by Scott Baker
‘Silence!’ came the call. At that moment another fifty or so guards arrived, reinforcements called in case of an uprising. Looking somewhat shaken, on a throne at the top of the stairs, sat Pontius Pilate. A servant poured what I suspected was wine. The crowd was boisterous, filled with every class of citizen: Jewish men in their headdresses, women in their veils, Romans, children, slaves, tax collectors, fishermen. I doubted that there was a trade or a race currently in Jerusalem that was not represented here.
At the front of the crowd, still in chains and surrounded by a circle of soldiers, the prisoner Jesus stood in a robe stained with blood and dirt. His head fell forward.
‘Herod can find no fault with this man, and neither can I,’ Pilate said in a loud but quivering voice. Immediately the roar started up again. This time Caiaphas walked up several steps and turned to quiet the crowd.
‘Have you no respect for our Roman procurer?’ he asked, with sarcasm in his voice. The crowd lowered its collective rumble once again.
Caiaphas turned and looked up at Pilate. ‘This man claims to be the Messiah. He claims to be the Son of God. This is blasphemy by our law. He must be punished!’
He motioned, and soldiers dragged the prisoner Jesus up the steps to be level with Caiaphas. They turned him to face the crowd. I gasped, for the first time seeing the man’s face. He was beaten horribly, one eye swollen in a purple bulge, his lips split and fat, the rest of his face disfigured by welts and blood. Welts upon bruises upon bruises. His hair hung around his face and his eyes were cast down.
‘You see!’ Malbool cursed at me. I could not believe the passion in his voice, so moved by what he had seen. ‘Do not tell me that you knew this was going to happen. I do not believe that you would let this happen! What kind of man are you to let this go on?’
I shook my head. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should save Jesus now; I could get my interview. Would his answers not be the same today as they would have been a day ago? Hamza had warned me that if I failed, millions in our time would die, that the interview must take place. I banished the thought from my mind. No. The Rule of Knowledge. It had to happen, Malbool just could not understand.
Shaun smiled at the irony of his own question just a day before, and Giovanni’s reasoning. The priest had told him that it was perception, not reality, that changed. The thing remained, no matter what you thought about it. This thing had happened, and Malbool not understanding did not change that.
‘It is custom,’ Pilate said, ‘on this day of the festival, to release to you a prisoner. I can release this man Jesus to you.’
Again the crowd started to shout, most in approval, but Caiaphas held out his hands.
‘No!’ he cried to the people. ‘This man must be punished!’
‘No,’ Pilate said defiantly, ‘there has been enough bloodshed in recent times. Shall I release this man to you? It is your right.’
Again it was Caiaphas who tried to quiet the crowd. The priests shouted up, ‘No!’ But Pilate had begun to make motions. Then it struck me: it was really going to happen. Had I changed Pilate’s mind by saving his life? They were going to release Jesus. The crucifixion would not take place.
I studied the prisoner’s face. My heart ached to see someone look so completely dejected, so beaten, so—
Jesus looked up at me.
Time stood still.
Through a swollen, blood-filled eye, from beneath a mass of sweat-drenched hair, and from the full distance of the courtyard, he stared right at me. Right into my eyes. Right into my soul. A chill spread through my body. It was as if he knew why I was here, and in that moment I had to make a decision.
I had been sent back in time to interview this man. To ask the questions the people in my time – a time of science, a time of doubt – would have given anything to ask. But now this man was beaten, broken, and suddenly it looked like I may not be too late after all. It looked like Jesus might go free. He looked at me, his eyes penetrating through the crowd. If they released him, I could complete my mission. I would get my interview, I would save the lives of millions.
But.
The Rule of Knowledge.
No, Jesus must die.
‘Barabbas!’ I screamed. ‘Free Barabbas!’ I screamed louder. Around me the crowd quieted, and Caiaphas, who was desperately trying to control the throng, looked up to the back of the crowd.
‘Free Barabbas!’ I called again. ‘Give us Barabbas!’ The priest’s face lit up, and he nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes!’
He turned up to Pilate. ‘Yes. Free Barabbas! That is our wish. Give us Barabbas!’ he started to chant, like some absurd football mascot trying to rally support for his team. ‘Barabbas! Barabbas! Barabbas!’
Jesus lowered his eyes.
Pilate stopped, turned and looked stunned. Then he looked out over the crowd. The chant was growing. Slowly he began to shake his head. ‘No … no …’
The high priest spun back to him with a broad grin. ‘But you must. You must! It is the will of the people. Give us Barabbas.’
Pilate motioned, and a guard moved inside. Several minutes later he reappeared, dragging behind him a pitifully dirty, grotesque-looking man with wild black hair and scars all over his face. The two prisoners were dragged higher, to the top of the stairs.
‘Again I ask you,’ Pilate boomed, becoming angry, ‘whom do you want released: this man Barabbas, who is a murderer, or this man Jesus, who is called your Messiah?’
‘He is no Messiah,’ Caiaphas spat. ‘He is a blasphemer and should be put to death. Free Barabbas!’
Yet again the crowd took their cue and began to chant the name of the murderous criminal.
Pilate closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he raised his head in a curt upwards nod. The soldiers released Barabbas from his neck iron and stood back.
The man, confused at first, screamed wildly and danced around like an animal, and then spat at the feet of the other prisoner whose fate he would not share and whose freedom he had been granted. I hung my head. I was responsible, and for the first time for as long as I could remember, I cried.
‘Holy shit!’ Shaun burst out far too loudly.
‘Holy shit!’ he said again. The other passengers in the airport lounge looked up from their various international newspapers and mundane airport conversations. What they saw were two loud Americans: one obnoxiously yelling at the top of his lungs, the other drunkenly drooling on his seat. After a few seconds, all of them returned to what they had been doing.
Shaun could not hold back; he needed to tell someone. He leaned over and shook David roughly. The big man had been asleep for a couple of hours.
‘Huh? It’s only a five-to-one compression, it’s not even a transport stream …’
‘David!’ Shaun whispered harshly.
With unfocused eyes, David Black stared at his friend. ‘What? Is it time to go?’
‘He killed him! He fucking killed him!’ Shaun said, exasperated, ‘Saul killed Jesus!’
‘Oh? Yeah, I know. Keep going; it gets better. Wake me up when we have to get on the plane.’
‘Better?’ Shaun said. His eyes darted around; he needed to share the experience, but he knew he could not.
Almost before he could do anything, his hand acted of its own accord and pulled the book back to his face.
Read! his brain screamed.
CHAPTER 50
There would be no interview. There would be no answers. I had failed my mission. But as I stood watching the flesh fall from his back, I barely cared about my mission anymore. I had become one of the crowd; I was witnessing something so abhorrent that I could not look away. The horror compelled me. The lashes continued.
Twenty-one … barely a spot on his back was not covered in blood … twenty-two … it was so much more brutal than I could have imagined … twenty-three … the crowd had demanded his death … twenty-four … but Pilate had refused … twenty-five … saying instead that he would flog the man and let him live … twenty-six
… now he could not even stand, his hands were bound to a stump, shackled … twenty-seven … even Caiaphas dropped his head, unable to watch the Roman guards whip the bloodied pulp any longer … twenty-eight … Jesus no longer cried out … twenty-nine … I was one of the crowd … thirty … I had never believed … thirty-one … but as I stood watching … thirty-two … I could not understand man’s inhumanity to man … thirty-three … I had been in the arena … thirty-four … and the military, but had never seen someone so defenceless take such a beating … thirty-five … Malbool stood next to me, with tears streaming down his cheeks … releasing one hand, they turned Jesus over to expose his front … thirty-six … although I wanted more than anything to turn my head, I knew my obligation now was to record … thirty-seven … and when they saw this, they would cry as we had … thirty-eight … and it was happening because of me … thirty-nine … I felt ashamed.
‘Enough!’ the overseer said, raising a hand to the soldiers holding the whips. They stopped, exhausted by the effort.
It was as they dragged him away from the stump, leaving a trail of blood on the stones, that I looked at this man’s broken body and marvelled. How could they expect him to walk? But they did.
We followed the soldiers as they took Jesus into an alcove. There they dressed him in a cape and put a ring of thorns on his head, pressing down deeply to keep the crown in place. Thorns punctured his scalp and pockets of blood exploded, creating streams that quickly became lost in the river already cascading down his face.
When once again they presented Jesus to Pilate, the Governor chastised his guards for allowing this to happen. Gently he took the pathetic figure by the arm and angrily addressed the crowd.
‘You see what has been done to this man?’
‘Crucify him!’ one priest spat back.
‘Is this not enough? Look at him! He is beaten! He has been humiliated and has suffered, and yet still you call for blood?’
‘If you do not crucify him, you are no friend to the people!’ called another of the men, this one a scribe.
‘Do your duty, Governor: crucify him!’
Then Pilate spoke quietly to Jesus. I could not hear his words, but again I adjusted the amplification on the recording unit to try to pick up the signal. Pilate bowed and shook his head.
‘Why? Is this not enough?’ he called out once again to the multitude.
And then, with emotions heightened, the surrounding crowd began to break out in scuffles with the soldiers. They were going to riot. Pilate had to do something.
The Governor held a pitcher of water out and had a guard pour the liquid down over his hands. Curiously this detail struck me at the time, having always believed that Pilate had used a bowl for this famously symbolic act. But just knowing it had actually taken place was something of a relief in this surreal moment. The emotional Governor called out that the blood was on the hands of the crowd, and he wished not to take responsibility. Yet he had passed the final sentence.
And now we stood and watched. The soft buzz at my temples recorded every moment. The crucifixion would be televised.
The sun rose on the most fateful of mornings in Jerusalem, giving life to the dusty streets. So quiet at this time yesterday, now they were lined with people.
First I shall set one thing straight: what Jesus was made to drag through the streets was an entire cross. It was fashioned with the cross-bar attached and would have weighed more than two hundred pounds.
I saw amid a group of women weeping for him one who was inconsolable. I looked at the woman’s face as she watched the man shuffle with painfully small steps along the stone path. With each step he received new abuse, the crowd throwing both rocks and insults at the man who now wore nothing but a cloth tied carelessly around his waist. The procession, led by men on horses, contained another four men heading to their fate, not just two as accounts indicated.
I walked among the crowd, trying hard to keep my camera on the subject. He was being motivated by constant lashings from a guard’s whip, and it took all my strength not to rush in and decapitate the cruel punisher with his own sword.
The first fall was the most dramatic. A member of the crowd, trying to rush into the line of travel, charged bodily into a guard, who in turn stumbled backwards and knocked into Jesus. The condemned man, already close to death from injury and exhaustion, lost his balance and dropped the massive wooden cross, his slight body following. As the cross-bar lodged in the stone and rolled, it pole-vaulted Jesus into a full flip, so that he came down hard on his face, landing awkwardly with his legs behind him. I pushed my way forward as jeers broke out. He did not move. The only thing that had kept him going was the momentum of not being able to stop, and now that rest had been forced upon him, his body shut down.
Stones were thrown at the fallen prisoner, and a soldier lashed his unmoving body. Still Jesus did not move.
Malbool pushed his way up to me and spoke harshly in my ear. ‘Do you not see this!’ For the first time since I had met him, I heard hatred in his voice. ‘What sort of man are you that you can simply stand by?’ he demanded of me as he moved forward, meaning to intervene. I grabbed Malbool’s arm and held firmly.
I looked at the guard who again swung his leather into the mass of blood that was Jesus’s back. At that moment, all I wanted to do was kill that guard. I think I would have if it were not for the woman – the one I had seen earlier in the crowd – who suddenly knelt beside the motionless body. She carried a white cloth and brought her face close to the man’s face. She stroked his hair, and slowly pressed the cloth to his forehead, soaking up the blood. Her cheek moved to the man’s cheek and she whispered in his ear. ‘I’m here, Joshua. I’m here,’ she said gently.
Her words did what the soldier’s whip could not: they brought hope. In what seemed slow motion, Jesus lifted his head and turned it to the side. The woman continued to wipe his face with the cloth, which was already saturated. Through his swollen eyes he looked at her, and whispered back something I could not make out.
‘Who is that?’ Malbool asked me, looking at the amazing scene.
‘That,’ I replied, ‘is his mother.’
With what must have been a supreme will, Jesus clawed his way to his feet once more. He stood, bent at the waist, and reached for his cross. As the party once again moved forward, the faintest hint of a smile twitched in the man’s mouth as his mother reached for him, only to be pulled back into the crowd. The procession moved on.
We came to a curve in the narrow street and the road ramped upwards. I fought for position in the streets, trying always to see, to record. The horses broke through the crowd ahead of the criminals marching up the hill in shuffling, uneven steps. Several times Jesus looked like he was falling. His breathing was cracked and worn, coming in the desperate gasps of a man past his limit. The men driving the movement ever upwards were relentless, taking pleasure in being able to lash all four prisoners at will.
With banded leather straps that curled around his shoulders, and a curved plume on the head of his dented and bronzed helmet, the soldier behind Jesus lashed again and again. The leather bit into exposed skin. The bloodied prisoner cried out with each new blow. Pure hatred burned within me. Finally, as yet another blow slammed into the raw flesh, I could take it no longer. I pushed past Malbool and threw those in front of me out of my way. I would kill the man with his own sword.
As I broke the line, another blow sent the Galilean stumbling forward. He dropped his cross and its heavy trunk slammed and bounced to the ground. Following after it, without even the strength to stretch out his hands to protect himself, Jesus fell forward.
His face slammed uncushioned into the stones and I saw an explosion of blood splash onto the dirt as part of his swollen face burst.
I stood in the middle of a jeering, cheering, hysterical crowd, Roman soldiers in front of me, behind me and mounted on their horses all around me. Lying fallen at my feet was a bloodied figure, covered in sweat and purple bruises. I looked
up at the guard who stood behind him. Our eyes met, every fibre of my being wanting to punish this man for what he had done and continued to do.
But I did not. Instead I looked down at the fallen Nazarene and his burden. I walked to him and reached down to pick up the cross, my own blood flowing from where my fingers should have been.
I watched distantly as it ran down the wood and mixed with that of the man destined to die that day. The colour of our blood was the same. It mixed together and formed a single river flowing down the grain, travelling a distance before falling to freedom from a notch in the wood. With both hands I hoisted, feeling the weight, so much heavier than I had expected. Shifting the load to one arm, with my other hand I reached down to the man at my feet, and helped him in his feeble attempts to rise. I held him gently but firmly under the armpit and lifted him up. His hands reached for the wood, which he had embraced in this macabre dance through the city streets for far too long.
He half-held, half-hung when he finally found the cross-bar. As I supported his weight, and that of his cross, his hand rested on mine. Time seemed to stand still as, for the most fleeting of moments, the man lifted his head and turned his face towards mine. As they had moments earlier with the guard, my eyes locked with the Galilean, and my heart missed a beat. Just as quickly as it had arrived, the moment passed and the man turned his head and shouldered the full weight of the wood once more. Purposefully, he began to shuffle off.
The guard shoved me roughly to the side and began to whip at Jesus again, but I felt no desire to return the aggression. My fury was gone. The crowd closed in around me and the procession moved further up the hill, but I stood motionless. For a long time I did not move at all, while the jostling and shoving masses streamed around me without so much as a bump. I knew I should have been following, recording, documenting, but I could not move.