In the morning, her visitors would be gone and then we had money to spend. We walked to the market around the corner. It always excited me to see it, filled with hurrying people bargaining, buying, and selling. I remember the scents best. Meat cooking on spits, roasting lamb and goat, filled the air with smoke and the aroma of coriander. Spices exuded the mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, curry, pepper, and ginger. There were things to eat, things to buy, copperware, fish, everything anyone could possibly want or need, or so I thought. If the entertaining went particularly well, we visited the cloth maker and the sandal maker and bought things to wear and the flashing, jangling ornaments Mother fancied. When there was no entertaining for a while, Mother took them back to market and sold them. That way we always had money to buy food.
I learned very early the power money wields over men. And that a man’s life—any man’s life—is worth more than a paltry thirty pieces of silver.
Chapter Three
“What have you done?” My mother stood in the road, hair flying, her face fractured with worry. “Where did you take her?”
“Who?”
“Your sister, where is she? You were supposed to watch her. She is your responsibility.”
The road shimmered in the shadowless light of the sixth hour. The buildings, set side by side, were washed to whiteness by the sun. Mother had been sleeping and Dinah and I, unwilling to disturb her, walked down the road to see the stonemason’s new lambs, born the day before.
“She is there.” I pointed to the road where it turned and at that moment Dinah rounded the corner, swinging her arms and singing. Her steps made the dust puff up between her toes.
Mother had the disheveled look of someone brought suddenly from deep sleep to wakefulness. Her hair, unbound, spilled across her shoulders in a cascade of polished ebony. The heavy scent of nard clung to the air around her. She had thrown a loose azure robe over her shoulders which covered her, but not very well. The women from the shop next to ours shook their modestly covered heads, hair tucked out of sight, and clucked their disapproval.
“You should have told me,” she said somewhat, but not wholly, mollified. “You should have told me.” With that she wheeled and retreated into the house, into its cool gloom.
In truth, I had taken Dinah to see the lambs. I had other business with the stonemason. The day before, I had found a stone carving in the sand high up on the beach. It looked like a peculiarly plump woman with large breasts, short legs, the stomach of advanced pregnancy, and a painted face. It was crudely done, but I thought the stonemason would find it interesting. He turned it over in his hand. I watched his eyes.
“Astarte,” he muttered under his breath, but I heard him. “Do you know what this is?” he said.
“Yes, it is Astarte.” I said. I had no idea what that meant but I guessed he thought it important.
“Do you know what it is worth?” he asked, surprised at my presumed knowledge. He had me there.
He offered me a denarius and I asked for ten. His eyebrows shot up and he inhaled sharply. We settled for five. That is the way of the world. Men find profit from their neighbor’s ignorance. If I were managing that transaction today, I would get the ten, perhaps more.
***
I arrived, my mother told me, wet and screaming in a small hut on the coast of the Great Sea along the Via Maris in one of the dusty outposts set every fifty stadia or so along the roadways to assure travelers safe passage throughout the empire. Legionnaires are assigned to them from time to time. I dropped into her life during one of my father’s stints in such an outpost. She named me after my grandfather, Judas of the Galilee, an irony lost on my father. We lived there for about two years. Whether my mother was happy or sad I cannot say. She had no choice but to bear her lot as a soldier’s wife. She never admitted that she was wife to no one and that her son was a mamzer, a bastard . My mother would have been twelve when she arrived at the outpost, thirteen when I was born.
One day he disappeared, his cohort called north to put down some minor insurrection. I suppose he believed whoever replaced him would also assume proprietorship of my mother. She waited a week, and when she realized he was not coming back, decided to go to him. To a thirteen-year-old, that seemed the logical, sensible thing to do.
“Then,” Mother said, “His detachment marched away. One morning at dawn, off they went, no good-byes, no notice, and no provision for those left behind—nothing.”
Her eyes gazed past me, into the past, I suppose, inspecting it for some clue to explain what went wrong.
“What was I supposed to do? He did not even ask me to follow. I did not know about those things. I only knew he could not marry me. Because I was an Israelite and he a Roman soldier, it could not be. I knew that, but I thought we were like man and wife, and then there was you. Men do not desert their children, do they? So we joined a caravan going north.”
Mother’s eyes were wet from remembering.
A man in the caravan, an Egyptian, took a fancy to her. Zakis left his home in Alexandria and traveled north to Caesarea to work as a designer and maker of mosaics. He was very proud of his skill and, to amuse her and some of their fellow travelers, he took a handful of small tiles and, in a wink of an eye, created a picture of a camel or the face of one of his onlookers. His hands would fly about the stones like swallows in the evening. The people clapped and smiled when he finished.
They, Mother and Zakis, got along and one night, abandoning any lingering hopes she had of finding my father, we moved into his tent. It is from Zakis that Dinah received her golden curls. He moved us into the shop in Caesarea and worked there for a while, making floors for rich and important people. Then one day, he disappeared just like my father. I do not remember much about him, just that he seemed kind and smiled a lot.
Not long after he left, a rich merchant came by to commission a floor. Mother persuaded him to stay for a honey cake and some fruit. An hour later, a bargain struck, he took Zakis’ place, though he did not live with us. She managed to meet his friends and when he, in turn, vanished, it was a simple matter for her to adopt a new way of life. That was when Mother began entertaining.
I did not understand the position it put us in at first. As a child, it was enough that we lived together and knew some measure of security. Later I grew to resent it and the burdens it placed on us.
“Judas, do not be angry with me. It is all that is left for me to do. I am unclean in the eyes of the Law. No one else will have me.”
“It is a stupid law then. Only stupid people would make such a stupid law.”
Mother gave me a look, not of anger, as I expected, but of fear. Not fear of some heavenly retribution, but rather for what might become of me. She had no family to turn to, and the thought that her son, born half pagan, might acquire the other half, made her tremble. I would not know that until later, of course. At the age of eight I had no real sense of it. To me there were the pagan gods and goddesses and then there was Mother’s and the two never seemed to meet. It remained a mystery to me how all the other gods and goddesses seemed to get along very nicely and had not much to say about how people lived, and certainly not who or what was acceptable, but they were never able to join with Mother’s, who did.
***
I have red hair, my only inheritance from my father. Not the gold-red they say King David had, but just red, like the “hennaed whores of Babylon.” One of Mother’s friends said that. He meant me and assumed I would not know because he thought me too young to understand. People called my mother a whore but I thought, childishly, that it could not be true because her hair was as black as obsidian.
My father soon became the pebble in my sandal. I learned to hate the man who left us and drove my mother into the life she led. I chafed at the thought of being the illegitimate son of someone named Ceamon. There is no Ceamon in this part of the world so it became what it sounded like, Simon. Simon the Red, because of his hair. Skyr is the way we say it—red. No one called me Judas bar Simon.
My status did not allow me the use of my father’s name. I had no father and, therefore, no patronymic. I became Judas Iscariot, Judas the Red, like my father, no, like my grandfather. I would never be like my father, but I ached to be like my grandfather, to be a hero.
Chapter Four
“We are going to the harbor,” Mother announced, jaw set and determined. “We are going to put an end to this madness.”
I had just dashed home from another encounter with some boys from the north end of town, my nose bleeding.
“Mother, they threw stones.” I tried not to cry. I was, after all, the man in the house and it would not do to cry.
“Yes, I know,” she said, and wiped my face with a cloth dampened with vinegar.
“They called you names and I said they shouldn’t and that’s when it started.”
“I know.”
“They shouldn’t call you names.”
“No, they shouldn’t.”
I spent much of my time at the close of my eighth year defending my mother’s honor against the nastiness of boys from the other side of town. They would call her a whore and I would fight them, all the while knowing that they were right and fighting them, even winning, could not alter that fact.
This last time they pulled my clothes from me and, seeing I was not of the circumcision, threw rocks at me instead. I became the target of their contempt, not Mother. I should have been happy for that, but then one of their stones hit me in the face and I ran home. I could not understand what it was about that part of me that provoked the barrage. Mother tried to explain circumcision, but it made no sense. Most adult pagans do not understand it; why should an eight-year-old boy? Bleeding stopped, Mother took me by the hand and led me to the docks.
Herod the Great built Caesarea, and, by anyone’s account, it is a marvel. The harbor is huge. The docks front a broad street with shops and places for sailors to stay. Herod deemed it wiser to subsidize their lodgings and keep them in the harbor than risk them on the streets of Caesarea.
I craned my neck this way and that, looking at the ships and taking in the excitement. I did not notice where Mother led me. We stopped in front of a door marked with a Greek caduceus.
“Here,” she said, “is where we will make you safe.”
Safe? Safe from what? The place smelled faintly of olive oil and wine, sweat and vomit, and the sour residue of dirty clothes—a surgeon’s place of business. She spoke briefly to the man. His eyes swept over me. They were red and still crusted with recent sleep. Coins were exchanged. Then I discovered what he had been engaged to do. Too late for me to run, and where would I have gone?
That day I became a Jew. No sacrifices were made in the temple on my behalf. No fatted calf slain in celebration, no chanting mohel wielded a quartz knife to mark my passage. Just my mother, the surgeon, and me. Later, I told my mother I would rather have my daily ration of rocks than go through that again.
***
“Tell me about my father.” I must have asked her that a hundred times.
“Your father is a soldier.”
“Does he march with the soldiers here?”
“No, not here, Sweet, he is far away. Your father came from one of those places where strange and wonderful creatures live and they speak in funny grunts like something is stuck in their throat and they paint themselves blue.”
I laughed at that. I thought my mother was as good at telling stories as her friends. Blue, indeed.
“No,” she said, “they really do, and instead of the Nifillim they have Little People.” That is how she said it, like they were a race of men—Romans, Greeks, Little People.
“Little People? How little?”
“Some of the grown men are smaller than you.”
My mother could be very funny. I thought it must be a wonderful place to live. Sometimes, when the sun lighted the sea to shimmering gold, I closed my eyes and thought about playing with little old men the same size as me. The only person my size I could play with was Dinah.
“You are in charge of Dinah,” Mother said. “When I have my visitors, you watch her and keep her out of the front room.”
She would be my responsibility for five more years. I took it seriously.
Someone had to.
***
Afternoons, if the weather was nice, we spent outside the walls at the beach. I played in the surf. Mother stayed under a screen with Dinah, because Mother needed to keep her skin white.
I preferred the sun.
When they both slept, I sat with my feet in the sea and tried to figure things out. Mother said the boys who lived near us were Greeks. I think she meant they are not Romans or Israelites, which is what she was. If my father was a soldier and my mother was a person of the land of the Israelites, what did that make me? It was a puzzle.
My name, she told me, is very important for the Israelites and I should be very proud of it. The Israelites lived on the north side of the city. We almost never saw them. When they did come by, they crossed the road to avoid us. Mother said they did it because of the entertaining.
Once we walked around the city to the north side. I do not remember why. We passed a deep depression in the ground. A stake with a leather thong attached stood at its center and stones were piled around the perimeter. I asked Mother what it was for. I guessed they put mean dogs in there or maybe they had cockfights. She got very pale and hurried me away. I did not see a pit like that again until years later at the gates of Magdala, when the good citizens of that smelly fishing village were about to destroy one of the Miriams—one of the Mary’s.
***
The desert man stood silhouetted in the doorway, bright sunlight at his back. His hand rested on the hilt of his belt knife.
“Where is it?”
His eyes flashed but his voice stayed even and controlled. I could not hear the anger even though I felt it. His ess sounds hissed, like someone tearing silk.
“What? Where is what?”
“My knife, boy, where is it?”
He came to our house the night before, dressed in the flowing layers of white robes desert men favor, and more knives than I have ever seen on one man. They were slung across his back, at his belt, and in the high leather coverings on his legs.
Sometime during the night one of them separated from the rest. He left later than usual in the morning. While Mother slept and Dinah played in the backcourt, I went about the business of cleaning up. I found the knife under a low table next to an empty wine flask. I turned it over in my hand, admired its red leather and silver sheath. Beautifully cut stones were set in its sheath and handle. The blade, hammered out from hard iron, curved like the new moon. I thought it the most beautiful knife I had ever seen. I coveted it. I tucked it away in my tunic. He had so many; he would not miss this one. Like a wasp, now I could sting.
“I don’t know,” I lied. Mother stirred and came into the room.
“Judas?” She glanced at me and at him.
“I am missing one of my knives,” he lisped, tearing more silk. He spoke to Mother but his gaze never left me. I kept my eyes down. We searched everywhere. Mother suggested he might have lost it somewhere else.
“You were a little drunk when you arrived last night,” she said. “Did you try the wine shop?”
He looked doubtful. Then he caught my eye. In that instant I think he knew. He opened his mouth to say something just as the great bronze horns sounded in the harbor. The tide had turned and the ships were putting out to sea. He cursed me and hurried away. I had my own knife. Now, I was armed…and a man…and a thief.
Chapter Five
I do not recall when I first felt the darkness approaching. It lurched toward me like a drunken sailor. I was ten years old and life, until then, had been bearable, all things taken into account. The three of us, Mother, Dinah, and I, had ample. We had the beach, a place to live, and money when we needed it. But that day I felt the way you do when you are about to be sick. You get sweaty and lightheaded and then, no matter how h
ard you try not to, your insides try to come out. Mother would have none of it.
“Gloomy Judas, what can happen? We have everything we need. We entertain important people…”
She stretched a point there. However much Mother wished it to be so, she had neither the breeding nor the background to be considered an hetaera. I let it pass as innocent fiction.
“Nothing will happen. Now go and help Dinah.”
Mother hummed and sorted plates and saucers. Dinah had the task of filling them with dates and figs. She inspected each piece as if she were sorting pearls. Tongue between her teeth, she carefully arranged them on the plates making sure they made a symmetrical pile. The two of them were very cheerful. That night, Dinah would be part of the entertaining, at least for a while. It was to be a special night.
For the previous two months, Mother and Dinah posed for Leonides, the Greek sculptor. A wealthy sponsor had commissioned him to create a statue of a woman and a boy, fashioned, they said, after some Roman or Greek idol, Aphrodite and Eros, but I did not know it then. Pagan gods and goddesses were never something I cared much about.
“It is their goddess of love,” Mother said, and scowled at some tarnish on a brass tray.
“I don’t see why they need a goddess for that,” I said. “There is not much in that department men have not already figured out for themselves.” Pagans have a way of making sacred whatever behavior they wish to pursue. Pan, Bacchus, Aphrodite—the whole pantheon—offers sanctification for the mundane. It is the difference between us.
“It doesn’t matter what they believe,” Mother said. “It puts food in our mouths and if posing as their goddess makes that easier, then it’s all right with me. Our God would not allow any of this, you know. It is a great sin.” My mother never willingly faced the contradictions in her life. She could not afford to.
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