The Liars' Gospel (23 page)

It is unusual for a woman to ask a question like this. Of a man who is not her husband, of someone she scarcely knows. But
they stand in an unusual relationship to one another. He supposes she has as much right to know what kind of husband he might
be as he has to ask himself and others what kind of wife she would make. And times like this change things. People meet each
other’s eyes differently in the streets. Strangers swap remarks or theories about the terrible events. Something has broken
down in Jerusalem. And she is right in thinking that he might know more than the gossips on the street.

“No,” he says, “it was nothing so complex. Pilate demanded his money and we gave it to him. And word got out”—he leaves a
hole here, a lacuna unfilled, hoping she will not notice it—“and we thought it would pass with a little disturbance.” She
is looking at him with such shining eyes of trust. “But Pilate is not a good man,” he says.

“He is a Roman.”

“There are better Romans and worse,” he says, “don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. There have been prefects
we’ve been able to come to an arrangement with, who’ve tried to learn how things are here, to bend with us as we bend to them.
Pilate is not like that.”

She nods. “He put Caesar’s head on the coins. My brothers said that was an offense against God.”

He runs a hand across his hair. She moves fractionally closer to him. He notices it. They are sitting in chairs next to each
other. The door is slightly open, though. She moves her chair closer to his.

“People are too swift to find offense against God,” he says, “and too slow to recognize the truth of our situation. Look.”

He stands up and walks to the window. She follows and stands close to him. A little closer than he had expected.

He points out of the window, past the Temple courtyards. She leans in close to see where his finger is pointing. It is the
red-roofed Roman building facing towards the Temple, its eyes always open, its lookout always manned.

“The garrison,” she says. “I know. I see it every day.”

“But do you know what it means?” he says.

“It means that soldiers walk among us. That strangers tread our sacred streets.”

“It means,” he says, and his hand is touching her arm, because he suddenly wants to make her really understand what he is
saying, “it means that none of us is free. Each of us is shackled, I as much as you. If we destroyed the garrison they would
send a legion, and if we destroyed them they would send four, and if we fight it can only end with the sacking of Jerusalem.
Rome couldn’t ever lose that fight, you know, never.” He finds his wheedling politician’s smile creeping across his mouth
and he stops it, pursing his lips, making his face stop lying for him. “We are trapped. All of us. No matter how high or how
low, we must make accommodation with what they demand of us. I am as trapped as you.”

Her fingers find the back of his hand. She is very warm, and he realizes how cold he is.

“Is there nothing but duty?” she says. “Nothing at all but that?”

He glances behind him. The door of the room is closed now. When did that happen? He does not take his hand away.

He shakes his head. “Not for me. Not if we are to keep Rome from our door.”

“Nothing at all?” she asks again, and her voice is very low, and her face very sad and serious as she looks up at him from
behind her lashes.

Is it possible she is a virgin? With the way she looks at him and the way she is dressed? It is possible, he knows it is.
Some girls bloom like this at even twelve or thirteen: knowing, without understanding what it is they know. Watching for an
effect.

Making himself examine it, he realizes she is dressed so modestly, it is impossible to fault her. A pair of loose white trousers,
showing nothing of her legs. Apart from that slice of bare foot slipped into her leather shoes, visible when the trousers
move just so. The brown, bare, warm skin. The tunic is loose also, seemly, white with a pale blue woven belt at the waist.

And yet when she stands, the daughter of Hodia, her black hair around her shoulders and her dark skin next to her white clothes,
he can detect, somehow, the shape of her breasts under this modest garment. When she stretches her shoulders, pulling her
arms back, he can see the nipples outlined for a moment against the fabric, as hard as dried beans and ringed by the raised
zone of bumps he could read with his fingertips like words carved into stone.

And then he cannot help himself any longer. He pulls her towards him by her arm and she utters a little squeak but does not
struggle, acquiesces softly and warmly, and he places his hand between her legs, cupping her where she is so hot, she is a
furnace and he had forgotten what young girls are like, giving off so much heat.

She begins to move against his hand. This is overwhelming.

He pulls at her tunic, releasing a breast, and the excitement of feeling that warm softness and seeing the dark bruise-colored
nipple makes him hold his breath before he descends on her with his mouth.

She is soft and she is warm and she is wet and she is hard. She smells of cloves and rain.

If he fucked her and did not marry her, she would be forbidden to any other priest of the Temple. This would be a terrible
disgrace. She is the daughter of a wealthy man of the priestly class. She is expected to marry a priest. And he cannot marry
her while he and his wife are yet married, for the Cohen Gadol, the High Priest above all, may truly have only one wife.

He stops short of entering her, and is astonished at himself, at his own maturity and composure, at the way that he almost,
almost, straining towards her, almost does so but then remembers and pulls back. He finds that what he wanted after all was
to consume that body, not to be consumed by it. That his desire had been to feel out every part of her, to see the gentle
undulations of her soft belly and the way her breasts fall back when she lies down, and to hear her pant and cry out, and
it would not have been right to go further, he knew that before he began. They may still have a wedding night. It is not entirely
impossible.

He lies with her in the stillness of the hot afternoon on the floor of his chamber.

He says, “You were really never with any man before?”

She shakes her head gently, the sweat glistening on her cheek.

“Never a man,” she says.

Hmm, he thinks. Then: oh.

“Oh,” he says. It is the secret dream of the priests when they see the women’s enclosure and the curtained-off places where
the women go. He allows this thought to grow in his mind, relishing the way it almost overwhelms his control. Almost, but
not quite. If he wanted, if he were willing to relinquish certain other things, he could have this woman, she could be his
wife. It is not impossible for a High Priest to divorce, just, in his case, unwise.

A thought occurs to him.

“Tell me,” he says, “I do not know your name.”

Her smile is mocking.

“You have never thought to ask one of your many servants and advisers?”

He shakes his head.

“What would you have called me on our wedding night? ‘Hodia’s daughter’?”

He reaches a hand to her soft breast again.

“Beloved,” he says, “I would have called you beloved, as in the Song of Solomon. And kissed you with kisses of the mouth,
for you are sweeter than wine.”

She does not seem displeased by this, but there is a thinking mind behind those dark eyes.

“Did you ever love a woman without noticing whose daughter she was?”

He looks at her, while his hand kneads at her breast and the desire rises in him again, pleasingly.

“No,” he says. “Did you ever love a man without noticing his power?”

“Never a man,” she says. And try as he might, he never gets more of the story than that from her.

She leaves before it is time for the evening service. Though he is sad to see her put away her dark and comely body, he knows
that it must be so.

At the door, she pauses and says, “Batsheni.”

He frowns.

“My name,” she says.

“Ah.” It is not a respectful name for a woman like this. “I think I would rather call you ‘beloved.’”

“Nonetheless,” she says, “Batsheni is my name. ‘Second daughter.’ In case my father ever forgot which order we came in, I
suppose. The boys are called ‘God will make me strong,’ ‘God will enrich me,’ ‘God approves my right hand’ and so on.”

She closes the door softly as she leaves and the scent of her oils still hangs sweet in the room.

And that evening, when he visits the sanctuary, the chamber next to the Holy of Holies, for solitary prayer, he bends down
and picks up a pinch of dust from the floor. He folds it into a scrap of linen and tucks it into his waistband. He keeps it
safe.

Every morning and every evening, a yearling lamb makes sweet savors for the Lord—the perpetual daily sacrifice. And after
that, between the many sacrifices brought by the people for sins and to make peace, to give thanks to the Lord for saving
their life, in between all that at some point, every day, Caiaphas makes the offering on behalf of Rome. Every day, he sacrifices
a pure white-fleeced lamb for the glory of the Emperor far beyond the Great Sea.

It is a compromise. For Rome has found it cannot operate in Judea in the same way that it franchises out its business to all
its many other conquered states. There is an accepted routine which has worked well in these many other nations.

“Congratulations,” says Rome, after its armies have torn down the defending walls and set alight the pointed fences and killed
the fathers and husbands and sons and brothers who had gone out that morning painted with war paint and screaming battle cries,
“hearty congratulations to you, for you are now part of the Roman Empire. We will defend you against barbarians and bring
you roads and aqueducts and various other civic amenities. In exchange you will give us tribute and we will take some of your
people as slaves and exhibit your king and your precious objects in a triumph in Rome.”

“Yes,” say the conquered people, barely able to draw their eyes away from the smoldering heaps of men and animals and timber
and stone, “that seems…yes.”

“Very good. And one other thing,” says Rome, “tell me, what is your local god here?”

“Why,” mumble the people, “we worship the Great Bull of the Mountain,” or it might be the Heron King, or Almighty Ba’al along
with the Sea God Yam, or Mother Isis and her son, who dies and is born again each year.

“How charming,” says Rome, “we worship our current Emperor, Tiberius, and various members of his family, both those living
and those forever alive, for they have conquered death. Here are their statues. Place them in your Temple and worship them
as you do your Great Bull. That will be all.”

“Yes,” say the conquered people, as the stench of burning enters their nostrils and their eyes begin to water.

This approach, so helpful in tying conquered peoples into Rome in all other places, was surprisingly ineffective in Judea.
It was because of the particular laws of the people: not to make an image of their one God, not to accept that His powers
could be divided into separate entities, not to create any statue even of their most revered prophets or to allow any such
emblem to be placed within their Temple. No man, say the Jews, can become a god and that is an end of it.

They attempted it, early on. Just a little statue of, let us say, the Blessed Augustus. Just one, here in an outer courtyard.
The battles were so long and so bloody that even the Romans became sickened by the slaughter necessary to keep that little
figure in its place. These people would rather die, each one of them, even the children, than give up the sanctity of their
holy places. It is an unusual and puzzling level of dedication to a god who cannot be seen or touched or felt.

But Rome is nothing if not flexible. Within limits. Annas, who was High Priest at the time, suggested a way around so many
difficulties.

“We cannot worship your God-Emperor,” he explained sadly to the Prefect, “the people will not tolerate it. But we can dedicate
some of our worship to him.”

And Rome sighed and said, “Very well.”

So, instead of the forbidden statue in a courtyard, there is this. Caiaphas slaughters a lamb every day, just one sacrifice
among many, but this one dedicated to the health and well-being of the Emperor Tiberius, whose reach stretches even to this
distant province.

And there are those who call him a traitor for this. In general, the young priests are so eager to perform Temple services
that they race to compete for them, or draw lotteries to see who will get the honor. But not for this sacrifice. They go to
it grudgingly, having to be summoned repeatedly. Even the lambs do not behave, bucking and bleating and kicking out.

But what can one do? One lamb among so many, to keep Rome happy. But, say the mutterers, nothing can keep her happy. But we
must try to keep her happy. This is my task, he says to himself as he brings the knife towards the lamb, this is my duty,
this is how we keep the Temple standing and the services being offered. This, this, only this.

In the private predawn light when the household is sleeping, Caiaphas takes a horn of ink and a quill and a strip of vellum
cut from the end of a letter he had written to save it for another occasion. He dips the sharpened feather into the rich black
ink. Holds it so that the bead of excess liquid drips back into the horn. Tamps it against the silver-rimmed edge so that
his first stroke on the vellum will be clean and clear.

He holds the parchment still with his left hand and begins to write with his right. It is the words of the curse against adultery.
“If you are defiled by a man who is not your husband, the Lord shall make you a curse and a watchword among your people. And
the bitter waters of the curse shall go into your bowel and make your belly swell and your thighs wither.”

He takes particular care over one of the words. The short horizontal line of the
yud
with its tiny tail at the right, like a tadpole. Then the house-like structure of the letter
hei:
a solid horizontal line held up by a long vertical coming down on the right, and a small vertical line inside, as if it were
sheltering from the rain. Then a
vav,
proud and tall, like a
yud
grown to manhood. Then the final
hei.
The pen scratches on the parchment. The black ink runs minutely into imperfections in the vellum. It is done. There is the
name of God.