The Implacable Hunter (17 page)

‘And there you have the tail of the procession Paulus heads by night: Death looking for employment, Grief
lusting
after Death, and Corruption praying for Pestilence. He, She, and It – a horrid allegory, as it might be, grouped to lend terror to the skinny little prowler with the daemon on his back.

‘And what is the purpose of these nightly jaunts? I will tell you what happens …’

I
MUST
have been deeply engrossed, or she must have moved like a shadow, for I have ears like a dog, but I was not aware that Dionë had come in until I looked up from Afranius’s writing and saw her sitting on a cushion an arm’s length away.

‘That is an evil book you are reading,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘You go
tat-tat-tat
like a bird pecking worms, and your face is black as thunder.’

‘I cannot imagine why,’ I said. ‘But if you interrupt me again, I shall have you beaten with a stick.’ I smiled to
myself
at the idea: one might as well thrash a kitten or flog a flower.

‘If you do, I shall kill myself,’ she said.

‘I will bet that you would not,’ I said, glad, after all, of the interruption.

‘How much will you bet?’

I said: ‘Let me see. I will have you beaten now. If you kill yourself immediately, I will marry you tomorrow. If you do not, I won’t.’

‘I hate that book you are reading. Is it a sad book?’

‘How do I know until I have read it?’

‘Is there any love in it?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘there is, among other things, the story of how Solomon the Wise, King of the Jews, made a queen come to his bed.’

Dionë clapped her hands. ‘Tell me! Tell me!’

So I told her about the salty dinner and the empty
water-pitchers
. I told the story in the tantalising, cumulative way that children love:

‘… And so she went to the White Chamber, and what do you think she found there? … And then she went to the Blue Chamber, and imagine what she saw there! …’ Repeated, with additions and variations, this silly story gave my poor little Dionë pleasure for years to come, although she knew it by heart. Or because she knew it by heart. Nothing pleases like the familiar story. There is no new thing under the sun because that which is new makes men think twice, and this they hate, except in play. If I were
inspired
to make a new philosophy I should introduce it in the form of a game.

The story ended, she sighed deeply and, after some meditation, said: ‘But this King Solomon was also a ruler of demons!’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then if I had been Solomon I should have called a demon and said: “Demon, fetch me that woman.”’

‘That wouldn’t have been the same thing. She had to come to him of her own accord.’

‘But she didn’t come to him, she came to the water.’

‘Let us not split hairs.’

‘If she made herself so different from a thousand other women, I suppose she put a charm on him,’ said Dionë gravely. ‘My mother learned such a charm. She learned it from a woman who was a hundred years old, but who could make young men think she was beautiful. It is easy to make the powder, of which you need only a pinch, but you must say the words the right way.’

‘And thus, no doubt, your mother found herself a king for a husband,’ I said.

Her eyes filled with tears as she answered: ‘She died.’ Then, instantly recovering her spirits: ‘But
I
have used the charm,’ she said, laughing.

‘Upon me, presumably?’

‘Yes. You only think I am Dionë. Really, my name is Kakmara, and I am sixty-seven years old; I have only one tooth, my breasts are like cakes of dry cow-dung, and
between
my thighs is a withered apricot. Only I have cast a spell–’

‘Go to your room!’ I said, unreasonably angry. ‘Go now. I am reading.’ She left, downcast, and I was sorry.

But why, suddenly, had something cold come out of
nowhere
and walked between my shoulders? I went back to my reading.

Paulus’s purpose in making these strange excursions about Jerusalem in the evening was perfectly clear to me: it was part of a trick he had learned from me. The owl is a sagacious bird – that is to say, he is wiser than mice. Therefore, he knows that if he hoots in the dark, the little creatures, frightened by his voice, stir uneasily where they lie. So he comes down on his silent wings and strikes at the sound of their stirring. But men in hiding are not so foolish as mice or small birds – they think!

When the Accuser comes knocking by night, it is the innocent who start; the guilty keep very still. Hence, if it is man you are hunting, make your alarm and listen for the
silences. And all this Paulus explained to Afranius
sententiously
and at some length – for which reason, no doubt, I made the impatient sounds Dionë imitated. I was asking myself:

‘Diomed, were you mistaken in this boy? What puerile play-acting is this? Is he out of his mind, to strut before Afranius like a lad in his first toga?’

But Afranius wrote on:

‘As one of the participators in this sinister dumb show I find it foolish and embarrassing. But this same fool’s parade seems to fill passers-by with a singular horror. To play it as Paulus does, one must be by vocation something of an actor: which is the same as saying, shameless with calculation.

‘First he stops before a gate: when he stops, I – outwardly a man of snow, but inwardly itching to hide my face – stop too; the guard comes to the halt with a stamp and a clatter while He, She and It, thrown together by their own momentum, form an unholy knot. Overhead our torches flare. Nobody speaks. Paulus then stands quite still for several minutes, stiff as a poorly executed bronze image, scrutinising doors and walls. Then he takes out a set of ivory tablets, looks at it intently, nods, snaps his fingers, and so we all go on, in and out of a myriad wynds and closes, fetid back-doubles and unsavoury blind alleys.

‘As we pass, the underworld of Jerusalem seems to hold its breath. Foul mouths hang agape in mid-obscenity and drunken voices crack into silence; a brazen whore,
throwing
open her dress in a doorway for some tipsy soldier, stands frozen, thighs apart, while her customer congeals with his penis in his hand. We were defeated only once, and that by a woman with a basket on her head.

‘The passage was narrow, and she would not give way. “Move, woman,” says Paulus, in his most peremptory tones. But she, a sturdy, copper-headed wench, puts her great fists on her hips and stands with her legs wide open – legs stout
enough to support the weight of a house – and defies him in strident Galilean to do his worst. “I know you!” she screams. “Why, by God, if my husband caught something like you he’d throw it back for being too small! You’re Saul the Pharisee, ain’t you? Go and kiss Caesar’s arse, you afflicted minnow! Which end of you does your wife use, your head? Get out of it!
Me
move over for
you
?
Ha-ha! Call your soldiers” – all the time her basket is swaying and swinging, perfectly balanced, although she must have been somewhat drunk – “What are you after, taxes? Or is it Nazarenes? Well, I haven’t got no money, and I haven’t got no Nazarenes – and, if I had,
you
shouldn’t get any! Yah, Pharisee night bird! God bless Rabbi Jesus!”

‘Paulus says: “Take her away.” At this, she falls back a pace, having lashed herself into one of those blind feminine ecstasies of rage, and shrieks: “What, take
me
away, you son of an unlucky mother and a filthy father? Take
me,
you child of the separation, you Onan, you! I’m Debby the Flower-Seller, I am, you chalky Pharisee – and
I’ll
give you some flowers, God strike me blind, I’ll flower you to make a mess of you for a month, I will! I will!” So saying, she reaches under her clothes and tugs out and brandishes a bloody rag, at the sight of which our lion-hearted Paulus jumps back – for the very touch of the menses is to the devout Jew pollution extraordinary, and must be followed by long and tiresome purifications. Taking advantage of the momentary confusion, this notable woman tosses her basket under the feet of the approaching soldiers and, bounding like a hare, is gone into the shadows.

Paulus said: “Debby, or Deborah, a flower seller in this quarter – let her be arrested tonight!” But nobody could find her; it appeared that, having soaked her head in cold water, she thought it expedient to leave town.

‘I wish her luck, wherever she is. I tried to make capital
of this incident by asking Paulus: “Exactly where is your clowning supposed to lead? This is a devil of a method of catching heretics, surely?”

‘He, smiling, replied: “It is no method at all for catching anything or anybody, Afranius. It is a trick Diomed uses to stir up rookeries, I believe. But our quarry doesn’t inhabit a particular quarter, like the criminals. The Nazarenes are not a criminal class in the true sense of the term. They are heretics, fanatics, artisans, and so forth: they can’t bribe their way, and it is not worth any criminal’s while to harbour them. All this foolery of ours is the merest display, or rather a feint. People are fools. They think I am looking for Nazarenes in the streets. Bah! I am merely spreading a little insecurity among the lower orders. The thieves, and
such-like
, will soon find the presence of a Nazarene disconcerting. So will your ordinary working man with a living to get. Every man is at heart a traitor. In a week the street will be blocked with informers –”

‘I interrupted. “How do you discriminate between the true and the false witnesses?”

‘He was back at me with my own words to throw in my face, saying: “Oh, in this life, that which is true so heavily outweighs that which is not, that if I believe everything I find the odds on my side…. Eh, Afranius?”

‘I said: “And no doubt your God has seen fit to reveal to you this End?” I was irritated by his bantam cockiness. “Less presumption, young man!”

‘He went on: “Really, Afranius, you must not take me for a complete fool. Do you know the proverb:
The
fish
always
begins
to
stink
from
the
head
down?”

‘“Well?”

‘“Judaea is the fish, let us say. Jesus is the stink. Now you cannot believe that it is the hewer, or the drawer, or the artisan, who has time or room in his wambling brain for religious or political heresy? Come now, dear Afranius, you
know that dangerous dissension is the naughty little pastime of the idle. Tell me, what momentous idea ever came from the people that work all day to get bread? Only the idle poor have time for the luxurious chatter of the idle rich. I do not regard the rabble, which I can handle with a dung-fork – give me the Rich, my dear Afranius, give me the Rich and a pair of tweezers!” There was a fever in the boy, and so I asked him, if he pleased, to expound.

‘I said: “I grasp the gist of what you are driving at, Paulus – but tell me some more.”

‘He did so with an impatient twirl of the fingers. “Oh, the argument of the Nazarene Jesus is, in effect, that man has nothing in the world but his fleshly harness to lose, and all eternity to gain. Do I deny this? No. It is a luxurious philosophy. But tell it, if you please, to the true man of the world. Sell me Jesus’s argument to the man alive who is wealthy enough to chaffer in righteousness – say to him:
Money
can
buy
poverty;
give
and
you
get
it
–
just you try it and see!”

‘I said: ‘Paulus, you must make yourself clearer.”

‘He said: “Oh well, then, consider Neihshon ben Asher, a rich Jew, a nobleman. Why do you raise your eyebrows, Afranius? There is Jewish blood quite as thick as wolf’s milk. Neihshon ben Asher; an idle man of an idle family this past three generations, living off his rents. The poor hate him, of course; the poor are bound to hate the rich. Bear in mind, now, that Jesus of Nazareth was a poor man’s prophet. Tell me, as a gentleman who has tasted all the pleasures, what can titillate the rich palate as exquisitely as the affectation of a pauper’s philosophy? So Neihshon ben Asher is a Nazarene. And what alienates the poor like this same affectation? Because a poor man pretending to be rich is only a trickster, but a rich man playing poor is a usurper: he mocks hunger, he shames poverty, he makes a cushion of the swollen belly. Endeavour to understand me – one
truly poor Nazarene is an item, one rich Nazarene brings Nazareth in a bankrupt’s lot wholesale to a dead market. Asher’s great-grandfather took the unborn calf and bought the crop before the corn was green. This Asher counts in millions, and yawns, yearning for new savours … for even among
us,
you know, we have our equivalents of Little Lucius –”

‘I said, with some irony: “Oh no! Don’t tell me so!”

‘“Fact, I assure you. So! Tomorrow, or the day after – let ’em sweat a little, they can’t leave town – I arraign Neihshon ben Asher, and his cousin Ahiezer too, for secret
questioning
. Not so secret, but silly old Barnabas Hagith will have information of it; and his turn comes the day after that. Well, Afranius, and now will you tell Diomed that I am playing the clown in the open streets?”

‘I said nothing. But if the Sanhedrin, through Paulus, decide to move against the likes of the ben Ashers and the Hagiths – who will be mulcted in stupendous fines, no doubt – why, then we are up against the gathered might of Israel. For Paulus’s politics are balanced to please the Temple and the poor, both at the same time; while the rich, as a class, will find themselves in no way embarrassed.

‘I only hope, my dear Diomed, that you may have nothing to beg the gods’ forgiveness for, old bestiarius of men that you are, who has taught a fox the taste of human blood! …’ Meticulous as old Tibullus himself, Afranius went on to describe the pall of terror under which Jerusalem lay, strangely quiet, while Paulus went methodically about his business.

Paulus, all of a sudden, affected an air of Pharisaical detachment; he let the authorities do his shouting while he stood by, squeezed to the eyebrows by pent-up
commiseration
. He was deeply concerned, he profoundly regretted, he was doing no less than his etcetera, etcetera. It grieved him that …
but.
Far be it from him … still
nevertheless.
Notwithstanding
so-and-so, such-and-such remained. He knew 2, and he knew 2; but not to add each to each, or multiply each by each … The result might be 3, it might be 5; Paulus knew 2 and 2 … The ben Ashers cracked, letting out first in a beaded perspiration of self-interested inquiry, then a plaintive fart of protest, followed by a piddle of extenuation and at last a strained dollop of pent-up
information
.