Testament

by Nino Ricci

  It was only when Shimon led us all out to Yeshua at the lakeshore to take our morning meal with him that I understood Yihuda did not intend to leave us. Surely, I thought, he knew that some of us had seen him coming from the garrison. But when we sat for our meal he instantly took his place in our circle, rudely, so that it seemed he would eat without so much as a prayer, even though he presented himself as if he were a person of breeding. Then when we came to discuss Yohanan’s death, many of us couldn’t feel free because of his presence.

  Yaqob, speaking cautiously, asked if we might not protest Herod’s actions to Rome.

  Surely you understand it was the Romans who killed Yohanan, Yihuda said, tempting us to treason. When none of us would respond, he tried to provoke us by insult, accusing us of being Rome’s pawns.

  We have no quarrel with anyone, Thaddaios said. It’s not our way.

  To our surprise, however, Yeshua took the part of Yihuda.

  If we have no quarrel with anyone, then we stand for nothing, he said. How is it that Yohanan is dead, if he had no quarrel. Do you imagine our road is different from his.

  We were all silenced by this. Not long afterwards Yeshua sent us away, so that only Shimon and Yihuda remained with him. The rest of us, in our disturbance, at once met at the house of Yaqob and Yohanan.

  Perhaps he is a spy, I said, but the others wouldn’t give me credence.

  Yaqob said, The teacher has called him, as he called us. It’s not right to question him.

  He encourages us to question him, I said.

  Not in such things. Only in his teachings. And then only to show us our errors.

  The following day we learned from Shimon that Yeshua had asked Yihuda to join the twelve. I was astonished at this and that the others made no protest to Yeshua, when we stood in such threat in the wake of Yohanan’s death. It seemed to me that the others had been bewitched, that they accepted Yihuda so blindly; and indeed it was true that we behaved strangely, as if we weren’t what we’d been. The men all called Yeshua teacher now whenever they spoke to him—perhaps there was no evil in this, it merely showed respect, yet it seemed Yihuda whom they deferred to, as if he was the one who would judge us. But when I spoke of these things, when I said, We are changed, or, Yihuda means us harm, the men wouldn’t listen.

  Once he and I were left alone on the beach as I cleared the remains of our meal.

  What’s your name, he said to me, and I was amazed that after the many days he had been with us he still didn’t know me.

  I’m Miryam, I said. I imagined he would share some thought with me then, but he said only, Fetch me some water to wash, as if I were nothing.

  I could not stop my apprehension then, but felt it grow larger day by day, that we had allowed this one among us not knowing him or who had sent him. After a time, I went to Shimon. Yihuda was often insolent with him, calling him the Rock to his face, which was only for Yeshua to do. But because Yihuda was a guest in his house, Shimon was reluctant to speak against him.

  He is our test, he said. Even if we despise him, we have to make a place for him, the way Yeshua has taught us.

  Perhaps he’s an agent of the evil one, I said.

  If he had been sent by the evil one, Shimon said, Yeshua would know it.

  But to me it seemed Yihuda grew stronger at every turn, so that soon he would rule us.

  Not long after his arrival he managed to take charge of the common purse. I didn’t know what argument he had made to win this trust, or how Yeshua had given in to it when there were so many who relied on him, whether it be the sick whom he fed and purchased medicines for or the destitute, cretins and cripples and the like in the towns we went to who often enough depended on him for their very lives. None of the others made any objection to Yihuda’s assuming this power—since many of them lived solely by barter, they in fact preferred that the monies entrusted to us be handled by those who understood such things. I, however, the daughter of a merchant, saw more clearly what Yihuda gained by this, and the danger in which we stood. Indeed, of the sums that came in to us from Yeshua’s followers, not a small portion came from my own father, and I couldn’t feel easy that this money fell to Yihuda’s care.

  Our meetings were utterly changed from what they had been. Yihuda was quick to speak his mind on every matter that came before us; and so he would catch Yeshua’s interest and draw him out, leaving no place for anyone else. He claimed he had studied at the temple in Jerusalem, and it was true he was well versed in the scriptures and knew how to use them to his own end, so that sometimes even Yeshua was forced to defer to his greater learning. But this was no mark of piety in him, but only of cunning, since like a Greek he might support a notion one day if it suited him and refute it the next. I’d heard these were the sorts of skills one learned now in the temple, where the priests made arguments merely for their own convenience and believed in nothing but their purses. Yet I couldn’t conceive that Yeshua would be taken in by such devices.

  Then there was the matter of Shimon’s brother, Andreas. As a boy, he had nearly drowned in the lake and had never again been right in his mind, so that although he was more gentle than most and caused harm to no one, he was also more susceptible to evil influence. Yihuda, seeing this, had promptly taken advantage of him, giving him the occasional almond or fig to win him over and then treating him like his slave. When he couldn’t be bothered to join us for our meals, he had Andreas bring him his portion; if he was cold in the night, he called to Andreas to bring a blanket to warm him. To my own eyes, it was clear that Yihuda had enchanted Andreas and that he stood in peril; yet somehow Yeshua was blind to this. Before Yihuda had come, Yeshua had always treated Andreas like his own brother or son. But now he suffered Yihuda’s abuse of him as if it amused him, and indeed said it was a mark of Yihuda’s goodness that one so innocent should worship him.

  At last, as the others would say nothing, it fell to me to speak to Yeshua. It was difficult now to be alone with him, because Yihuda hardly left him in peace; and so I had to come to him at dawn and ask him to follow me to the lakeshore.

  When we reached the beach I thought at first from his silence that he was out of temper with me. But when he spoke he said, I have missed our walks, and in an instant my heart was in his hands.

  I’ve also missed them, I said.

  It was sunrise and there were many fishing boats near the shore, some returning and some going out. As a child, I would watch them from our porch and imagine that the lake they plied was the world entire, with its depths and its distant shores. But now the lake seemed small, since Yeshua had come.

  Yeshua walked with me near the water.

  I wouldn’t think to question you, I said. But once you encouraged us to.

  Yes.

  I think Yihuda means us harm.

  Has he offended you in some way.

  No, I said, for it didn’t seem right to mention how he had slighted me on the beach.

  Then why are you troubled.

  For your sake.

  Do you think him stronger than me.

  No.

  Then you needn’t concern yourself over him. In the scriptures, God accepted challenges even from Satan. So if Yihuda is a force for good, then we’ll learn from him, if for evil, then we’ll defeat him.

  I was left disturbed by this, still uncertain how Yeshua could admit among us someone who might do us harm. I might have questioned him further yet he had begun to seem a stranger to me, changed as though I saw him across a great distance. Walking with him then I had a sensation almost of fear—for the first time, it seemed, I was aware of him as simply a man, as someone utterly separate from me.

  It wasn’t long before we women, who knew more of these things than the men, heard rumours of how Yihuda in fact did do injury to us. Because he refused to go out on the boats with the others, he often spent his days in the markets and taverns; and there, through his idle talk, he had revived Aram’s lie concerning the lepers, that they had begun to follow Yeshua where
ver he went and threatened to overrun us. This was hardly the case—as the lepers knew that Yeshua would come to them, they had no need to seek him out. Yet the rumours had done us no little harm, for although people had been able to see with their own eyes that they were untrue, many had been happy to judge us solely on hearsay. It was just at a time when we were laying these falsehoods to rest that Yihuda began putting questions here and there and encouraging gossip again, so that people were quick to add one exaggeration to another and to circulate every sort of lie. Thus people’s fears were rekindled; and since the occasional leper did indeed arrive in search of Yeshua, people had proof enough that their fears were justified.

  Around this time there was a man in Korazin who had been condemned as a leper who refused to go into his quarantine, saying the wonder-worker Yeshua would come to cure him. This was a person well known as a troublemaker, who had always sought every means for avoiding the law. But the landowner Matthias, who was Yeshua’s enemy, didn’t miss this chance to stir up hatred against Yeshua, and prevailed upon Korazin’s elders to have him banned from the town as an evil influence. So it was that one morning we arrived at Korazin’s gates to find the town guards lined up there to bar us entry, bearing knives and clubs. Such a thing had never happened to us—even at Tsef no one had dared to come openly bearing weapons. But Yihuda, instead of taking the blame on himself for feeding people’s fears, at once turned it onto Yeshua.

  For the sake of the few you win over among the lepers, you risk losing all the rest, he said, much as Aram had months before at Arbela.

  I thought that surely Yeshua would now put him in his place. But instead he did a thing that passed comprehension: he invited Yihuda to accompany him the following day on his visit to the Arbela colony. This was a trust he hadn’t shown any of the rest of us, though I, for one, would gladly have undertaken it. I was astounded now that he had extended it to this one who was such a serpent among us. So it was that the next day while Shelomah and I waited outside the gates of the colony as we usually did, Yihuda stayed by Yeshua’s side. I could hardly bear this, or how Yihuda came back to us afterwards boasting about Yeshua’s good work, though it seemed to me he was the one who had least understood it if it took so much to convince him of its worth.

  Often now it was just the two of them who stayed late on the beach when the rest of us had gone, or who sat apart and talked in a way we others couldn’t follow or of things we didn’t know. It hurt me then to see Yeshua smile or put a hand on Yihuda’s shoulder, as if he had not understood how Yihuda drove us apart. I thought surely the others must take offence, but even in this Yihuda was cunning, for one by one he had begun to win the rest of the twelve over to him—first the innocents such as Andreas and the young Yohanan and those like Thomas and Thaddaios who were weak-spirited, but then even Philip who was sharp-witted, but who more and more admired him and took his side. When he saw that it was only the women who still opposed him, he began to deride us in front of the others and bring up the old arguments against our inclusion, until it began to seem he would prevail against us.

  I went to my father then.

  He wants to destroy us, I said, and listed all the ways he had gained power over us.

  But my father, no doubt still remembering how I had misadvised him when Yeshua had returned from Tyre, said we couldn’t make accusations merely from appearances.

  It’s only that you dislike his manner, he said, and warned me of turning the blame to Yihuda, when I was the one who could not accept him.

  I might simply have resigned myself then, since I had exhausted every means, if Shelomah hadn’t come to me and said there were rumours in Kinneret that Yihuda had sought a pact with our enemy Aram. So it seemed I hadn’t been mistaken in him, and he indeed wished to ruin us. I resolved at once that I wouldn’t see us destroyed and so went to Aram, secretly.

  If you plot with Yihuda, I said, though he swore he hadn’t yet met with him, I’ll surely turn you in as a traitor, and he knew I would do it.

  It was clear to me by now that I couldn’t rest easy until I had found the way to rid us of Yihuda for good. So it was that I came to do a thing that brought danger not only to me but to all of us, and that went against the teachings of the scriptures and of Yeshua himself.

  As a child, I had only once been to the town of my mother, during a time when my father had thought to divorce her for refusing to accept his beliefs. But it was there I learned the ways of the pagans, for my mother’s people, who were called Martu or Amurru, did not worship the god of the Jews, but Asherah and Baal. We hadn’t been there long before my father missed us and came to reclaim us. But afterwards I remembered my time there as if it formed part of some different life I had led, so awed was I by the place and so different was it from what I had known. I had never been in the mountains before and felt as if someone had caged me, since everywhere were trees and bush and in every direction peaks that cut off your view. The houses were like caves carved out of the mountain face, and there was always the smell of blood from the sacrifices and of smoke, but not like the smoke of our smoking sheds, more acrid and sickly and stale.

  There was a priest in the place, whom the Jews would have called a sorcerer, who every morning killed an animal on an altar just above the village. He himself dressed only in skins, and smeared himself with the blood of his sacrifices, and often spoke in a language that none of the villagers understood and that was said to be the language of their gods. His eyes would turn upwards then and his body shake like a thing possessed, and it frightened me to look at him though many in the village would join him in his fits as if they too had been taken over.

  During the time that I was there it happened that a leopard came to curse the place, carrying off several children and leaving the remains of one for all to see in a clearing just outside the village. The priest said the leopard was the spirit of an enemy who had come for revenge, and required the villagers to find the beast’s excrement and bring it to him. When this was done he mixed it with blood from a sacrifice and other things, including poisons and the sting of a scorpion. Three days later, the animal was found dead in the forest. The priest’s acolytes brought the carcass into the village to show us that there was no mark on it, and hence that it had fallen dead only through the priest’s power.

  These were the things I remembered and that came to me now, clouding my mind. So it was that I began to go before dawn to Kefar Nahum, telling my father that I had been called to make the morning meal for the twelve, and to wait secretly outside the latrine near the harbour gate until finally once I saw Yihuda come to it. When he had gone I so debased myself, though it turned my stomach, as to retrieve his waste from among the rest, knowing it by its heat. I wrapped it in leaves and buried it along the beach, and then after our meal I carried it home and hid it beneath a stone in our courtyard.

  In the hills outside Bet Ma’on lived a pagan named Simon who was called the Canaanite and who was known to sell remedies and spells. The local people, though they were mainly Jews, nonetheless tolerated him, because they thought him harmless and because many of them came to him for his cures. His house was little more than a hovel, a crude thing of sticks and mud hardly more substantial than the huts we built at Tabernacles, and even from the road gave off the same stench I remembered from my mother’s village, of animal skins and smoke and old blood. He had cleared a bit of field that he farmed for his food and his medicines, and bartered his cures. But beyond that he lived in the bush, hunting like the people of old and living not much above the station of the animals that he killed.

  I went to him one morning, veiled so he wouldn’t know me, and found him working in his field. The look of him frightened me, for he was unkempt and wild-eyed, though from the distance he kept from me it seemed his own apprehension was equal to mine. I couldn’t find the way to explain to him my purpose but somehow he divined it, for he said if I wished someone killed, he wouldn’t do it, since it was not his way to use his magic to such ends. From his word
s I came suddenly to understand the gravity of what I’d undertaken, and made clear to him that it was not my intention to murder, which was against my own law as well, but only to drive someone away.

  I showed him what I had brought from Yihuda and also two drachmas I had taken from my father’s purse. He motioned me inside his hovel and had me set my parcel on a sort of table or altar there, where he inspected it. Besides the doorway, the house had but a single opening, at the peak of the ceiling, and all the walls were blackened with smoke and the smell of the place was overwhelming. There were little figures of clay arranged on the table and on the floor—of his gods, I imagined. I felt sick at the sight of them, for it was profanement for me to be among them and surely no good could come of it. But he said the thing could be done. Since I couldn’t bear to remain with him one moment longer I said I would leave the matter to him and go my way. For payment, he took just a single one of the drachmas I had brought. This surprised me, for I hadn’t expected him to be honest.

  I told no one of what I’d done. But in the following days it happened that Simon’s measures took effect, for first it came about that Yihuda moved his quarters from the home of Shimon to that of Yaqob and Yohanan and then that he left us entirely. Both these changes, however, caused such tension and discord among us that whatever good they might have promised was quickly belied. In the case of Yihuda’s move to Yaqob’s house, the matter was handled with such a degree of informality and haste that Shimon took great affront at the insult to his hospitality. He put the blame at first on Yaqob, so that for several days there was enmity between them, until it grew clear that Yohanan had made the invitation, though it was hardly his place to decide on his household’s comings and goings.