The Artifact (33 page)

“LAST SEPTEMBER 7
^th
, I REPORTED AN ALLEGATION BY BEDOUIN NOMADS I ENCOUNTERED IN THE SYRIAN DESERT THE PREVIOUS SPRING. THOSE WANDERING ARABS CLAIMED THAT DURING APRIL 2003, THE FIRST MONTH OF THE IRAQ WAR, AMERICAN SOLDIERS OF THE 82
^ND
AIRBORNE DIVISION KILLED SEVERAL TRIBESMEN IN A FIREFIGHT AND LOOTED A PRICELESS ARTIFACT BURIED BENEATH THE DESERT SANDS. THAT ASSERTION WAS ECHOED BY THE PROVISIONARY IRAQI GOVERNMENT, BUT DENIED IN MY OWN QUERIES TO THE PENTAGON, THE COMMANDER OF THE 82
^ND
DIVISION, AND WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPEOPLE. IN THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED MY BROADCAST RELATING THOSE EVENTS JUST 90 DAYS AGO, I PURSUED THAT ARAB CONTENTION WITH INTERVIEWS OF TROOPERS WHO WERE IN THE AREA WHERE THE NOMADS CLAIMED THE CONFRONTATION TOOK PLACE, FOLLOWED LEADS TO CITIES AND TOWNS AROUND THE COUNTRY THAT FINALLY IDENTIFIED TWO PRINCIPALS IN THE ARTIFACT THEFT. DURING THAT INVESTIGATION, I ALSO DETERMINED THAT THE STOLEN ARTIFACT WAS NOT A PRECIOUS CACHE OF GOLD AND GEMS, BUT AN ANCIENT DOCUMENT WRITTEN IN ARAMAIC, AUTHENTICATED BY EXPERTS AND TRANSLATED INTO COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH. UPON OUR GUARANTEE OF TEMPORARY CONFIDENTIALITY REGARDING THEIR IDENTITY, AND CERTAIN OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THIS PHENOMENAL DOCUMENT, THE SOLDIERS IN POSSESSION OF THE MANUSCRIPT HAVE ALLOWED THIS REPORTER TO EXECUTE THEIR INTENT TO SHARE IT WITH THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE. I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS SURROUNDING THE DISCOVERY AND HANDLING OF THIS INCREDIBLE MANUSCRIPT WILL FOLLOW. FRANK MORRISSEY WILL NOW READ THE VERBATIM AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SHIMON, BROTHER OF JESUS OF NAZARETH.

Frank sat perched on the edge of a padded, straight-back chair wearing outsized earphones, facing Viola within the cramped jury-rigged sound studio. He adjusted the oval microphone of slotted chrome on the table before him, picked up the sheaf of paper beside it in both hands and gave a nod to T.P.

On Monday night, Sammy rolled his swivel chair to the end of the dining room table where they had set up the satellite communications equipment. He checked the specialized computer, the VCR tape player interface, and confirmed the position of the rooftop transmission disk. Geoff monitored the Universal Coordinated Time on his laptop, raising his hand to signal Sammy to activate the uplink that would send the first segment of the two thousand year old autobiography to a twenty-first century global orbiting satellite for a listening audience of seven billion people.

Charlie’s hand cut through the air. “Send.”

Sammy pressed the red button on his console and the encrypted voice of Andrea, then Frank Morrissey soared twelve miles into the stratosphere for pickup by every radio network on earth.

Shimon’s Tale

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Syrian Desert

3818
Iyar
(CE 72 May)

Men have named me Red Warrior. I have questioned often the accuracy of that sobriquet over the years, because a Jew who wields a sword among a race of submissive talkers need not spill much human blood to be so designated. On the other hand, I have fought for my dignity in my youth, for my life in the Circus, and for my freedom as a rebel. You may judge for yourself.

On this day, I recoup my strength on tufts of grass in the shade of a tall palm tree on an oasis in the vast expanse of undulating desert some
400
milia passumm
^2
.
to the north and east of Jerusalem. All phases of the moon have occurred since I escaped the Temple raging in flames, Jerusalem sacked, the last of our rebel command killed, captured, tortured or crucified. Few of our number have surrendered to the cruel retribution of soldiers in Vespasian’s legions
³
. Except for several besieged outposts, our rebellion has been defeated by the might of the Roman Empire. Our people fought hard and bravely for six bloody years against a better equipped, better trained army of legionnaires
⁴
seasoned in the art of war, in the end, to no avail. Perhaps it was knowing when to retreat and how, that allows me to lie here in the dry heat that broils the flesh and steals one’s breath; an old soldier’s inner guide, the experience of many battles survived by wit as much as skill.

Realist that I am, scant weeks before our ultimate defeat, the Temple in total conflagration, the battle turned decidedly against us, I managed my escape from the crumbling battlements we had occupied for so long against implacable odds. In the dark of night I was able to slay a mounted soldier guarding the outskirts of the city, relieving him of horse and armor. Other survivors escaped to Syria, Turkey, Greece, and even Rome, the very existence of Judea in question. Later scribes will surely record the details of that event. My purpose on these challenging sheets of parchment is to expiate my own soul, to seek a resolution that will enable me to spend my time remaining in some small vestige of a peace that has so far eluded me in this contentious life.

Despite my wounds, I was able to gallop the Roman horse through trickling streams in rock strewn wadi and mountain passes to Jericho, roaming the villages and towns in Jordan, camping in fields and plains, foraging wheat and barley from small farms, game from the forests and fish from lakes, until I had traveled some
50
milia passuum
into the desert where my exhausted beast faltered, leaving me collapsed on the scorching sand.

Without knowledge of my good fortune, I had been following a trade route to the port of Baku on the Caspian Sea from which a glint of my shucked armor was seen by a caravan from Cairo, according to their leader, hours before my certain demise under the merciless sun. I was unconscious for several days while the women tended my wounds and body ravaged by exposure to the elements. Without the strength or means to exist on my own, I traveled with them, first on a litter pulled by an ass, then my own worn sandals until we reached this watering hole not far from

the foothills of Tell Manuk, to the south of Bir Meloza, where those kind merchants left me with an

old dromedary and provisions.

I have erected my tent against a healthy date tree which provides shade and some sustenance. A cool spring flows from a narrow crevice in an outcrop near a patch of damp moss, sustaining wild flowers and combs of honey. On occasion, I trade my meager possessions with passing nomads, but just as often have been forced to abandon my camp temporarily to thieves and bandits. In the absence of grain or fruit, I have hunted small game with my sling despite our dietary strictures, which I began to observe again when I joined the rebellion three years past. Most days of late I have spent in uneasy solitude, contemplating my wretched life, staring at the virgin parchment before me. My wounds will have healed soon, and I shall travel south to join our forces in what may be our last stronghold in Judea, a final opportunity for our rebellion to expel the two-century domination by Rome from our land appointed by Abraham. Until then, I will occupy my days by setting down this account of my time on earth for my own mental diversion, if nothing else, with the hope of some paucity of expiation for the ultimate crime against my own blood.

My stylus is heavy, and I put it to parchment with the reluctance of a guilty man. Throughout my life I have scoffed at Egyptian kings and Pharaohs compelled to leave their mark on history with pyramids and obelisks erected by the sweat and blood and very lives of tens of thousands of slaves, the countenance of Emperors cast on coins of gold and silver, carvings of their image inlaid with precious gems, and scrolls encrypted with their own perception of their worldly accomplishments. Is it the fear of historical anonymity or self-justification that drives a Roman magistrate, Israelite patrician or temple priest near the end of his life to commission scribes to record a filtered version of his earthly endeavors? If this is an inherent urgency of mankind it is well that peasants are neither literate nor have the wealth to engage scribes, and must be content with leaving progeny with misspoken oral histories to burden future generations, or the land would be filled with scrolls of prevarication. Who am I to condemn another? It matters not whether hubris, a final search for self-enlightenment or vicarious extension of his time on earth that compels a man to assess his actions, his lifelong beliefs as he nears his end.

Now, in the fifty-ninth year of my age, after much consideration, I too feel compelled to record the elements of my existence. Without diversion or distraction this fortnight past, they have overfilled my mind to a point where the only way I believe I can find relief from their pressure is to set them down and thus aside in the hope that I can work up the physical and intestinal fortitude to rejoin my comrades still embattled by the Roman hordes. And possibly to rebuke the letters from

Paul.

I have always thought of myself as a simple man. Not pious in the ways of the Torah as James, the firstborn of my siblings and ultimately first among the Temple Priests. Nor brave and clear of purpose as my brother Yehoshua. As rebellious as sister Sarah or quiet and resigned as Mary and Rifka. We six, excluding the usual stillbirths and miscarriages were issues of Mary and Joseph, a worker of wood in Natzerat some seventy-odd years ago during the rule of Augustus Caesar and Coponius, his Procurator of Palestine.

I was born in the month of
Av
⁵
in the year 3752, when we Israelites had been under Roman rule since Pompey captured Jerusalem two hundred years past. At that time the Empire had conquered Hispania and Mauritania to the west, Gaul to the north, Greece and Armenia to the east, Egypt and Cyrenaica to the south. Their occupying armies were garrisoned in and around our large cities of Palestine from which dissention or revolt was most likely to occur. Although cadres of legionnaires roamed the countryside enforcing the collection of taxes and displaying their authority, the small villages of the Galilee were generally free from Roman presence. However, any perceived resistance to Roman law or the Jews employed by the Prefect to collect their levied tax met with swift, harsh punishment by those roving soldiers, most of whom were near barbarians pressed into service in other conquered nations. Under these circumstances, the traditional submission of Jews to the apparent will of God to suffer adversity and application of our inherent abhorrence of physical confrontation seemed the most practical means of existing under the heavy

sandal of Roman rule.

Our home consisted of a solid wooden structure my father had built on the outskirts of Natzerat to which additional rooms had been attached as the family grew in number. Despite the modest nature of the house, the skill and patience of my father with lumber, mud and bricks produced a comfortable dwelling providing warmth during cold winter nights and shelter from the heat and rains of summer. As the youngest male child, my early memories are of adequate food and a comfortable living space, which had not been the case when my elder siblings were tots, James having been born in the dank cave inhabited by my parents during their early marriage. Our family observed the Dietary Laws and mandates of the Scriptures, which were reinforced by the sweet voice of our mother who sang the psalms of the Torah almost every evening of her life. It was primarily in this verbal way that Judaism was made known to us and most peasant families, for the knowledge of reading and writing was rare among the vast majority of the population.

Both our parents came from poor families, my mother betrothed at the early, yet acceptable age of thirteen years, my father a widower with three adult children from his previous marriage, almost thirty years her senior. For reasons of which they would not speak, there was friction among my parents, grandparents and the adult sons of Joseph that caused a distance between our family and most of our relations.

After giving birth to her first three children in rapid succession, my mother gained a position

in the glittering rebuilt city of Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee. Her employment at the home of a

wealthy merchant began as caretaker of his infant daughter and son; whereby the boy Marcus and my brother James, who were of the same age, became playmates. When Marcus was assigned a Greek tutor, James had been included in those instructions. While my mother continued caring for the man’s daughter with Sarah and Yehoshua at the skirt of her robe, James learned to calculate, write and read in Hebrew and Greek.

Because the older boys were far beyond their beginning studies by the time Yehoshua came of age, instead of schooling, he was apprenticed to our father as cabinet maker. James, however, had been absorbing his lessons like a dry sponge from the Sea of Galilee. When he had achieved literacy in Aramaic and Latin, he spent much of his time in the new synagogue in Sepphoris studying the Torah in preparation for his bar mitzvah. James possessed an unusual interest and appreciation for the often ambiguous writings of the holy scriptures, and it was not long before he and the elderly rabbi in residence were discussing the Talmud and intended meaning of the laws and historical passages contained in it.

The education of James was one of the major turning points in our family fortunes. Upon an early family pilgrimage to Jerusalem, whence he had merely eleven years of his age, James astounded the Temple priests with his knowledge of the scriptures and his perceptive questions and interpretations of the Torah. Though I was still a babe in mother’s arms on that sixty-mile trek from Natzerat, the story was still regaled at meals when I was older, as that seminal incident had eventually inspired those self-important priests to recruit James into their midst. This became the towering achievement of our erstwhile unremarkable clan until years later when fate descended calamity and dishonor upon us for events beyond our control.

With James away at his studies in Jerusalem, Yehoshua became the elder son by default,