The Liars' Gospel (24 page)

He waits and watches for the ink to dry. It seems wrong to leave the paper. He has turned it into one of the holiest things
on earth. So he just waits, as the ink soaks in and changes color slightly. He blows on it a little. It does not take very
long. The sun is just peeping over the horizon when it is done. The ink is dry. He holds the vellum in his hand. This thing
is so holy now that, if it were to become worn or tattered, it must be buried in a grave, like the body of one whose soul
is departed.

He places the ink horn and the quill back on their appointed shelf. He goes to the well in the courtyard of his house. He
fills a small slender-necked jug with water. He sits beneath the vines and fruit trees as the birds begin to call out with
joy for the start of a new day.

He looks at the parchment for a long time, taking in the letters. The curse which cannot harm unless harm has already been
done. The name of God. An impossible tense of the verb “to be,” which suggests somehow at the same time something which is
and was, something which has been and will be. It is entirely forbidden to destroy this name once it is written. Except for
one sacred purpose.

Without thinking too hard, at last, he plunges the paper into the water. Waves it to and fro. Watches as the letters dissolve
until there is nothing on the paper at all. The name of God is now in the water. The curse is in the water. They are bitter
waters. He takes from his belt the folded-over piece of linen he keeps with him always. He retrieves from it the pinch of
dust he took from the outer sanctuary. Drops it into the water. Shakes the jug to dissolve it.

He brings an empty wineskin from the kitchen—the servants are just beginning to rise, he can hear them moving slowly upstairs.
He pours the holy water into the skin. Holds it close to his beating heart, as if he can feel the name of God inside it. It
is done.

A week goes past with no disturbance. Then two, then three. Shops and market stalls begin to reopen. The barber in the road
next to Caiaphas’s city house sings one morning in the late summer as he used to do. The maker of pots produces a new design
of interlocking wheat sheaves, very pretty. No one fulminates in the market square or passes seditious notes from one hand
to another. It is like the silence after a thunderclap.

It has been a little while since Annas came to visit. He comes now cheerfully, as if that moment of self-doubt is entirely
expunged from his mind. He bears scrolls of parchment with some good news. The harvest in the north is successful. And Pilate
has received a sharp note from Syria about the massacre in the square.

“They have warned him that if this continues he will be recalled,” says Annas, as his daughter pours for them the wine of
the evening.

And the daughter, Caiaphas’s wife, looks up suddenly and says, “If this continues? So you are saying we will have to have
another massacre before he can be sent home?”

If she were another man’s daughter, or merely Caiaphas’s wife, Annas would have raged at her. Caiaphas has seen his rages:
terrifying and cold when they arrive, and sudden. Caiaphas prepares himself for the onslaught, feels the muscles of his shoulders
tensing and his thighs bunching and his heart beginning to race.

But there is no rage. She has taken the fire out of him with a few words. As a man’s daughter can, sometimes, if she knows
him well.

Annas stares off into the distance. His face crumples. He looks older suddenly than he did. He is becoming elderly, he is
nearing sixty.

“Yes,” he says, his voice deep and rumbling. “Yes, I think we will have to have another massacre before they recall him. I
think that is what will happen.” He looks at her. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

She raises her eyebrows. “I wanted to know that you knew it.”

She brings another wooden chair from the covered part of the garden and sits with them. She sits closer to Caiaphas than to
her father. She covers Caiaphas’s hand with hers and squeezes it. There is a reason that he married her. Not just because
of who her father is, but also because of who she is for being his daughter. He did see her, when he agreed to marry her.
He could not see through her skin, but he did see something.

“You’ve put Caiaphas in a hideous position,” she says, “I suppose you know that.”

“Is it my fault?” starts Annas, and then, “No, you are right. In the southern kingdom they’ve already sent word that they
want you removed, Caiaphas. They have their own man for the job.” He shrugs and chuckles. “He wouldn’t be any improvement,
let me tell you.”

“Removing you solves nothing,” she says to Caiaphas, “I think Pilate will trust you a little more after all this. Because
it ended so badly, because he lost control of his own men. He thinks you’re in it together now. Despised by your own side.
Neither of you wanting to admit how it happened.”

Annas nods slowly. “He thinks you miscalculated. Good.”

Caipahas wants to point out the obvious thing, but cannot. For fear.

His wife says it instead. “He doesn’t know it was you, father, who miscalculated.”

Annas shrugs his shoulders. “Let him think he has a friend. You can play that part, can’t you, Caiaphas?”

Caiaphas, whose special gift is to lie so well he does not even notice himself doing it, says, “Everyone thinks I am their
friend.”

The next day, he takes his wife on a long walk in the hills.

“Come,” he says, “while the countryside is safe and the bandits are quiet. Let us walk in the quiet of the hills and today
another priest will perform the daily sacrifices.”

She looks at him oddly. For he is speaking oddly. And it is an odd request. But they used to do so when they were newly married.
He brings wine with them, and a little dry bread and hard cheese. And skins of water, including one which he is very particular
to keep separate from the rest.

The hills are stepped and dotted with cypress and twisted olive trees. The earth is red and yellow, and the path is dry. Lizards
sit basking on rocks, blinking as they approach, too lazy to move. Their feet become dirty from the dust, but it is good to
walk and walk, as if their bodies could outpace their minds. They talk of the children and the family.

He finds a shady place for them to sit. His wife is smiling now, puzzled, as if she did not know him. He does not know himself.

He passes her some of the bread and the cheese. They eat. They drink the wine. They are softened by the sun.

He says, and he had not known he would begin like this, “I have seen you with Darfon the Levite.”

Her whole body stiffens. Like the turning of the crowd when Pilate raised his hand and gave his signal and the soldiers showed
themselves. He has revealed the traitor in her midst.

“I do not know who that is,” she says slowly and at last.

“I could take you to the Temple,” he says, “and bare your breasts in front of the high altar and accuse you of adultery. I
could put that shame on you.”

She says, “You would not dare to do it.”

He shrugs. “I have never known you at all, I think,” he says. “You were only ever Annas’s daughter to me, and perhaps I was
only ever a man suitable to be High Priest to you.”

She looks at him, her eyes dark and angry.

“If I were a man,” she says, “I would be High Priest and make a better job of it than my brothers.”

He gives a little nod to show that he agrees. This is not the matter at hand, though.

“I could divorce you,” he says, “but it would bring shame to the children and we want Ayelet to be married next year.”

“I did not lie with him,” she says.

And he shows her the wineskin of bitter waters. And tells her what it is. She starts to laugh.

“At your foresight,” she says when he asks. “At the plans you have made when Jerusalem was burning around you and men were
slain in the streets.”

“It is the same thing,” he says. “It is all part of the same thing. All the different lies, and the plans, and the men we
give them.”

“Yes, I know,” she says, shaking her head. “Do you think I have not heard all this before from my father? I know how it is.
To keep the Temple standing, we do this and this and this, and—” She breaks off. Stretches her arms behind her so that he
is reminded for a moment of Hodia’s daughter.

She snatches the wineskin from his hands. Looks into his eyes.

She says, “My father told me about applying this curse to women suspected of adultery. He said that often they never had to
drink the water at all. That women who were guilty would start to weep and shake when they saw the bitter waters and confess.
And those who were innocent would drink it down without fear.”

She says, “I swear I am no adulteress and may all the curses of heaven fall on me if I am.”

She meets his gaze as she drinks and drinks, gulping it down, some water spilling over her chin, drinking it all until the
wineskin is empty and she takes it from her mouth and her mouth is full of water. She does not look away from him as she takes
the last gulp. She wipes her mouth and chin with her forearm. She throws the wineskin at his feet.

They walk back to Jerusalem together, not talking. She does not help him when he stumbles. He does not give her an arm over
the high stone wall of a farm. The silence between them is as thick as woolen fleece. But still they walk together. For there
is a presence howling and prowling on these hills and, if they separated, they would become prey for the wolves.

Nothing is settled forever. Every peace is temporary.

The dove sellers come before him again, this time one with a blackened eye and another with a tooth missing.

It is a man in his forties who brandishes the tooth like a nugget of gold.

“Do you see what they’ve done to me? Do you see? Those mongrels, those monsters, that pack of dogs!”

This time he bans several of the men from the Temple courtyards altogether, and tells them to make reparations for the disturbances
amounting to more than a talent of gold in total. It cannot go on like this, and yet there is no other way for it to go on.

The brother of Eliken—the eighteen-year-old priest who died in the riot in the plaza—comes to visit him. His name is Shlomo,
the brother, he had not thought to ask that before, or perhaps he had forgotten the name. Shlomo’s wife has given him four
living sons, thank God, and the eldest is now approaching thirteen, when it will be time to begin his Temple service. The
son belongs to the Temple, as do all male children in the family of the priests.

“Perhaps,” says Shlomo, “you would be prepared to meet the boy? To offer him some guidance? He remembers his uncle Elikan
with great fondness.”

And Caiaphas knows what Shlomo is asking.

“Is he with you?”

Shlomo brings the boy in. He is gangly and nervous, with a voice on the edge of breaking which wavers from high to low pitch
within a single sentence. He does not speak much.

“What is your name?” says Caiaphas, trying to be kind.

“Ovadya-Elikan,” says the boy.

“He took on the name himself, after his uncle died,” says Shlomo proudly.

“Come to see me Ovadya-Elikan,” says Caiaphas, “when you begin your service. And we’ll make sure you get to know everyone
in the Temple.”

Shlomo is grateful. He himself serves his turns at the Temple offices but has never had a friend in such a high position before.
Much good may it do him, thinks Caiaphas.

Natan the Levite tells him that Darfon, son of Yoav, will set out this very afternoon for the north, where his strong arms
will be of the greatest use in loading barrels of wine and oil onto carts and his cunning brain will be most welcome in figuring
the accounts. Caiaphas feels a certain relief at that, but then at once his mind starts to seek out whom his wife might turn
to now, in Darfon’s absence. He cannot send every man in Jerusalem to the north.

“And Pilate wants to see you,” says Natan. “No,” he continues, before Caiaphas can ask the question, “he didn’t say why and
I didn’t ask.”

They look at each other. Every peace is temporary.

Pilate is full of himself. The rebellion has been quashed; Rome surely sent disapproving words merely to placate their own
guilty consciences. But he has acted strongly and rightly. This is how a Roman man behaves.

He greets Caiaphas warmly. There is no soldier standing guard today.

“Can you sense the mood in the city, Caiaphas?” he asks. “They have felt the touch of my power. They know who is their master
now, and they have given up all resistance like obedient slaves.”

Or like clever slaves, who will heal their wounds and gather their resources before beginning to plan the next rebellion.

“Yes,” says Caiaphas, “you have shown them what you are willing to do.”

“They cannot help but respect it, Caiaphas! Like a woman, they long to be governed.”

Like a woman. Yes, exactly like a woman. Who has labored and survived, who has raised a child. Similarly fearless of pain,
careless of self in protection of something greater than herself.

“I think I will bring the golden images of Tiberius back from Caesarea. He is their lord and high master, he is their god
and rightful king. They should kneel before his statue and kiss his feet.”

“Exactly as you say, Prefect.”

“This is not a bad country, you know. A few rotten apples in the barrel, but mostly decent hardworking families. They will
be grateful to me for rooting out those bad elements. I will turn around the lives of those families. With this rioting on
the streets, your society has become morally degenerate, but I will repair it!”

A memory skitters across Caiaphas’s mind, as if he has heard a speech before delivered with the same shining eyes, the same
absolute self-assurance. But the memory is gone before he can recall the dingy robes and the glowing clouds of heaven.

“Certainly you are right, Prefect,” he says, “but I do not know if the people of Jerusalem deserve your love. Look at how
they rebelled: not only against you but against me! Lavish your praise rather on Caesarea, on the Decapolis, on the loyal
regions.”