But this disjointed morning, words do not come, and all that I have been taught and all that I believe sacred becomes chaos in my mind. Seeking stillness I rest my stylo and I search the four corners of my small chamber. There is a mouse that shares this room with me. It has gleaming black eyes and its nose quivers with frantic glee whenever I pull crumbs from my bread to feed it or dip my finger in whey and let the drops fall to the floor. Through care and patience all of the last winter, I have earned the creature’s trust. It will now walk up my fingers and sit quietly in my cupped palm. As my eyes try to find my tiny friend in the darkness, I find that my mind is becoming still. I cannot see him; the little one must still be asleep. How I envy his unbroken dreams.
I was wrong.
How, my beloved, how could you, chosen by the Saviour, speak falsely?
With effort I rise. I put away my pen and parchment. I straighten the pelts across my bed and, taking a ladle of water from the night jug, I wash my face, the back of my neck, my hands and feet. Clean before the Lord, I stretch my body across the cold wooden floor and I force myself to pray. I pray for those around me who have placed their loyalty and trust in us. I pray to be freed from the profanity that is the body. I pray to be liberated in the coming kingdom from the bonds that are greed and lust and need. I praise the Lord, I sing his prayer. I pray so I will not hear the treacherous rumbling that threatens to spill forth from deep within me. I pray, I sing louder, so those words will not escape. I do not say them but I feel them as violence: Saviour, why have you not returned?
It is wise to tread cautiously every time I leave my room. I step over children coiled tight around each other in their slumber. The morning that glowed softly as I finished my prayers has yet to illuminate the darkness of the courtyard below. My foot slides carefully along the planks till it finds the first step. I descend, my hand firm against the damp wall that always smells of mould, as do all the surfaces of our dwelling. But as I cross the third step that distasteful odour is replaced by a reek much more foul.
Is it the stink that first assaults my senses or is it the rumbling sound of the scores asleep on the ground? It is impossible to tell. The smell and the sound are as one; each intensifies the other. I stall on the final step as tremulous light ventures like a mist across the yard and I place my hand over nose and mouth. The frank odours arise from the bodies of the refugees, all of these asleep on the ground. The air thunders with their snores and the awakening cries of the infants. Some, carrying diseases from the lands they have fled, have been up all night, purging themselves of their poison. One child’s cries are piercing. A young mother grabs the babe and raises it to her breast. She has hollow cheeks, hunger has fed mercilessly on her body, and on seeing me she raises a hand to her mouth in supplication and need. ‘Food,’ she mouths in the Syrian tongue. I pick my way carefully across the bodies. ‘Soon, sister,’ I answer in her language. ‘They will feed you soon.’ One hand fastens her child to her useless teat, the other hand rises higher, imploring me again to find a morsel for her to eat. ‘Soon,’ I repeat, this time with more force. I step around her to cross into the yard; in my haste I kick against bodies that stir and answer me with curses and threats. I push open the gate.
In the street I can breathe again.
We welcome them, we take them in, we tell them of the kingdom to come and we immerse them in our river and in our sea. Every day we bring new souls to the Lord. But each soul has a body and each body has a stomach that demands to be filled. Each day brings us more of them to feed. The masses that pour into our city from the fallen east are incomprehensible; it is impossible to fathom that Judea housed such a multitude. Each starving and beaten fugitive has a tale to divulge about the Roman sacking of Jerusalem. Those who survived the siege are the ones who speak the least. Their bewildered silence indicates the unspeakable horrors they have witnessed. We hear that hundreds of thousands have been sold as slaves, and the evidence is all around us in our city. Ephesus’s servants, her gravediggers and masons, her field hands and dock workers, her prostitutes—they all seem to speak Syrian. And still they come. We ration and we beg, we implore the brethren who have means and who are patrons of the city to give us more food, more hides and garments to clothe the migrants. There is never enough. Every day they come and every day they die, their hunger endured for so long now that no meal can satisfy it.
And every day, each of them ask: ‘Where is the raised son, the one who promised to return? When is he coming?’
As I walk slowly past the market square, the sun starts to warm me. It is early and only the slaves have risen. The shorn women on their way to the wells balance jugs on their heads. Strong young men are marching to the quarries. They bow as they pass me, and those of our way covertly greet me: ‘Truly, he has risen.’ I answer them back in a whisper: ‘Truly, he is returning.’ I enter the Imperial Road, and as I pass by the temple of the accursed goddess the sun takes this moment to shine his rays on her statue. The gold leaf of her skin glistens and shines, her painted emerald eyes flash and the myriad silver teats that hang from her neck seem alive, a writhing string of engorged asps. Even after all this time, even though I am brother to the first of the apostles, and though I have spent my adult life a follower of the true Lord and of His anointed son, there is some semblance of the heritage that goes all the way back to the seed that begat me, to the rituals my infant eyes witnessed, some of this I have yet to overcome, even now. Every time I am in the shadow of the accursed idol, every time I walk past her temple, I have to resist the urge to bow, to honour her. I avert my eyes.
‘Timothy!’ a voice screeches from above. ‘Another sleepless night, eh? It is the curse of our old age, brother.’
For a moment I can almost believe that the work of gold-leaf and marble, of clay and stone, that Artemis has spoken. But such folly passes.
The old priestess Denisia limps down the wide marble steps of the temple, clasping a wooden staff with the head of a serpent, and comes to greet me. She stands on the bottom step, but she is so short that we are now eye to eye.
‘Morning, brother, the goddess welcomes you.’
‘Morning, sister,’ I answer. ‘And the supreme Lord, the one God, He awaits you.’
We hold each other’s stares, and she is the first to smile. I answer with a benign laugh. For how many years have I been leader of our assembly here in Ephesus? How many mornings have we greeted each other with the same mischievous dare? The crone is a constant of my mornings. Unless celebrations keep her inside the temple, unless the Sabbath forbids my wandering, our mutual greeting heralds the start of the day for both of us. Denisia, idol-worshipper though she is, slave to a false god though she might be, is the closest soul to a wife that I have.
‘Sister, is there some food you can offer us?’
She is kind—she doesn’t hate us even though we refute her gods. And she often sends baskets of food to our house; the food is blessed to the goddess, but the starving don’t have scruples. Even the most pious Jews fall ravenously on her gifts: the calamitous siege of the Romans didn’t only annihilate the Lord’s city—it also swept away His laws.
But today she scowls and shakes her head. ‘I’ve been up half the night, Timos. Your degenerate followers threw shit at our goddess, they covered her in their foulness. I have been scrubbing her clean for hours.’
She steps to the ground, not daring to defile the temple steps, and she spits in front of my feet. ‘Is there no sacrilege your vile death cult won’t commit?’
An icy arrow spears my heart. I steady my voice, knowing how crucial it is that I seem calm. ‘How do you know he was one of ours?’
She makes a derisory motion with her hand, whipping it across her lips then shaking it over the ground. ‘I heard him—he was so stupid. He yelled out, “I do this in the name of Jesus the Saviour.”’ She laughs without mirth. ‘That’s your god, isn’t it?’
My heart stops: are we already condemned? ‘Have you reported it to the governor?’
A flood of relief; she is shaking her head.
It would be wisest to not speak of it anymore, to trust in a friendship that has crept up on us both over time, just as a slow-growing vine remains stunted and fragile for a generation until the morning one is astonished to find that it has attached itself resolutely to a stone wall.
The sacrilege she has described is one that no authority can pardon. My hope rests in the fact that she alone cleaned the idol. She must have kept it secret, otherwise the mobs would have already burned down our house and embarked upon their massacre.
Two emotions battle to undo the composed face I present to her. One is blind rage that some foolish brother has endangered all of us by such idiocy. The other is the awe I feel at this test of her loyalty. Loyalty towards me? An enemy of her gods? I am so moved a tear escapes from my eye.
Her face softens. ‘I exaggerate, Brother Timothy,’ she concedes. ‘It was only one turd they flung at her and only at her plinth. It was easy to clean but the night and dawn were wasted in the ablutions I had to make.’
It is all I can do not to clutch her hand, but that would be an abomination for a priestess promised to the virgin goddess.
‘Thank you, sister. We are in your debt.’
Her eyes are sharp once more. ‘The outrage must be avenged, sir. Promise me that.’
‘I do, I promise you.’
‘Friend, your young disciples, those desert savages, they are insane in their piety and the way they worship.’
There is no rebuke I can make, no way I can refute her. She is right. My head is heavy with the thought of the arguments to come, how the young brothers will resist any plea I might make for justice. Their hatred of the Greeks is greater than their love of the Lord.
‘Cut them loose. Is there no abomination they will not perform to satisfy the spite of your hateful god?’
I cannot allow this slight. ‘My Lord is not one of hate, sister; He is the Lord of grace, of love.’
She snorts in disbelief. ‘I know your rites and I know your lore,’ she says with a grimace. ‘I have been listening to you for years, Timothy. I am speaking about your god, not his son.’
‘The will of the Father and the will of His son are one.’
She smiles now, deepening the wrinkles at the edges of her mouth and under her eyes. ‘The children of our gods are like the children of men. They defy their fathers, they are thoughtless and believe the world began at their birth.’
I am shaking my head at her ignorance. ‘He wasn’t born in the way the sons and daughters of your gods were born,’ I answer curtly. ‘Our Lord doesn’t steal maidens and our Lord doesn’t have mistresses and concubines.’
Her smile turns sly. ‘We too have gods born of virgins.’
I start at her words. I have never spoken to her about this superstitious invention, this peasant mischief. This is another madness, another falsity that comes here from the east.
‘Our Saviour was not born of a virgin,’ I explain. ‘He didn’t spring from his father’s head nor from his father’s thigh. He was born and lived a man.’
She waves her hand in irked dismissal. ‘That may be. But the one you call Jesus Resurrected is a young god. It is his father, the angry and vengeful god, that commands respect.’
We have rehearsed this argument over many years now. We know that neither of us will concede. I am about to say the words to contradict her, but the vision from last night’s ill-omened dream returns: the anguished face of my teacher saying, I was wrong.
Believing my silence to be acquiescence, she continues her argument. ‘Only very few men, brother, can become gods. Kings and emperors maybe—but for ordinary men, that was only possible in the heroic age.’
I find my voice. ‘He was born a son of man, he was crucified and died and was resurrected by our Lord on the third day. This I believe.’
As always, on the release of that word—crucified—she cannot hide her distaste. She snaps her fingers before my face. ‘You will not listen, friend, I know that. Pray to your god, love him and honour him and obey him. But do not seek to be like him—do not seek to be immortal as gods. That is the insanity we deplore.’
‘Sister,’ I answer, my eyes locked on hers, ‘don’t you want that too? To be raised in body and spirit for all eternity?’
She doesn’t answer. This question is where I come closest to tempting her, it is what most intrigues her, though she won’t admit it. But finally she raises a finger, runs it from her mouth to her breast to her belly. And it is always at this point, in that gesture which returns her to her body, when I lose my advantage. I don’t even have to hear her words—I know her reply: ‘A lump grows here, Timos, I feel the tumour in my belly. My back can’t straighten, it is agony to walk. I cannot wait to leave this body, brother—I don’t want to wander the earth forever.’
But today she responds another way. ‘It is lovely, that promise.’ Her voice is quiet, wistful. But then it hardens. ‘Even I, with this sickening failed body, even I love life enough to be seduced by your words. But I don’t believe you, Timos. I have been made curious by your dedication and your faith, I grant you that.’ Her smile is no longer mocking or cruel; now it becomes sad. ‘But your followers, those desert madmen, they are more honest than you are. Your brethren despise the body that the gods have given us. They hate that our bodies give birth to children, that they excrete blood and life, and they hate the sex that the gods have given to be the very essence of our bodies. I don’t believe that they want to be resurrected to their old human bodies. I think they want to come back as gods.’
I look at her face, lined and withered. But I do not see age; I see a young maiden, dedicated to her god. ‘Your goddess is a virgin,’ I declare. ‘You too are unsoiled, sister. And I am celibate. We both know there is a greater duty than that to the body. You too believe the soul is greater.’
At this she spits and waves two fingers across her breast. My words are pollution for her. ‘Careful, Brother Timos. My temple is full of virgins and it is all I can do to guide them in their frustration and insanity. My goddess’s dwelling also houses prostitutes and my work here has taught me that it is they whom the goddess loves and honours most. The whores marry and become mothers and fathers and they beget sons and daughters. They live a life that honours the gods.’
She comes as close to me as her worship allows. I can smell her stale vinegary breath, see her blackened gums and the surprising vibrant pink of her tongue.
‘You are upright, as am I,’ she states. ‘All through my maidenhood my devotion was a burden—I was assailed by lust all the time. You understand that, brother, don’t you?’
I don’t have to answer. She knows me.
‘But the one gift of age,’ she continues, ‘is that our lusts weaken over time. I love the goddess and I do not resent the vow that my father made to her. Your love of your god satisfies you, Timos. I believe that.’
She winks. Her breath is hoarse, a flush across my face. ‘It must be harder for you, being a man. An old goat, certainly, but still a man. The vow of abstinence that you made for your god doesn’t diminish or poison you, but you must know that it is an unnatural and cruel command for young men.’ She glares at me now. ‘Let your young brethren loose, friend. Let the boys prowl the brothels at night, let the girls dream of husbands and children, not of everlasting life.’
I answer gravely. ‘He is coming, truly, he is returning.’
At this she sighs and turns her back, lifting her staff. I watch as she painfully climbs the temple steps.
On the last one she turns around and calls down at me, ‘You promise that you will bring the defiler to me?’
‘You have my word.’
Morning now is sovereign, and the city is noise and movement. The municipal servants have finished their dawn work; they have sprinkled the main avenue with river water to settle the dust from the tumultuous, unceasing activity. Many call greetings to me as I stroll, but I answer abruptly and absent-mindedly. I can’
t stop thinking about the old priestess’s words. Her demand that someone be handed over for punishment is reasonable and justified; my mood sours as I think of the battle ahead.
It must have been one of the young fools, one of the refugees in our care, who has dared to insult the temple. It is devastating that someone has taken advantage of our hospitality in such a way. The young are always impetuous no matter where they are from. It is my role to temper their hot-headedness, to counsel restraint and to remind them that soon, very soon, this world will be destroyed. Yet this morning I feel overwhelmed by the immensity of that task. I don’t know how to transform their hate, nor how to enhance their patience.
Many of the refugees are Jews whose families were annihilated by Rome’s brutal, inexorable conquest. The older ones survived the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the cities of Judea, and the younger ones have been raised to wreak revenge. They have found their way to us, even though they know we are pledged to Paul and are committed to welcoming Strangers to our community. In a previous generation, even if they had believed that Jesus was the Saviour promised by the Lord, they would never have countenanced living with Strangers. Their Messiah had been Jewish and only Jewish. But the Roman holocaust destroyed Temple and city and kingdom and kings. In that obliteration we lost James and Peter and the Magdalena. So many friends are now gone. That obliteration also created desperation and need—and hunger and exile have no time for old ways and old laws. In desperation and in need and in hunger, the refugees come to us. We feed them, we shelter them, we teach them, but their hatred of Rome is understandable and inescapable. And to them, Rome is not only Rome: it is also Greece and her gods and her rites and her people—how do I even dare counsel them to love the Stranger? I have lived too long and all my friends are gone. I am not capable of shouldering this burden that the Lord has placed on me. I must pray for Him to forgive me. Saviour, we are four generations—surely now you must return?
Damascus Page 24