Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (16 page)

It was a time for spectacle, and people were ready to be moved and awed.

The throng had come ahead of us and everyone seemed to stare at my master. Even those who had not traveled with us seemed to recognize that here was a man of importance that he came into the city with such a following, and they fell in alongside us, singing and slapping the Galileans on their backs as though they were longtime friends.

The boys of Galilee glanced around, apparently amazed at the marvel of my home city. By the Temple rising up white in the morning sun, the gold facade of the sanctuary on fire with light. But even its brilliance could not match the shining of my pride in it, the most beautiful building on earth.

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I had seen many soldiers in Galilee, especially in the garrison town of Capernaum, but now it seemed that I saw them everywhere: standing at the gates of the city, at the cascading stairs of the Temple's entrances, outside the Antonia Fortress. Even though the Temple guard was comprised of Levites, when I looked up and saw them striding atop the royal stoa, with their short tunics and swords, they looked as Roman as the rest.

We paid our coin to immerse in one of the mikvot near the southern steps, handing our things to one another as we donned clean tunics. It was the first time I had immersed in days, though we had all bathed in preparation to come to the Holy City. Stepping into the water, I felt renewed. That I shared new kinship with the men with whom I had traveled and eaten with for weeks. I was also anxious to go home, to see my mother and Nathan and tell them about my journey and new teacher. But first, I would go to the Temple.

When we came out of the mikva, freshly dressed, Peter glanced around.

"Where's Jesus?"

"I thought he was with you?"

"Some followers we are," James muttered.

We found him in the porticoes, already surrounded by a growing group of pilgrims and some of the regular students, those who came to the porticoes on holidays hoping to hear a visiting rabbi from Alexandria or Antioch or even Rome. They had not come looking for a teacher from Galilee, and yet a group had already gathered at his feet, including several children.

"You've heard people talk about loving their neighbors and hating their enemies," he said, his voice carrying easily through the arched basilica. "But I'm telling you, you should love your enemies. If you love those who love you, what reward is there?

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If you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?"

Mere months ago, I had known nothing of this man except that he was the emaciated cousin of John. Would have disdained the teachings of a laborer from Nazareth.

How much had changed in the space of a few months.

Soon I would learn how much could change in a day.

MY BROTHER GREETED ME in the front room of our house with the cold decorum of a stranger as his children came rushing at me. I could not remember them ever doing this before, and I scooped them up in surprise.

"Brother," Nathan said, standing back.

"Don't jump on your uncle," Mother said, coming into the front room. I let them go reluctantly.

I clasped my mother and she clung to me, girl-like joy sheathed in the wrinkles of her face. And then she drew back and cried, "Judas, how thin you are!"

That evening, as the horn sounded from the corner of the Temple announcing the coming in of Sabbath, we sat down to the meal.

"You should have seen it," I said, gathering lentils on my bread. "His face was whole again. I tell you, it had been covered with rotting flesh and it was whole--and his fingers were on his hands!"

My niece and nephew watched with rapt gazes.

"So you've seen them, then, the wonders they talk about," Nathan said.

"People compare him to the healer Hanina bar Dosa. Have you met him?"

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"No, though I've heard his name. He's a Pharisee." I hesitated, then said,

"The teacher does not always have the highest respect for Pharisees."

"Brother, you've been too long in the countryside," Nathan said. "Any would-be messiah who does not earn the approval of the Pharisees is not a wise man. Perhaps, if you are truly intent on this cause, you should go sit at the feet of Hanina for a while."

"No," I said with a vehemence that surprised me. "Don't you see? That's exactly it! He doesn't look for approval from any Pharisee. Or priest. When he healed the paralytic--"

"He healed a paralytic?" Mother said.

I had almost said too much. Already, I saw the way she raised her brows, the slight frown.

"Yes," I said. I did not add that he had also pronounced the man forgiven.

"Are you certain he was a true paralytic before?" Nathan said, squinting.

"Yes. Quite."

"Hmm," Nathan said. "Well. I would have liked to have seen that."

Mother glanced up at his wife. "Rebecca, is there more good wine?"

I stared at her as she went back to her plate, to chasing lentils with a bit of bread. How could they continue to eat? A paralytic restored! A leper, healed!

Didn't they understand? How would I ever be able to tell them about the dawn I had met Jesus on the trail, or the way he had summoned the tax collector I now knew as Matthew to come with him? Or the strange dinner that we had eaten at his house that night?

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And then I realized: I couldn't.

There was a new hardness in Nathan's eyes. I had missed him while in Galilee. I had longed to say so, but now I felt a great gulf between us. What could he understand of my need for the strange thing Jesus carried within him, for the purity I had felt in the company of those sinners, so unlike that of the Pharisees? Even if he did understand it, he could never, as a good man of Israel, condone it.

Sitting in my house with my mother and brother, I felt alone. I longed for my teacher, gone back to the house of his relatives, Mary and Martha, where we had spent our last night before entering the city.

"This teacher is a man free of the burden of convention," I said, trying again.

"I've never seen anyone without fear, as he is. He speaks his mind, without worry of consequence from the rich or the learned."

"Well that's not wise, to not fear the consequences. He's in Herod's territory.

Didn't you say his cousin the Baptizer was arrested? Is he so foolish?"

I fought back the sudden wave of my anger.

"You could see for yourself. He's in the city now. Perhaps--"

"Judas, you look as though you haven't eaten in days," Mother said. "Eat.

There is plenty of time to talk about these things. You've just come home."

Her meaning was clear: No talk of messiahs. We are here. It is enough.

Nathan glanced from Mother to me. It was a thing I had seen him do uncountable times throughout the years since his birth. And then he gave a hard laugh and looked away as though not knowing how to deal with me.

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"Tomorrow we'll go to the Temple," I said. "He'll be teaching there."

"As you wish, brother," Nathan said, a sardonic turn on his mouth that made me want to strike him. I had done that once, when he was very young, around the time he had first lifted his chin in defiance of me.

That night I sat in the courtyard by the light of a lone lamp, pretending to be in prayer but only wanting to remove myself from the house.

My mother came out to bring me a cup of wine.

"He won't say it but he missed you. You are his greatest hero, Judas," she said, handing it to me.

I glanced down at the cup.

"I abandoned him."

"But you're here now."

"I mean I abandoned him years ago. And you." I glanced up at her. The lamplight was playing along the wrinkles on her face. When had she acquired so many? And yet I could see within her the woman I remembered coming down from Jerusalem with my father and Joshua that day. The same one who had survived the days after Sepphoris if only for my sake. I wanted to smile at her. To say that I thought she was beautiful. Instead, I looked away.

"You did not abandon us. You never left."

"That's not what I meant."

"Do you think I don't know why you struggled to love him? To look me in the eye? I don't blame you and neither does Nathan in his heart. He craves your approval even if he doesn't say it."

She sat down beside me. "But now, listen to me. Whatever it is you seek in this teacher you can find here. Your brother needs

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you and I want you near. Go to Nicodemus. You can see about a place in the school of Gamliel or Zadok. A teacher respected by other teachers. Not a laborer from Galilee keeping the company of bandits."

"He doesn't keep the company of bandits," I said, instantly defensive despite the fact that the company of tax collectors was considered far worse.

Bandits, at least, were often heroes of the people.

"I hear the tales as well as anyone!"

"Then you know the signs he performs. And remember what I say, because I tell you one day this nation will throw off the shackles of Rome--"

"No!" she hissed. "Do not say such things. You know how dangerous a game it is you play. I forbid you to speak such a word again!"

She was shaking in the flickering light of the lamp. "I will not count my son among those men. Do you know what it is to answer the other women and say that yes, my son has gone to follow this strange preacher? The way they look at me?"

"There was a time when you were not afraid of how others looked at you."

"That was a different time. I did what I had to do. But I did not do it so you could fall into the same fate as your father!" The line of her jaw, illuminated by the glow of the lamp, hardened, but her lips began to quiver like a girl's. "I wouldn't take back anything I've done. I would do it again! Because in so doing, I kept at least one of my sons and I gained another. I would do what I did for a lifetime to keep you alive and safe."

I touched her hand.

"All I have ever wanted is my sons near me."

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"Forgive me, Mother." I said, because I knew I would soon leave.

We sat in silence broken only by the sound of her quiet weeping.

THE SONG OF THE Levites was still in my ear when Nathan and I emerged from the Temple's middle court into the porticoes the next day.

"I don't see anyone resembling your description of this Jesus," Nathan said.

"I'm sure he's here."

As we passed near the double gate, I noticed a clot of priests walking toward it. It was unseemly to walk too fast, let alone run on the Sabbath, but the priests came striding with great purpose, their robes billowing about their feet, furrows in their brows.

With a gnawing pit in my stomach, I hurried out after them.

Outside, the priests had stopped atop the steps. Below them stood several Pharisees I recognized as those who oversaw the nearby mikvot. All of them were staring at something farther down the wide stair. A voice soared out in the clear autumn light.

"My father is always working, and so am I!"

I hurried down the steps, skirting the long robes of the priests. There, a little lower down, surrounded by a crowd of gawking onlookers, as well as Peter, Andrew, Matthew, and several others of our company, was Jesus, his arms outspread.

"What happened?" I asked one of the others standing nearby. And then I saw James and John standing a little farther down, uncharacteristically silent, their eyes darting this way and that.

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"They said he went to the Siloam Pool," the man said in a hushed voice, gesturing toward my master. "And that he healed a man, and that he told him to pick up his mat and carry it. And that one of these Pharisees saw him carrying it and told him that the law forbade him to carry his mat on the Sabbath, but the man said that the one who'd healed him commanded it."

"So you admit that you told a man to do what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"

one of the priests was saying. "You admit that you told a man to break the Sabbath?"

My hands were cold. This was far more serious than dining with a tax collector or not washing before a meal.

"He's mad," the man said. "Who would say such a thing, and to such men as these? He claims to heal by the authority of God!"