Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (12 page)

His thumbs brushed over the boils of the leper's cheek, over the lesions rimming his mouth like the uneven stones lining a well in the desert. It was not the touch one gives an abomination, not the perfunctory graze of the physician . . . but the caress of one moved to weeping over the sight of something beautiful. The man dropped his head down into the Nazarene's palm, and sobbed.

"Be clean."

The man slowly lifted his head.

I staggered. The air left my lungs as Simon shoved past me, staring.

Where there had been lesions like boils, there was smooth skin, revealing for the first time wide-set eyes, a strong nose, and well-shaped mouth--a mouth for uttering prayers. A living being had emerged from the flesh of the dead and for the first time since seeing him, I wondered what his name was.

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He covered his face, his cries more primitive and profound than words. And when he lifted his shaking hands, ten well-formed fingers grasped for the sky.

I had seen many great teachers. I had heard many stories.

But I had never seen anything like this.

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11

That night I lay wrapped in my mantle in an inn in Gennesaret, unable to sleep. I was thinking about the leper, of his return to his family. Of his return to the synagogue--to the Temple, from which he would have been barred all this time.

Of the way the Nazarene had cupped his face--as though the man were not a leper but his own brother or son or dearest friend.

How many years had the leper hoped for the day that he might be sprinkled with the blood of a bird by the priest and proclaimed clean? How many years had he dreamed of the eighth day after, when he might bring two lambs to sacrifice--and the hour that the priest would rub the blood of one lamb on his earlobe and his thumb and his largest toe and pronounce him clean? And how many months or years ago had he abandoned such hope--along with his earlobe, his thumb, his toe--in the limestone caves of Galilee?

What did it mean that a man could restore such hope to one lost?

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Could this man do the same for a nation?

Messiah.

I told myself not to think these thoughts. But then I thought them anyway.

IT WOULD BE ALMOST two days before we would see the Nazarene again.

The teacher, someone said, had gone into the hills to pray. And so we stayed at the inn, waiting as many of those camping outside the city waited, to see him again. During that time, tales about him abounded, as numerous and unbelievable as so many Galilean fishing stories.

That he'd driven demons out of a woman from Magdala by simply commanding them to go. This, I knew to be impossible.

That the Magdalene woman now followed him wherever he went, even in his company as part of his circle. The mere idea was an affront to propriety.

That he had come to Galilee by way of Samaria. What good Jew traveled through that land of murderers? One man even said he had sat down at Jacob's own well and asked a woman for a drink. Simon declared this last bit rubbish and called the man a liar to his face. No respected teacher would speak to a woman who wasn't his wife--let alone ask a Samaritan woman for a drink. He would contract uncleanness by just touching her.

And yet, he had touched a leper . . .

"The teacher says that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed," a local merchant who sold us some bread told us. "It's the smallest seed, but when it is grown, it is larger than all the

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plants in a garden and becomes a tree, and birds come to rest in its branches."

"Are you sure that's what he said?" I frowned.

"Heard it myself. I follow him every chance I get--have for months now. He also says the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea that gathers all kinds of fish. And then when it's full, men pull it ashore and sort the good fish into containers, and throw away the bad ones."

"I don't like it," Simon murmured the second evening. "What teacher teaches with stories like these? How does one teach truth with fictions? It's a dangerous thing to toy with scriptures, to chance changing even one jot or tittle of the law!"

"He's speaking to common people, Simon. Not learned men like you."

"I heard someone say today that he doesn't even wash his hands before eating. What teacher ignores the purity laws?"

I did not tell him that I didn't think the Nazarene was interested in that form of purity. Nor did I remind him that the Maccabee himself had gone from town to town raising his army until the day that he was ready to march on Jerusalem and purify the Temple. I did not say that the day we arrived I had not seen just a throng of hungry peasants, but the beginnings of an army. I did not share any of this, though it sent my heart soaring in my chest and I knew I would report it to the Sons.

But Simon remained unconvinced.

"Someone told me they almost killed him when he went home to Nazareth.

Because there he is only a hand-laborer and yet he claimed the scriptures were fulfilled in his being there. And because he does not teach by quoting the sages, but on his own word as though the scriptures were the commentary!"

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"It's rumor and hearsay! What else have these peasants got to talk about?" I said.

"He didn't heal a leper or perform any sign there. Do you know the reason he gave? Because they did not believe. And so he couldn't perform it. Isn't that how conjurers work? Do you know what another man told me today? That he was in Egypt as a boy. Egypt--the land of magicians!"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Judas, be careful. We will know the Messiah by his might, but we know a man of the Lord by the law and the company he keeps."

"To keep the company of the poor is not a sin."

"Why do you defend him? We're nearing the end of our funds. If we return now, we can get back to the city ahead of the pilgrims going up for the Feast."

"Simon, there's something happening here. Can't you tell? Can't you feel it?

These men haven't come out to hear stories. They came for hope."

"Hope in what? I see a horde of peasants that will eventually get scattered when their leader gets put down like a dog! This is not the way, Judas."

Anger welled up in me like desperation.

"How do you know? Because they do not wash? Did you not see that leper come away with whole skin? Fingers--where there were no fingers? Can you not see the faces of those people, more desperate for what he has than they are even for food? There is something more simple and profound here that even you and I, in our learning, can understand."

"You're infatuated with him!" he burst out. "You want so much for him to be this thing you desire, you overlook that he flouts the law!"

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"He came from Egypt. You said it yourself. Andrew says he wasted away in the wilderness. For forty days. Forty--the number of years Moses himself wandered the wilderness. And then he returned and crossed the Jordan.

Does this mean nothing to you? Didn't our forefathers do the same on their return from exile?" Even saying it raised gooseflesh on my arms.

"Bethlehem," I went on. "Did you hear that he wasn't born in Nazareth? He was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem, Simon. The birthplace of David. And his parents were even of the line of David."

"So are a hundred other peasants every year. Someone whispers 'Messiah'

and you go all crazy? Did anyone tell you he's also of questioned birth?"

I blinked. Of "questioned birth." Not quite a bastard, but not without a smudge on his lineage. My brother's birth had also been called

"questionable," though in his case it was a kindness over calling him what he truly was. In small Kerioth, it had made finding a woman for him especially challenging. His wife, Rebecca, was of similarly questioned birth, her parents only betrothed at the time of her conception.

Why was everything we heard about this teacher troubling?

I pushed the thought away and closed the distance between us. "I am the last person to lose my mind over a so-called messiah. You have no idea what I have lost in the name of would-be messiahs!"

"Oh yes I do," he said, very quietly. "You are so presumptuous, thinking you are the only one who suffers, who has lost anything. I know very well what it is to see a brother put to the sword, a father hung on a cross! I do not need to tell you that these things have dire consequences. Herod's already seized the Baptizer that

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you rushed out to hear at the river. How long before he arrests his cousin, too?"

"He healed that leper," I said. "I saw it with my own eyes and so did you.

That was no magician's trick."

His mouth was set, hardness in his eyes like a shield.

"A little longer," I said. "If the signs are not real, if you cannot say 'I see. I believe' with your own mouth, we will go back."

Even as I said it, I knew that I would not go back, even if he turned and left me now.

"A little longer," he said, more quietly. "But think, Judas. Do you not see that maybe he is a very clever peasant with a grudge? With good cause, perhaps, but a grudge nonetheless--against the rich, the learned, the keepers of the law, every one of those who have seemingly deprived him of honorable place in this world? And so of course he appeals to peasants and landless workers. He is one of them. But he is not one of us."

The next day we got up early before the crowds could gather. The sun had barely tinged the sky when we came across a man I thought I'd seen with the Nazarene the first day--one close to him.

"Excuse me," I said, making for him. "Have you seen the teacher, the Nazarene they call Jesus?"

"He's resting," the man said in a thick Galilean accent. His face was dark from the sun and I assumed him to be another of John's disciples. "Don't worry, you'll see him soon enough. You can't miss him."

The disciple started down the path toward the docks and we quickly followed.

"And who are you?" I said.

The man glanced over at us as we came alongside him. "Simon 104

bar Jonah," he said, his chin lifting a notch. "Though the teacher calls me Peter."

"He calls you 'Rock'?" Simon said with a queer look.

Peter knocked himself on the skull with a grin. His front teeth were crooked, one of them so much so that when he closed his mouth it seemed to almost stick out between his lips. "When it fits. Andrew is my brother."

"I don't remember seeing you at the river with the Baptizer," I said.

"I wasn't. With all the fishing tolls we need every able-bodied man in the family on the lake. No, Andrew was the wild one, telling tales of a man at the Jordan, baptizing any other madmen willing to go hear him." He flashed a wry smile at me. "We were secretly glad when John was imprisoned, because it meant that Andrew would come back."

I frowned.

"And yet, here you both are," Simon said, squinting at him, "following his cousin."

"Yes. Here we are. And I've pledged to follow him wherever he goes. I thought my brother was out of his mind the first time he came to tell me he had found the Messiah."

I glanced sharply at him. "Messiah?"

Peter lifted his chin. "If that's not a Messiah, then I don't know what is."

I noticed then that he had a sword at his side, partially obscured beneath his robe.

"Will you tell us where you're going?" I asked.

"Capernaum," a man said behind us. "Home."

We had come this far and now they were leaving for another 105

village even farther away. These were all fishermen and peasants and farmers here. For an instant I wondered if Simon was right. We didn't belong.

I turned to the man who'd spoken behind me and my next question died on my lips.

Before me stood the Nazarene.

"Go on to the boat, Peter," he said.

Peter ducked his head and went ahead toward the dock.

"I've seen you before," the Nazarene said, turning to smile at me.

Was it possible he remembered me? Even now I remembered that first day, the gaze that had drawn me back to the river days later to look for him again.

"Yes," I said. "At the river. I came to warn John."

"What are you called?"

"Judas bar Simon. From Kerioth. Jerusalem, originally. And this is Simon bar Isaac, who studied under the great Shammai."

"Teacher," said Simon, who was nothing if not proper even in the face of doubt.

I couldn't gauge if the name of Shammai meant anything to the Nazarene. I knew only that the words he spoke next changed my life.

"Judas Ish-Kerioth. Simon bar Isaac," he said, looking at each of us. "Come with me."

"Now?" Simon said.

He chuckled. "Yes, now."

He went down to the pier where Peter was waving at us from the boat.

Exchanging a last look with Simon, we hurried after him and got in.

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I desperately wanted to look into the Nazarene's face, to see if I could find in his expression a hint of the thing within him that had healed the leper, some secret in those too ordinary eyes. But he had pulled his mantle up over his head against the morning sun glancing off the water and I couldn't crane to see him without feeling like I might topple from my seat in the rocking of the boat.