Damascus

by Christos Tsiolkas

  When we near the temple, supplicants have already prostrated themselves over the marble steps, their cupped hands filled with garlands, cracked wheat and ground nut-meal for the goddess. We step over them. The servants of the nobility carry squawking fowls under their arms; one young man leads a skittish goat up the steps and another clasps a struggling lamb under her arm. They announce the name of their house and master, cover their shaved heads, and the temple guards allow them to step through the arched gate of the antechamber. The poor and the beggars are praying on the bottom steps, they call out to their caste cousins, to the slaves, imploring them to whisper their names to the priestess so that she in turn can reveal them to the goddess, for Artemis to heal them, or to save a son from gaol or a sister from whoredom.

  I see that Jacob’s nostrils flare and his mouth waters as hungrily as a dog’s at the odours from the sacrifices wafting down through the temple colonnades. The air is thick with the smoke and the smell of grease and charred meat. Our empty bellies rumble, mine and the boy’s, but also those of the believers banging on the stone and asking for mercy from their cold and false idol. Our hunger is the loudest sound in the world.

  As we wait for the temple guards to glance our way, the boy begins to show fear. I respect the old witch, I trust that she is not given to malice, but in her eyes and the eyes of her goddess and the world, his crime is enormous. I pull him close to me, hoping that in this unity we can both find courage.

  A guard takes pity on us and beckons us over. I bow, and as I do so I strengthen my hold on the boy, indicating he too must make obeisance. I feel him resisting, but he bows. The guard then allows me to speak and I ask for the priestess Denisia. I keep the pressure against the boy’s neck, fearing that he might raise his head before she appears.

  We hear her coming down the stairs, her silver anklets jingling. I lift my head.

  Her eyebrows and her hair have been shaved off. A line of thick amethyst kohl is smeared around both eyes and across the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Welcome,’ she says, ‘in the name of the First Amongst Us and in the name of the goddess.’

  I discern the scent of the poppies on her breath. Her eyes swim lazily; she is intoxicated from inhaling their sap.

  ‘Greetings,’ I answer, ‘in the name of the First Amongst Us and in the name of the true Lord.’

  Her eyes are inebriated but her voice is sharp. ‘Is this the culprit?’

  Before I can answer the child steps forward. He knocks his breast, in loud and confident mimicry of a warrior. ‘Me,’ he says in his graceless Greek. ‘Me do it.’

  She brings her hand from underneath her shawl and swings it with speed and force across the boy’s face. Surprised by the strength of this old harridan, he stumbles and steadies himself.

  I clutch at his arm, fearful that in his humiliation and his fury he will strike her back. ‘Careful,’ I say to him in his language. ‘Remember you have promised to accept your punishment.’

  My words do caution him. But the memory of the previous evening’s thanksgiving emboldens him. He even bows as he faces the priestess. ‘Punish me. Kill me.’ And with this declaration he again beats his chest. ‘I die for the Lord.’

  She seizes the boy by the shoulder and prods him up the stairs—he is gone from my care.

  ‘When can I collect him?’

  She has turned away but her hand shoots up to the sky. ‘When our goddess the moon rises from her sleep,’ she says, ‘he will be yours again.’

  Please, Lord—and here, on the very steps of this heinous temple, under the shadow of the terrible idol herself, I am praying—please, Lord, return the boy alive to us.

  For the rest of the day I do not leave my cell. I ignore the calls at my door, I decline all food. I have no will even for prayer, let alone for returning to my writings. I sit on my stool, and I cannot move.

  My thoughts hurtle me away from Ephesus, as if my recollections have wings. They return me to my youth, to my wanderings with my teacher, my beloved Paul. Our hunger, our poverty, the violence meted out to us by storms and by men, none of that mattered because we knew that the Lord had taken pity on His Creation and had re-entered the world to save us. He is returning, Truly, he is returning.

  I was wrong.

  He is not returning.

  I am ashamed of this blasphemy. The past vanishes and I awaken to see that I am alone in my meagre chamber. The day has darkened and grown bitterly cold. The sun is leaving us. I find a shawl, wrap it around my shoulders, and descend the stairs, ignoring all those who call after me in greeting.

  I abandon my household. I am glad to be in the godless streets of Ephesus.

  The scuttling that announces night is of a different order to the confusion of the streets in the morning. Those who have shelter, they don’t stop to chat; their bones and spirits are exhausted from labour, they are impatient and rush home. There are those who have drunk wine all day and their sloth and depravity is visible everywhere in the wet of the road stones, in the foulness they dump on the city’s streets. One drunken fool, evidently a butcher by his bloodied and soiled apron, slips on a turd and falls flat on his nose. On his hands and knees he screeches, ‘Who did it? Which whore’s child did it?’ A beggar boy takes the opportunity to grab a lone sausage from the drunk’s belt and though the butcher scrambles to his feet and lunges after the thief, the boy is too fast and evades capture. I recognise the thieving child. He arrived in Ephesus last season, a Judean and a refugee. His ears were deaf to the promise of our Redeemer. He preferred the streets and homelessness; he would risk the violence of thieves and rapists rather than submit to the impossibility of a crucified and humble Saviour.

  I tell my old feet to hurry. I cross the near empty agora.

  Devotees are still crowding the steps of the temple. A cloud of incense rises above the columns guarding the goddess’s chambers, shielding her from the stench of the city. I must be patient. I would be mad to interrupt the evening rites. As I wait it is as if my brother, my beloved, my Paul is beside me, whispering in my ear: ‘The real stench, my Timos, is the goddess herself. She stinks of rutting, of dishonour and waste. She reeks of death.’

  A young boy-girl, her head shaved, a minion—and, by the marks on her back, the poverty of her clothing and the rude scarlet paint and black kohl outlining her features, a slave of the lowest and most depraved order—hears my laugh and turns to me in delight. In her cupped hand she holds a lock of hair; she must have snatched it at her shearing and kept it hidden from the eyes of sorcerers and magic makers—it is all she has to offer to her goddess. She opens her mouth, black and toothless, revealing suppurating gums, and intones: ‘Artemis, you were there at my birth.’ She waits, her eyes flashing in hope, for me to return the expected fealty: ‘You will be there at my end.’ And I am close to answering, close to offering her this small and puny gift, some comfort to this abandoned boy-girl who has lived in poverty and destitution and sin, and who is deaf to eternity and the promise of it. I am close to answering. But I cannot and I will not. I turn away from her—yes, to defy her goddess, but also not to witness her disappointment.

  How loud their eunuch priests shriek and how shrilly comes the response from their deranged priestess. With the setting sun, believing that their deity will soon awake, they are calling out prayers to rouse the goddess. The mob on the steps, stretched across the stone and marble, they too begin to wail and plead to their dumb god. In Greek and Phrygian; I also hear the quick guttural clicks of an older tongue: the coarse pleas of Alexandrian sailors and the pitiable lament of Egyptian whores. The calls of her devotees, from inside the temple and from its steps, reaches the ecstasy of completion. But all I hear is an empty rejoicing, one incapable of bringing forth renewal or light. It is self-pleasure, not love. She does not hear nor see nor comprehend.

  Amidst the clamour, I whisper, ‘Thank you, Lord, for my mother’s blood.’

  Finally, the screen is lifted and the bedchamber of the deity is revealed. The jubilant
screams of her devotees are raised to the darkened heavens. And then, just as swiftly, after a glimpse of the reclined and bejewelled doll, the screen is drawn.

  With the retreat of the idol, the extinguishing of the incense and the departure of the idolaters, I approach the guard and ask for Denisia. As I wait for her, I look at the moon arching into night. It is full and rosy, as if it has gorged on blood.

  Denisia comes down the stairs and she has the dignity and respect not to gloat, nor delight in my agony.

  The boy she is leading is taking slow, clumsy steps, as if he were an infant testing its gait. He is nearly naked except for a cloth that has been tied around his loins to stem the bleeding from both his rape and his castration. It is wet and dark with blood. He sees me and stumbles as I reach for him, taking him in my arms. His tears stream and his mouth gapes as if to howl but the sound that emerges is a terrible bleating. His breath smells of rot. His mouth is filled with blood; they have torn out his tongue.

  They have drugged him. He is incapable of standing and I have to steady myself to take his full weight. His face turns to me, and even in the trance of narcosis I can see the unspeakable misery in the depths of his eyes. Bestial growls are coming from his throat.

  ‘I am sorry, brother.’ Denisia’s voice is calm, subdued. ‘He boasted to the High Priestess of his deed. He told her that he will never stop trying to dishonour Artemis. Well, he can’t do that anymore. He will never disgrace her again, he will never insult her. His punishment is just.’

  And now I cannot speak, for if I were to find my voice, I would unleash a thousand insults to that stone whore, abuse her, curse her, promise the destruction that the Lord will visit on her and her accursed disciples. And I would gladly hurl my hate at the priestess herself, knock her down with my fist, for her temerity in poisoning the word justice by bringing it to her lips. Their foul gods know lust and greed and torture and death but they do not know justice. No covenant can ever be made with such gods, for they have no loyalty to us and no love for us. Our God gives us truth: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—a truth that holds for everyone, whether they be master or slave, rich or poor, man or woman, Stranger or Jew. That is fairness, that is justice. I cannot speak. If I open my mouth, my path will emulate that of my Redeemer: my words will crucify me.

  I summon my Lord to bring down vengeance, to unseal the covenant with our Saviour and bring down fire. I am my mother’s blood.

  ‘This is not just.’ I say these words and only these words.

  And I carefully guide the boy down the last step. The atrocities done to him cannot be lulled by the sap of poppies. No drug can soothe his suffering.

  Here at the steps of the many-breasted goddess, that abomination, I am ready to tear off my clothes to cover the boy. I cannot bring myself to ask for kindness from the sorceress; better to disgrace myself than take anything from her. But she understands my quandary. She holds out a swathe of black-dyed flax, part of a temple slave’s dress. I take it, I have to take it: the child is shivering violently.

  I do not bid her farewell. We are no longer companions. We can never again be friends.

  The streets are dark and empty. In an alcove near a small shrine to the god Priapus, I command the boy to grab tight to the obscene wooden appendage. He is terrified but trusts me. Carefully I unwind his drenched loincloth. The boy’s testes have been ripped away. His sex is shrivelled and caked in dry blood. A thick paste has been applied across the incisions—underneath it the flesh is burned and charred from the flames used to seal the wound. I drop the cloth to the ground, tear a long piece from the linen the witch has given us, and tenderly wrap it once more around the boy. But even being as gentle as I can, he is still rigid from the excruciating pain, capable only of a defeated animal whimpering. When done, I wipe the filth of blood and muck off my hand onto the disgusting phallus of that most obscene of gods.

  Can their foulness be measured? Is Priapus worse than their tyrant Zeus? All that are not of the Lord are evil. My mother’s shade is before us. All who are not us are evil. I am my mother’s blood. A strength runs through me now, a power willed through myself but granted by our Lord. That strength lifts the boy to cradle him. This weak old man feels no strain as he carries this boy down the dark streets, returning to our home. I am nourished by my mother’s blood. This blood that is consecrated to the Lord, that comes from Him and belongs to Him, this blood has wet and fed the earth for generation upon generation. This child in my arms, he is of this blood. Bring me a sword, place it in my hand so I can slice in two any child of a Stranger, that I can slash the throats of the sons of Greece and Rome. Their pride, their vanity, their wisdom, their knowledge, their enlightenment, their art, their laws, their idols, their temples, their towns and cities, all will be razed, all will be extinguished, all will be turned to ash when the flames engulf this world. Her nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom and all the princes will vanish. None of their names will remain.

  As the Lord grants me strength and renews the muscles of my arms, He raises a cloud of wind to ennoble my legs and my feet. I do not walk, it is as if I am a tempest in the very streets, I shove and I push and I ignore the curses that land on me. Everyone is foul and everything is corrupt. I thunder through the streets and alleys and only awaken to the world before me when my foot catches on a raised block in the square dedicated to the Awakened Apollo. I look down; the face of the victorious emperor has been stamped onto the face of the brick, it is newly fired. With the boy still in my arms I bring my heel down on the wicked face of he who dares call himself the First Amongst Men when he defames our brothers and he insults our Lord and curses our Redeemer. He who dares to imprison us, to sacrifice us to his blood-drenched revelries and orgies. He will be last, as will all who were before him and all who will come after him: generation after foul generation. All will be lost. Adulterers and violators of children, assassins, father-murderers and mother-killers, pornographers and whores; from the first of them, from the most august of them, to his depraved grandchild who dared raze the Temple, the dwelling of the one and true Lord. The blood of that whore Rome reeks of incest and perversion. And the day is coming—truly, it is coming—when no more will you be called beautiful and precious, where you will be forced to labour and to serve, where the veil will be ripped from your face to reveal your wickedness and you will lift your skirts and bare your legs and you will wade through streams of shit, the shit that you have vomited up, and all the world will witness your nakedness and your shame will be revealed, for the Lord will take vengeance and spare no one.

  I am proclaiming this out loud, openly and fearlessly in the streets. I recite the very words of the prophet Isaiah that were taught to me by my beloved, my brother Paul. You were not wrong! I see the prophet’s words as if the darkness of the night is the parchment of a sacred scroll. I throw my head back; let them hear my abuses, let them listen to the truth: I am ready to roar.

  But as I pause to draw breath I sense the weakening heartbeat of the boy against my chest. His eyes are open wide in dread and incomprehension. And as when a fire engulfs a forest and the wind sucks all that is living into the centre of its blaze, the Lord reaches down and lifts the strength off my shoulders. I struggle, I clench my teeth and I dare not drop my charge. My rage is futile bluster and insanity.

  I whisper to the boy, ‘Don’t be frightened, Jacob. Our prophet Isaiah promised us that a child will be born, we will be given a son and the world will rest on his shoulders.’

  Fear has not left him but he no longer struggles in my arms.

  ‘That promised child was Jesus the Saviour. He was broken as you are broken, he was violated as you have been. He died and was reborn on the golden morning of the third day, as you will be. Whereas those who did this to you will be forever condemned.’

  I kiss the boy’s hot and feverish brow. ‘This I promise you.’

  He cannot smile, but his dread has gone. As I struggle to carry him, solely through exertion and will n
ow, my knees buckling and the sweat pouring from me, the boy lays his head against my chest, if not at rest and not at peace—for how can he any longer achieve either?—at least in faith. I feel his trust. I carry him home.

  The refugee women fall to their knees, smashing their palms on the dirt floor, gnashing their teeth, beating their breasts, weeping and screaming. It is impossible to not be moved by their distress and the child once again becomes agitated. They try to wrest him from my arms, but he will not give himself to them. He struggles and breaks free, landing on his knees on the ground, his body and movements imitating those of a moon-drunk hound, a mountain wolf—his eyes and face searching the beams and beyond for light, for the Lord, but his useless mouth can only bark piteous coughs and snarls.

  A voice commands, in Syrian, ‘Stop! Are you not a man?’ It is one of the leaders of the Judeans, the brother Adam who had vouched for the courage of the boy. He storms into the mob, pushing aside the women, oblivious to propriety or law.

  The child, still on all fours, falls silent before his older cousin. Adam picks him up by the shoulders as one might a newly born cur, ignoring the boy’s gargled whimpers. Adam inspects the damage done to him. He then clasps him in his arms, says quietly to the boy, ‘Let us go.’

  This, finally, gives me voice. ‘Where are you taking him?’

  The man will not face me. He keeps his tears hidden. ‘He is ours.’

  I will not accept this. ‘We are not divided,’ I insist. ‘We are one.’

  Adam sighs deeply. Age is a shadow that has suddenly descended on him. When he does turn to me—the jaw clenched, the lines of pain etched—he is no longer a youth.

  ‘Uncle Timos, I mean no disrespect,’ he says, his voice dutiful now, ‘but we are Jews from Galilee. I believe in our Saviour but I also believe in the traditions of our ancestors. Jacob is the son of my cousin Abraham, may he rest in eternal peace. I need to do my duty.’

  The boy is limp in the man’s arms. Life is seeping from him, the light is vanishing.