by Nick Tosches
It was impractical for reasons of nature. The long northwest passage against the wind from Caesarea to Rome, which could take more than seven weeks—far longer than the leeward passage of ten or so days from Rome to Caesarea—under the best of conditions, in late spring and early summer, could take much longer before then. Furthermore, the late fall and the winter months were so fraught with violent, wrecking storms and rages of sea and wind, that the number of sailings was much reduced in number, occasioned only by essential communications. Crossings were simply too bitterly dangerous in winter. We had not endured and thrived this long only to perish at sea while watching the land we had looted turn into a speck and disappear on the horizon.
And, as I have said, Pesach seemed a very poetically fitting end.
“He who is the Anointed One wishes to extend his ministry until the Pesach,” I said, and felt a smile spread slowly on my face. “And so Pesach it will be.”
He appeared quite contented, and he laid back his head into the water, looking into the morning sky above.
Through the trees, others could now be seen making their ways along the quiet piny paths that led to the springs.
The caw of an unseen crow could be heard.
“And where should the Messiah like to spend the Pesach?” The smile still lingered on my face.
“Jerusalem.”
I said not a word. I hoped that I had not put this into his head with all my talk of the authorities, which he had dismissed out of hand.
“And why Jerusalem?” I asked.
“Why not?”
28
AND, TO BE SURE, THERE WERE MORE GOOD TIMES. DELICIOUS times, as he called them. One dark starry night, in the cool, gently sloping hills east of Moab, I administered, under cover of wine and dainty-cake, a considerable dose of opium to the tick Andreas. I did this for my own amusement, and in the hope that he might unwittingly reveal something of his true nature, which he did his best to keep hidden.
I told Jesus what I was up to. We agreed that, if the tick’s behavior became too strange, we should play it by ear as to how Jesus would explain it to the other disciples, by declaring that Andreas either was possessed by a demon or, depending on the direction of his strange behavior, was entranced by divine rapture.
Alas, our Andreas was so tightly closed in on himself that, after a brief phase of noticeable ataraxy, he merely entered into a state of panic. His eyes wide, his breath rapid but wordless, he was immobilized. “Something tries to claim him,” Jesus said. The others gave their theories, some of which did indeed involve the demonic, but none of which ventured rapture.
The tick remained in his rigid panic for a good while. The peace of sweet dreams was not open to him. Then, in cold sweat, he fell fast asleep.
The entertainment I had anticipated turned out to be slight at best. And, no matter how much Jesus and I tried to lure him, he revealed nothing of what was within him. Nothing, that is, of what lay beneath his fear, dread, and terror, which were manifest in full. Otherwise, he was as a dull stone unmoved by a passing earthquake. Looking down on him, the Lord said, seemingly for lack of anything better to say:
“May the beloved disciple learn from this that, while evil and dangers lurk all about us, those who would follow the Word and the Way are not easily snatched up.”
“Amen,” said I.
The next morning, Andreas spoke much of his struggle with the demon, and his conquest over it.
“It was the presence of our Lord that made the demon flee,” the rabbi said to him.
“Yes, of course it was,” said the tick. There was in his voice a momentary hint of awkward reticence, which vanished as he said: “And my faith in our Lord did not waver through the battle.”
There was a wedding at a place near Salim that some called Cana and others called by different names. Looking toward the small feast, Jesus recognized the groom, a young man he remembered from our visit to Nazareth. Then his eyes fell on another he knew from Nazareth.
It was his own mother on whom his eyes fell.
Before being seen by any at the feast, Jesus told us to go ahead of him and join those who feasted. He would return after a solitary prayer that would be his spiritual gift to the handsome young bride and groom. He veered off with Hope in tow, and soon was among us again.
His mother looked to him with melancholy, and seemed ever on the verge of saying something to him.
I could not keep from smiling with playful malice as he brought forth from Hope’s packsaddle the magical amphora that I had purchased in Caesarea as a jest.
The feast had fallen quiet, as word had passed among them that the Messiah was with them, and their blessed event was now doubly blest.
With two hands, he placed the brightly glazed amphora on the ground, and he removed the lid from it. He called to the servant of the feast to bring water to fill the vessel.
“I wish to share a cup of most precious wine with the bride and groom,” he announced.
I watched him, then looked all round. I wondered if any of these rustics knew of the juggler’s trick of the magical amphora. It was familiar to many in Rome, but I had been told by the merchant who had sold it to me that it was the only one in the province.
“Please,” our Lord said to the steward, “fill well the jug.” The servant returned with a waterskin and poured water from it into the false belly of the amphora. Jesus replaced the lid and bowed his head for a moment. Curiosity rippled through the hush.
“Please,” our Lord said to the steward, “bring three cups. The bride’s, the groom’s, and one for myself.”
The cups were brought. Slyly plugging the hidden water-hole with the thumb of his right hand, and bracing the amphora between his knees, he tilted it, and lovely red wine flowed from its open lip into the cup he held to it with his left hand.
The feast was suddenly quiet no longer. The rejoicing for the bride and groom became rejoicing for the Nazarene who was the Son of God.
Blessing all, Jesus raised his cup and drank. The bride and groom raised their cups and drank, and proclaimed that never before had there been a wine of such delight and grace. Jesus filled his cup again and gave it to an elder to be passed round and tasted. And all agreed that never before had there been a wine of such delight and grace. In truth, the wine was from a barrel of common Roman draught with which we had filled our wineskin at a shop in Aenon.
Yes, the Nazarene who was the Son of God. And of the aging woman who looked to him with melancholy, and who seemed ever to want to say something to him. Did others here know that he was her son? Did she claim to others that he was her son? Did those in Nazareth who remembered him as a boy, remember him as her son? Had she laid the past to silence, as he had done?
It was the sound of her voice that ended my thoughts. She was near him, the both of them somewhat apart from the rest. Her voice spoke only his Hebrew name. What lay in that voice was hard to discern. Love? A desire to forgive, or to be forgiven? Regret? Need? Perhaps even doubt as to his identity? It could have been a longing for something, or an expression of something. Whatever it was, that something that was to be heard in the utterance of her voice, it was unknowable. It may have been unknown, unknowable even by her son, even by her. All it evinced was a vulnerability, and nothing else.
What happened next was like a dazing blow. It must have stunned her to the quick.
From where I leaned, I could see him turn to face her; and those eyes of his were no longer like those eyes of his. They were the cold, untelling brown eyes of a hooded cobra roused and risen to strike. And strike he did.
His voice was one of low, chill, cadenced heartlessness, devoid of mercy, or pity, or any human quality other than inhumanity, that most defining trait of what we loftily call humanity:
“Woman, what have I to do with you?”
Her weeping was terrible to witness, but he beheld her as if her tears and sobs were sweet rain and song.
“I never knew you,” he said. “Depart from me.” Then he
turned his back to her and drew close to me. “Judge not”—he spoke sternly, seeming to believe that I had pronounced silent sentence upon him, and that I had done this in ignorance and in prejudice—“lest you be judged.”
His low voice now came through clenched teeth, like an aggressive hissing.
“Lovely words,” he concluded in that same voice. “I seem to remember them from somewhere.”
I should have slapped him. But I could not, because of the disciples, some of whom were walking toward us; because of the rest who were present.
His apologies came only after the day turned to night, and the wedding feast was well behind us. He neither explained nor offered excuses, but simply asked my forgiveness.
I thought of that nonsense of mine about turning the other cheek. I thought of the whispering man in Narbata: the whispering man with the withered arm and the unfortunate daughter.
My curiosity was such that I asked him to tell me more than he had about his mother and him. But all he would say was that there was nothing more to tell. He stared into the little dancing flames of our modest fire. Or, more accurately, he kept his eyes trained on them.
I studied him that night for a long time. He was conscious of my scrutiny. Finally, with a deep sigh, he walked off by himself. Later a few of the disciples asked me where he was.
“He went in solitude to pray for his mother,” I told them.
“Is she ill?” one of them asked.
“I believe so.”
“It is difficult to picture him as having a mother.”
“Yes,” I said. “It truly is.”
“I shall pray for her as well,” said the tick. “Oh, how our Lord must love all mothers, and most dearly his own.”
“Yes,” I said, “let us all pray for her before we sleep this night.”
I spat casually into what was left of the fire. I longed for the springtime, and for that galley bound for Rome. I thought of what Jesus had said of his behavior in Bethany: “I acted madly.” Did he feel that he had acted madly against his mother and me at the wedding feast? There was no telling, even, if he was or was not drifting into madness outright, full and fulsome. Why did I ally myself to men prone to madness? Was I one of them?
These were unpleasant musings. It was an unpleasant night, a humid and unpleasant and sleepless night.
No, not all of our times were delicious times, as he called them. Far from it. But they were times such as few men have ever tasted.
The month of Janus was on us: the month of the old two-faced god of the beginnings and ends of wars and peaceful respites from them. It was time to return to Caesarea. Payment was due on the earnings from my deposit of creditum. These earnings must be placed in a separate account, apart from the shared fortune belonging to Jesus and me in equal parts, his half on deposit, by his decision, as vacua pecunia, accruing no interest through usury, and my half, by my decision, as creditum, which benefitted, with small risk, from the ways and wiles of the money-lenders.
My interest amounted to more than sixty thousand sesterces, representing a return of fifteen per centum after the subtraction of the fees of the argentarius and the share of the profits claimed by the usurers. All of this was minutely detailed in the agent’s ledgers. I did not care if these ledgers reflected the truth. Sixty thousand sesterces was sufficient truth to satisfy me. I arranged to have the principal of my creditum redeposited as vacua pecunia, and the interest from the principal to be deposited in a new account as creditum. I also deposited into the account of our mutual riches what new-temple money we had collected in recent months, an additional hundred and three thousand sesterces, which brought the total sum of our fortune to almost nine hundred and twenty thousand sesterces.
I left Caesarea this time carrying no jestful gifts from the jugglers’-goods shop.
As arranged, I met him at Hyrcania, east of the Dead Sea. He wanted to give a sermon to the Essenes. Hyrcania was very close to their main community, at Qumran.
I had questioned him about the prudence of this. These austere men had no money. But he was adamant.
“We both know that we have enough money. And in the towns after Qumran, there will be more money, a great deal more. We shall leave Jerusalem with Faith, Hope, and Charity burdened full.”
“If money is not your motive in preaching to the Essenes, what is?”
“I am sick of the rabble who seek miracles. I am sick of those who want the dead to be raised, and demons to be exorcized. I am weary of those who believe in a God who shows himself through cheap jugglers’ tricks.”
“If you are sick and weary of the rabble, let us breathe free of everything and await spring in feasting and ease. We are as good as in Rome now, but for the storms at sea and your desire to visit Jerusalem.
“Besides,” I said, “is not God himself but a cheap jugglers’ trick? What do you expect from those who believe in him? All of the fine orations of the Word and the Way, they are taken to mean all manner of things by all manner of fools. The time for silence is at hand.”
At Hyrcania, when he heard of the Lord’s intention, even Aaron, our former Sadducee priest, modestly advised him that the tenets of the Essenes were held by them with such inviolable self-righteousness that the Word and the Way might be met with hostility at Qumran. The rigor of their beliefs could very well offer no tolerance.
“Nonsense,” said Jesus. “Minds that pursue the mystical are always, by nature, open to that which is unknown to them.” After a pause, he spoke again: “Furthermore, as you know, the Essenes forbid themselves the expression of anger.”
Aaron held his tongue, sighing instead of saying whatever more was on his mind.
Simon Peter remarked that the idea of being surrounded by Essenes intimidated him, but added that when he was with Jesus, nothing frightened him.
I found it odd that, after our rest at Callirrhoe, on the other side of the Dead Sea, instead of winding down and looking toward Rome, Jesus seemed to be increasing his energies toward a climactic conclusion preceding our departure.
His self-aware confessions of acting madly, speaking madly, and being subsumed by the role he played were like vexing tidal currents, whose directions could not be predicted. Then a terrible notion struck me.
“Are you coming to believe in God?”
“Have you injured your head? Of course not.” He laughed softly but deeply. “But I am beginning to believe in something,” he said, looking off into the dusk. I followed his eyes and saw rosy wisps lighted with golden hues, and blue becoming violet-blue, and the colors of nacre imbuing the white of clouds.
“In what are you beginning to believe?”
“A truth,” he said. “A certain and absolute truth.”
“Do you wish to share with me this truth, so that I can make composition on it, or do you wish me to invent one on my own, or re-state one of the many fanciful absolute truths of our established repertoire?”
“The means to express it are almost risen to my lips. When I can express it, you will know it.”
“Oh, come now. What is this?” In exasperation, I threw to his face with sarcasm the lofty lying words he had used so long ago, in Simonias, to tell the priest of how God spoke to him: “The voice speaks in elemental tones that are not words and yet are words.”
He did not bristle at the exasperation or sarcasm in my tone. He merely continued to behold the changing colors and light of the dusk. To me, these were the changing colors and light of those unpredictable tidal currents that vexed me. In them, like a haunting, were the tints and shades and hints of madness and the insinuations of unfolding futures at play.
“This has nothing to do with any God,” he said. His voice could not have been more calm or more gentle.
I looked into his eyes, which did not respond to my gaze. They were not the eyes of the man who once upon a time, at the inn at Caesarea, had run his dirty fingers over the handle of the dagger in his sash. I well remembered the lie of innocence in those soft, pale-brown eyes that had st
ruck me the moment I chanced on them, those eyes that did not see the greater games, the greater gains that were their destiny.
The eyes I now beheld were even softer, more luminous, more mesmerizing, more deeply wed to destiny. We had won our great game, and the gains were ours. But I had an unsettling feeling that I had been drawn into another game, a game whose essence eluded me, a game whose movements were not mine to control.
“So,” I said, “your pronouncement to these high holy cave-dwellers will be written. I shall begin composition tonight. Should the elemental tones of your certain and absolute truth come to your lips, do be so kind as to let me know.”
“Please, my friend, take your rest tonight. My words are not so fine and well-wrought as yours. It is your words that have carried us to where we are. It is you who are the true and undenied master of the means by which we have prospered. But, please, tonight, take your rest.
“I will let issue from my mouth at Qumran that which will issue from my mouth.”
I was displeased, and also felt a twinge of dejection. It was as if I were being dismissed. He had taken increasingly to extemporizing his own words, and to revising mine. But this was unprecedented in all of our journeying together. Was the puppet dispatching the puppeteer to the audience? Was I of diminished importance to him in this vague new game whose essence escaped me?
“It matters not to me,” I said with a shrug. We had started out together as untrusting strangers, but we had become close and friends. I should have made known to him my true feelings, but I did not. Things are not always as they should be. It was not good, in the moments of that dusk, that I knew not what was in him, and he knew not what was in me.
I felt a sadness, and there seemed to be a sadness in him, too.
Hyrcania was unfortified, and after dark became a lawless sort of place. There were roving bands of drunkards, and of Zealots, and whores of both sexes called out from dim-lighted windows. From the inn where we stayed, with some of the disciples sleeping in the stable to look after Faith, Hope, and Charity, we could hear sporadic yells, whoops, and wicked laughter through much of the night. After one disturbance, I heard Faith bray. We had been so long with our three beasts that we had come to distinguish their noises, one from another, especially those of our old dun jack, Faith, who had been with us since we had set out on the road.