The Artifact (56 page)

I decided I would drink only one cup. As I brought the wine to my lips for a long savory draft, I was able to concentrate more fully on what he was saying. “What circumstances?”

Judas leaned forward across the table. “He will go to Jerusalem at Passover to make a statement to hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.”

This news disturbed me. “What kind of statement?”

“Some proclamation that will challenge Roman rule and call attention to our established religious hierarchy he believes places unnecessary burdens on us, yet fails to emphasize the path that Yahweh would have us follow.”

The servant brought our meal and refilled our cups, which were empty.

“This proclamation will be made at the instigation of the rebellious Judah, I imagine.”

“Judah opposes whatever confrontation Jesus has in mind for Passover,” my lunch partner said. “A premature action would not serve his strategy for rebellion. We are not yet prepared to follow through.”

This blatant statement caused a hollow sensation in my bowels.
We,
I wondered? “Does my brother fully comprehend the magnitude of such opposition to authority?”

I drank from my cup before answering. I hated Rome, my enslavement, the forced killings, the murder of Nubian, their sophisticated brutality, their occupation of our homeland, the exorbitant taxes. It would occupy my time and give me a purpose. “Perhaps I could help.”

“We will mount a powerful threat to Rome one day,” Judas said, “but making people agitated, creating a false start would be folly.”

“Which you are concerned Jesus will do.”

“Judah believes that demonstrating our intent with carefully planned forays will solidify our cause. Not flagrant opposition that is overhasty.”

“Jesus intends to deliver a message that Judah plans as a signal for a demonstration by his rebels present in the city for Passover. Others will join them.”

“What if Jesus is arrested?”

Judas smiled, his good eye fixed on my own. “That may be even more effective.”

After Judas left, I ordered another carafe to sharpen my thoughts regarding how I could persuade my obstinate brother to desist in his intent to rile the authorities, considering my failure to influence him the previous fall in Bethany. In the absence of a concrete plan, I decided to put those thoughts from my mind for a time, finishing my second carafe with thoughts of ordering another. Drinking alone had never been my preference, and realizing I had just committed to join a cause that might well take me elsewhere, it occurred to me that I had not bid farewell to my old drinking companions in the lower city. I bought a full wineskin as a parting gift for them and found myself happily ensconced once again on my favorite stool in an old haunt well before sunset. That night was spent with a youthful prostitute with whom I continued that carouse for several weeks. At the end of that debauchery, I found myself lying under an aqueduct outside the city, my face bloodied, my tunic torn and filthy, bereft of purse, memory and self-esteem. The only light in that darkness was my belief that I had not tried to visit Yentl again.

I walked home, saw to it that my hired freedman had been caring for Nubia, cleaned myself, threw my rancid clothes away and went to my bed.

I endured the same sickness as followed my previous cessation of drink, which must have been the result of the vast amount I had steadily consumed night and day during that week. The shivers and sweats kept me from any thoughts other than my own discomfort, exerting every grain of my will to resist the temptation to soothe the pain with more wine. I reckon I slept for several days before I arose to eat a meal, this time without wine, swearing again to avoid such heavy consumption in the future, possibly a celebratory cup on some special occasion, but no more.

The illness left me of a sudden, however, with no awareness of day or date, bolting me from my bed, down to the stable where my servant tending Nubia informed me that the celebration of Passover was three days hence, which meant that I had missed the opportunity of confronting Jesus before he departed for Jerusalem as I had planned.

3783
Iyar
(CE 37 April)

The Jerusalem road was jammed with even more pilgrims than fourteen years earlier when Father had taken our entire family to celebrate the holiday. Nubia made a great difference in my progress, however, cantering beside the new metal pavement, cutting across streams and fields to place us at the southern gate to the Temple City shortly after moonrise the same day we had set out from Sepphoris.

As a late arrival without reservation, I was forced to pay an exorbitant price for a horse stall and tiny room in the Lower City. More tired than hungry, I immediately fell on the straw-filled pallet and slept until dawn.

I made my way through the city streets early the next morn, where I bought leavened bread and a piece of smoked fish to break my fast before entering the Temple Compound, squeezing my way through the densely packed Court of Gentiles to the balcony of men from which I eventually caught the attention of James, who was engaged in performing holy sacrifices below. He came out for only a few moments, slaughter blade in hand, his vestment spotted with dark, moist animal blood and dung, clearly displeased with me.

I spent the day wandering through the Upper City, in which the more interesting shops, businesses and museums were located, consciously avoiding taverns and wine merchants, taking my midday and evening meals from street vendors who offered only water with their particular foods.

Venturing again into the Temple area, I paused to listen to excited gossip regarding a holy man who had addressed the large crowd in the Court of Gentiles, preaching repentance for the imminent end of the world and Kingdom of God, before storming through that outer Court upsetting the tables of money changers and vendors of sacrificial pigeons. Several Temple Guards had accosted the man, but intimidated by the mob outraged on his behalf, had merely escorted him out of the Temple where they released him. I shuddered to think that the nameless man may have been my brother, but searched for him and his disciples outside the Temple walls without success.

The appointed hour for our meeting was sunset, which found me climbing the outer stairs to where Judas had found a room. My knock at the door was answered by the occupant, James and Judah seated on a floor mat within a semicircle of shadows cast by a single lamp in the evening dusk.

My question regarding the disruptive holy man was answered with great solemnity by Judah, who confirmed that arrogant gesture against the conservative Sanhedrin that managed the Temple and Pax Romana had indeed been made by Jesus. James sat with downcast eyes in clean vestments, Judas absorbing every attitude and demeanor of all with shifty glances, as usual.

“Well,” I ventured, “they released him.”

“For the present,” Judah said. “The talk of an uprising is on the lips of many. Who knows what more disruptive act or proclamation he might make on the morrow?”

James seemed morose as he informed us of overhearing the chief priests Annas and his son-in-law Caiaphas confer about the disruption. They believed that his threat against the Temple could only have been directed at the Sanhedrin, James reported. The man was an insult to their authority and conspired with the Zealots. If allowed to stir the rabble he would cause the Prefect of Judea to send his soldiers down upon them all.

“Rather that Pilate should act against one madman,” Annas had said, “than innocent priests and pilgrims.”

James later heard from other priests that Caiaphas had shed his blood-spattered sacrificial vestments for a clean robe and went off to an audience with the Roman Prefect with a petition from the Sanhedrin to absolve the Temple hierarchy of any interest in Jesus’ fate.

“They will act quickly,” James added, “so as not to give the crowds time to rally behind him and cause the fury of Pilate to wreak havoc with our holy holiday.”

Judah spoke as though he had reckoned the answer before the meeting. “Take him away from this place until the holiday is finished.”

“How could this be done,” Judas asked, “without an altercation with the other disciples who have stuck to him like maggots to carrion since leaving the Galilee?”

As I suspected, Judah had already formulated a plan. “We must take him alone tonight before the celebration begins.” Turning to Judas, one of his closest, he asked, “Can you find out where he will be tomorrow?”

Judas hesitated, reluctant to make even that small betrayal to save this man with whom he had jousted verbally and followed for over a year. “He will preach throughout the Temple during the day. He has invited us to a ritual seder in this very room.”

Sundown, Friday, the next day. The Galilean assigned tasks like a general, confident, answering several concerns with facile responses. In essence, he feared that if he and his rebels were recognized by patrolling soldiers or Jesus and his disciples, the feat could only be accomplished by force and the possible spilling of blood, which would anger my brother, defeating our goal.

I was therefore assigned the task of accosting Jesus as he left the seder with his disciples in the Lower City, holding him back from the others in a last effort to convince him to leave Jerusalem. Jesus had been spending the previous nights with several groups of followers outside the city walls, so because we knew not what gate or route he would take, Judas would hang behind us until certain of our direction, then alert Judah and his men of the best place to intercept us. With a solemn agreement that no harm would befall my brother or his people, we adjourned to our respective lodgings.

The next day found my mind in turmoil regarding the planned imposition of our will upon Jesus’ intentions. Regardless of our love for him and care for his safety, did we have the right to thwart his ‘mission’? Would I wish him or any other to alter the course of my life, as the Romans had done? We were being driven to this by Judah’s belief that Jesus’ premature agitation of this vast gathering of largely impoverished Jews would cause Herod and Pilate to take steps to preclude his own future rebellion. Or was some other reason in play?

Before that noon, I found myself pondering that dilemma with a carafe of watered wine under the awning shade of a tavern on one of the main streets of the Upper City, the clamor and bustling of the passing throng distracting me from reaching a final conclusion. When of a sudden, a canopied litter of polished mahogany with golden trim carried by a half dozen slaves stopped before my table. The diaphanous curtains parted to reveal the beautiful dark-haired visage of Tanya.

“Walk with me, Shimon,” she called out.

I was happy to see her. Not only to thank her for sparing my life in the Maximus, but to inquire about our son and...just to see her. I will not dwell on this encounter, however, for it is a dalliance for which I have carried guilt and shame throughout the remainder of my years. Suffice it to report that I eagerly accepted her invitation to view our red-haired son from her balcony as he played at games with friends in the courtyard below. Then, as her husband was yet in Caesarea attending to administrations of the Province, she offered me drink and food, leading to the renewal of the ecstasies of our youthful pleasures beyond dusk, well into the night, long past the time I was supposed to extract my brother from his followers and deliver him into the hands of Judah and safety.

I write this painful confession some forty years after the fact in further atonement for my drunken abandonment of my brother to his fate, my cheeks wet with tears, even as they fell unbidden intermittently for days after that mortifying night.

I woke from a troubled sleep before dawn the next morning feeling my old sickness after heavy drink, leaving Tanya’s bed to seek Judas out to learn what had transpired the previous eve in my absence. I found that devastated man crumpled beside the east wall of the Temple, sobbing profusely as he nurtured his own wineskin. After a great deal of prodding, I learned that Judas had loitered up the street from his room where Jesus and his disciples supped, well after the hour when I should have arrived to hold him back from those closest followers. Unbeknownst to Judas, Temple Guards had been roaming the Lower City looking for Jesus, and spying one of his disciples, watched Judas from afar and waited. Fearing that the whole entourage would remain together when they finally left the building, Judas followed them to Gethsemane hoping for an opportunity to accomplish my assignment of final persuasion, and worry about the rendezvous with the rebels later. The Temple Guards lingered unseen behind Judas until he approached that garden east of Jerusalem near the foot of the Mount of Olives, where the Guards dispersed the disciples who had been only bystanders to my brother’s affront to Roman authority in the Temple.