warm day, he stood in the river naked except for a loincloth, shouting the words I had heard so many times: "Repent! The kingdom of God is near!"

I waded out to see him.

"Judas!" He grinned, kissing me. "Blessed are the breasts that suckled you!"

"I've come to repent," I said with a smile. "Baptize me, Levi."

I released my complacency along with my envy over the waters of the Jordan before sinking beneath them. Too soon, I broke the surface, sound crashing around me like the shards of a thousand breaking pots.

"I must speak to John," I said, my beard still dripping.

Levi squinted without grinning, seeing, perhaps, the seriousness of my expression.

John was teaching farther upstream surrounded by pilgrims. I was disconcerted at the thought of speaking to him; what would he say to my warning?

But as we approached, he broke off, eyes fixed to the east. And then he surged forward, wading quickly toward the water's edge. It was not the self-possessed stride of a man accustomed to the river so much as a man stumbling through it, murmuring, eyes fixed on some thing--some one. We hurried after him.

I saw the object of his fascination then: a man--a very gaunt man--moving along the bank.

"Lamb of God!" John said, as though to himself. And then again, 84

more loudly: "Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

The man was so thin as to appear corpselike, unsteady on his feet. And now I could see that his skin was as dark as John's but patchy and peeling from overexposure to the sun and that his lips were blistered pink and bleeding in at least one place. John seemed to notice none of this as he took the man's hands and laid his arm around him, leading him gently toward the narrow bend in the river to the place where he kept his camp.

I turned to Levi, who was staring after them. "Who is that?"

"John's cousin, from Nazareth," he said strangely.

Nazareth. I remembered the tiny hamlet that resided on the toes of Sepphoris--a place I associated with the delirium of pain, hunger, shame.

Could anything good come from there?

"By the look of him he's hardly had a morsel to eat since he was here last,"

Levi said.

"He was here?"

"A little over a month ago. He came to be baptized." Levi shook his head. "I'll never forget that day."

"What do you mean?"

"John didn't want to do it. Which is strange because John refuses no one.

They seemed to get into an argument, and at one point John got down on his knees in the river, but his cousin grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him back up. John finally did baptize him . . ."

"And?"

"It was a cloudy day, but as John's cousin came up out of the water, the sun broke, and then John was staring at the sky as though he had seen Elijah in his chariot though none of us could see what