The Implacable Hunter (22 page)

‘Master, that is what
they
say. It is bread and wine, but after it has been blessed it is taken as the body and the blood of Jesus.’

‘You said God.’

‘Master, is it my fault if they say Jesus was the one and only Son of God? Who partakes of Jesus partakes of God Himself – that is what
they
say,
I
did not say so. How could I say so? Would I be here if I believed so?’

‘This is most filthy blasphemy!’

‘Yes, master.’

‘And you, blind beast – do you not get your share of bread and wine and blessings?’

‘Last of all, Master.’

‘Tomorrow night you will have to do without.’

‘A mouthful of wine, a crust of bread – is this something to do without?’

‘And you get no money?’

‘Alms for watching. A miserable pittance, Master.’

‘How many will be there?’

‘Who can say? Sometimes more, sometimes less; it might be forty, or fifty, or eighty.’

‘Of what kind, what condition?’

‘All kinds, Master. Mostly Jews like us –’

‘Like
what
?’

‘I mean, mostly Jews. Some Syrians, some Greeks, some Romans.’

‘How long does this mummery go on?’

‘One hour, two hours, three. The Deacon preaches. The people bring food, and eat supper. Then before dawn they disperse, in ones and twos, to avoid attention.’ Nun
hesitated
. ‘Master …’

‘Well?’

‘You will bring your people only in ones and twos?’

‘Ha! A lucky day, that, when I take lessons in tactics from blind beggars!’

‘And Master … you will tie me up, as if you had
overpowered
me?’

‘Rest assured of that.’

‘Thank you, Master.’ Blind Nun fawned. Then: ‘Master … on account … just a little more?’

‘What? I gave you three silver denarii yesterday. That is more than enough to keep the likes of you for half a year!’

The man squirmed, and muttered: ‘For the likes of me, learned Master, more than enough. But – have mercy, did I ask for eyesight? I am … there is … a girl, sir, who dances without moving her feet.’

Afranius was surprised by a gush of pity for this wretch. But Paulus said: ‘You disgust me, you creeping thing!’

‘Master, it is something stronger than I am. Cursed be the hands that gave me sight!’ Nun’s anguish was horrible.

‘Yes. And so now all Jerusalem will be talking about Blind Nun, who is giving silver in handfuls to whores who dance without moving their feet, eh?’

‘No, Master, no, no! For after tonight I shall not meet Selma again.’

‘Why not?’

‘She, too, will be in Chislon’s cellar,’ said Nun.

Without a word, Paulus threw him five more silver pieces. Nun had to shut his eyes in order to find them. Afranius heard him mutter: ‘She despises me, but I can pay her price this once.’

‘She prostitutes herself and gives to the Nazarenes?’ asked Paulus.

‘Master, she says, “I sell what I have and give to the poor, and the lips
I
pray with frame no double meanings.”’

‘And you love this whore?’

‘Master, I hate her.’

‘Go.’

Nun went. Afranius felt, he wrote, as if he had fallen into a deep pit leaving his heart and bowels in the air above him.

When he, too, left, Paulus was sitting absolutely still, staring unblinking into the flame of a lamp. Next day he had a map, or diagram, of Chislon’s premises, together with a perfectly simple and workable plan of action…. Here I noticed a certain change in Afranius’s way of writing: I felt an astringency in it, together with a flatness of tone, such as one detects in the manner of an honest man compelled by duty to make a distasteful statement. He wrote:

‘I have seen many things that were supposed to be
frightful
. In the course of a lifetime largely spent in an endeavour to allay an unappeasable curiosity, I have made it my
business
and my pleasure to involve myself in many matters of a more or less unseemly and shocking nature – so many of which have to do with the gods, as it happens. I have been present at the fertility-orgies of the Baalim – which are tedious. I have witnessed the forbidden “nameless” rites of Hecate – which, to the dispassionate observer, are almost comic. Paulus alone has succeeded in disgusting me …’

Chislon’s cellar, Paulus demonstrated, was a commodious one, about eighty short cubits long and twenty wide; not high, but large enough to hold at least two hundred people in addition to the wine and cheese that were stored there. The cellar was approached from the warehouse by a
ponderous
double door of oak that was fastened from the
outside
by means of a strong beam. It was exactly as Nun had described it. From the doorway, ten stone steps connected the ground level with the cellar, at the other end of which another flight of steps led to a large trap-door which was bolted from within. This opened upon a walled yard, with a gateway large enough to let wine-carts through. This gate, again, was barred at night on the inside, but Nun was to leave it unlocked.

Half an hour after midnight, a spy reported to Paulus that
he had counted fifty-three men, thirty-one women and nine children, who had gone into Chislon’s warehouse. Paulus waited another eternal hour, then tapped out the signal. Nun was there. The outer doors opened silently on oiled hinges. Paulus and Afranius went in, followed by four soldiers.

The cellar doors were not completely closed. Lamps were burning down there. Paulus put his eye to the little space between the doors. Afranius did not need to stand on
tiptoe
to look over the little man’s head. There, in a great
dimness
, all the worshippers knelt in silence, while Stephanas blessed them in a cool, deep, strong, buoyant voice, in the name of Jesus, the Son of God, the Saviour. Afranius caught a glimpse of a strongly-made man with what he called ‘an elegance of manner and an easy confidence of bearing’. Then, without a sound, Paulus pulled the doors shut and, obedient to his gesture, one of the soldiers lowered the massive
barrier-beam
into its brackets.

There was a space of half a hand’s breadth between the bottom of the doors and the stone floor. The soldiers
produced
some bundles of unwashed wool, which they arranged near this aperture. Oh, Paulus had thought of everything – like an assassin, like a woman! Now, they sprinkled this wool with oil. Paulus himself took a lamp and set fire to it. A stinking, choking smoke arose, hissing. This the soldiers fanned towards the door with their cloaks. What poured into the cellar must have been as dense as the wool from which it came. Then, at a signal, one after another, the soldiers cried
‘Fire!’
– separately, at first, each in his different voice, and then together as in a mounting chorus, at the same time beating their shields with the shafts of their spears and
running
noisily to and fro. One bellowed:
‘Water,
water!’
– two others yelled:
‘Help,
help!’
– while another bawled: ‘Run for your lives! The house is burning!’ And no doubt they
enjoyed
themselves immensely, as soldiers will when
playacting
comes in the line of duty.

There was a pounding at the cellar door. Over the
shrieking
of the women Afranius heard a man cry, ‘The doors are barred!’ Stephanas’s voice then commanded: ‘Be calm, children. There is a door overhead’ – pointing heavenwards, I daresay, and beckoning – ‘Steadily, now, and let the women and children come first.’

Paulus plucked Afranius by the sleeve and, bounding like a hare, ran with him to the other side of the building and into the walled courtyard. It was lined with soldiers, both Jewish and Roman, and several cloaked figures grimly waiting.

‘Now, watch,’ said Paulus. The two halves of the heavy trap-door rose, creaking, and fell apart with an echoing double crash that shook the night – exactly at which moment Paulus, in his excitement, beat a fist into his palm, so that there were later witnesses to swear that he carried
thunderclaps
in his hands – and the Nazarenes came coughing and weeping out of the cellar into the moonlight. The last to emerge was Stephanas, half-carrying a crying woman.

So Afranius reported: ‘… Not counting Stephanas and the wine merchant Chislon and his wife, a good bag: of men, fifty-three; of women, thirty-one; of children, nine. I beg pardon – a correction – of children, nine and a half….’

For the woman whom Stephanas dragged up the steps had been near her time, and fright and the wild jostling had brought on her pains. Convulsively, she gave birth there in the walled yard. Everyone stood hesitant. The Chinese say: ‘The perfume of a rose may stop a clock.’ But the outland prostitute Selma drew a knife from her sleeve, daring
anyone
to come near her; tugged the half-born child out into the light of the moon, wiped its mouth and eyes with her kerchief, and cut and knotted the navel-string. Then she swung the red and dripping infant up by the heels and shook it, saying to Stephanas: ‘Bless it.’ He blessed the babe in the name of Jesus, while his hands were being tied, and
it drew its first breath and began to wail; at which everyone assembled seemed to come with a start out of a kind of stunned daze, and the order was given to take the prisoners away.

It was a melancholy procession. Stephanas led it, bound like a felon; and in its wake came He, She and It, led by Little Azrael. The night-birds of Jerusalem slunk away as they heard them all coming.

I remember that at this point I wrote in the margin: ‘The fact of the matter is, that Afranius’s “disgust” is mere
boredom
. Life has spoiled him by presenting him with too many events ready-made. Has he lived forty-five years without learning that it is the drill, not the battle, that breaks the soldier’s heart? He is simply tired of watching a zealot on manoeuvres.’

When the prisoners were penned, Paulus sent for Blind Nun. He had been tied, as he requested, and for good measure some guard had bloodied his nose. He fell at Paulus’s feet.

‘Master,’ he asked, ‘have I done well?’

‘Yes,’ said Paulus. ‘And I have a promise to keep.’

‘Yes, Master.’

‘I promised you – let me see – the full protection of the law, steady employment in canditions favourable to your general condition…. You prefer a dimmed light, I think?’

‘Yes, thank you, master.’

‘Regular meals and housing for life, and your enemies in chains. Something away from the city of Jerusalem. Yes?’

‘Oh yes, Master.’

‘Did you, by the way, satisfy your lust for the harlot Selma?’

Nun hung his head. ‘She cast a spell,’ he muttered, ‘she bewitched. She took my money. She took me to her bed. All my soul cried out for her. But I was struck limp as a worm. All night I tried. At dawn she kicked me out. As soon as I
was in the street, I was a stallion. I knocked at her door. She let me return. And behold, I was a worm again.’ Paulus let out a bark of laughter.

‘Poor Nun,’ he said, ‘but never mind. You like sea air? Travel?’

‘Yes, Master. It is my heart’s desire.’

‘I am very happy for your sake, then. You will find it dim enough for you on the low bank of a trireme, I have no doubt, and there you may travel your fill.’

‘Master?’

‘I am having you sent to the galleys, blind man.’

‘But, Master, I served you!’ cried Blind Nun, numb with horror.

‘I paid you silver for serving me. The other payment is for having served the dog Jesus. Take him away!’

Afranius said to him, coldly: ‘Far be it from me to come between your youthful high spirits and their expression in a charming joke, Paulus, but it should have occurred to you that Diomed might have use for a fellow like Nun in Tarsus.’

‘It did occur to me,’ said Paulus. ‘But Nun is exposed as an informer, and an exposed informer is worse than none at all. Ask Diomed.’

‘Diomed would have let Nun “escape” to Tarsus and go into hiding there.’

‘He sickens me, with his worms and his lusts,’ said Paulus, dismissing the matter.

The trial of Stephanas was short and uncomplicated, for the man was evidently guilty of blasphemy a hundred times worse even than that of Jesus his master. A kindly old judge, of Hillel’s school, put it to him that the ritual of the bread and wine was a symbolic act, and understood as such. But Stephanas said: No – the bread was the body of God, and the wine was God’s blood in truth, by a holy and mysterious transubstantiation. ‘This is my body,’ Jesus had said; and Jesus was God’s only begotten son, flesh of God’s flesh, blood
of God’s blood, spirit of God’s spirit walking in God’s own image. Several of the judges tore their garments for even having heard such blasphemy and afterwards did penance to avert calamity. Stephanas was sentenced to be stoned, and Paulus was appointed as Official Witness to the execution.

Impelled by his fever of inquisitiveness and followed by Afranius, he went to talk to Stephanas in his cell. The prisoner, full of solicitude for Paulus, rose courteously, offered him his stone bench, and said: ‘My poor young friend, you should take better care of yourself. You are tired out in a lost cause.’

Taken aback by such cool effrontery, as it seemed, Paulus said: ‘Lost cause? I?’

‘Yes, child. You make me think of the way certain Dacian shepherds catch wolves, in the winter time. They rub a knife with rancid fat and fasten it to a stone under the snow. The wolf smells the fat and starts to lick the knife. Licking the knife, he cuts his tongue. Tasting blood, he licks all the more hungrily. The more he bleeds, the more he drinks; the more he drinks, the harder he licks. So he dies of drinking his own blood, with a gorged belly and empty veins. You are drinking your own blood, Saul. How can a man be unhappy in the cause of righteousness? And you are so sad, poor Saul, that my heart bleeds for you.’

‘Save your bleeding for tomorrow.’

‘Yes, it is a sad thing indeed, to be stoned.’

‘I am told that it may be the most painful of all deaths,’ said Paulus.

‘Oh it is, it is! If I were to be burned, now, let us say – then there would be only one executioner. But to stone a man is to make a thousand executioners. That is the worst part of it. Even kind-hearted people throw a stone because they fear the censure of their neighbours. As for my personal discomfort, I must put up with it, and try to set a good example. Christ Jesus forgive me! I might have managed
matters better. But what is done is done, and I alone am to blame. Christ’s lambs in captivity, and all those poor people tomorrow throwing stones! Alas, alas!’