Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (26 page)

There were hundreds of men and women upon them. And the city itself, as I passed beneath that grisly parade of crosses, was empty.

"Mother!" I shouted. "Nathan!" I shouted the names of my sister-in-law and my niece and nephew. But there was no one left within the city. Only then, when I ran back to my house, did I discover the coded message written on the wall: You have done this.

MANY LEFT IN THE middle of the night, and more, openly, in the morning. I stood outside the house in which we had stayed--some relative of Zebedee--

and watched them head northwest to Sidon, or west, toward the countryside of Galilee. Some of their faces I recognized as having followed us for months. I wondered if they would go to the hills, to be welcomed into the ranks of bandits. Maybe even by the true sons of Judas bar Hezekiah, themselves.

Countless times through the night I had thought of going. Of asking Simon if he would return with me. What else could I do here? I could only slant my reports to the Sons for so long. They had their own spies among us--I knew that now. They could easily check the veracity of any account I gave and know I tried to sway them. To hide that my master was slowly collapsing beneath this weight.

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Of madness.

But when I would have rolled up my meager pack and slung it over my back, I didn't. I didn't, not because I had more courage than the others, or because I had so much to return to . . . or even because I wanted to know what he would do next or if there was in his madness some true plan, some genius that I had not seen or anticipated.

I did not leave because I had never felt so fearfully alive than I had with him.

Because I believed him.

So I would wait. I would nurture him and coddle him back to health if I must.

In the end, I did not leave because I loved him.

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By the time we came to Caesarea Philippi, it was not as conquerors, but as fugitives. The throng was gone and the dream of the coming Passover faded with every mile.

Jerusalem might as well have been a world away.

As we made our way toward the foot of Mount Hermon, I began to wonder why he would bring us here, to the source of the Jordan in the cliff face. It was a pagan place where the locals worshipped the Greek god Pan and our prostitute king had built a temple to Augustus.

As we made our way up the face of the rock toward the grotto, I could see even the niches in the walls carved out for offerings to the god. No good man of Israel should be here. Had my master come so far, then, that he not only blasphemed, but sought those places rife with the worship of other gods?

I wanted to laugh my own mad laugh. Why not. Why not? Should we eat the offerings left to the idols as well?

And yet the closer we got, the more crisp the air became. It smelled of water.

Not in the way that air might smell of rain, which

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was a blessed smell, as rain was always a blessing in the land, but of living water.

Of purity, and cleanliness.

It should have smelled of death.

Above us, the snow was on Mount Hermon, pristine and clean, the source of the water. How could the cliff face be so polluted by these niches and this grotto dedicated to Pan, by the temple here, built by the traitor Herod of my youth, who built a temple to every Caesar who shined his crown . . . and it smell so beautiful?

How could I possibly feel renewed by the water coming out the mouth of the cave--the same one the pagans believed to be the gate to the underworld so that the nearby city literally sat upon the gate to Hades? I had even heard once that they enticed their gods out from this very grotto by perverse acts performed between women and goats!

The air picked up, riffled through my hair. The breeze was filled with the scent of cypress and almond trees, of the orchard that the townspeople kept near here, of mossy rock and snowmelt.

"Who do people say that I am?" Jesus said, when we had come to stand just before the cliff face. We had bread and olives with us, but none of us dared suggest we eat or drink here, despite the fact that these were the very waters that became the river Jordan.

Peter and I glanced at one another.

"John," Matthew said. "Many people think you are John. Even Herod, Chuza's steward says, thinks this."

At that, Jesus gave a sad smile.

"Elijah," Thomas said. "Or Jeremiah."

"Yes, any of the prophets," Simon said.

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"What about you?" he said, looking around at us. "Who do you say I am?"

In that moment, I had the distinct impression that if I said he was my friend, that is what he would forever be. If I said he was a hand-laborer . . . that is who he would be. I don't know why I thought that, only that his face struck me as a blank slate, devoid of the anguish or madness of before, ready for inscription.

My friend.

My heart whispered it.

Messiah.

My past, my pain, cried out for it.

Silence stretched around me and I knew that each of them voiced the thing they wished only in their hearts.

We hadn't known how to talk to Jesus of late, each of us watching our words, none of us speaking with the same impetuousness we had known. A year ago we had been children. Now we guarded what we said, measuring it, knowing when our words would be futile or even go unheard. He had grown so contrarian of late, so unpredictable, that most of the time none of us knew what to say at all.

The moment stretched over the running of the water like the thin web of a spider, taut with expectation. I all but heard the glances of the others, darting around us.

And then I realized I was afraid. That my heart was a cudgel in my ears. I was afraid because I feared that whatever I said, he might say it was not true.

That he was not the Messiah.

That he did not love me.

Worse yet, I feared I would believe him.

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They were the twin badges on all our hearts for so long now: hope and fear.

The strained silence stretched on, unbearably. I glanced at Simon, who was searching the ground in front of him, his eyes moving back and forth as though reading something there. I looked to Peter, impetuous Peter, who had leapt from the boat.

Speak. I thought to myself. Say it. Let it be said, spoken into existence.

Or let it be said, because I cannot bear it anymore. Let it be put out like a shard to be crushed, and then let us no longer pretend. As though in voicing it, it would be bound in heaven and earth, both.

Speak.

"You are the Messiah."

My pulse hammered into my skull.

"The son of the living God."

There it was.

But it had not come from me.

Across the circle of us, no one moved. Only Peter, who rose to his feet. Hope shone from him like a fever. He was radiant.

Jesus lowered his head. For an instant, my heart sank.

"Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah. But I call you, Peter. And this is the rock I will build my church on," he said, glancing up.

The temple of Augustus seemed to fall away behind me. The niches in the stone face ceased to exist. There was only this: Peter's simple proclamation, and this ground, separately holy, where we stood.

"And the gates of Hades will not overcome it," he said, over the water gushing from the underworld behind him.

At last, I thought, and fell down to my knees.

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At last.

I left there in a state of alternate hope and euphoria. Hope, because I had never heard him say it or consent to the label of Messiah before until now. I understood that as in Galilee there would be strife surrounding us as we did our work--as the trappings of the pagans and Herod had surrounded us in this moment.

Euphoria, because as we left, he said he would indeed go up to Jerusalem.

It was the thing we had hoped for.

But then on the way down from Caesarea Phillipi, he began to say things that at first confused me, and then filled me with desperate frustration.

He began to talk about suffering at the hands of the priests and the teachers of the law.

This had already happened. And, if I was honest, he had brought much of it on himself.

Why must he harp on it now?

And then a few days later, as he was saying this again, he said something that turned my blood cold.

"I will be killed, and on the third day be raised to life."

Even as I was thinking that I would speak with him in private, Peter forgot his former restraint.

"Never! We will never let that happen to you!"

Jesus pulled up short and cried, "Get behind me, Accuser!"

Peter froze.

"You, stumbling Rock. Behind me now."

We were stunned. Any one of us might have said the same thing; it was the sentiment in all of our hearts. For what had we given these months and, some of us, years?

Or, others of us, a lifetime?

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That night Jesus went apart from us as usual. This time, none of us tried to pursue him.

Peter came to me an hour later.

"I'm leaving."

I got to my feet.

"No. You can't."

"Can't I?" He threw up his arms. "What else can I do? In trying to do what seems right, I do wrong. When I am with him, it is as though all the world is turned upside down. So that if I say, 'You must live,' he calls me Accuser, a satan."

His eyes were filled with the deep cuts of confusion. "How does one please a master like that?"

I didn't know. None of us did.

It was a paradox. He was a paradox.

"Meanwhile, my family is in danger as I follow this teacher I cannot please!

At least in Capernaum I know what I am doing. I am an expert at what I do. I never feel off-balance, not knowing my right from left as it changes each day!" He covered his face with a hand. "You, Judas, have been closer to his heart than any of us. You, who understand the ways of teachers. Tell me!"

There was a moment, a bare moment, when I thought, Yes. Go. Perhaps the fewer there were of them, the more influence I might exert over him. Even to the point of saving his life. Because that's what it was rapidly coming to. My master was right; he would die if he followed this course. Herod wanted him dead. The Pharisees wanted him dead. The Sadducees. Who else would there be but the poor and the sick and what would happen on the day that he refused them bread and signs? Even the Romans had to buy favor where they went with bread and circuses and offers to lower taxes or build 225

roads or of privileges. I had thought the coming kingdom different, but perhaps it was the same for any kingdom--God's, or man's.

But Peter loved him, and our master loved him in return. I knew this. For Peter to leave would crush him. And so it was for the sake of our master, and for our movement more than Peter himself, that I said, "No. You must not,"

and begged him to stay.

At the right time, and in the right moment, I would speak to Jesus if he continued with this. I would speak plainly. I would rebuke him if I must. His grief was choking him and making him irrational. We could not afford to be

irrational. We were now gambling with our lives.

SPRING BECAME SUMMER. THE jackals were out on the hillsides.

Somehow they sounded closer than ever.

I forgot the sounds of Jerusalem, of Capernaum. I knew only the rhythm of the coming and going, the prayers of my master. He preached to whoever came to hear and whatever towns we came to during the day, but then left us alone at night seeking solace not with us but with God.

I had in my things some parchment. Now, I began to write. To chase the account of all that had befallen us and record as many words of Jesus as I could remember. To have them for posterity. To distract myself from the new and gnawing hole in my gut. Every time I thought he had abandoned his morbid distraction with death, that we might at last talk of the future, he would announce to us again that he would die. Recently he had begun to say that any of us who wanted to follow him must even take up his own cross.

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He had not said it to the crowds--there were no longer multitudes that followed him at any rate--but only to us. Didn't he realize that he must not think this way?