Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (33 page)

see us razed to the ground?

I had been a man of God's law once, rededicated after a false messiah had ruined my life. I had thought this messiah would be different, had been seduced by his signs, the way he'd absolved me of my childhood guilt.

By his love.

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For love, I had kept myself in the company of sinners. Had spoken alone to a woman improperly, had broken the Sabbath . . .

I had thought it a kind of freedom. An anarchy of the coming kingdom where all men are free from oppression.

But I had let the law leak away like a badly plastered mikva that drains dry the living water within it.

When I finally got up again, it was nearly dusk. But rather than go to join them, I turned my steps to the upper city, sickened and utterly lost.

How could I have been so terribly wrong?

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36

This time I was not offered water to wash or wine to drink though my throat was burning and I could barely swallow. I had waited nearly two hours by the back gate. Finally, the steward returned and fetched me upstairs, to this small room.

"Hail, Teacher," I said, rushing forward.

Zadok didn't greet me but merely sighed as I took his hands.

He sat on a bench, not in the robes of a Pharisee but in a simple tunic, the tefillin loose on his forehead and arms as though he had begun to take them off. In that moment, he looked not so much like a teacher as an aging man, the furrows more pronounced around his mouth than the last time I had seen him.

"Very serious charges wil be leveled against your master."

"Please, I need your counsel."

"Judas, clearly you love him. But these are serious charges. You knew that the chief priests put out a call for informers on him, and that they accuse him of blasphemy. But now, after today . . . I don't know that even that will be necessary. He convicts himself." He sighed. "And after all your loyalty."

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"No man can convict himself, not in a court," I said. "I, too, know the law!"

Jerusalem was not within Herod's jurisdiction--the king couldn't just kil him as he had his cousin, John. It would take a majority to convict him of any charge, unless the mob were allowed to get to him first--

"Judas. Is he so adept at deceiving that you never even saw it?"

"It was the signs! Even I performed signs under him--"

"So did Pharaoh's magicians. Are you so in need of wonders to give you hope? Is the Torah not enough for you?"

I covered my face.

"But that's not all," he said, sounding weary. "I'm told that a Roman auxiliary serving in the Temple was killed today. A Samaritan."

I sat back on my heels. The strange shout, the cheers--that had to be it.

"Now we will all suffer." Zadok shook his head.

"But if it was only a Samaritan . . ."

Even as I said this, I heard the echo of one of my master's stories. Of a Samaritan, a member of that hated people, who helped a man beaten by bandits when a priest and a Pharisee had failed to help him . . .

"Do you think that matters to Pilate? He was wearing the uniform of Rome!

He can't let this go unexcused. Anyone associated with your master will suffer. That will include your family, Judas."

"Please, help me to save them!"

"How can I help you? You follow a deceiver!"

"Please. You have influential friends," I said, coming to him on my knees.

He was quiet for a moment, his gaze fixed somewhere in the 283

space between us. Finally, he said, "Judas, an hour will come, I think very soon, when you will have to decide whether it is better for one man, who has repeatedly demonstrated his failure to Israel, to be sacrificed to spare a nation."

The floor fell out from beneath me.

"You would stand up for Caiaphas and his false prophecy?" I said. "He is a Sadducee and not even the legitimate High Priest!"

He looked up at me then and it seemed I saw every line etched on his face.

He was worn, tired, but he was also proud. What might a man like Zadok find for himself in the kingdom of God if--when--that very thing should actually arrive? People looked to him to fill the shoes of his teacher, the militant Shammai. But when God's kingdom finally came into being, what would the world require of men like Zadok?

He was a man whose entire identity was wrapped up in rebel ion against Rome, whose very reputation required Rome. A man who would not willingly or easily be reduced from visionary to mere policer of the law. And somehow I knew then that he would never lose his life for this cause, but always find a way to survive it.

I exhaled stiffly at this realization, the sound coming out like an abrupt, short laugh.

He needs Rome. He fears Rome.

"Judas, we are not ready for rebellion. Not yet. Your master has placed us all in such straits!"

"Rome has placed us in such straits. We have. It is our sin that has brought about this exile in our own land! Is that not what you teach? How is my master any more to blame for this than me or you?"

His eyes narrowed a warning. His mouth flattened. "Heed me.

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Your master is soon to die. And I am telling you this as a father to a rebellious son, because I have seen this descent of yours."

A rebellious son? From a man younger than I! My master had told a story, once, of a prodigal son returning to his father. Would Zadok welcome me with a fatted calf and a feast? No. He was that brother standing by, claiming that he had always kept his father's commandments.

"Because of your teacher, Rome will come down to the Temple and wrest away the vestments from Caiaphas for good, and our free religious status with it."

"Perhaps that is what should happen then!"

His face hardened. "Take care, Judas, lest you, too, become a blasphemer!

They will close the Temple gates! They will help themselves to the treasury and this time not for an aqueduct. Do you know he was crying out for the destruction of the Temple?"

"He speaks in metaphor," I said. But how could I explain it to him?

"He claims that it must be destroyed--so that he can raise it up. Madness!

That Temple took nearly fifty years to build. It is the dwelling place of the Lord, and your master turned against his own people in it--and to turn against us is to turn against God!"

Leave. Get out.

"Do you think Pilate is a lenient man?" he demanded. "Do you think Herod hasn't wanted to kill Jesus since he first took John into custody? He is a dead man, and now you must choose how many others you will consign to death with him."

"There are those who will see him to safety if you will not," I said.

"Nicodemus. He was my father's patron. He has powerful friends and his teacher is Gamliel himself, leader of the Sanhedrin."

"Nicodemus can't defend your teacher. Are you so naive? Who 285

do you think controls the Sanhedrin? Not Gamliel but the Sadducees!"

"Even among the Pharisees the school of Shammai has waited for a messiah like my master ever since the days of Judas bar Hezekiah!"

"A messiah yes! But one who rebukes the Pharisees and turns against his own people?" Zadok demanded. "Who forgets the traditions of the elders? Is that a messiah?"

"He's a good man."

"And we might have accepted him. We might have rallied every man to his cause. Don't you see? But you most of all, Judas. You have been wronged more greatly than any of us, you who have lost your dignity and laid down the Torah in your making of excuses for him. And for that, we must call him blasphemer and can render him no love."

But he loves me.

And I love him.

It is the storm. This is the storm. It is only the storm. Soon, he will rise up and calm the wind.

But what if he didn't?

"More pilgrims are coming into the city every day. We will all rise up at once--"

"Yes! More pilgrims are coming into the city every day. Do you think Caiaphas will allow your master to take advantage of that? To cause a real stir in the city at the peak of the Feast? He dare not. Pilate is in the city!"

"Then Caiaphas is acting in accordance with the interests of Rome."

"No," he said, getting to his feet. "Your master is acting in accordance 286

with the interests of Rome. Rome is only strengthened by revolt. At even the

hint of sedition, they raise taxes and enforce worship of their emperor. Do you think they haven't looked for any excuse to take away our religious status? That they hadn't had their eye on the riches of our Temple, on the gold dedicated to the Lord? They would take it with any excuse to build their arenas for public spectacle in Rome. Your teacher's rebellion here will feed their empire!"

He paced to his left and turned. "Have you considered that God has placed you in a unique position to salvage this situation in obedience to the law?"

I couldn't breathe. I got up, fumbling with my mantle, torn between reason and love. A love that demanded my master live, no matter how deceived either one of us might be.

Behind me, his voice, deliberate and calm: "Think on what I have said."

I reached the door before the servant could open it. Flung it wide. Drawing my mantle up over my head, I rushed out into the rain.

That night I did not go to join my master, nor did I return home. I begged a place to sleep in the corner of the synagogue, where I curled atop one of the benches in my mantle. Long into the night, I stared at the Seat of Moses, illuminated by a single lamp.

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Upon rising, I stood outside the Temple and realized I was weeping.

Weeping because my heart refused to stir at the sight of it. Because it had become an alien place to me, so that it seemed now ostentatious and made more and more so by the hands of men. Because I didn't know if I would ever pray as fervently as I once had, in the green hills of Galilee.

I was ruined for it. For the Temple and the sacred law. The Israel of my dreams was gone, replaced only by lepers who needed healing, the sick and the hungry. The women put out by husbands only to be caught in the act of survival and hauled before authorities. The boys thrown down in the dirt because they were of questioned birth. The rift between brothers, born of disappointment and bitterness. We had not needed the Romans for any of this to happen, but only cruelty and a code by which to measure our failures.

Jesus had done this to me. With his signs, with his miracles. With his love.

All my hopes in the law paled beneath the currency of a love more immediate than Israel itself. And now, standing before the Temple, I felt nothing but the terrible longing for my

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enigmatic teacher's arm on my shoulders, the fierce desire to kiss him in greeting.

To strike him.

To fall at his feet.

A young man was walking through the rain with his parents. I started at the sight of him. Even from this short distance, the way he walked, as sedately as an adult, the way he carried himself with the seriousness of a young sage, put me in mind of Joshua. Joshua, with his great question of whether the Lord existed with us at all.

And that was the greatest fear of all, wasn't it? The reason we grappled for our laws, and our ways, and our Temple. This fear that without them God did not--would not--remain. And then who would we be? No different than the unwashed Gentiles, and no better.

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"So . . . Your master is back to bring us all down." Nathan leaned in the doorway as I folded a second mantle around some food. Children's voices sounded from the outer room. Overhead, voices drifted down through the roof.

"Take this," I said, pulling the moneybag from my belt and tossing it to him.

"What? Why?" he said, catching it.

"It's yours."

"Where are you going?"

"You are the one going. I went to Nicodemus. He's promised you a position."

"What do you mean? Where?"

"In Galilee. You will be wealthy and Mother will have slaves. Go to his house tomorrow and leave immediately after you see him. Leave here and cut all ties with the Sons."

He laughed. "You're out of your mind! I'm not leaving the Sons--"