10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights

by Ryu Mitsuse

  A right turn off the road that leads to the Shushan Gate brings the traveler to a barren, rocky hillside called Golgotha. Judas was standing where the two ways met, looking down at the Jordan Valley below. Several steep, jagged paths were cut into the stepped faces of the cliffs, looking like scars left by lightning bolts. The small collection of dingy dwellings near the center of the valley was the village of Jericho. Beyond that, the Jordan River curved like a silvery snake beneath a shimmering mirage.

  Following the bends of the river with his eyes, Judas gazed across the vista to his right to where the Jordan swelled suddenly to become the Dead Sea. Half of that body of water glimmered a rich, brilliant blue, while the other half sat in the shadow cast by the protruding cliff of Tel Bet Yerah.

  Once, when Judas was a boy, he had seen something sunken in the depths of the deep water beneath the cliffs—an ancient, empty city. There were buildings of stone there, with square windows cut in their walls; an arcade leading to a wide plaza; even trees turned to stone. All of it seemed close enough to touch were he to reach over the side of the boat. He’d asked many people why there was a city at the bottom of the Dead Sea but had never received a satisfactory answer. Some merely shook their heads fearfully and declined to speak of it, while others had made the Jewish hand gesture for warding off demons and had either promptly departed or driven him away. It was only much later that he had learned of a legend, passed down by the prophets, that identified the city under the waves as part of Sodom or Gomorrah, sunk by no lesser power than the wrathful God Himself.

  When Judas was around thirty years of age, a powerful earthquake had struck the region, destroying many buildings in Jerusalem and in other towns and villages on either side of the Jordan. After that, the city at the bottom of the sea could no longer be seen. Where it had been, a large pile of boulders covered the seafloor. Judas harbored doubts about whether the lost ruin really was the remnant of Sodom and Gomorrah. All the legends were in agreement that God in His wrath had rained fire and sulfur down from Heaven, and the two towns had been swallowed by the earth. Judas took this to be a clear indication that, at some point far in the past, a severe earthquake had shaken the Jordan River Valley, causing a volcano to erupt and fissures to open in the ground. Yet the underwater city in Judas’s memory had appeared whole and unblemished. How could this be, if it had suffered such a calamity? It was an unfathomable mystery, and now unanswerable for all time. As such it had joined the set of suspicions that had lingered and grown in Judas’s mind for some time now.

  He had always found it odd that the legends of the region pertaining to things divine were so startlingly real. It was almost as if a mere two or three generations before, it had been a regular occurrence for the people of the Jordan River Valley to encounter gods. They spoke with them, fought with them, and sometimes collaborated with them . . .

  And whence the abundance of self-proclaimed prophets? Many of them did it for money, of course—prophecy was an occupation, nothing more. Yet still the people of the Jordan hungered for word from the gods as those living elsewhere did not, and they accepted uncritically the revelations of the many prophets. It was possible, Judas had to admit, that since ancient times, there truly had been people living here who had some privileged knowledge of the divine. Moses had been one of them, and Jesus of Nazareth another.

  “There you are, Judas. What are you doing here? Time to head up to Golgotha. I expect the crucifixion of the Nazarene to begin shortly.”

  Judas turned to see Pilate astride a white horse—the Prefect of Jerusalem must have ridden up the switchbacks to the crossroads. He had several soldiers in attendance. Each of them was fully armed with javelin and shield and wore a heavy metal breastplate of a sort rarely seen outside of times of war.

  Judas nodded and followed Pilate’s entourage from the crossroads up the path to Golgotha.

  In the center of the rocky slope stood a large wooden cross atop a platform. It appeared to have been quickly assembled, and the naked white wood shone in the morning light where axes had hastily hewn its shape. Several soldiers stood underneath it. As Pilate and Judas made their way up the slope, the soldiers turned in unison to face them, the silver tips on their long spears glinting. Though it was difficult to see from the road, it appeared that a man had already been hung upon the cross’s other side.

  Pilate frowned and urged his horse onward to get a better view. From high on the hill, he could see that a large number of people had come to observe; they were gathered in a semicircle further down the slope.

  “Be wary,” he shouted to the soldiers at the platform. “His believers might attempt a rescue.”

  “Prefect, those are not his believers,” Ceint called out, appearing astride a horse of his own. He gave his mount’s neck a blow with the flat of his hand to urge it on. “They are people from town come to see the crucifixion—that is all. I spotted several of the kohanim among them.”

  Pilate rode up to the cross with Ceint and Judas following close behind.

  Jesus had been writhing in agony up there for nearly four hours by now, having been crucified with the first light of dawn. His arms were spread wide along the horizontal beam of the cross and tied at the wrists with crude twine, and a long nail had been driven through the palm of his left hand. The rust-covered heads of two other nails could be seen protruding from his ankles at the bottom of his limply hanging legs. A line of blood trickling from the wound on his right leg made a path across the top of his soiled foot and ran down to collect and harden at the tip of his toenail. Ash-colored hair caked with grime and sweat was plastered to his forehead, making his face difficult to see, though Pilate could clearly hear his occasional moaning and muttering.

  “Any idea what he’s saying?” Pilate asked Ceint.

  “Something about wondering where God in Heaven has gotten to, I hear.”

  Just then, a stone came flying up from the crowd on the hillside and struck Pilate’s horse on the rump. Startled, the prefect’s mount whirled in a circle, rearing and stamping its hooves as he struggled to calm it. The exposed layers of the rocky slope were slippery, and the horse’s sliding hooves made a dry sound like a clattering of bones that echoed off the boulders around them.

  “Lord Prefect! I’ve caught the culprit—this is the man who threw that stone!”

  A soldier came from the crowd, dragging a young man behind him. The captive opened his sunken blue eyes wide and glared at Pilate with all the malice of a viper.

  “You there,” Ceint asked the man, “are you a follower of Jesus of Nazareth?”

  The man did not so much as glance at Ceint, but instead leaned toward Pilate sitting atop his horse and spat ferociously. He was too far away to actually hit the prefect, and the spittle fell short, becoming a tiny dark spot on the hot, dry ground between them.

  “Insolence!”

  Pilate urged his horse nearer and, lifting the rod in his hand, struck the man across the face. The prisoner lurched backward, held up by the soldiers who clutched his arms on either side.

  “Forgive him. He understands nothing,” said a clear voice from above their heads. All of them looked up to see Jesus gazing down on them from the cross, his head bowed as though in supplication. “Forgive that man. He is just a fool.”

  The blood had long since drained from the dying man’s face, leaving his skin the color of clay. A brilliant green horsefly was perched below one of his ears.

  “You call me a fool?” The young captive was the first to speak. “I threw that stone because I pitied you—I wanted you to see me get back at Rome for you! And you call me a fool?”

  The prisoner writhed, fighting to free himself, his face filled with terrific rage. The soldiers yanked hard on his arms, pulling him back farther from the base of the cross.

  “Who are you to call me a fool? If you really are the Son of God, then step down off that cross yourself!” The man’s shouting echoed down the slope.

  “Jesus of Nazareth. I am Judas Iscariot. Do
you know me?”

  At the sound of Judas’s voice, Jesus again opened his eyes with great effort. His gaze wandered until he found the speaker.

  “I do not recall it well . . . but I believe we met once . . . in Galilee,” he gasped between breaths.

  “That’s right. I spoke with you about the Final Judgment you preach. At that time you told me you were the Son of God—that you were a true prophet.”

  “Yes, that’s right, I am a prophet. I am the mouthpiece for God’s will . . .” Jesus’s voice trailed off into a low moan.

  “Jesus of Nazareth!” Ceint called out, his voice heavy with loathing. “Will you not take back your words? Say only that you are not the Son of God, that you are not a prophet, and I will release you from your pain.”

  Jesus made no reply but, with head hanging low, began to softly mutter the words of a prayer.

  “Father in Heaven, please forgive these poor men, my brothers. They do not know you, they do not know that you truly exist. Father in Heaven, please . . .”

  “Do it!” Ceint commanded, as though he could drive Jesus’s prayer back into the man’s mouth with the force of his own voice.

  Two soldiers advanced, brandishing long spears held at an angle. A clamor rose up from the spectators around the hill, though it was impossible to say whether they were lamenting or cheering.

  “Well, liar of Nazareth? Shouldn’t your God be coming to save you about now?”

  The rod in Ceint’s hand made a whistling sound as he swung it through the air, a final signal.

  One of the spear-wielding soldiers reached upward, thrusting the silvery tip of his weapon deep into the side of Jesus. When he stepped back, blood flowed from the fresh wound, staining the soiled hempen ropes of the wounded man.

  Jesus’s face twisted in agony, his features changing until he looked like another person altogether. “Father!” he cried, lifting his begrimed, contorted face to the sky. “Why do you abandon me?”

  The ragged cry reached the ears of all who stood around that hill, the soldiers and the people from Jerusalem and the valley towns, with startling clarity.

  Then all was silent. The sound of the wind was gone, leaving only the brilliant sunlight to shine burningly upon the bare rocks. So quiet it was that Judas half expected to hear the sound of the water lapping against the banks of the distant Jordan.

  The vivid blue sky over the river suddenly dimmed. Pilate, searching with narrowed eyes, could see no difference in the sunlight where it struck the land, nor in the contrast between light and shadow, and yet the change was there. A bird began to cry raucously in the distance; shouts went up from the crowd on the slope. Something was approaching swiftly from the far banks of the Jordan, spreading as it came.

  Pilate gripped his horse’s reins tightly and galloped down the hill.

  A wind, chill as ice, enveloped Golgotha. Now the dimming was clearly noticeable. The brilliant sun faded, and darkness wrapped around the sky. The soldiers standing guard at the base of the cross began to run in a pack uphill. Quickly it became so dark that Pilate thought he had gone blind—he could see nothing, not even the tip of his own nose. Soldiers and spectators alike staggered unseeing, thrusting their arms out in front of them, or crouched and felt their way along the uneven ground.

  Startled by the darkness, Pilate’s horse reared high on its hind legs. The prefect had entirely lost track of where he was on the slope.

  He heard a scream of terror cut through the darkness with the speed of a shooting star. Loud at first, the scream grew fainter and then stopped abruptly. He heard another. That must be the direction of the cliffs, Pilate thought. Some people must’ve lost their way and wandered too close.

  “Miracle! It’s a miracle!” shouted a man through the darkness. “The Nazarene was the Son of God in truth!”

  “God judges us!” another voice cried out. “We tried to kill his son! The prefect! The prefect has brought this evil to pass!”

  Then the words were lost in a chorus of insane screams and women’s weeping.

  Judas stood a short distance from Pilate, though neither man could see the other. The old scholar leaned upon his staff, considering the phenomenon. I wonder what Jesus of Nazareth is doing at this moment, he thought—and with the thought a burning need to know overcame him. Dropping to one knee, he carefully felt the ground around his feet to determine which direction was uphill, then slowly he began to climb.

  Bits of dislodged earth and small rocks had begun to roll down the slope. They stung his face, getting in his eyes and nostrils. He covered his face with his hands. Then something else came flying down and struck him hard—a human body. Their arms and legs tangled, and together they rolled down the hill.

  Even as he fell, Judas wondered about Jesus. Has he undone his ropes? He tried to grab the other man, but when he reached out, his hands closed on nothing but air. Then he noticed that his rate of descent had accelerated, and despite himself he screamed with fear. Flailing wildly, he scrabbled at the increasingly steep slope, finally clawing his way to a stop. He could hear falling earth and stones and endless screams disappearing below the shelf to which he clung. In the darkness, Judas wiped cold sweat from his brow. Though it seemed his tumble had lasted a very long time, he realized that during the entire ordeal he had only had space for two or three breaths.

  All at once Judas was bathed in light. A sudden blue incandescence from somewhere high above his head illuminated the hilltop and cast the land below in shadow, giving the Jordan River Valley the appearance of a vast dark ocean.

  Looking upward, Judas saw a swirling column of light atop the hill, like a pillar extending from the layered rock of Golgotha into the sky. Everything, both heaven and earth, was wrapped in a blue, icy light. All things trembled before the wrath of God.

  He heard a scream and then another in the distance, sounding horribly far away.

  Judas was out of breath, but he forced himself not to gasp, afraid that he might pass out. Stumbling to his feet, he began to make his way up the steep slope again. His entire being was screaming Run! You must run! Get away! And yet another part of him was certain this was not the wrath of God after all—no miracle come down from the heavens. Whatever he was witnessing, it was something of a completely different, if still terrifying, nature.

  Now he could see the barren slopes of the distant rocky hills lit by the bluish glow, each individual blade of withered grass standing out with vivid clarity. The light had increased so greatly that it even illuminated the wide flow of the Jordan River below, making it shimmer like a mirage.

  Then the cloud of light atop the hill swirled violently and took on the form of a giant figure of a man, nearly half as big as the hill itself. The giant wore a helmet low over the top part of what Judas took to be his head—a helmet not so dissimilar from those worn by the Roman legionnaires. His chest and waist formed one enormous pillar. There were two clearly defined arms and two long legs, the latter planted firmly upon the hill of Golgotha. The giant’s body, wrapped in pale bluish light, was half transparent, like a glowing mist; an unending darkness was revealed beyond.

  Within the borders of the brightness, the body of Jesus of Nazareth was floating upward. He was already some distance from the ground.

  Then the bluish white light flared in the darkness, forming a ring in the air. Within that ring, Judas saw the giant figure carrying Jesus in his hands.

  A sharp tearing sound rent the air, like the tearing of a silk curtain. The earth shook with thunder, a vibration that passed from the top of the hill down to the river valley. Several of the steep cliffs crumbled, their remains tumbling downhill in a landslide. Quakes rocked the darkened land, and the land shuddered and fell.

  And yet, despite the apocalyptic noise, all who were there could hear the quiet words of Jesus as he drifted up into the sky:

  The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,

  By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles,

  The people who
were sitting in darkness saw a great light,

  And those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a light dawned . . .

  Soldiers and citizens clung to the shaking slope, their imminent deaths assured, and they cried out the name of God.

  Judas Iscariot picked himself up. He could hear another voice speaking to him from somewhere in the rolling earth below his feet.

  “Your Majesty! You must tell me what this means. Why do you strike down your own people?”

  “Legate. I will soon report on my failure to the Planetary Development Committee. Yet understand that this failure is only one of my results. Legate, you saw the fire? It was that fire that foiled my plans! It was the greatest barrier to the designs of the committee, and the final reward for our efforts.”

  “Your Majesty—!”

  Judas stood, flustered, and looked around. Majesty? Was that the emperor in Rome? Surely not! And who is this “legate”?

  By now, the blue brilliance was nothing more than a dot of light among the stars that shone in the vault of the sky.

  “Have you understood, my prince? Do you know whose statue that is? Not even Brahmā, ruler of this world, does. The great god after whom that statue was modeled was a resident from another world who visited this region and claimed it for his own. This world is to be ruled from without, you see. Five billion six hundred seventy million years from now, he will once again appear in this world and determine the fate of all who remain here. That is what they call Maitreya.”

  “What of salvation? What of salvation in the time of the last dharma?”

  Judas’s mind raced, his thoughts wild. Who is this prince? And who is Brahmā? Five billion years seems an impossibly long amount of time. And Maitreya . . . Maitreya?

  Judas cocked an ear in hopes of hearing more of the strange conversation that seemed to be coming to him from some impossible distance. Yet there was nothing. He ran up the slope of the hill, stopping occasionally to listen, ears pricking like a wild beast’s. The voices were nowhere to be heard.