The Kingdom of the Wicked (8 page)

       'Food!'

       'If you want food,' a guard said, 'you'll have to pay for it.’

       ‘Have you any money?' John asked the no longer leaping one.

       'I've not taken much today. And here's a question for you: how do I earn my living from now on?'

       'We always get that question,' the tired Peter said. 'Learn a decent trade. Pottery, carpentry, something.'

       'At my age? Who'd take me on as an apprentice now?'

       'Have you money or have you not?' John bawled.

       'Oh, all right then. But you won't get much with this bit of tinkle.'

       They got stale bread and musty water. They slept uneasily on the cold stone floor. When the dawn cock indiscreetly crew (who of us is worthy, who?) they were let out and led to the council chamber, not far from the jail, the place called the lishkath ha-gazith, or hall beside the Xystos, this Xystos being the polished stone gathering place in the open air on the western side of the hill of the Temple. The beggar leapt most of the way to confirm that his cure was genuine, and Peter in his fatigue said: 'Please. Walk like a man.' Outside the chamber they were kept waiting for over an hour. A man was selling baked fish nearby, and the pungent reek was a torture to their empty bellies. At length they were admitted and they gaped at what they saw. Most of the Sanhedrin was assembled for them, though there were more Sadducees than Pharisees. You always stood a chance with the Pharisees.

       Annas was there, appointed high priest by Quirinius, the legate of Syria some twenty-six years back, deposed nine years later but the main power still of the priesthood, which was all in his family anyway. His son-in-law, Caiaphas, made successor to the old man by Valerius Gratus, procurator before Pilate, they knew too well. There was the son of Annas, Jonathan, and a mild little man named ineptly Alexander. There were priests and laymen muttering in their beards. Caiaphas, president of the court, opening the proceedings by saying:

       'It is claimed that you cured a man well known to be incurable. Is he in the court? Yes, I see he is. This leaping is unseemly. So. By what authority and in whose name have you effected this cure?'

       Peter had prepared no words. Jesus had always insisted on the advisability of keeping one's head and mouth empty so that the bird of inspiration could flutter in, or wind blow in. Peter's tongue felt fire blaze at its root and he said:

       'Rulers of the people, elders, it seems that John here and I are charged with the crime of doing a good deed to a poor cripple who is, by God's grace, a cripple no longer. Power and authority? These come from Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, as you will remember, and whom God raised from the dead. Now there is a line in one of the Psalms of David, which one I cannot recall, not being a man of book learning, and it goes like this: "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner." There is salvation only in him. There is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved. The making whole of this beggar here is a testament or testimony, I am not sure of the right word, being ignorant, of his glory. I say no more.'

       There was a good deal of muttered arguing and ocular daggers aimed at Peter and John which missed their targets. Then Caiaphas ordered that the two disciples be put outside so that the muttering could be augmented into open, though secret, plain speech.

       'Well, look, holy fathers and reverend gentlemen,' old Annas said, his parchment face scored as by claws and his wattles wagging, 'I can give you only the fruits of my experience in this sort of business. I have, as you know, no authority here.' He beamed hideously at them all. 'Belial and Beelzebub and the rest of the devils don't cure cripples, they make them more crippled, so you can get diabolic power out of your heads, it won't work. The whole city, I gather, is talking about this piece of thaumaturgy. Of course,' he said, appraising the limbs of the beggar, who could not remain still and so walked the length and breadth of the court without rebuke, 'we could always have his ankles broken and say that the cure never happened, but I think that would be gratuitous cruelty.' Some of the Sanhedrin nodded agreement. 'The God of our fathers sometimes effects prodigies which no man of learning is able to explain. What we have to do is to separate the act from the alleged spiritual force behind it. The thing to do is to say to these men that they have to stop propagandizing in the name of the Galilean. My son-in-law here didn't actually put him to death, he left that to the Romans, but he must find it acutely embarrassing that an amateur rabbi carpenter should now be proclaimed as the resurrected son of the Most High.' He grinned maliciously at Caiaphas. 'And the source of undeniable miracles.'

       'You won't stop them,' Jonathan said. 'They either should not have been arrested at all or they should be stoned now for blasphemy. But that means stoning all of them, and the converts they're making will turn against us more than they have already. It's an awkward situation. What is needed is somebody like Rabban Gamaliel — why isn't he here by the way? — who can spin new words and theories and make out that this Jesus was a genuine minor prophet acceptable to the priests and the people.' He was shouted down.

       'You must be careful,' Caiaphas warned. 'No compromise is acceptable. It's the claim of messiahship that's dangerous, along with what many will take to be proof of it. One thing at a time. Threaten them with dire punishments if they preach the Galilean again.'

       'Apeile apeilesometha,' Annas mouthed with relish. 'Threaten with threatening. Not really a tautology. All we can threaten with is threats.'

       'Let them go then? With a warning?'

       'That's right. Till the next time.'

       Peter and John arrived for the day's baptizing late. Peter relieved Bartholomew, who needed to seek his own relief behind a bush. The Roman bucklers to the west drank the new sun. 'Your name?' Peter said to the young man before him.

       'Stephen.'

       'And what sins have you committed, Stephen?'

       'The ordinary human sins. Lust, though lust unenacted. Impatience and anger. Prolonged failure to see the light.'

       'But now you see it?'

       'I see it.'

       'I baptize you, Stephen, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'

Now began the setting up of a Jerusalem community with no private property. Matthias turned his lonely house into a mart where furniture, plate and titledeeds to fields and messuages could be brought, evaluated, and transferred to the hands of the primal twelve as administrators. Cunning merchants willing to turn personalty and realty into liquid cash came and offered as little as they could. Matthias had not yet become a totally feckless Nazarene and inaugurated a system of auctioneering. The pens of clerks drove hard. Saul, hearing the crash of the hammer, came to see in his uncharity and anger.

       'Monstrous and unclean. To throw away hardearned money on snotnosed beggars and stinking cripples.'

       'And yet failing to buy the release of my nephew from the hands of the Romans. Unnatural — is that what you wish to say? Well, God took charge. God knew as well as I that the Romans are unbribable.’

       ‘First things first, Matthias. Family. The company of the faithful. But of course you're no longer of the faithful.'

       'I call myself a Godfearing Jew to whom a new grace has been added. You're an intelligent young man, Saul, as well as a learned one. You must see the signs of the times. The old way is finished.'

       'I will protect the old way, as you call it, with the last breath of my body. And I will attack the new.'

       'Simply because it is the new?'

       'No, because it is blasphemous. God is a pure spirit and all above the decaying flesh of humanity.'

       'We believe differently.'

       'Believe then to your sorrow and destruction. The stones of justice are already grinding.' And Saul elbowed his way irritably through the press of bargainers and appraisers, hearing the voice of Matthias pursue him into the street.

       'May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ bring you yet to the true way.' Saul spat, then jostled the weaker members of the street crowd. He was in no mood for tentmaking and, besides, he had a sore thumb. He came to the grounds of the house which Joseph Barnabas had formerly owned and saw a new thing: there were awnings, and under the awnings litters, and on the litters the bodies of sick people. Stephen and Bartholomew were binding a wounded knee. Ananias was taking from bed to bed a breadbasket and a wineflask. He smiled when he saw Saul. He said:

       'You've come to us at last? This is a good place for easing a stiff neck.'

       'So,' Saul said. 'How long will this continue? You leave the Pharisees and join the Essenes. And now you belong to this blasphemous sect. Stephen too, I see. Folly. Have you too sold everything for the sake of the drooling cripples?'

       'Everything, Saul.'

       This was not strictly true. Later that day, in the former house of

       Matthias, Peter repeated, though with more grace, the words of Saul. 'Everything, Peter. Count the money — it's there on the table.’

       ‘And the bill of sale?'

       'That,' Ananias uncomfortably said, 'is not strictly the affair of the community. I was not bound to sell my farm. That was a voluntary act. Surely all our acts are voluntary? We live, surely, under no compulsion?'

       'As we vow to live without possessions of our own and share all things in common, you, as one of us, were bound to give everything. I ask again, Ananias — everything?'

       'Everything.'

       'What does your name mean, Ananias?'

       'My name? Why ask about my name? It's properly Hananiah, I'm told. Something about Jehovah giving graciously —’

       'You mock what God does and you mock your own name. I see to your soul, Hananiah. And you, Saphira, you abet the lie?'

       Saphira was Ananias's wife, her name properly Shappira, meaning the beautiful one. It is a dangerous thing to give girl babies names they may not live up to. Saphira was small of eye and thin of lip, her hair lank with an excess of God's own oil. She said, in some confusion: 'The farm was my father's. It's my father giving from the grave, but he made no promise to the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes did not exist when he died.'

       'The money is nevertheless that of you and your husband to give. I ask again: do you abet the lie?'

       'I am no liar,' she said. 'Were we not entitled to some small place of our own? Where are a man and his wife to live? There are things a husband and wife must do in private, they cannot sleep as in a jail with strangers who call themselves brothers snoring around them or keeping awake to watch what is forbidden.'

       'So some of the money has been kept back. Yes, Ananias?’

       ‘Nothing has been kept back. This I swear.'

       'We're enjoined by our master not to swear but to say plain yes and no. Are you a liar, Ananias?'

       'Whatever is meant by liar. We were granted a small messuage of the farm, no more than an outhouse. But the money from the sale is all there.'

       'So,' Peter said, 'Ananias the liar finally speaks the truth. Go now, and Saphira with you. We're not like the Romans or the Sanhedrin. We exact no punishment, leaving that to God. For now the knowledge of wrongdoing should be punishment enough. Savour your crime alone, the two of you.' And he turned his back on them.

       'Give me a little water,' Ananias said. 'I feel faint. My heart is not strong.' Nobody gave him anything. 'I see. The giving is all on one side. This shall be a curse to you, you will see.' And he left tottering, supported by Saphira. Matthias said to Peter:

       'Forgive my presumption — I know I am the newest of the company and so understand least — but I can't see how Ananias was wrong. I had the opportunity to have my nephew freed — I mean Caleb. It was a matter of paying out money. How if I had kept back money that was really my own?'

       'Was,' James the other, son of Zebedee, said. 'Was, remember that. Now you are in a happy position. Before you were in confusion, for you knew that bribes did not work and yet you had the faint hope that one might. It's always best to be without money. Turn money into what can be consumed and consumed quickly. That rids a man of confusion and greed and many another vice.'

       'You would have lost your money,' Peter said, 'and, if things had not worked out differently through God's grace, your nephew would have lost his life. The Romans don't make bargains, James is right. Things have worked out for the best. Always look for the hand of God.'

       'As now?' Matthias asked. He was looking out into the street, where Ananias had fallen into the dust. Saphira was bending over him, her hand on his bared chest, feeling for the heartbeat. She raised her head and her voice, crying for help. A laden camel went by, roaring out of its own inner dissatisfaction, and it was led by a man who, though not roaring, had troubles of his own. A dry wind bestowed more dust on Saphira and her husband. Two fat women passed with baskets loaded for the market, chattering.

       'I thought we preached charity,' Matthias said. 'Or should I say that there is a gulf between preaching and practising?'

       'God hates a liar,' Peter said doubtfully.

Caleb arrived at Sebaste, the capital city of Samaria. This, which had once borne the name of the country itself, had been rebuilt in the Greek style by Herod the Great and named for the Roman Emperor Augustus, who was styled in Greek Sebastos. Caleb saw in morning sun the hill Gerizim, on which the Samaritans had built their own temple to rival that of Jerusalem. It was not so fine to look at, though its eastfacing gold and silver doors were as brilliant in the sun as those of the city of true holiness. There could be no real holiness here, so the Judaeans taught. A lot of halfbreeds. Assyrian blood, blood of the Hasmoneans, a bad lot. But the people looked much like Caleb's own. They wore dirty robes, chaffered at fruit stalls, spat, scratched. An unveiled girl of rare pale beauty looked down wistfully from a high window and was then roughly dragged in to darkness by a scolding voice. Beggars cried for alms in the name of Jehovah. A man in whiteedged black with an Assyrian beard performed conjuring tricks before an idle knot of citizens the police rudely beat from the thoroughfare of burdened donkeys and camels, a closed litter in the Roman style borne on tough poles by nearnaked men who looked like Ethiopians. There were, as in Jerusalem, Syrian troops but more decurions of Italic blood. Caleb had a few coins stamped with the head of Tiberius Caesar, given to him by Ananias when he left the thin pale community of the Essenes. He found a small tavern and broke his fast. The bread here was baked hard in thin slabs on oiled iron. The wine was more pink than red. The girl who served him noted his accent. From where? Jerusalem. She was not impressed.