The Liars' Gospel (19 page)

They taste together. The wine is exceptional, scented with walnut, figs, and spring grass. Caiaphas rolls the good red richness
around his mouth. It is the hills of the north and the deep peace of childhood.

He meets Natan’s eyes.

“Yes, then,” says Natan.

“Ask them for this in the future instead of the grain they owe.”

Natan nods. Pauses.

“And then there is the other matter.”

He looks at Natan, a little confused. Natan shifts uneasily in his chair.

“You’ll have to remind me, my friend.”

“Livan’s daughter gets married next week.”

“Ah,” says Caiaphas. “Yes.”

There is a pause. Caiaphas contemplates Livan’s daughter in his mind as he last saw her. A dark-skinned girl of fourteen,
sweet small breasts under her shift, her hair caught back with a garland of flowers. She kept her eyes modestly lowered when
she met him. And he thought: yes, as well this one as another, if God wills it.

“How old is she now?”

“Seventeen.”

“Yes, then she has waited for me long enough. Very well. Good. Do you have a new girl for me to meet?”

“I have her waiting in the outer room.”

“You should have told me she was there. We could have dealt with her first.”

Natan chuckles.

“It is good for her to become accustomed to waiting.”

Caiaphas laughs.

“I believe you kept her outside just for your joke.”

Natan shrugs.

“Whose daughter is she?” asks Caiaphas.

“Hodia.”

Caiaphas nods slowly, impressed. Hodia is a wealthy man, whose generous gifts to the Temple have already secured him a certain
amount of political power.

“He has three sons, Hodia, yes?”

Natan smiles. “And he is a Cohen.” Hodia is a member of the priestly class. His sons would be candidates for high priestly
office, perhaps even High Priest. “I’m sure he would be delighted to be so close to you.”

“Well, bring the girl in.”

This girl is different to the last. Hodia’s daughter is round-cheeked, with skin burnished like bronze, black hair and bright
black, searching eyes. She does not keep her gaze modestly cast down. Her body is already that of a woman, with broad hips
and full breasts. She is sixteen.

Typically these girls remain silent unless he speaks to them, but she speaks before he has a chance to address her.

“Sir,” she says, a small smile at the corners of her mouth, “is your wife in good health?”

He laughs, without intending to.

“Very good health. Should I apologize?”

“Are you that much of a prize?”

And he and Natan are both laughing.

“I see you’ve had the thing fully explained to you.”

“Perfectly.”

It is not a complex matter. The High Priest—the Cohen Gadol—must be married. It is not optional. He alone goes into the holy
sanctuary on Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the year. The entire people wait for his sign that they have been forgiven
by God. And to atone for the sins of the whole house of Israel, he must be a whole man: he must not be crippled, he must not
be unusually ugly, he must not be deaf or blind, he must not be unmarried. To expect an unmarried man to carry that burden
of sin would be as foolish as expecting it of a child, or a woman.

This raises a problem, of course. For what if the wife of the Cohen Gadol should chance to die on the eve of Yom Kippur? Then
there would be no High Priest able to intercede with God on behalf of the people. So there must be another girl waiting, just
in case. She may never be needed. But it is as well to have chosen her in advance. There is, of course, another Cohen waiting
to take his place if he himself dies. The needs of the people go on, though men die and other men rise to take their place.

This girl is attractive, with her sauce and her talk. He thinks it would be good to lie with her, to make her gasp and teach
her how to please and be pleased. The wife of a Cohen Gadol must, of course, be a virgin. It is not that his own wife is displeasing
to him physically or that he longs for another woman, but one must consider the thing properly. If it happened, there would
be no time for doubts, and it would seem ill for him to divorce her very quickly.

“You understand that you must be beyond suspicion? For this next year?”

She wriggles her shoulders in a way which reminds him how very young she is—as young as his wife was when he married her.
Her shoulders say that she is uncomfortable with the question, but her smile is bold. Her mother or grandmother must have
told her all she needs to know.

“I understand,” she says, and her pink tongue licks her dark upper lip. “I shall remain precisely as I am now, and consort
only with old women, and discuss only housework with them. For this next year.”

And there is something about the way she speaks that makes him wonder. It is interesting. They would not have brought her
to him if there were a shred of doubt about her chastity—to do so would risk the whole of the house of Israel. And yet.

Natan leads her out of the room, closing the door behind her and waiting for her steps to recede before he grins and says,
“Well? Don’t tell me I haven’t found a good one for you.”

“Yes, she’ll do very well. Only…”

Natan raises an eyebrow. Waits.

“Only are you certain of her innocence? She had a way about her which—”

“No young man has ever even held her hand. Hodia has another priest waiting for her when your year is up. She knows she has
to keep herself pure. Don’t mistake what your cock knows for what her cunt knows.”

Caiaphas laughs, in spite of himself.

“She’ll do very well,” he says.

“And may your wife remain in perfect health until she reaches one hundred and twenty,” says Natan, grinning.

“Amen.”

He tries to reason it out to himself. He is not a stupid man or an uneducated one. His father, a Cohen as well of course,
for the thing passes from father to son, had owned a string of vineyards and olive presses in the east, enough to pay for
the best possible education for his son. His father had an idea that the boy might be material for a Cohen Gadol, so he had
him learn Latin and Greek as fluently as his own Hebrew and Aramaic, and brought a tutor from Antioch. So he’s read Greek
philosophy and Roman military history, as well as the texts of his own people. He knows the value of reason.

He says to himself: why would his wife do such a thing? He says to himself: it would be death to her. And yet he cannot reason
it himself. One needs a friend for such conversations. He waits until an evening a little later, when he and Natan have finished
their business, when the lamb of the evening has been slaughtered, when the day cools and the night blows gently across the
hills of Jerusalem.

“Did you ever…” He looks at Natan. He had been intending to ask the question in one way but finds now that he cannot. Natan’s
wife is buxom, loving, several years older than him; the man can never have suspected her. “Did you ever know a man who had
a suspicion about his wife?”

Natan’s usual merriness instantly sobers.

“Kef,” he says, “your wife? Do you think your wife…”

Caiaphas finds that his practiced High Priest smile, the liar’s smile, comes quickly and naturally to his lips.

“By the enemies of God, no,” he says. “No, no. I heard a story from one of the other priests,” and he can tell that Natan
is already trying to calculate which of the other priests it could be and whether he is lying and what this might mean for
the smooth running of the Temple, but he must talk to someone and if Natan guesses, so be it. “I heard a story that one of
them suspected his wife of adultery. Did you ever know a man who thought so?”

Natan leans back in his chair. He scratches at his beard.

“All women look at other men,” he says at last, “it’s natural. Means that there’s still juice in them. The day a woman says
she never notices another man is the day you know she doesn’t want to fuck you anymore.”

Caiaphas breathes out through his nose.

“Looking is one thing,” he says, “I’m talking about something else.”

Natan puts his cup down, leans forward, hands on his knees.

“What are you talking about?” he says. “Your wife is the most sensible woman alive.” He reaches his hand forward and clasps
Caiaphas’s knee briefly. “Even if she did pick you for a husband.”

Caiaphas finds he is laughing. It is the politician’s laugh, the one he is surprised to find seems so convincing when it does
not touch him at all on the inside.

“Tell me about Darfon, son of Yoav,” he says quickly.

“Oh,” says Natan, “is that all this is? The man’s a flirt, Kef, an unconscionable, foolish flirt and you’re not the first
one to notice. I’ve been thinking for a long time I should send him north, to work at one of the record-keeping houses and
get him out of our business here. Let him show off his muscles to the girls of the house of Zebulun and find himself a wife.”

“But I—”

“He will be away from here within two weeks.”

He watches her the next day, privately, quietly, while she dresses in a simple night-blue shift and arranges her hair with
two gold pins. His mind vacillates between suspicion and finding himself ridiculous. She would not be so foolish. She would
not be so cruel. The simple fact that he fears it means it must be impossible.

It is entirely forbidden for any man to lie with a wife who has been unfaithful to him. For any man, but especially for the
High Priest. It is not only undesirable. It is not only that he may divorce her if he wishes. It is forbidden. If she has
been unfaithful, he must know it and he must divorce her.

Every part of him will go into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. No part of him may have touched an impure vessel.

He must know. So he arranges things. He waits for a time when he knows that Natan the Levite, the man he trusts, will be busy
with the tribute from the tribe of Gad. He calls another Levite, a man who does not know him.

He says, with his liar’s smoothness, “My wife asked me to send one of these casks of wine home.” He motions to two of the
barrels from Asher in the corner of his chamber. “Will you have one of your men do it?” A pause, just long enough so that
it will seem as if the idea has only just occurred to him. “Oh,” he says, “why not send that man Darfon? He is strong, and
my wife wanted someone to cut a low-trailing branch from the cherry tree in our garden.”

Caiaphas is a wolf, cunning and perpetually hungry.

He gives them a little time. He does not follow Darfon closely in the street. He hangs back and tarries at a market stall,
examining jars of oil while he counts the moments in his mind. This would be the time when Darfon arrives at Caiaphas’s home
unexpectedly. This would be how long it would take his wife to send the servants out on errands. This would be the moment
they are alone. Now. It is now. His hands shake as he places a small jar of oil back on the stall and his feet begin to walk.

He pauses before his own front door, thinking suddenly whether he would not rather go back to the Temple. It is the memory
of the Holy of Holies that urges him on, the memory that soon he will be summoned back to that tiny chamber at the heart of
everything and called on to answer for the whole of the people.

The house is very quiet. The small fountain in the courtyard trickles into the pool beneath. His daughters’ bedrooms have
already been neatly swept by the maidservants. His own bedroom, the large one that looks out onto the courtyard, is still
and silent. Some of his wife’s hair is caught in the silver-backed hairbrush on her table. In the bronze mirror, his reflection
walks past, creeping like a thief.

It is so quiet here, away from the bustling street, that he can hear the birdsong.

He ascends the wooden stairs at the side of the house leading to the upper floor where the servants sleep. Although it is
his home, months can go past without his needing to visit these rooms. Some furniture is stored here, a few pieces he inherited
from his grandfather. There are four tiny rooms with small windows and sleeping benches for the slaves, and two larger ones
with better beds for the housekeeper and the cook.

He fingers the blankets on one of the beds. Remembers how, when his children were young, he would often find them up here,
playing in the dust. The slaves and the servants were kind to them. There is an ointment in an earthenware pot by one bed.
He smells it and wrinkles his nose. Some foul-smelling cure for rheumatism or spottiness no doubt.

In a box under one of the beds, he finds a letter in Greek—he had no idea that his cook could read Greek—it is a love letter
from a man in Crete, promising to come soon and take her away, calling her his duck, his sweet fruit, his fresh pomegranate.
As he reads, his emotions are mixed: irritation that some Cretan will take his cook away, anxiety that he might somehow be
discovered reading this letter, even though the house is empty, and a kind of wonder at the secret chamber at the center of
every human heart whose contents are unguessable from the outside.

Even the slaves have their tiny arrangements of possessions. A talisman against coughing. A bone comb. A half-completed carving
of a tree on a piece of olive wood. When they are released—and a Hebrew slave must be freed after seven years of service—he
supposes they will take these things with them, back into whatever life they came from.

He is so involved in the examination of these artifacts that he half forgets why he came to the house in the middle of the
afternoon at all. Until he hears his wife laughing.

It is a short laugh, a breathless one. It is coming from outside. Peering through the tiny window above the housekeeper’s
bed, he looks without seeing for a while: only the fountain, the vines growing up the trellises, the bushes and the fruit
trees already beginning to drop their harvest on the red stone tiles. And then, craning, he sees them.

They are in the gardener’s enclosure, screened off behind the main garden so that it can only be seen from above. He never
goes in there: it is where the gardener stores his tools in a wooden box, where the plants which are not ready to come out
are grown and tended. He does not even know how to get in: he thinks he has seen the latched gate in the fence at the back
of the house but is not sure.