Judas

by Frederick Ramsay

  I slipped into the building and climbed wearily to our room. Mother was frantic.

  “Where have you been? Have you seen Dinah? I can’t find her anywhere and Darcas won’t speak to me.”

  “She is safe. I took her away to a safe place.”

  “Oh. Good. You are a good son, Judas. Go fetch her back now.”

  “I can’t bring her back.”

  “Can’t? Why? What have you done with her? Where did you take her? Why can’t?”

  “She is safe. I took her to Corinth.”

  “To Corinth…Corinth?” she said, eyes round and frightened.

  “I took her to the Temple of Venus—Aphrodite. She will live there now, and neither Darcas’ men nor any others will be allowed near her. They will keep her safe. They gave me money.”

  Mother screamed. A sound of anguish so complete, it would make an angel weep. She leapt to her feet and pulled her hair. She tore her clothing. She ran to the hearth and heaped ashes on her head. She alternately moaned and bellowed like a cow dropping a calf.

  “How could you? It is not permitted to sell children to Gentiles…you know that. You must go and bring her back.”

  “I cannot. It is done and I did not sell her. They gave me money. Here, take it.”

  She slapped the coins from my hand. They clattered and rang across the floor.

  “Mother, it was the only way. Darcas had her locked up in a shed. She…You cannot stop her, I cannot stop her and Dinah…is special.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. It would be better if Dinah were dead than sold to Gentiles. You have done a terrible thing…a terrible thing. We do not turn our own over to the Gentiles, and never for money, never. Dinah cannot go to the Gentiles.”

  She paced up and down flailing her arms, wailing, and looking at me wild-eyed and furious. “It is the same as death. You know the law. You cannot have done such a thing.”

  “Mother, for god’s sake…”

  “Do not talk about the Lord to me. If you had any sense you would know that—”

  “Mother, stop it. That old god of yours has brought us nothing but pain. Dinah was going to die here, Mother. That is a fact. She is damaged and cannot help herself.”

  “Dinah is fine, only very quiet.”

  “Quiet? Mother, she is mad. What happened in Caesarea broke her.”

  She sat down heavily on the bench by the hearth and became very still. Her hands hung limply between her knees, her hair covered her eyes. I listened to her breathing. She stared down at her feet. I never noticed it before but she had very small, thin feet, the feet of a young girl. Somewhere in the midst of her pacing and yelling, she had lost one sandal. Tears streaked the paint on her face, which I realized with a shock, was no longer young. The kohl from her eyes now filled the lines around her mouth. In the three years since we left Caesarea, she had aged ten.

  “Look at us,” I said. “Look at what we have become. We live like this in a city, the name of which is the Greek word for what you do in the atrium.”

  She looked up sharply and then dropped her eyes again. We both stared at her feet.

  “There is enough money here to go home. You could go back to Galilee and your people.”

  “Home? I have no home. I have no people. Judas, the moment you were born I lost any possibility of ever going home. This is what I am now.”

  “But…”

  It was hopeless. What I had done, I had done. I did not regret it and if her people and her god could not see the sense in it, then I wanted nothing to do with it either. We sat in silence.

  Finally, she stood and stalked to the door, one foot silent, one slapping, and said, in a voice so soft I had to strain to hear it, “Judas, you are dead to me.”

  “Mother?

  Chapter Thirteen

  After my mother declared me dead, I left the House of Darcas and made the streets my home. The sale of Darcas’ copperware enabled me to expand my money changing enterprise. Within a year Amelabib was gone. He fell behind in his bribes and the gangs wrecked his stall and ruined him. Later, I switched from money changing to money lending, a less risky occupation. It did require some bribes, but what does not? And I required help to collect debts. Fortunately, the empire produces many slow men suited for that work and who ask little in return by way of wages. I practiced that trade, and one or two others I prefer not to recall, in several cities.

  The empire exists through the delegation of decreasing power through its rigid class system. Senators, patricians, equestrians, on down to the meanest farmer are accorded respect by virtue of the wealth and position they have, acquire, or inherit. At the very bottom are the slaves, who have no rights of any kind, including the right to life. Slightly above them are people like me, the humilores, and so on, up the ladder. I came from the brothels and streets of Corinth. To climb from the ranks of the humiliores to honestiores—peons to honorable men, I needed to advance my education. So, I invested a modest portion of my earnings in Patros, a Greek scholar made superfluous by Rome’s cultural pillage. I hired him to give me some polish. Brilliant when sober, which was not often, he instructed me in the finer points of life and culture so that I passed as a man of substance and breeding, that is, if you did not look too closely.

  I would have stayed in Cenchrea except for the family of Leonides. From Patros, I learned about the goddess, Nemesis, who sees to the business of retribution. Leonides’ family wished revenge, blood for blood. Nemesis never stops, never gives up. I would be pursued by these men for the rest of my life. I tried changing my name. I shaved my head, dyed my hair, everything I could think of, yet these merciless men kept finding me, driving me from one city to another. In my darker hours, I sometimes wished they would find me and put an end to it.

  ***

  I traveled to Sepphoris armed with letters of credit, gold and silver coins safely sewn in my cloak and tunic, and determined to unravel my history. It seemed strange, walking into the land my mother once called home. In the years since she left, Sepphoris had been rebuilt. A few noticeably charred walls remained here and there, and the buildings lacked the style they once had, if I believed my mother’s description, but the city lived on and the people prospered. Galilee has a way of healing its own. If things had been different, if Grandfather had not responded to an ancient yearning to be free, Sepphoris would have been my home. Now, I came as a stranger. No one had ever heard of Judas Iscariot, the grandson of Judas of the Galilee. And my mother was, at best, only a dim memory.

  ***

  “You must talk to Nahum the Surveyor, he will know,” the old woman said and pointed south and east.

  “Where will I find him?”

  She scowled and pointed again, back toward Nazareth. “He is working out there.”

  I looked down the road I’d just traveled on my way to the city. I saw nothing.

  “There,” she said again and shook her head, “on the hills.”

  Finally, shifting my gaze from the road, I saw three or four men on the parched hillside a mile or so away.

  “Those men?”

  “They are laying out the course for the aqueduct. It will be a good thing, the aqueduct,” she said, “water.” She peered at me with rheumy eyes. “Water,” she repeated.

  I thanked her and walked toward the workers. They were handling a series of poles. One man, Nahum, I guessed, seemed to be in charge.

  As I drew nearer, I saw him sighting along a straight bar loosely fastened to one of the poles. It had another thin bar attached to it at right angles and that one pointed to the ground. He waved his arm up and then down and then held his hand out flat. A second man, two hundred paces away, stood next to a second pole set firmly in the hard clay. As the first gesticulated, the second slid a crosspiece up and down the pole. With the last signal, he placed a mark on the pole where the crosspiece had come to rest. I looked back and saw there were a series of those poles stretching across the hillsides, back toward Amatai, and each had a similar mark on it.

  �
��Nahum?” I said. The man looked up from the bar.

  “I am Nahum.”

  “They told me you would be the one to talk to.”

  “Yes? Talk about what?”

  “The uprising here—eighteen years ago.”

  “I do not know any more than anyone else about that,” he said and turned back to his work.

  I pointed back toward the city. “They said, ‘talk to Nahum, he will know.’”

  He mopped his brow with the back of his hand and inspected me, one eyebrow cocked, whether being careful or suspicious, I could not tell. “And you are…?”

  “Judas. I am named for my grandfather. Perhaps you knew him.”

  “Roman legionnaires crucified the Judas I knew—over there.” He pointed toward the road I had just traveled. “Are we speaking of that Judas?”

  “He died over there?”

  He nodded.

  “I would like you to tell me about that, if it is not too much trouble.”

  Sweat trickled down my back under my tunic. He squinted at the sun and at his men, then at me.

  “It is nearly the sixth hour. We will stop then and eat a little something and rest in the shade of those olive trees. Wait for me there. I won’t be long.”

  I thanked him and walked to the grove of trees. I sat with my back against the rough bark of an old olive tree and wondered if it had once been my grandfather’s. The shade provided a welcome relief from the heat and the sun.

  ***

  Nahum limped toward me and collapsed in the shade. He unfolded a cloth containing his meager meal. He offered to share but I declined. He had barely enough for one.

  “So, you are the grandson of Judas of the Galilee? Except for young Menahem, I did not know his sons had sons and surely none that could be as old as you.” His eyebrows framed an unasked question.

  “I am the son of his daughter, Miriam,” I said. I stared at the dusty road in the valley where Nahum said my grandfather had been crucified.

  “Miriam? But she is dead.”

  “Perhaps now, not then. Soldiers carried her off. I am the result.”

  “Ah…yes. Well…” He waited for more. I said nothing. What purpose would be served by telling him that Judas’ daughter worked as a prostitute? He stared at my red hair and then nodded. “Yes, I see.”

  “I would like to know what happened here.”

  Nahum leaned back against the tree and gazed at the sky. Finally, his mind made up, he turned to me. “It is a long story and a brutal one. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  I nodded.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We sat in silence for a long time, he staring backward into time, and I forward, toward what I must do. He’d told me the whole of it, my grandfather’s brave and foolish idea to free the country and the horror that followed. I realized, too late, I had greatly underestimated my mother’s strength. No wonder she seemed so short with Dinah.

  “You say you were part of the uprising. How can that be if the men were crucified?”

  He showed me his wrists and the ragged scars where the nails had been driven through and his deformed ankles. I recalled his limp.

  “It takes time to die on the cross. Our Roman conquerors were called away the next day. Not all died. Usually they will break the legs of those still living. Then death comes quickly. But they were in a hurry, so they ordered our people not to bring us down, to let us die. Who would follow such an order? It was Friday and Shabbat would begin. The dead must be in the ground, so we were taken down. I was one of the lucky ones.”

  What could I say? I closed my eyes and tried to see it, to take it in.

  After a while he asked, “Are there others…brothers, sisters?” I hesitated, my gaze shifted westward, toward the sea, toward Corinth.

  “No, none.”

  “Well, you have uncles in the area but—”

  “But they would not welcome me under the circumstances.”

  “Unfortunately…it is our way.”

  “Yes.”

  “It would be best if you kept what you have told me to yourself, Judas. These are difficult times and some of the people here have not forgiven your grandfather, and with the circumstances of your birth…”

  “I did not come here to find family. I do not want anything from them. If they had any interest in my mother or me, they would have saved us, they could have helped.”

  “Your uncles were only boys…children.”

  “And my mother’s uncles?”

  He dropped his gaze. “Why did you come here?”

  “To find out what happened, and to measure the people’s will. I am the grandson of Judas of the Galilee. I intend to pick up where he left off.”

  He looked at me, sadness etched his face. Finally he pointed to the hillside just to the south of where we were seated.

  “This water system will connect springs and wells in these hills to provide good water for Sepphoris. The first well in the system once belonged to your grandfather. People here think it is the least he can do to atone for what he did nearly twenty years ago. Do you understand?”

  “You are telling me that these people will not fight for me. Will they fight for anyone?”

  “We live in expectation of a messiah.”

  “Messiah?”

  “You do not know your scriptures? Surely you know about the messiah.”

  “You forget. No one ever invited me to share them.”

  “Yes, that is so. Some believe a new David will come and set us free. Some believe he is near.”

  “How near?”

  He closed his eyes. Then, a decision made, he rose to his feet.

  “I must finish this line today. I would be honored if the grandson of Judas of the Galilee would stay with me while he visits the land.”

  ***

  The Galilee is the provisioner of all of Israel. The soil is dark and fertile. From it comes such abundance that those who work it can support their families and, in a good year, have sufficient surpluses to attain a small measure of wealth. Anything that can be grown will be found ripening on one of the terraced plots in the hills around the sea. Grapes, olives, pomegranates, figs, and dates of every size and variety hang heavy on branches. Flowering fruit trees bring the bees and their golden combs. Land that is not cultivated supports flocks of fat sheep and goats. Wines, oils, and dried fruit are shipped everywhere from this valley, through the port of Caesarea or on the backs of dusty camels and donkeys in caravans that crisscross the land.

  In the center of this rich land lies the Sea of Tiberias—the Sea of Galilee, its greatest source of income. Fish is a staple food for the surrounding countryside and, more than that, one third of all the salt fish consumed by the legions of Rome comes from Galilee. This prosperous corner of the world is, indeed, “the land of milk and honey” promised to our ancestors. Perhaps it is this abundance that creates a yearning to be free, perhaps not. But more than its fish, fruit, oil, or flocks, the export, for which the Galilee is most famous, is rebellion.

  Rebellion, I have discovered, does not always arise from political oppression or crushing poverty. It is just as likely to rise up in the hearts of prosperous and comfortable men who yearn to be free. The whole of our history is about such men, not conquest or overriding righteousness, but the endless pursuit of the Covenant, to live in the land God willed to us. In the Galilee the ideal burns like holy fire. Sometimes it seems no more than a flicker, sometimes a conflagration, but always there.

  The only thing needed to kindle it anew? The long expected messiah, the new David. I wondered if I sought him, might I find him.

  And where?

  Chapter Fifteen

  I lingered with Nahum. He told me he followed the practices of the Essenes. I did not know what that meant and his explanation did not help. If you have no knowledge of the books of Moses and God’s prophets, variations in interpreting them mean little or nothing, not that ignorance has ever stopped anyone from trying. He began my education in the holy books
my mother quoted but did not understand. If I proposed to ignite a fire, I needed to learn and learn all this, and quickly.

  After weeks of searching, it became obvious to me the men I sought were not in the hills around Sepphoris, but east and south in the prosperous towns rimming the Sea. Nothing remained in my mother’s hometown but bad memories. Nahum urged me to stay. “You have much to learn, Judas. Stay a while. This is your land and when you know it as I do, you will come to love it.”

  “Yes, I am sure you are right. But I must go. I thank you for your hospitality and your confidence. I wish you to have this.” I handed him a letter of credit, a small one, but for him it must have seemed like a fortune. He inspected it carefully. His jaw dropped.

  “It is too much. I cannot accept so much for so little. Even an innkeeper would not expect this.”

  “Take it for the future. Someday if I need you, you will have the means to respond.”

  I headed to Tiberias and, I hoped, one step nearer to my goal, one farther away from my nemesis.

  ***

  I moved about the country for another month. Tiberias reminded me of Caesarea, a place for the wealthy and their hangers-on to be seen. Herod Antipas made it his capital and imported people to live there. More pagan than Jewish, he filled its streets and houses by offering freedom to slaves in exchange for their pledge to stay.

  I made discreet inquiries, but no one would admit to knowing anybody. I spread some money around and learned I should seek out a certain Jesus Barabbas. But more money could not induce anyone to admit knowing him.

  Then one afternoon a voice whispered in my ear, a voice from the shadows, “Go east toward Bethsaida and look for a man.”

  “What sort of man?”