Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (8 page)

breath.

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7

Now it all made sense to me: The way Amos, another student, clasped Levi's shoulder. The way they parted in the courtyard, not looking back. The unspoken language of sedition disguised in plain sight. I simply had not had eyes to see it. Or, rather, I had not chosen to. Now I realized that a part of me had known and even sought its ubiquitous presence here in the Temple, even as I claimed to have relinquished the messianic dream.

Freedom for Israel. Death to Rome.

It fired my imagination and left me restless. At night, I lay awake, wondering: What if the Essenes were right, and the Day of the Lord was soon to come?

No. Such thoughts only brought death. The Lord himself must bring it to bear. I was soon to be a father.

I did better than not reveal Levi's identity; I avoided him altogether. What's more, I announced to Elias that I would leave my position in the treasury with the start of Passover. The ancient Levite wept, as sentimental as a woman in his old age. I clasped him and

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thanked him and promised to come to his house to announce the birth of my son, but I was relieved.

The day I left my job at the Temple I saw Levi from a distance. He was walking through the columns of the porticoes. His last glance at me was a smile, but one of sadness.

PASSOVER WAS LESS THAN two weeks away when my mother received word from Kerioth that her sister was dying.

As a boy I had looked forward to Passover--from the place at the table left open for Elijah, the prophet who would return before the coming Messiah, to the flooding of Jerusalem's streets and valleys and neighboring hills as her population swelled from thirty thousand to three times that number.

But the years since Sepphoris had cemented the violent symbolism of Passover for me: the slaughter, the blood amidst the hope of freedom--first from Egypt, now from Rome.

This year I wanted only to celebrate it in quiet, in remembrance of the past and in hope of a different kind of future. But when the letter came, I reconciled myself to the journey south to Kerioth.

My brother Nathan and I set our mother on a donkey and left with his wife, daughter, and son born last winter. Susanna would not make the trip so close to her time. I hated to leave her--with a house of holiday guests to tend, no less--but I would not make Nathan, known as a boy of questioned birth in Kerioth, take Mother there alone.

Two days after our arrival, my aunt died in her bed.

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That afternoon, as Mother bathed the body, a man came running into the village, shouting.

"Pilate has seized the Temple treasury!"

I had been making arrangements for my aunt's burial. Hearing the man, I hurried out toward him. "What's this? Speak plainly. What's happened?"

"The Roman procurator Pilate sent his soldiers into the Temple to seize the treasury!"

He clapped himself on the head and cried out: "Aiee! What have we come to? Like Antiochus of old he has looted the treasury!"

"Quiet!" I said to the man. "This is a dangerous thing you say. A dangerous comparison you make." Everyone knew that Antiochus had done more than steal from the treasury--he had profaned the altar by sacrificing a pig on it.

The man hissed through several missing teeth, "Isn't it true? Doesn't Rome profane our altar with sacrifice on behalf of their emperor, who calls himself the son of God? Where is our Maccabee to put him down and chase out Rome? Where is our Messiah to cleanse our Temple? Come, Elijah! Come, son of David!"

Judas Maccabee. I had been named in part for the warrior hero and reared on tales of his cleansing of the Temple. My skin prickled at his words.

"Stop!" I said. But he had already begun to gather an alarmed crowd. Soon he would incite a panic. Fear had already lodged like a bone in my throat--

for the Levites working in the Temple treasury. For the students in the porticoes, the pilgrims in the courts.

But then a terrible thought occurred to me: If a man was saying this here in Kerioth, what was being said in Jerusalem? What kind

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of outrage would this act of Pilate provoke there, among the city's swollen numbers?

Tinderbox.

As I hurried back to my aunt's house, there was only one face before my mind: Susanna.

With swift goodbyes, I left my mother in the care of my brother and headed north, to Jerusalem.

The Holy City was in the throes of holiday chaos. Pilgrims camped on the hills as thick as the knots of a carpet, flooding the Kidron Valley all the way to Bethany. The smoke of their fires and colorful strew of their tents was everywhere from the hillside to the rooftops even of the synagogues. Only the Valley of Hinnom, where the city's garbage continuously burned, was devoid of pilgrims' tents.

But Jerusalem was in the throes of something else as well: rage in her streets, outcry over one more violation at the hands of Rome and her prefect, Pilate.

Entering the city, I joined the crowds flooding the streets, swarming in the direction of the Temple. I would gauge the outrage there firsthand, and then get home and collect Susanna, take her from the city if I must.

But to enter the Temple, I had first to immerse. The dust of travel was on my feet and I could not enter without immersing, especially on this day of all days. I made for the mikvot on the southern end of the Temple. The lines wound all the way down the street! I briefly considered the mikva at a nearby inn . . .

And then I stopped.

I had been in the same house with my dead aunt. I bore corpse uncleanness. Immersing would not cleanse me of that today.

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I could not enter the Temple.

"Judas bar Simon!" A familiar voice rang out over the throng.

I twisted at the sound of my name and stared at Isaac. I will never forget the sight of his face. Shining. Strangely beatific.

"Have you come to join us? Come!" He reached across the chest of another man, to pull me toward him. I clasped his hand, pushed my way between two other men moving crossways against me.

"Tell me what happened!" I said.

"Pilate seized the Corban."

The Corban. The monies set aside for public works--I myself had paid out wages from the Corban to laborers paving streets or repairing gutters.

"Come with us!"

My first thought was, to where? And then I thought of Susanna. I had all but decided to forget the Temple, which I could not enter, and go directly home to her, make certain that my bride and unborn son were safe.

Still, I shouted after him, "Where?"

My fingers slipped free of his and the shouts around us drowned him out.

And then I realized that all around me a protest was forming.

"Isaac!" I shouted.

He was gone. The crowd was surging toward the northwest corner of the Temple, and I got caught up and carried along with it, trying all the while to pull free of that inexorable human current. I saw Isaac once more a moment later and then he was gone, like the head that bobs above the surface of a wave before going under for the last time. Then I was swept along, past the western wall of the Temple, toward the Antonia Fortress.

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And there, on a platform built out from the fortress steps I saw the man himself. A figure anyone would know by sight alone.

Pilate.

He sat on a simple seat in the purple equestrian stripe of his rank. His hands were folded in his lap, his head tilted as though he listened to an invisible someone standing before him--but there was something about the set of his jaw, the cast of his eyes as they dropped like shadows upon the shoulders of those clamoring below.

Something was wrong. The guards at the entrance to the fortress behind him seemed too still. And there were none at the platform's edge in front of him, between the procurator and the growing throng.

Shouts filled the air: "He steals from her treasury! Give back to the Lord what is His!"

Something landed on the platform an arm's length from Pilate's sandaled foot. A rotten piece of fruit. He flicked a glance at it, but did not move even as a few of those closest to the platform began to grasp at the scaffolding.

"We stand by while Rome desecrates our holy place!" someone shouted.

"Send Pilate back to Rome!"

Someone else picked up the refrain. Within seconds it echoed throughout the crowd. "Pilate back to Rome!" Fists pounded at the air.

Pilate sat unmoving. Not a scowl, not a dogged look of guilt. Nothing but the impassive face of a statue. And then he stood, gathered the hem of his toga, and calmly walked into the building.

There was a momentary cheer from a few of those behind me, as though Pilate had indeed fled to Rome. But it was cut short by a sudden cry, farther up, as a group surged back from the steps. It

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took me only a moment to realize that either a riot had broken out, or that the crowd was under attack--but by whom? I had seen no Romans in the crowd.

Melee on all sides--the pushing of the throng. A woman ahead of me went down, and when the man with her tried to haul her up, the mob rushed over him like water flowing to fill a hole in the mud. A man brought a club down onto the head of another to my right. It caved like a summer melon, splaying blood in my eyes. I stumbled backward, almost falling to the stones in shock.

The man who had done it wore the clothing and beard of a Jew.

Shouts. Screams from the steps of the Temple.

Where before I had fought my way toward the Temple, I was now swept along with the rush of those running away from it. I stumbled to stay aloft, grabbing the shoulders of those beside me. I leapt up on a cart tipped over in the street and searched for a way around the sea of people.

Violence. Death. Chaos in every direction.

"Judas!"

I glanced down to see Simon, his face flushed.

"I have to get home!"

"Come!" He frantically motioned me. "Hurry!"

I got down and followed him, shoving through the crowd, heart thudding in my ears, ice in my gut. Past the Ephraim Gate. Together, we broke into a run.

"Isaac is dead!" he said. "Bludgeoned to death against the western wall."

Innocent and fresh-faced Isaac! I ran faster.

"By whom?" I had seen only Jews in the crowd.

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"Samaritans," Simon said, his lips peeled back.

Revulsion rose up in me. Samaritan soldiers passing as Jews. Samaritan auxiliaries, doing the dirty work of Rome.

Until that day I had forgotten to be vigilant, the rhythm of my life having lulled me into the belief that Jerusalem was a safe place.

It was not.

We ran down the street. Almost home.

"Susanna!" I shouted, bursting into my house.

Her mother came into the front room. "Judas! Back so soon? What of your aunt--is that blood on your face?"

"Where's Susanna?" I demanded.

"She's gone to market for some things for the feast--Judas!"

I was already tearing out of the house, Simon on my heels, back through the gate toward the pavilions, shoving by those fleeing the riot, coming at me now like crazed and wild-eyed animals.

I could see it from a hundred paces off: the market in shambles, baskets of spices and produce upturned, amphorae of wine and oil smashed to the ground, looters grabbing anything they could as merchants quickly packed up whatever they could save.

We ran into the middle of the pavilions, turning, looking all around.

"Susanna!" I shouted, tearing at my hair, running down a small side street filled with the toppled stalls of vendors. I spun around, started to run back--

And saw the form crumpled against an overturned table. A woman, lying in a heap like debris on a riverbank after a hard rain. I knew the embroidery on that mantle. The foot in that sandal. The dark wool of that uncovered hair.

No. It must be someone else wrapped in Susanna's mantle, 68

wearing her tunic over a broad, swollen belly . . . staring with her lifeless eyes.

Simon came into the side street just as I fell to my knees beside her,

gathered her into my arms, and slapped her cheeks.

"Susanna! Susanna--"

That's when I felt the blood in her hair, thick and sticky, coming from a place at the back of her head where it caved, soft as a bruised fruit.