Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (27 page)

And each night I went to my bed in a sweat and dreamed of my father.

One day late that summer, Jesus went away to pray on the slopes of Mount Hermon. He was almost always in prayer now, taking Peter and the brothers James and John with him. Though I missed him and our nights of prayer until dawn, I resolved not to begrudge Peter, who had been so wounded by him.

And so I tried to savor the time to myself, resting during the day when I knew I would not dream, and writing at night by the fire, glad that Jesus was not alone in his solitude, even though it seemed more and more that he preferred the company of only these three.

They came back with strange tales of Moses and Elijah, come to talk with him. I didn't believe them at first, but then I was intrigued with what it could mean, and made them tell the story again, and then again. I was excited by this, anxious to ask my master about it--until Peter sheepishly told me that they were not to tell the story to anyone. Not even the rest of us.

Not me.

I, who made constant excuses for him, who rationalized what he meant, who did everything I could to blunt his rough edges and to sharpen his soft ones . . . was not to know.

I hated the weakness in myself that made me feel like a child or a sulking fishwife. But somehow, I had fallen away from him, and he seemed to shun my company so that I had to learn, now, what he had said from one of them.

The three of them were strange after that, often quiet. Too quiet.

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"What is it?" I said at last to Peter. "What is it that puts the fear on your face?"

It was fall and the rains had begun to come, and I looked forward to the green on the hills, hoping that we would all, somehow, be restored to new life with them.

His eyes were hollow when he looked at me. "He says again and again now, that he will die--die and be raised from the dead. Why does he say that, Judas? What does he mean?"

I just shook my head.

We were in exile for months, until the day that Zebedee sent word that the fervor had died down and most of the crowds had given up waiting for him and gone their way.

Finally, that fall, we returned to Capernaum.

We returned as men who hide in open sight. I saw the way that they looked at us, the people and the Pharisees. I saw the wide berth some of them gave us, thinking it might hurt their own image to be seen talking to us.

For the first time, I missed moving about as one even who offended the Pharisees--at least then we had not scuttled around like those who fear being caught in some act. I missed, even, the throng.

And now who was there following us in earnest but a few stray dogs? They had come with us so far that when I opened the door in the morning to go out and relieve myself against the garbage heap, there was always one of them there, manged and haggard, choking by the side of the road on whatever it had found to gnaw on. And I could not ascertain who was in worse condition--them, or us.

But for as much as I missed our life before, I relished this time with my master. Between his many admonitions that he would die--he 228

was obsessed now with the idea of death--he began to spend time with us alone again as he hadn't been able to before, in the presence of so many.

And now he told us stories of prodigals, of forgiveness and debt, of missing sheep and coins.

Pray in this way. Forgive us inasmuch as we forgive others.

Seventy-seven times.

His teachings were not new to me--these were the things spoken of in the teachings of the sages, and debated in the schools of the Temple and in the synagogues. But his stories were.

We sat by lamplight at night. As men who share stories holed up in a cave without food while a storm blows outside, knowing they may starve.

We pretended there were no soldiers waiting to seize him, that there were not, even now, ready witnesses willing to testify that he was a blasphemer.

That he was not caught in the grip of a malaise and fixated on death, and that he would not take us all to that grave with him.

I could believe, in those days and weeks, that we were alone, we twelve, in fighting an invisible Accuser, that we twelve were somehow army enough.

Until I woke up in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat, having dreamed again of the burned city, the coded message on the wall.

This last time, it had read only one word: Unclean.

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26

Standing on the road and looking up toward the Holy City, my heart hammered within my chest. But not for joy.

It was Tabernacles, the time of harvest. I could not escape the dream that had haunted me now for many nights. The crosses, the burning buildings.

The Temple, destroyed.

I did not confide in Jesus; I didn't want to tax him in any way with my macabre dreams--he, who thought only these days of death.

We had left Thomas, Jude, Philip, Nathanel, and James the smaller behind and joined a group of pilgrims as we came closer to the city. But first we had begged Jesus not to go.

"There are things I must do. But don't worry." He smiled slightly. "It isn't time yet."

Time for what?

But I knew I would get no good answer from him. At least there was no throng following us. In this way, we might be any other pilgrims on this road.

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Last year I had anticipated that by this time we might be in our new base in Jerusalem. Perhaps in the palace itself. But here we were, skulking about, going so far as to stay in Samaria, where we were issued the gravest insult of all: the refusal of hospitality.

I never thought to enter Samaria, let alone to pass an evening there out in the wild. I did not sleep well that night even though Peter stayed awake most of it with his sword unsheathed.

The night before the feast began we arrived at the home of Mary and Martha in the darkness of early evening. Their brother, Lazarus, clasped all of us in greeting.

Even this close to her gates and my family so near, Jerusalem did not beckon to me. A sense of dread had settled like a pit in my stomach, so that I had to slip out constantly to empty my bowels, which would not hold food properly.

When, on the fourth day of the feast, Jesus started out for the city, I slipped away.

The day of our arrival I had sent a message ahead. Now when I came to the house of Zadok, I was let in without preamble.

I was not given a garment as before, but only some water to wash my hands as I was taken to a smaller room to wait. A short time later, Zadok came in.

"Hail, Teacher," I said, kissing him, feeling strangely false, as though I betrayed my own master in greeting Zadok this way.

He seemed to have aged in the time since I had seen him last. And then I thought, He will outlast us all. The thought sent a strange wash of cold up my shoulders.

"So your master returns to the city. Despite my warning to you."

"Please. Help me protect him." I was ready to beg, to promise 231

him anything. He was so close, my master, to recovering from the thing that had seized him all these months. Soon, I thought, very soon, he would be nearly his old self again.

"I think you overestimate my power," he said, reaching for a stone cup and pouring some wine. He offered it to me, and I took it, but I could not bring myself to drink. "I told you he shouldn't return at all unless he was ready to march on the city."

"We lost the throng after John was killed. And now today he'll go to the Temple and soon everyone will know that he's here." Simply saying it, I was close to panic. "But the Pharisees have influence to exert in this. You can protect him."

Zadok sighed. "Judas, your master has made his own choice of friends. I hear he has routinely flouted the ways of the Pharisees--and for what? The man is no idiot. On the contrary, he is a brilliant teacher, by all accounts, if contrarian and manipulative."

I wondered about who had reported those other accounts. "No," I said quickly. "He is not manipulative. Contrarian, yes. He is a paradox. If only you would meet him yourself. Please, will you go to the Temple? Look behind the provocative words he speaks. There is more there--"

I caught myself. I had almost said, "than the law," but said instead, "than what you have heard and the heresy spoken about him. He is himself a sage, whose way would have caused Hillel to smile and Shammai to nod."

Zadok set down his cup. "Judas. The messenger of Annas has already asked what I know of your master's appearance so that the guard may arrest him. He's prepared even now to take him the moment he enters the Temple."

I fell down at his feet.

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"Please, Teacher!"

"Why did he cause such offense the last time he was here?" he said, shaking his head. It was genuine frustration on his face. Frustration and anger, too. But rather than alarm me, I felt an anger of my own, rising up in me toward this man that he should presume frustration from so far without knowing what paradoxes and hardship and fear we had lived with . . . and then toward Jesus himself, that he had caused this rancor in us all.

"Is he a man of such compulsion that he can't stay away, that he can't choose his time, that he must go to the porticoes as a dog goes back to his vomit?"

I felt my face turn red. "You insult my master." Were it not for my dire need for his help, I would have stormed out of his house. Were it not for circumstance, I might now sit in his place, as an even greater teacher of the law, and he in mine. But need compelled me to stay, even on my knees.

He raised his hand. "Forgive me. I mean only, why can't he temper passion with prudence? If what you say is true and he would be Messiah, why doesn't he act more strategically? You say he lost the throng that surrounded him--how does a man lose a whole army?" He shook his head.

"It was a choice," I said, in a bald lie. "And if you were there, you would have seen the prudence in it. But don't think he can't recall them all with a word.

All across Galilee, his name is known. Even to Phoenicia and Syria, into the territory of Herod Antipas' brother, Philip. The people love him, or how else would he have evaded the soldiers of Antipas? But now he has come here--"

"Yes, and why?" he demanded. "Didn't I say he shouldn't return until such a time that all was ready and we might support him?

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Besides." He sighed heavily. "He's from Galilee. There's no overlooking this.

What prophet comes from Galilee?"

"Nahum," I said swiftly.

"Nahum," he repeated and gave a slight but mirthless laugh as he sank back into his seat. "Let's not argue, Judas. This changes nothing between you and me. Your master won't be the first messiah to fail. There's no shame in it.

But it's time to leave his side."

Leave Jesus? No. Impossible. Panic rose up inside me at the thought of my brother, my mother. What might happen to them because I disobeyed an order from this man? Even now, Simon lived in fear for his family.

But I knew without question I would never leave Jesus.

"He won't fail. The signs, the healings!"

"Yes, the signs, the healings. What messiah hasn't made the same claim?"

And then I knew.

Zadok was supposed to be the new Shammai. He was supposed to want the freedom of Israel, and the perfect keeping of Torah that would bring about that day. But in that moment I understood that he would want it only as he had envisioned it or not at all.

"Please," I said. "Go to the Temple. You have every pretense to be there even now. Please, hear him. Test him yourself."

"Perhaps, Judas," he said, sighing. "But perhaps it's time for you to consider that this man is not the Messiah."

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27

There was a crowd gathering around a teacher at the far end of the royal stoa. Some of them were shouting.

It could only be him.

I slowed my stride, sure that anyone near me would hear the dread thud of my heart.

A man standing a little ways off said, "Isn't this the one that they were talking about, the one they're trying to kill?" He looked up and around. "But no one's stopped him. Maybe they really do think he's the Messiah."

"That can't be," another man said. "They know this man is from Nazareth.