Damascus

by Christos Tsiolkas

  ‘No,’ answered the bearded man. ‘In this new world the last will be first and the first will be last. This is what Jesus has sworn.’ He was almost animal in his passion. ‘Only those who’ve suffered will be there—those who’ve been enslaved, those who’ve endured cruelty and evil. Only they are promised to the kingdom to come.’

  My daughter suffered. She endured cruelty and evil.

  I turned back to Paul. ‘Is my daughter with this God, is she with this Jesus?’

  A spasmed racked his body, his jaw clenched, his eye rolled back. Was he possessed? Timothy placed a hand on Paul’s shoulder and the old man grasped at it. And through the touch he was released. He must be a seer, I thought, he has been granted visions into the worlds beyond this one.

  ‘Do you see her?’ I pleaded. ‘Is she with Jesus?’

  His voice trembled with pity. ‘She is lost. But the Saviour mourns her loss.’

  And of what use is that mourning to me? I wanted my will to be a force that destroyed this hovel, this city, this world. But the sorrow that came from that piercing eye, that sorrow sucked my rage from me. He had not lied. His God grieved for my daughter and I was suddenly stunned by the enormity of such unthinkable compassion. And with that understanding I realised that I had been in shadow, that since she had been taken from me I had been in league with death. My gods deceived and tormented and abandoned us, but this God mourned the loss of a child.

  ‘Will your God avenge her death?’

  The bearded man stepped forward. ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘That is the kingdom we seek.’

  In the vehemence of his wrath he became my ally.

  ‘I will follow this Jesus,’ I declared. ‘I will worship this God.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘He is not a god, Lydia. He came to fulfil the promise of the Lord.’

  ‘Where is he now? Where is this Jesus?’

  The younger girl spoke up. ‘He is returning.’

  And as though in prayer, all answered, ‘Truly, this season or the one next, he is returning to us.’

  ‘From where?’

  Paul hesitated. He was looking at his young companion. And for the first time, Timothy spoke. ‘He died, sister. He was killed, but on the third day of his interment he rose from the dead.’

  My head ached. None of it made sense. I tried to understand. ‘How did he die?’

  I waited. And I waited. Would no one answer?

  Paul’s voice, for once, was deep and clear. ‘He was crucified by the Romans.’

  And then I laughed. I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my stool. The old man attempted to fix my gaze once more with his serpent stare, but all I saw before me was a deluded and ridiculous old fool.

  ‘I saw him, Lydia, he came to me after he died. I’ve been sent by him to bring you Strangers to the Lord. He was crucified, he suffered the most vile and obscene of deaths, and he was resurrected three days later. I saw him with my own eyes. He died but he came back.’

  That strange word, resurrected, replaced my levity with hostility. I felt fury for how they’d mocked and deceived me.

  ‘What nonsense,’ I spat out. ‘What idiocy is all of this? Men who die on the cross are criminals and bandits. They are filthy slaves. How can such a man be a god? How can such a man avenge the death of my daughter?’

  ‘How did she die?’

  I whirled around to face the older woman. ‘You have no right to ask me that question.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Yet I did. And I’ll ask it again. How did she die?’

  I could not answer. I was afraid that if I did the truth would rent me apart. I would not reveal my anguish to this deluded and treasonous mob.

  ‘You abandoned her. You killed her.’

  The levee that had for so long held back my grief, that impenetrable wall, suddenly cracked and shuddered and was destroyed. I fell to bawling.

  But the bearded man’s words broke through my grief.

  ‘You abandoned her to the wolves and the vultures, didn’t you? You weren’t there to hear her screams as they tore at her body, feasted on her bones. But that is how she would have suffered. Wasn’t that a vile and obscene death?’

  I didn’t want to hear but I heard. His words, the tearing of flesh, the howls of my child. Her last scream before death and Hades and darkness.

  Paul dared to insult me once more. With both hands he grabbed my face, and held it until I could not help but look at him.

  ‘Our brother Perseverance is harsh, I know, but his truth is a way towards understanding. Perseverance too has abandoned a child—he knows your shame. Don’t you understand, Lydia? This Jesus whom you believe scandalous and base, he knows what your daughter suffered. He knows because he understands what it is to be the most despised. Don’t you see, sister? Our Lord is not only the Lord of justice, He is also the Lord of love.’

  My revulsion and anger calmed. But I still couldn’t understand. The cross, that shameful weapon of torture and death—how could a god rise out of such debasement?

  Paul was stroking my cheek. ‘Don’t try to make sense of it all now, Lydia. It will come. But ask yourself: what other gods would weep for your child?’

  Paul, that is the moment you became my teacher, my guide to the Lord and to His son. I did not understand then. But those words entered my heart. I knew the other gods. They had forsaken me; they cared nothing for my daughter. They taunted us, abandoned us. Was I to believe in a god nailed to a cross? Maybe such an impossible reconciliation would never come. But I also knew what to abandon and forsake. I knew what I despised. I carefully moved his hands away from my face. I looked around the decrepit hut. No incense, no altars, no idols. I did not understand, but at that moment I pledged myself to their world and not the world of the gods. I dried my eyes, and I said, ‘I believe.’

  Paul leaned forward. ‘You believe that there is one God, the Lord of Israel?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And that Jesus, a son of man, is the Saviour promised to Israel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That he was crucified on the Roman cross, buried and rose to the Lord on the third day?’

  I couldn’t reveal my doubt. ‘I believe.’

  ‘And do you believe that he will return to us any day now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man, Perseverance, the older woman, the girl, Timothy and Paul, they rushed to embrace me. They called me sister and for the first time Perseverance smiled. And though their faith was strange and their mysteries yet unknown, I was calm and content. In the hovel that only an hour before I had abhorred, in that sanctuary, I was at peace.

  Paul was a seer; he had no doubt that I would accept their fellowship, so he had already prepared a thanksgiving for me that afternoon. Psyche returned with the slave, Daphne, except I was not to call them slaves. Within that wretched dwelling we were sisters. This commandment, I learned, had been given to us by the Saviour himself. There would be no master and no slave in the promised kingdom. No castes. And there was a greater gift: no women and no men in the coming kingdom. We would all be equal. As we prepared the dishes and the wine for the feast—bread and the most basic gruel, wild herbs, honeycomb, a plate of wood-smoked nuts—Clemency revealed that she and Perseverance were married, but in preparation for the returning Jesus they lived now as brother and sister not as husband and wife. She no longer had to endure the humiliations of rutting; she was freed from that curse. She’d had two daughters taken from her when she was a slave. This was how she knew the ordeal of abandonment. Yet she had the fortune to be bonded to a household where her mistress, though a Stranger, had come to hear of and to respect the god of the Judeans. This noblewoman had pleaded for her husband to free Clemency. And he had done so. I asked if she and Perseverance had any children. Her eyes clouded with tears and she said simply, ‘Our son died not long after he was born.’

  And I was amazed by the sensation that overtook me. Clemency’s face was turned away from mine; I sensed her struggle to contain her suffering. It was as
if her grief was mine and my grief was hers and she was not a freed slave and I was not the wife of a landowner. Suddenly I was next to her, I was holding her. Her deep sigh was a warm breath across my neck.

  ‘He is coming,’ I said. ‘Truly, the Saviour is returning.’

  Not long after the dishes were ready for the meal, there was a greeting at the door and three more people arrived. The first, Temperance, was a slave. With him was his master, an ironmonger named Apollonius. The greater shock came with the entry of the third. This was a woman adorned in silk, her veil shimmering with gilded thread. This was Clemency’s former owner, Heraclea, a woman of the highest caste. I went to bow but Clemency stopped me. I was astonished to see the noblewoman kiss and embrace us all, even the slaves. This was a miracle, a scandal, more unthinkable and perverse than any nightmare. Psyche’s mouth hung open, her eyes were as wide as those of a terrified child.

  When the noblewoman went to hug her, the foolish girl burst into tears.

  ‘You cannot touch me, my lady, you must not touch me.’ Her sobs were such we could only just make out the words.

  ‘She is not yet one of us,’ explained Clemency.

  The noblewoman moved away and, bizarrely, apologised. To a slave. Psyche dropped to her knees, offering thanks for her mercy.

  Next to me Clemency whispered, ‘I was like that girl once.’

  Her husband snapped back at her, ‘Yes, we were all like her once—we were forced to be.’

  Then, in a loud voice, he called out those dangerous and seditious words. ‘In the kingdom to come the last will be first and the first will be last.’

  And the noblewoman nodded.

  Then came the feast. Temperance had a sistrum that he shook as Paul sang prayers that he declared were of the heroic age, when a king named David ruled the world. ‘These are his songs, dear Lydia,’ he called to me between chants. ‘These are the songs that Jesus our Saviour sang.’ And there in a circle, a slave on one side of me and a noblewoman on the other, I glimpsed the kingdom to come. This was the music of the kingdom, this was the fellowship of the kingdom, these were its citizens and its laws. The merciless and mocking gods had no place here. ‘Teach me these songs,’ I called out joyously as we whirled and danced. ‘Let me learn these songs.’

  We will teach you, dear sister, you will learn them, and you will speak in tongues of a thousand peoples. You will see the face of God. Take this bread, sister, swallow your portion, pass it along to Temperance, who is neither slave nor man but brother. Pass it to Heraclea, who is neither lady nor woman but sister. Pass it along, and as you swallow this bread, remember the sacrifice of the Saviour. Take this wine, sister, sip this delicious warm wine, pass the cup to your brother and your sister. As the wine flows from tongue to throat, remember that this is the blood the Saviour spilled for us. You are one of us now, Lydia.

  As Psyche—not my slave, my sister—led me down the rocky path, past the stinking field, past the hovels, through the markets and temple squares of the city, up the rise to our home, as my husband and sons greeted me, embraced me, as my husband took me to our bedchamber, as he pushed apart my legs and entered me, I was in a dream. I was still lost in the songs and in the dance, and the body and the blood of my new god was in me and there was no stench from Theodorus, no weight pinning me down. I wasn’t there. I was in another kingdom. Another world.

  As my husband’s belly spread so did our home. While our labourers and slaves worked at the dye sheds and stoked the furnaces, our father added rooms to our house and purchased the land alongside his property to build us a home of our own. Tutors were hired for our sons. Theodorus was puffed with pride. ‘Our sons will read and write,’ he crowed. ‘They will marry rich girls and they will father gentlemen.’

  I now lived for the Sabbath, when I would enter a world that was invisible to all but those in our secret devotion. I lived for the world that Paul had created for me. I felt unshackled from the chains that had bound me my whole life. All Theodorus saw was that now I laughed, that I was gentle with my sons, that I indulged him. And so he spoiled me, believing that my interest in the Jewish God was benign. He had no idea that the Lord and the Saviour were gods who shattered worlds.

  One more ritual awaited me before I could claim complete fellowship. I was to be bathed in running water. It was this ritual that breached the division between the two worlds, and I would emerge from that baptism cleansed and ready for the kingdom to come. I knew who had to baptise me; there could be no other. But I was afraid to ask. How I loved Paul: for the way he sought my counsel, for his chaste affection for me, for how patient he was with his teaching; love of neighbours and meeting spite with forgiveness—so much of the Saviour’s words were impossible to comprehend. ‘I am uneducated and a woman,’ I’d complain. ‘I can’t understand it!’ Paul would laugh and reject such petulance. ‘Lydia,’ he’d answer, ‘our Saviour said that a woman must become as a man to enter the kingdom. She must not doubt herself. One of his most cherished and honoured disciples is a woman.’ He would grow stern. ‘Such excuses will no longer do. We are all capable of understanding, slave as much as master, ruled as much as ruler, woman as much as man, and son as much as father.’ I loved Paul. This was not the love demanded by the Greek gods, this was not the love of the hunt and violation. Paul had to be the one to baptise me, so that in the new Creation, it would be him to whom I was bonded.

  I awoke to a crisp and clear morning, promising cloudless skies and sunshine, but the return of winter was on its breath. On awakening, I knew that I was with child.

  I rushed through my duties, I was impatient. All I knew was that I had to see Paul, I had to ask him what to do.

  I waited for them at our gate. As soon as I saw them approaching, I knew that something was amiss. Paul’s gait was heavy and he looked troubled. I rushed to him, resisting my impulse to embrace him. Words of greeting were on my tongue, but he was the one who spoke first.

  ‘Lydia,’ he said softly but firmly, ‘Timothy and I have to leave Greece.’

  It was as if a cold hand was at my throat. The vengeful gods had prepared this final, lacerating punishment for me. I heard their mocking laughter: Did you really think that we were finished with you?

  ‘Why must you go?’ I implored.

  ‘We are needed. I must return to Jerusalem.’

  ‘I will come with you.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  With a sternness he had never shown me before he said, ‘Because you are married to our master. That bond cannot be broken.’

  I understood. His teaching had been clear. This faith we followed, this Saviour we believed in, they both renounced divorce.

  His tone softened. ‘We will meet again, Lydia. In the coming kingdom.’

  I ignored Timothy. I dared an outrage. Visible to anyone who might be working nearby, I touched my Paul’s face. ‘I am with child.’

  His sombre expression lifted, a wide smile transforming his face. ‘This son,’ he said, ‘you will raise him for Israel.’

  My voice was peevish. ‘What if it is a girl?’

  He dared outrage as well then. He took my hands, I felt his gnarled rough fingers.

  He leaned in towards me. ‘I know your sadness, sister,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘But Theodorus is not cruel and his home is secure and his trade is flourishing. He will not abandon this child.’

  ‘What if he insists?’

  There was a noise from within the house. We sprang apart.

  ‘That will not happen,’ he answered.

  ‘What if he demands it?’

  A great tiredness came over him. He looked like an old and beaten man. ‘You must not abandon this child.’

  My fate, ordained at the beginning of Creation, had been sealed.

  My voice was now confident. ‘Baptise me?’

  Age and suffering were lifted from him and his eyes were as luminous as those of a child. He could not speak, he clutched my hand. Quickly, recognising t
he danger, he dropped it but his eyes glistened with joyous tears.

  The next sacred day, with my brothers and sisters as witnesses, we walked through the Augustan gate of the city, singing the songs of the Judean king as we followed the path that led to Apollo’s stream. There my teacher, my guide to the Lord and to His son, my Paul, took me by the hand and we waded into the rushing silver water and I fell into his arms and the water was dancing over my body and my face. When I emerged, spluttering and shivering, I was promised to the kingdom.

  After our thanksgiving and the joy of our celebrations, I could not stop weeping as I walked back through the city. My beloved teacher was leaving Philippi the following morning. I was inconsolable, more desolate than when I left home as a young woman.

  When we got home and Theodorus saw my red and tear-stained face, he came running towards me.

  He turned to Psyche, he raised his hand. ‘What have they done to her?’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ I demanded.

  I bowed to my husband. ‘Theodorus, I am with child.’

  The wind has roared all night long. The fire affords us little warmth, but I don’t care. For the last three nights my Salvation has slept. Those malign spirits that torment her and contort her body have departed. I know that they will return. They have had their sights set on her since she was born; they watch us both. But for three nights she has slept and for three days she has been calm. She has sipped water from my cupped hands and she has swallowed some broth. Her body is at rest, but I fear it’s because she doesn’t have the strength to move. I braved the storms and found wood for the fire, collected chicory for the broth. Apart from that I have not left her side.

  I awake with a start before dawn. Looking wildly around the dark cave, I search for the cause of my unrest. Then it comes to me. The world outside is quiet. The storm has abated. And as I have every morning since Paul brought me into the new world, I prayed. My son, my brother, my Jesus, is this the day you will return?

  Salvation is still asleep. Quietly I leave our rough bed and crawl to the entrance of the cave. In the dull light of the fading moon the forest floor is silver. A blanket of ice and dew covers the earth. Deep in the black horizon there is a faintly pulsing glow from the awakening sun. I sit there, watching the sun gather strength, until the white light is climbing the mountain. I look back into the cavern. Salvation has not stirred. I leap to my feet. The storm is over but winter is still here. We need more kindling, we need more fuel.