by Nick Tosches
Thus I foresaw it. I beheld him as he allowed himself to imagine it.
But I amused myself at the same time by thinking of a man coming to Rome with no Latin other than the two words constituting the careful tidying of the anus.
All along the way south from Shechem, we came upon towns and villages. We procured food, drink, and supplies as we needed them from every town, village, and settlement through which we passed.
We had much dried fruit, such as raisins, figs, dates, apricots, pomegranates. We had smoked and salted meats, smoked and salted fish, dried pulse. We cooked good meals with water boiled in our clay pot, which hung with the rest of our possessions from the stalwart dun jack donkey that was our beast of burden. There were butterfat and whey in goatskins. There were cheeses, leavened and unleavened breads, olive oil and vinegar in which to immerse them. Our wineskin was never empty, and we never wanted for spring-water.
He reprimanded me for paying for what he said he could as easily steal. His most exasperated rebuke came when I tossed a coin to a blind man who was offering almonds for alms.
I told him that we were about to assume a posture of purity and innocence, and that this was a posture that could be brought down by the least transgression.
“You shall steal no more,” I commanded him, “except from God.”
With our bare hands, we sometimes caught and gutted fresh fish for the fire. There were wild boars, and we hungered for them; but neither of us knew to hunt except by trap, or dogs and pig-stick, and as we stopped only to camp when the sun fell, there was no time to trap, and we had no dog, bay dog or catch dog or otherwise. But my good Jesus did once drive his dagger into a rabbit, and, with garlic, hunks of old bread, and choppings of a yellow-flowering fennel plant that we dug from the sandy soil, it made for delicious stew.
We lived well for the most part, and were often as gay as two boys on an adventure. My legs, which in recent years had grown weak, were renewed in strength.
We made our way to the south, to the city of Bethlehem, in the hill country, west of the lake that is called the Dead Sea. Bethlehem was known in the Book as the city of the patriarch David, the house of the patriarch David, who was born there in time out of mind. Isaiah of the Book prophesied that there would be born a child, a son, on whose shoulders all holy authority and governance would rest, and he would become known as the mighty God, the Father everlasting, and the Prince of Peace. This holy authority and governance was likened by Isaiah to a key, the key to the kingdom, the key of the house of the patriarch David. Other prophets in the Book also looked to Bethlehem, to the house of David, for the birth of the new god, the bearer of the key, the Prince of Peace.
Whenever we came upon natural beauty, we rested. If the cool of evening was in the air, we settled down for the night amid that beauty. Walking slowly, we advanced less than ten miles, or five of his parasangs, in a day, and even less when the way was steep or treacherous. This afforded us much time to converse at leisure, to more deeply come to know one another, to learn from one another, to discuss and lay the finer points of our scheme.
We progressed slowly also because we both were lazy by nature. This shared inclination to a languid pace rendered all the more comfortable our traveling together.
Somewhere in the countryside, south of a settlement where fig trees, olive trees, and almond trees were in abundance, we spent the night in a grassy place that was rich with the rare, wondrous scent of balsam, though there was not one balsam tree to be seen.
“We come upon almond trees bare of almonds,” Jesus said. “Fig trees and olive trees whose fruit is not yet ripe enough to harvest. And here we are, in the dream-like midst of balsam trees that cannot be seen.”
“Well, they are quite small trees,” I said. I was sitting, and I raised the flat of my hand to a bit over the top of my head.
“Yes, small. But not so small as to be invisible.” We slept that night without dreams.
After some days, my companion let it be known to me that he himself had in fact been born in Bethlehem, or so he had been told. It was, he said, an accident, for his family was of Nazareth, very far to the north, in Galilee. But his father came from Bethlehem. When, early in the third decade of his reign, Augustus decreed a census for the taxation of the joined provinces of Syria and Judea, those who did not abide where they were born were obliged to register where they were indeed born. It was on this return to Bethlehem that his mother, who was heavy with him, gave birth. In youth he had known only Nazareth, but this was the tale of his birth that had been told him. Every time it was told, his mother added that his was a breech birth, and so had caused her more pain than the births of her other children.
I had no memory of any such census decree, nor had I ever heard of any such decree, or any such census. I told him this. It also struck me as very unlikely, indeed nonsensical, absurd, for a census to oblige men to return to their places of birth to be registered. I told him this as well.
“It has always seemed the same to me,” he said. “That is why I have made no mention of it until now. As I say, it is a tale that I was told. It is as if I had been told this tale to veil something from me.”
He shrugged, exhaled, and spat.
As he reckoned that he was born in the year of a census that we both felt was more fable than truth, he confessed that he did not know when or where he was born.
His earliest memories, he said, did indeed date to the third decade of the reign of Augustus, to a time when Marcus Ambivulus was the Roman prefect of Judea. I knew that Ambivulus had overseen Judea and Samaria from the thirty-sixth to the fortieth year of the reign of the emperor Augustus.
For him to have been aware, in his days of earliest memory, of the name of the prefect, he would have been of about the age when children of Roman families of rank began their schooling, in their seventh year.
I was now in my fortieth year. By the looks of him, he was about ten years younger than I. This would place his birth somewhere near the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Augustus, before Roman soldiers were first garrisoned in Judea, and before Coponius, the first prefect of Judea, briefly preceded Ambivulus. Of those days, he remembered nothing, though he had heard much of them: the time before the Roman troops, and the time of trouble upon their arrival.
I figured him, then, in the summer that we met, to be about in his thirtieth year.
To not know when or where one was born. To not know one’s age. Were these a blessing or a curse? In some way, did they free a man from time and place?
I asked him if his family, his parents and siblings, were still alive.
“Not to me,” he said, then said no more. I let his silence be, then spoke lightly:
“Odd, considering the tale of your birth, that you never before considered you were the bearer of the key, the Prince of Peace.”
This brought back the now familiar smile to his face, and the soft wry laugh that was barely there.
The fire was but an embering. The stars in the vast black of the calm luxuriance of blissful night bade us leave our thoughts to ember as well.
One night, not far from Shiloh, in the Ephraimite hill country, we made study and repeated recital of what was to be his first pronouncement, made on our departure from Bethlehem. I gave it to him in Greek, he gave it back to me in Greek. I advised him, assessed his performances, encouraged him. He put to memory the words and the practiced delivery of them. He set them into Hebrew and put to memory those as well. I could not understand the latter, but I could feel power in them. As for his Hebrew-accented Greek, I felt it to be near perfect for our purposes: the universality of our message represented by the inherent cosmopolitan nature of the Greek language, but imbued with the deep and unmistakable intonation of a sense of Hebraic past, present, and future.
“I have come from the town of my birth, to which I had journeyed in search of guidance…”
At Bethany, which was but a few miles southeast of Jerusalem and a few miles northeast of Bethlehem, we did th
e same. I could feel, hear, and see the hesitation and self-consciousness lifting from him and being borne away into the night. I closed my eyes. The sound and presence of him overtook the dark with a low seductive majesty.
“I have come from the town of my birth, to which I had journeyed in search of guidance…”
We drank much wine that night, for we were to assume the pretense of austere and abstemious men before the next night fell.
He stood, turned away, walked a few paces, and pissed, letting his head fall back easily as he did.
“Ah,” he sighed. “If only this were the mouth of a young virgin whore instead of a roadside ditch.”
We shared laughter and more wine. Then we slept, and rose the next morning in the dark and the dew.
The road became but a path. This path grew obscure and rugged in turn, then steepened as we ascended the foothills of the southern part of the mountains. The final few miles of our journey to Bethlehem were thus the most difficult of the miles we traveled to get there.
The northern outskirts of the vast desert Wilderness of Judea, in parts still unknown and unexplored, lay between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea. An unprovisioned man could perish if he lost his bearings in that desert before reaching Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea, or the oasis of Ein Gedi, the spring of the kid. On the table-land of Qumran, I was told, there was a great settlement of the sect known as the Essenes. Fewer in number than either the sect of the Pharisees, pretenders to highest sanctity, or the sect of the Sadducees, pretenders to the sole righteousness of sacred written law, the Essenes were a mystical, ascetic coenobitical lot that seemed forbiddingly self-miseryed even to others of their blood. They forbade the presence of women among them. Yet there was such a growing number of devout but despairing souls in Judea driven to join the Essenes, perhaps as an alternative to suicide, that the sect was the only group on earth whose population increased without procreation.
The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and in judgment-day. The wealthy Sadducees, comprising the aristocracy and priestly classes, did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. For them, there was no immortality of what we call the psyche, no afterlife, and, comfortingly, no reward or punishment beyond the grave. The Essenes were enigmatic in their view of the resurrection of the dead, which involved the separation of body and psyche, a separation that they strove to effect in life. Where the Pharisees saw judgment-day, the Essenes saw wholesale apocalypse.
The Sadducees had much influence on Hyrcanus II, the Hasmonean high priest and king of Judea who conquered Idumaea, and forced its people to convert, and its men to be circumcised.
It was good to have knowledge of these things, the natures of the players among whom the dice were to be cast.
Soon and at last we could see it above us. Bethlehem.
He told me of the meanings of the names of the Beth-places we had passed, and the Beth-place we were about to enter. By this time I was aware that beth was the second letter of both the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets, but I knew nothing of its meaning as a word, which is also the same in both the Hebrew and Aramaic tongues, so very similar are they.
“Beth-El, the house of God. Bethany, the house of misery.”
“House of misery?”
“Yes.”
How this strange land intrigued me, exhilarated me. This beautiful land with its pall-cloud of suffering. More and more it seemed to be a vast theatre open to the sky, filled and eagerly expectant, the stage set and all riggings ready, awaiting only our entrance, and the breaching of the pall, and the bringing forth through that breach the light of imminent deliverance. A people that could be led by neck-iron to misery could be led to radiance, hope, and joy. And, after them, the miserable victims of other gods and unanswered deprecations.
“And Bethlehem?” I said.
“The house of bread.”
“The bread of affliction?” I laughed.
“No. A different bread, lechem, a bread that is more than bread. A bread that signifies food, life, sustenance of all kinds.”
The three of us slowly approached the entrance to the town: Jesus, the donkey, and myself.
“Remember, my Lord,” I said in a low voice. “We seek together, but it is you whom I reverently follow in our seeking.”
“And what is the Greek again?”
“Christos.”
“Yes.” And then he intoned from memory. “He called me christos, and I knew not this word; and I learned that it was the Greek for our Hebrew mashiach, our Aramaic meshichah, which mean ‘anointed’ and nothing more. The Book describes priests as anointed. I am no priest. We are told in the Book that Cyrus the Great was anointed by God. I am not great, and I do not worship Persian or Babylonian gods, as Cyrus did. Why, then, should I be called anointed? Why, then, should I be called by him christos, or, in the tongue of his native land, christus?
“I did ask of him an answer. And he, who knows not the Book, said unto me—”
“Enough. That is for our journey to Nazareth.”
He began anew, modulating his tone to a humbler and less assured effect: “I have come from the town of my birth, to which I had journeyed in search of guidance—”
“And that is for tomorrow morning. Rest your voice, work your pantomime, and let us remain in this day.”
“Yes, my son.”
We laughed quietly, and it did us good, helping to allay the undercurrent of anxiety within us. We looked at the donkey trudging just slightly ahead of us. We stopped, gazing down into the valley whence we had come. We drew deep breath and entered Bethlehem.
7
BETHLEHEM WAS A PLACE OF HILLS UPON A HILL. IT WAS A wonder that a city had grown on terrain that seemed so unwelcoming and so uncompromising. In conforming to the rocky hills, it was a labyrinth of narrow, constricting pathways of sharp sudden turns, sharp sudden inclines, and sharp sudden declines. It was a city built of limestone on a highland limestone ridge. It was a city of sun and moon, where the pale buildings took on the hues of dawn, day, dusk, and dark.
Many people were about, but it was oddly quiet. An old man sang an old-sounding song as he went about gathering the dung of dogs, which was much used by tanners to bate their hides. His voice and his old-sounding song were for long moments all that could be heard. It was a plaintive song of no beginning and no end. It was as if the rest of Bethlehem were listening to it, or stilled by it.
We found the synagogue. It was one of the few buildings made not of limestone, but of darker, more somber rock and mortar. Its small courtyard sheltered only two money-lenders. Nearby, another two men sat at a shared table carving small figures from olive-wood. It was explained to me by Jesus that they were figures of demons. He spoke a question to the carvers. One of them answered. He nodded and then he added to me that the little olive-wood demons were to ward off the evil eye. He said some words from the Book to me, something to the effect that he who hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye.
He scrouged one brow, arched the other, and he looked at me. I could not immediately discern if there was more jest than pondering in him. This place, Bethlehem, was working some sort of subtle sorcery on my equilibrium.
He entered the synagogue, as I had instructed him to do. If the priest was there, he was to seek counsel. If the priest was not there, he was to make a show of prayer. We both assumed and hoped that the priest would not be there. While I waited, I walked some paces to where I found myself looking out on the desert southeast of where I stood, and seeing in the distance the grand domed roof of Herodium, the fortress palace of Herod, the king of the Jews. Once staffed by so many attendants, servants, and slaves that it was a town unto itself, the palace complex of Herodium was now as deserted as the sands that surrounded it. Herod, who had built the port of Caesarea, who had built the great temple of Jerusalem, had built Herodium for himself and his untold stolen, blood-stained riches. Now it was his tomb.
As I gazed on it, there came to me the whole of what Jesus had recited to me from hi
s memory of the Book:
“He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him.”
When did poverty come upon Herod the Jew? Only when death robbed him of breath in the ripeness of his years.
Jesus emerged from the synagogue, and I walked to him.
“The priest is not to be found,” he said. His tone was natural, but he spoke so that the men in the courtyard, and likely some passers-by, overhead him. One of the demon-carvers, the one who had answered him, looked toward him, then down again to his work.
We found an inn near to the synagogue. There was a manger, and we had our good donkey tended before we took our room.
It was our plan to have our evening meal and then remain awake until well after midnight.
The sun was setting. Wisps of the ghosts of red, orange, yellow passed over the limestone, and the first brightling star appeared in the sky.
The pallets in our room were much inviting to us after our nights of hard ground. But we must stay awake. Looking directly to the cramped plank beneath the window, I saw, near to the oil lamp, a simple clepsydra such as those that measure the passage of an hour in brothels and courts. We fetched water and filled the timepiece to the hour-mark. Assured that the clock was in fine working order, we decided we could sleep in turns, one sleeping an hour while the other sat guard an hour. I worried that one of us might fall asleep on guard, considering especially the slow, soft droplets being so conducive to sleep. Jesus assured me that we would not allow this to happen. We would each take two alternating turns of sleep, two turns at guarding the clock.
I was awakened from my second turn at guard by the hand of Jesus gently shaking my shoulder.
We ventured into the middle of the night. I have described Bethlehem as quiet by day. Imagine it at this hour. Yet lamps did burn in some windows.