The Kingdom of the Wicked (26 page)

       'Not stinking, to put it blunt and honest. More than can be said of Simon. He stinks of his trade. So does his house.'

       'Tanning's a smelly trade,' Peter said. 'It's done with camel dung, did you know that?'

       'Something I don't want to know. Well, there's plenty of camel dung around here. Look at that big roaring brute. I never cared much for camels. Well, we'd best get there and see if the stink's started. It ought to be a decent sort of ladylike stink.' They got up wearily and went off leaning on their staffs through a throng of fruit stalls and loud chaffering. Too much, I don't pay that much down the road there. Lady, I'm losing money charging you what I do. Outside the gate of a house with closed shutters two women in black were waiting for them. They went into darkness but no smell of putrefaction. There were a lot of lilies about in pots. Two more ladies in black were sitting drinking some kind of hot herbal decoction. Stay seated, ladies.

       'Let's have that name again,' Peter said.

       'Dorcas, Dorcas.'

       'Or Tabitha.'

       'Aye,' Thomas said. 'Both names mean that sort of animal that runs fast.'

       'Gazelle.'

       'Gazelle, aye. Run off to the next world, has she?'

       This callousness started them all off weeping. One woman wept while sipping her brew.

       'Discretion, Thomas,' Peter said. 'Where is the er —?' They led the two of them up a short flight of steps to a bedroom. The shutters were closed but the scent of nard was overpowering. Also (Thomas sniffed cautiously) camphor. A candle at her head and one at her feet. A quite young girl, a gazelle no longer footfleet, pretty too, not unlike that daughter of what was his name, Jairus.

       'Aye, she seems dead all right, but ye can never tell.'

       'What were his words? Yes, Talitha cumi.'

       'And now ye have to say Tabitha cumi. Ye have to do what he did, Peter. He said we had to.'

       'That's not for us.'

       'Sometimes nature plays tricks like that Simon Magus did. Seems isn't the same as is.'

       'I don't like it,' Peter said. 'But there's no harm in trying. Tabitha cumi. Rise up, girl.'

       There was no response from the girl's body. 'It's a lot to expect,' Thomas said.

       'Too much. He was him. We're just us.'

       But Thomas, his eyes widening, put his hand on Peter's sleeve. He muttered something like a prayer that what seemed to be happening should not happen. Both looked with mouths stupidly opening at a mouth gently opening to let out what seemed a small store of breath kept shut in there. One of the candleflames flapped. That old breath once let out, new breath possessed the body, its rhythm as feeble as in a body about to die. Both men dreaded the opening of the eyes, with their message of light from a world nobody wanted to visit if he could help it. So falling over each other they got out of that room. Having fallen downstairs, Peter said to the women: 'You can go up there now.' The herb decoctions were spilt on the worn Greek carpet with its key pattern. Peter now saw for the first time a gaudy bird in a cage that looked at him, head cocked, as though from another world. A flight of heavy black birds went up those stairs with black wings flapping. In a minute, in the manner of women, they would start wailing joy that sounded like grief. The two men got out of that house with the speed of robbers.

       At that moment the centurion Cornelius was holding a meeting of the senior under officers of his century. It was in his own house overlooking the bay of Caesarea. His wife was singing in the kitchen and his small son dribbled on to a toy centurion the garrison carpenter had kindly carved for him. 'Look, lads,' Cornelius was saying, 'the situation's not clear. No situation ever is these days as far as Rome's concerned. We stay but he goes.'

       'No procurator?' said the decurion Fidelis. 'Ever again? Who are we responsible to?'

       'You're responsible to me for the moment. And it looks as if I'm directly responsible to the man in Syria, Lippius.'

       'Caius Lippius,' young Junius Rusticus said, a boy given to needless pedantry.

       'But we also have to take orders from this Herod Agrippa who's on his way from Galilee. The King of Palestine, as he calls himself. Sort that out if you can.'

       'So we get moved to Jerusalem?' Fidelis said.

       'We'll be needed more in Jerusalem than in Caesarea,' Cornelius said. 'Especially if he has that statue moved in.'

       'I can't see that,' the decurion Androgeus said, a half Greek and very oliveskinned, one who was on his third decurionate after two demotions for brawling. 'I can't see how a Jew can do that. Even if he calls himself like a king. The other Jews will cut his bleeding gorge for him,' proleptically. Cornelius said:

       'It seems to be up to the Roman army to see that they don't. Meaning us. And the lads from Syria, a mean lot. The god Caligula, eh? For Jews and Romans alike. I don't think I can stand much more,' he said, singing in unconscious unison with another centurion many miles away, 'of the world's madness.' He went to his little balcony and looked out on the sea and the massed shipping. All that seemed sane enough. Then he turned and surveyed the room, not seeing his men. He was in his home, such as it was. Full of ornaments picked up in a variety of foreign bazaars, most of them cheap except for that bronze buffalo, all of them probably tasteless. He said: 'You know where sanity lies, don't you?'

       'You've said something about it, centurion,' Junius Rusticus said.

       'We need somebody to talk to us,' Cornelius said, eyes down. 'The man I have in mind was here a couple of days ago. The Greek man in the chandler's store, he said he'd gone off to Joppa or Jeffa, whatever they call it. He's a fisherman, this man Peter I mean. He's in charge. They say he's done strange things. A humble man for humble men, just the same.'

       'Strange?' Fidelis said.

       'Oh, you know what I mean. I don't know what word to use. Even words are losing their meaning in these days of the world's madness. Ask for the man Peter in Jappa or Juffa. Everybody's bound to know where he is. You, Rusticus and Androgeus, you two can volunteer.'

       Where Peter was now was on the roof of his host Simon the tanner. He had got up there for two reasons. One was that the fumes of dinner cooking below could not easily overcome the stench of the trade that was carried on in the sheds at the back of the house. A hunk of elderly mutton was being turned on a spit by an elderly woman who turned the handle grousing, Simon the tanner's mother. You'll have to wait for it, she had said ungraciously. Time and tide wait for no man, irrelevantly. The other reason for being on the roof was to get away from the crowd that had heard about the sudden recovery of the gazelle girl, one who had been orphaned early and spent most of her very adequate inheritance on garments for the poor. A lot of these garmented poor were down there, exhibiting running sores and withered limbs and demanding to be healed by faith, not that many of them had any. There was a staircase leading to the roof and a door at its head that he, Peter, had bolted. He lay exhausted with the strain of feeling under a whitish canvas canopy that kept the sun off. His only company was cauldrons of sea water that Simon used, along with camel dung, in his unwholesome trade. There was a fist knock on this door.

       'Who is it?'

       'Me, Thomas. Your presence, sir, is requested for further miracles.’

       ‘Tell them it's a blasphemy. Tell them to pray. Tell them I'm nothing. You too.'

       'Aye, I know well I'm nothing. What I will tell them is that ye require a nap before your dinner and they'd best be away.'

       'I need the dinner before the nap. You can bring it up here.'

       'Ye're right, aye. The stench down here is no good for the appetite. But it's no ready as yet.'

       Peter, not needing the nap, nevertheless dozed off. He had a dream almost immediately, and it was a dream that told him how hungry he was. The light of the dream was the light of this rooftop, and it shone on the right number of sea water cauldrons, or perhaps there was one fewer, as well as the two or three withered plants in pots that were there. A cat came on to the roof to stare at Peter and then, spotting an alighting sparrow, it lightninged after it and out of the dream. The whitish canvas canopy did not stay where it was. It flew off from over Peter's head and stretched itself very taut in the sky about nine feet in front of him. It began to fill up with the materials of one of these Roman banquets he had heard about. Haunches of deer, a whole roasted infant camel, writhing lobsters, crabs fighting each other though steaming from the pot, sucking pigs, pigmeat sausages (this he knew though his eyes could not penetrate their skins), a kid seethed in bubbling milk undoubtedly its mother's. Milk, of goat or cow, in crocks nudging the roast pork. In the dream all this was no abomination. A voice that filled the four corners of the world cried that it was all good. 'Eat, eat. Nothing is forbidden. All is from God.' Peter heard himself say: I can't. It's unclean. And the voice boomed: 'God has cleaned it. Eat.' Peter woke. The awning was back where it had been. He heard Thomas fisting the door, calling: 'Ye said ye wanted to eat. Eat.' Peter stumbled to the bolts and drew them. Thomas had a wooden tray with steaming meat on it, bread, a jug. Peter blearily said:

       'Pig flesh. Washed down with goat's milk.'

       'Urrrgh. Ye've been having a bad dream.'

       'We can eat anything, Thomas. He just said so. We can be like the Gentiles.'

       'Get yourself properly awake, man, then eat your dinner. All good Usher provender. Milk and roast pig. The devil's been at ye. Urrrgh.'

       It was while Peter was tearing into the roast mutton that two men of the Italian speira arrived at Simon the tanner's house on horseback. 'You want who?' Simon's old mother asked. 'What's he done wrong, then?' No wrong. He's needed in Caesarea. 'Somebody dying?' You could say that somebody's dying for something.

       Peter sat at the rear of Rusticus and Thomas at the rear of Androgeus. They had never before been on horseback. It was a jolting experience that did little good to their dinners. They had to hang on to the belts of the two riders and grip the hot flanks of the mounts with their thighs. Too many new things happening. Thomas yelled against the wind: 'It's no done. To enter the house of the uncircumcised. He never did it. It's again the law.'

       'Which law? The law that's been persecuting us?'

       'We're Jews, man. The followers are still Jews. We keep the law.’

       ‘My dream broke the law. This voice from heaven broke the law about what to eat and what not to eat.'

       'And ye'd take pig flesh? Lobsters out of the sea?'

       'I know what the dream meant. If I hadn't been such a fool I'd have known when the new law began. When Philip baptized the black man

       'He'd no right to. Not only an uncircumcised one but a eunuch too. For all we know, a damned cannibal.'

       'Your brain creaks like your joints,' Peter yelled. 'The faith has to go to the Gentiles as well.'

       'Who says so?' Thomas snarled over Androgeus's horse's snort. 'I'm no going in, anyway. On your own head be it.'

       Cornelius had got a large company together to welcome Peter. He heard the octuple clop coming up the road and said: 'Right. We'll go out to meet him.' Alighting, Peter nearly fell. Thomas sat till he was helped down. They were in a small garden with a wide gateway. Thomas dissociated himself from the whole business and went to sit on a stone bench under a figtree. Peter stood uncertainly smiling and was shocked when this centurion got down on his knees. Others, anxious to do the right thing, also got down. Peter hurriedly raised Cornelius, saying:

       'Up, up. I'm nothing special. I'm a man like yourself. Well,' with fisherman's honesty, 'there are certain differences. Law, I mean, if you know what I mean.'

       'I know the law of your fathers, sir,' Cornelius said.

       'Not sir, please please not sir —’

       'That it's unlawful for you to mix with the uncircumcised. That you're defiled by association. And for me, us, you're going to break the law. You're coming into my house. That's why I knelt.'

       'Into your house,' Peter said firmly. He heard Thomas groan from under the figtree. 'God seems to be no respecter of persons. Every nation that fears him and does right — well, it seems as if he accepts. You want baptism?'

       Cornelius gave a solemn nod. He was in full uniform as if on parade. 'If you'd come inside —’

       From the figtree a fig fell on to Thomas's lap. He picked it up and began to undress it. It was red and ripe. He started to eat it, shaking his head. 'A fig from a Roman tree in a Roman garden. Have I your permission. 0 Lord? Och, a bad business.'

       The ceremony, performed by aspersion, took place in a small salt lake by the shore. Aspersion rather than immersion seemed in order. You did not ask men in uniform to get it all wet.

The name Cornelius had become common in Rome shortly after Publius Cornelius Sulla liberated ten thousand slaves and let them enrol in his own gens Cornelia. That had been some eighty years or so before Jesus was born. Things were different now. Slaves were property and only fools gave property away. For the seven-day sale of imperial property, which mingled slaves indifferently with golden chamber pots, Greek statuary, nags past their best, title deeds to distant fields of tare and hemlock, the Emperor, with an unwonted gust of shame, preferred to absent himself from the city. He witnessed some secondclass games near Neapolis and rather admired the wrestling displays. The Jew Caleb, who called himself Metellus though nobody was taken in, was coming to the end of a provincial tour and, it was said, was now ripe for Rome. Caleb Metellus sent a Pannonian giant to the dust and broke the arm of a sneering Athenian. Gaius Caligula commended his performance. If Caleb had been in Rome, along with his Emperor, he would have been able to see his own sister up for sale in the market off the Via Sacra by the Forum.