Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (15 page)

There was not a Pharisee or man of the law to be seen. But of course not.

We were dining in the company of tax collectors.

Outside the Roman-style house, a small crowd had gathered to peer at the guests through the courtyard and windows, to gawk at the sheer wealth of the table and the delicacies upon it. But they let out a collective gasp when servants went out to them with platters of the same food served at the table within: Jerusalem dates and rare melons off the coastal plain, almond cakes and lentil stew, salt fish, jugs of wine, and loaves and loaves of bread. Within minutes the courtyard had swelled to bursting, and Matthew had gone himself to invite in as many of those outside as the room could accommodate.

Sometime during all of this, the Magdalene woman who indeed followed my master came in with her friend, Joanna, who I had been alarmed to learn was the wife of Herod's own steward. They sat down not even three arms'

reaches from the teacher himself.

It was chaotic, anarchic. As vividly aberrant as Jesus' healings, with the fishermen looking as though they could barely swallow and the tax collectors glancing from the women to the plates of food going out to the courtyard as though they were goats flying across the sky.

One of the tax collectors, whom I had heard the others refer to as Kaniel, suddenly put down his almond cake and hissed, "What is that woman doing here?"

At first I thought he meant the Magdalene or her friend. And then I followed the line of his gaze to a woman in the corner of the room. Her face was painted, her veil not properly tucked around her hair. I wondered if Matthew had any idea that a prostitute had

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entered his house. She was eating hungrily and when she got up to make room for another woman who came in to sit beside her, I saw that she was pregnant.

They would ask her to leave, surely.

The tax collector looked around and summoned a servant, whispering to him. But when he had finished, Jesus reached out a hand to the servant's sleeve and said something I could not hear. A moment later, the servant went to the woman, but rather than ask her to leave, he brought her a basket full of bread and figs.

I watched all of this, the way she clasped the basket as though it were not a basket at all, but an amphora of something far more precious.

Clearly offended, the one known as Kaniel got up and left.

I told myself that I should not be here, that I insulted myself. The sages said that a man was not to associate with an evildoer, even if it brought him closer to the law. That to take something into oneself from a contaminated environment would draw the impurity of that company into oneself.

And here I sat with tax collectors and sinful women.

But for the moment, the vigilance of purity seemed like a distant thing. As I ate, a strange sense of liberty came over me, as if a coarse cloak had been removed from my back.

I drank deeply of the wine. It was very strong and I wondered if it had something to do with my musings, my observation of myself as I realized that in the company of Pharisees, where I ought to have felt more pure, I felt less so. I was the child of a woman who had lost her purity. I had dwelt in a cave with corpses, and had seen the nakedness of my father on a cross. If there was anyone impure here, it was I.

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My master had dirtied his hands on the leper and the paralytic both. Now he dirtied them publicly with the tax collector. I began to wonder if that was the way it was, that one must dirty his hands to heal.

It was as though the world was backward with him, and that purity was the truest contagion.

I was thinking all of this the minute I saw them: three forms moving through the courtyard. As the crowd parted for them I could see the tassels hanging long on their garments, tefillin on their foreheads and arms, the way they did not stop to help themselves to food, but rather shied away from it.

Pharisees.

A few minutes later, one of the peasants from the courtyard came into the house where we were eating and stood before Jesus.

"Please, Teacher," he said. He was one of the better attired of the lot outside in that his clothes were less ragged and he had a pair of sandals on his feet.

The stilted and awkward conversation around the table fell away. "There is a Pharisee outside who asks, 'Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Why this display of impropriety?'"

Jesus set down his cup. "You might ask why I heal the sick rather than the healthy," he said, loudly enough for those in the courtyard to hear.

His face was no longer that of the man who had grinned at the others upon their arrival. He looked off to the side and shook his head slightly. "Tell the one who sent you in here to learn the meaning of 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' I haven't come to call the righteous, but sinners!"

The Pharisee outside visibly stiffened as the other two glanced 126

between themselves, apparently at a loss as Jesus picked up a date and went on eating and talking to the guest beside him as if nothing had occurred. After a time, the rest of us followed in uneasy suit.

That was the first night that I realized the tenor between Jesus and the Pharisees had changed. Before, they had come questioning, wanting to know which faction or school he followed and where his loyalties lay. In every synagogue and even in the Temple this same ritual played out like dogs sniffing one another's tails.

But as the Pharisees left, gathering their robes close around them, I saw the way the first one glanced back, a terrible look on his face.

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14

New Year came in with the harvest. It was now two weeks until Tabernacles and we turned our eyes south, toward the Holy City.

I had both anticipated and dreaded this journey up to Jerusalem. Anticipated it, because I wanted to enter the Holy City with this new headiness of purpose and because I missed my family.

Dreaded it, because I knew Simon would leave me and the company of my new master.

The teacher's family joined us in Bethmaus for the journey. I was surprised by the prick of impatient envy I felt in seeing them surround him and steal his attention away, even at the way Jesus attended to his mother. She was petite, her small stature lending her a girl-like appearance until one saw her eyes, lined with years, filled with secrets.

I told myself that in Jerusalem I would take Jesus to the porticoes. I would be there to usher him about, to show him off to those in the Temple. Jerusalem was, after all, my city.

All this while I had been chewing on the cud of what to say to the Sons. That he healed lepers? That the lame walked? Or that he ate with sinners and had taken a tax collector into his company?

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I knew that I had to make a decision--to proclaim him to them as a healer and perhaps a messiah, or as a lawless man of questioned birth and potentially a blasphemer.

I wrote at last, swiftly figuring the cipher in my head: Tell the Teacher that the sick are healed and masses come to hear. Our friend is coming for the feast.

I felt like a prophet, writing it. Had felt the thrill of it coursing up my arm even after I folded and sealed the note and sent it ahead with a merchant.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, Jesus had taught only days ago.

I wanted it to be. And now I understood that it was: spreading quietly, until it has taken over the entire dough. The teaching itself was a message, I believed, a code of its own. Perhaps by the time any more Pharisees took offense to his ways, we would stand on the steps of the Temple itself, and the kingdom would be at hand.

I shivered in the heat.

At night I allowed myself to consider that I might go to my deathbed free of Roman rule, able to say that I had walked with and even been the disciple of the Messiah. Perhaps, even his adviser.

I began to inwardly rage at Simon for his shortsightedness. I told myself that when the kingdom arrived, he would miss his place at the high table and only have the comfort of knowing he had not eaten beside a tax collector--

one who walked with his chin lifted and more peace on his face now than any of us.

More had come to follow us up to Jerusalem so that whenever 129

we moved, the dust of so many feet seemed to be everywhere--in hair and eyes and nostrils.

We made camp along the Jordan and went down to the river to wash. We shook the dust from our tunics before donning them again. Later, I sat on the bank next to my master, savoring the rarity of this moment alone with him.

Simon was nowhere to be seen, having gone farther downstream.

"Tell me how I can serve your cause," I said to Jesus. "I have friends I would have you meet. Friends in the Temple and who frequent the schools and others who teach in the porticoes."

He gave a small smile. "I am longing for the Temple. It was the first place I heard the voice of my father. I couldn't bear to leave it." He laughed softly, the corners of his eyes creasing, damp hair curling over his ear. "My mother was so angry at me. It took her three days to find me . . . but I didn't want to leave."

There was a sadness in his voice as he said it.

I realized then that I wanted to know him more than I had ever wanted to know anyone in my life. My friends. My father.

My brother Joshua.

I had so many questions to ask of Jesus still. How he healed. How he could presume to forgive. How he felt any peace at all about schooling the Pharisees and teachers of the law. How does one do these things?

"Teacher," I said, turning toward him. I would have gotten to my knees, so weighty was that word when I spoke it. "Please tell me. When will the kingdom come?" I felt like a boy, a child, asking it.

"How do you know it is not here, in this evening, with you now?" he said quietly.

I felt my brows draw together. "But the Romans. The Sadducees 130

and corrupt High Priest. When will the priesthood be restored and the Temple cleansed?"

"One day Rome itself will look toward Israel. But Judas . . . remember these hours and savor them. In days to come, the kingdom will cost us both much.

It will cost me everything. And it will cost you all that you hold most dear."

What I held most dear? What had I not already lost, other than my own life and good name?

"But that is not your greatest question, Judas, is it?" he said, quietly.

Suddenly, I realized that he had stayed to talk to me. That he had remained here on the bank not to laugh at Peter and the others dunking one another like boys in the deepest part of the water, but merely because I had wished it.

My heart began to pound in my temples. I couldn't bear the direct brunt of that gaze, fearing how I might see myself reflected in those limpid eyes.

You do not know me. If you knew me, you would not want to be near me.

Sweat rolled down my sides inside my tunic. I opened my mouth to say it, knowing that with the effort of only several words I could alienate him forever. And gone would be the only peace I had felt since the days we left Sepphoris.

I spat at my brother. I dwelt in a tomb. My father died, and my mother sold herself to keep me alive. I may keep the law, but what does it matter, knowing this?

I am not worthy of anyone.

But when I looked at him, I saw a great tenderness in his eyes as though everything within me were already laid bare. And yet I knew it was not.

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If he looked at me like this, when I had voiced nothing so ugly as the truth, what would he do the moment I did? I couldn't bear his turning away. And I would crumble beneath his pity.

"My greatest question is simply . . . when will these things come to pass?"

His gaze lingered on me a moment before dropping away and I felt an inexplicable disappointment within myself.

"Stay with me, Judas," he said, finally, quietly. "One day you will understand all these things."

I could not sleep that night.

TWO DAYS LATER WE entered Jerusalem amidst the press of pilgrims flooding her streets, singing their hymns and waving myrtle and palm. To the hawking of street vendors, the smell of refuse, the baking of a thousand ovens within the city.