Hot Night in the City

by Trevanian

  He had ample opportunity to indulge his morbid interest in these fanatic preachers soon after our arrival in Jerusalem, for zeal and sedition seethed in every corner of the city. He had come to stiffen the small garrison with his personal presence, making a more telling show of his entry into the city by thickening his handful of reinforcements with his wife and her handmaidens and slaves, and his own retinue which included concubines, servants, scribes, and your humble servant, an aged rogue-philosopher who served, depending on his master's mood, as his adversary in rhetorical exercises, his confidant, his entertainer, his adviser, and his clown. Keeping the peace in Judæa (or rather, keeping disorder within acceptable limits, for my master well understood the need for a periodic controlled release of steam, lest the cauldron explode) required no small portion of bluff and nerve, for he had only three thousand Roman soldiers to control more than three and a half million Jews. Adroit political navigation would be required if his minute show of force were to restrain the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visited Jerusalem during Passover each year, all smouldering with religious fervor and tinder-dry for insurrection.

  It is little wonder that my master was depressed and thorny-tempered this evening and little able to endure the company of gruff, shallow-minded soldiers. Shifting from my role as counselor to that of entertainer, I sought to lift his spirits. "My lord is weary with the burdens of state. Working with these Israelites is particularly sapping, for nothing is more draining than pushing against an immovable boulder. Perhaps I could arrange something refreshing? Something young and... ah... rejuvenating?"

  "No, no, I'm not in the mood."

  "They can be amusing, these local women. Eager, flexible, inventive, and above all grateful, for their men are often too occupied with quarreling over minor points of scriptural interpretation to gratify their not inconsiderable appetites. Perhaps this explains why so many of them seek sapphist consolation. Or perhaps it is merely—"

  But the Procurator was not to benefit from my insight into the causes of this tribadistic proclivity, for there was a disturbance at the great doors connecting the Prætorium of the Castle of Antonia to the temple of Jerusalem, and the officer-of-the-guard strode across the stone floor with a hard-heeled gait, his body armor rattling with self-importance. He came to attention before the Procurator. "Sir!"

  Pilatus looked up wearily. "Can you not see that we are dining?"

  "Yes, sir! I see that, sir!"

  "Then, if this is something that can wait..."

  "They're demanding to see you, sir!"

  Pilatus's eyes widened slightly. "Demanding?"

  "Well... that is... they are requesting to see you, sir. It's a delegation from the San-hed-rin." These last syllables had just been memorized.

  The Procurator raised his eyebrows at me.

  "A religious high court of sorts, my lord," I explained. "Rome has allowed them a certain amount of self-government in matters of slight importance: religious rituals, local festivals, dietary peculiarities, marketplace customs—that sort of thing."

  "Hmm. And what does it want of me, this Sanhedrin?"

  "They've brought a prisoner for you to judge, sir," the officer-of-the-guard said. "It has to do with one of the 'oiled ones'."

  "The 'oiled ones?" Pilatus said. "How long have you been out here, young man?"

  "Too long, sir."

  "Like all of us. But evidently not long enough to be familiar with one of the most common phenomena of the streets. They are called the 'anointed ones', not the 'oiled ones', although it's true that they're anointed with oil. That's what gives us the Greek word for them: the 'cristos'. I believe there's also a word in Hebrew." He glanced towards me.

  " 'Messiah', sire. It means the same thing: an anointed one."

  "Ah yes, 'messiah'." He turned to the officer-of-the-guard. "Very well, you may tell them I shall consider their petition after I have dined. They may come back in two or three hours."

  But the guard officer hovered. "It... ah... it seems to be a most pressing matter, sir. They deman—request to speak to you right now."

  Pilatus released a martyred sigh. "Oh, very well. How many are there?"

  "A whole gaggle of them, sir."

  "A gaggle, eh? Well, that is impressive. Inform your... gaggle... that I will receive a deputation of three of the cleanest of them."

  The guard officer shifted uneasily.

  "What now?" Pilatus asked, his patience thinning.

  "I'm afraid you will have to go to them, sir. They await you on the steps leading down to the temple."

  "I must go to them?"

  "Yes, sir. It has to do with... well, with bread, sir."

  "Bread?!"

  The guard officer stared straight ahead, only a shift of his eyes betraying his nervousness.

  I cleared my throat. "I believe I understand the problem, my lord. They hold us—and indeed even this room in which we dine—to be 'unclean'."

  "We are unclean? Now there's the pot slandering the kettle! These Jews never had two baths in the same year before we arrived to set them an example."

  "Unclean in the ritualistic sense, my lord." Pulling a comically grave face and dropping my voice to a theatrical tremor, I said, "You see, sir, we are guilty of harbouring—dare I speak the horrid words?—leavened bread in this place."

  "Leavened bre—! The Gods grant me patience!" Then he chuckled. "Oh, very well, tell them this unclean eater of leavened bread will join them shortly."

  "Sir!" And the officer-of-the-guard departed with martial clatter and stamp.

  "Oiled ones!" Claudia Procula said with a shudder of distaste. "Filthy, hollow-eyed fanatics holding the mindless masses in their hypnotic sway. I am told that the desert fairly teems with them. To what do we owe this sudden infestation of... what is it the locals call them?"

  " 'Messiahs', my lady," I informed her. "But, alas, there is nothing new or sudden about this plague of messiahs. They appear spontaneously out of the body politic, like maggots on diseased meat, whenever political unrest, economic deprivation, or religious reformation stalks this unhappy land. But over the last ten years or so there's been a spate of them. Hardly a day passes without some new 'cristo' entering the city with his handful of fanatic followers, curing hypochondriacs, slipping red powder into water and calling it wine, hypnotizing away the pangs of hunger, and claiming the hungry host has been fed, raising the dead—the dead drunk, usually—in short, all the usual ruses and shams."

  "But why do all of them truck out the same tired old stunts? Sheer lack of imagination?"

  "Not quite, my lady. They have no option but to perform the same 'miracles' because all Jews are familiar with the writings of their prophets who, down through the ages, have described the long-awaited Messiah. Each would-be messiah knows what utterances and acts and 'miracles' he must perform to fulfill the prophesies. I should be very surprised if there were not half a dozen of them out there in the streets at this very moment, all performing their miracles, all preaching, all thumbing their noses at the religious establishment, each one claiming to be the fruit of a virgin birth and descended from the obligatory family of Jesse, each followed by his coterie of bemused disciples."

  "But how can it be that Jews, famed the world over for their intelligence, are taken in by these rabble-rousing charlatans?" Claudia Procula asked. "In the long catalogues of opprobrium heaped on the heads of the Jews, one never hears the word 'gullible'!"

  "Ah, but they are a uniquely gullible people, my lady! Both devious and gullible."

  "Is there not a logical contradiction there?" my master wondered.

  "Of course there is, my lord. Contradiction is the distinguishing essence of all Levantine peoples but Jewish gullibility has a particular character of its own. The Jew is too quick-witted to be duped by others; but he often dupes himself. And how can this be? Because the Jew is a constant and willing victim of Hope."

  "The Jew as a victim of Hope? Well, there's an interesting concept... if somewhat fanci
ful," my master's wife said.

  "Fanciful if you will, my lady, but..." I began, but she had turned away to bestow her attention on other guests, so I continued to my master, "...but, sire, this addiction to hope explains why the most grasping, materialistic merchant will sacrifice everything for a chimera, a gesture, a phantom, a promise writ in sand... in short, a hope. The hope implied in his calling this arid heap of sand his 'Promised Land'. The hope enshrined in his famous deal with his god: the Covenant. Threaten his treasured hopes, and overnight the plodding, prudent Jew becomes a fanatic. An enthusiast! A rhapsodist! A zealot!"

  "I'm perfectly aware of the contradictions in the Jewish character, Greek. And know what traps and snares those contradictions pose. But I am curious, and curiosity is a powerful lure for a bored man. Above all, these 'oiled ones' fascinate me, both as individuals and as a general phenomenon."

  "I hope my lord recalls how the asp fascinates its victim before stinging him to death. Above all, never for a minute forget that the Jew is always willing—nay, eager!—to become a martyr, for the Jew has a marrow-deep appetite for martyrdom, and for martyring others with his martyrdom. Therein lies a great danger to you."

  "To me?"

  "Well, to Rome, if you'd rather. But in this place and at this time, you are Rome."

  "May Rome admit to being confused?"

  "I should be distressed if you were not, my lord. After all, it is my role to amuse by dazzling with the complexity of my insights."

  "It is also your role to share your insights and unravel those complexities. I perceive a certain archness of tone that ill becomes a slave... even the most complex and insightful one."

  "I am warned, my lord. And most thoroughly chastened." I lowered my eyes and retreated into a respectful silence.

  "Well?"

  "I beg your pardon, my lord? Did you speak to me?" I asked, all innocent wonder.

  "Damn it, Greek! First you wound with your superiority, then you punish with your humility! Are you sure there's no Jewish blood in you?"

  Although my smile did not desert my lips, my heart stopped for an instant. Had he inadvertently stumbled upon the truth of my origins? (If you think, dear Reader, that only Gentiles harbor anti-Semitism, then you don't appreciate the complex and involute reactions a person can have to years of scorn, ridicule, and humiliation.) When I realized that he had only meant to be amusing, I recovered smoothly with, "Ah, but I was merely warning my master that in dealing with these messiahs one must be wary of the Jewish tendency to martyrdom... a martyrdom the Jew's adversary might get to share with him, if he is not careful, for when the Jew throws himself off a cliff, he is usually holding the tunic of his enemy in his iron grip."

  Pilatus chuckled. "I'll keep my tunic close wrapped. Now, then! I believe we have made the priests of the Sanhedrin wait long enough to give them a sense of their relative insignificance. Let us have a look at the captive messiah." The Procurator rose from his couch and lifted his hand to arrest the rising of his guests. "No, no. Continue your festivities, gentlemen. I'll return in a few moments. Claudia, I know I can rely on you to entertain our guests." She communicated her annoyance with an almost imperceptible compression of her lips, but old diplomatic hand that she was, she dutifully began to tease an oft-heard story out of the senior officer present as Pilatus and I stepped out onto the landing at the top of the wide staircase that led from the Praetorium down to the Judgment Hall.

  Below us stood a knot of chief priests and scribes surrounded by a gawking crowd eager to witness pain and punishment. And there before the religious leaders, his head down, was a young man in a dirty, travel-stained gown of cheap cloth. They had brought him from Caiaphas after accusing him of blasphemy in that he claimed to be the Son of God. They had bound his arms and blindfolded him; then they had struck him on the face and asked, "If thou art indeed the omniscient son of the omniscient God, then say which of us it was that smote thee." And when he would not, or could not, they had mocked him, saying, "And yet you claim to be the Messiah! The anointed one that our people have so long awaited!" The prisoner had answered only, "No matter what I told you, you would not believe me, nor would you let me go," so they brought him to be judged before the Procurator.

  Upon the appearance of Pontius Pilatus at the head of the stairs, the priests and scribes brought their prisoner halfway up the stairs leading to the Praetorium—well, to be exact, they brought him one step less than halfway up, so they could avoid any accusation of having entered a place wherein Gentiles were desecrating the Passover by eating leavened bread.

  Pilatus looked down upon them and spoke, and I can remember his words exactly, because I was obliged to repeat them in translation. For the smoothness of my account, I shall henceforth assume you understand that everything that was said passed through me. Pilatus said, "What accusation bring ye against this man?"

  "He has blasphemed, calling himself the son of God!"

  The Procurator shrugged. "Is that so serious? Are not all of us the children of our gods, in a way of speaking? But if you feel that he has offended your cult, then take him and punish him according to your customs."

  Seeing that Pilatus had no intention of accepting the responsibility of punishing this poor fellow over some trivial matter of local cult sensitivities, the chief priest took another tack. "This man has been perverting the nation, claiming to be King of the Jews and forbidding the people to give tribute to Caesar. We would punish this treason against your worship and against Rome, but you have made it unlawful for us to put any man to death."

  Now, it was true that the Romans had found it necessary to deny the Jews the right to put one another to death over their endless internecine religious spats, so Pilatus said, "Oh, come now! Surely preaching some political nonsense to a pack of illiterate malcontents is not a matter deserving of death." His dismissive, cajoling tone might have been used for speaking to quarrelsome children, but when he saw from their determined, thin-lipped expressions that they had no intention of letting their prey off lightly, he drew a long weary sigh and said, "Oh, very well, bring him up for me to question."

  I cleared my throat to remind him of their terror of proximity to bread-eaters. "Send him up alone, then! The rest of you can wait there below!"

  When the accused was standing before him, Pilatus said, "Now then, young man, what have you been getting up to? You have certainly managed to draw the wrath of the religious establishment down upon you. Mind you, perhaps it does them good to have their noses tweaked occasionally, if only as an exercise in humility." He smiled, but the prisoner made no indication that he had heard.

  The Procurator's smile faded and he spoke in a graver, more urgent tone. "You'd be well-advised to cooperate, young man. You're accused of blasphemy towards their god—your god too, I suppose. I cannot help you if you won't speak to me."

  The prisoner lifted his head and settled his calm, deep-set eyes upon my master without answering.

  "Did you, in fact, claim to be King of the Jews?" the Procurator pursued. "Before you answer, I should warn you that Caesar is the only ruler here, so it would be possible to interpret any claim to being king as treason. Do you understand that? Now then. Are you King of the Jews?"

  The prisoner responded, "Those are your words, not mine."

  Pilatus looked at me, and I lifted my shoulders. We had met this phenomenon with all the 'messiahs' we had been obliged to interrogate: this peculiar reluctance to admit to their specific offenses, although they seemed perfectly willing—indeed determined—to achieve martyrdom by suffering for them. It was as though their impulses towards life and towards the diseased ecstasies of martyrdom were tugging them in two directions.

  "So you're denying that you claimed to be King of the Jews? Is that it?" Pilatus said, trying to prompt him into the right answer.

  The young man responded, but, typically, not to the question posed. He said, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyo
ne that is of the truth heareth my voice."

  My master and I exchanged a glance. This business about coming into the world to bear witness to the truth had been said by every messiah we had questioned over the past year or so. Indeed, even the phrasing was almost identical. Shifting to Latin so that we could not be understood, my master said, "Another one who has learned his part perfectly. Are they just rogues and charlatans, after all?"

  "Many of them, to be sure. Probably most. But not all. Some are deranged enthusiasts who really do hear voices and who clearly remember things that never happened. But the most interesting of them are honest, rustic teachers who assume the guise of the Messiah to give weight and impact to their teachings among the uneducated masses. Alas, sometimes these teachers find themselves entangled in the net of their little subterfuge when they are questioned by priests and religious functionaries and are obliged either to renounce their claims to deity, and thus lose their followers and the fruits of a life's work, or face punishment for blasphemy, which, of course, can mean death."

  Pilatus nodded. "Difficult choice. Glory and death, or life and ignominy. But I'll tell you what confounds me, Greek. I cannot understand the appeal of these 'cristos' to the ignorant masses. What do they offer them?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  "Well, something more profound and more attractive than nothing, Nothingness! They prophesy that the world will come to its end in a very short time. Total destruction! Final judgment! Apocalypse! And that's a very tasty prospect for the lost, the crippled, the lonely, the impoverished, the frustrated, the incompetent, the ignorant, and the powerless who constitute their followings. And even more tasty is the prospect that this total and final annihilation will sweep up the rich as well, together with the clever, the strong, the pleased, the life-embracing, the informed, the liberated, the powerful—all those whom the underclasses envy and hate."