The Kingdom of the Wicked

by Anthony Burgess

  ‘Strange?’ Fidelis said.

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean. I don’t know what word to use. Even words are losing their meaning in these days of the world’s madness. Ask for the man Peter in Jappa or Juffa. Everybody’s bound to know where he is. You, Rusticus and Androgeus, you two can volunteer.’

  Where Peter was now was on the roof of his host Simon the tanner. He had got up there for two reasons. One was that the fumes of dinner cooking below could not easily overcome the stench of the trade that was carried on in the sheds at the back of the house. A hunk of elderly mutton was being turned on a spit by an elderly woman who turned the handle grousing, Simon the tanner’s mother. You’ll have to wait for it, she had said ungraciously. Time and tide wait for no man, irrelevantly. The other reason for being on the roof was to get away from the crowd that had heard about the sudden recovery of the gazelle girl, one who had been orphaned early and spent most of her very adequate inheritance on garments for the poor. A lot of these garmented poor were down there, exhibiting running sores and withered limbs and demanding to be healed by faith, not that many of them had any. There was a staircase leading to the roof and a door at its head that he, Peter, had bolted. He lay exhausted with the strain of feeling under a whitish canvas canopy that kept the sun off. His only company was cauldrons of sea water that Simon used, along with camel dung, in his unwholesome trade. There was a fist knock on this door.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me, Thomas. Your presence, sir, is requested for further miracles.’

  ‘Tell them it’s a blasphemy. Tell them to pray. Tell them I’m nothing. You too.’

  ‘Aye, I know well I’m nothing. What I will tell them is that ye require a nap before your dinner and they’d best be away.’

  ‘I need the dinner before the nap. You can bring it up here.’

  ‘Ye’re right, aye. The stench down here is no good for the appetite. But it’s no ready as yet.’

  Peter, not needing the nap, nevertheless dozed off. He had a dream almost immediately, and it was a dream that told him how hungry he was. The light of the dream was the light of this rooftop, and it shone on the right number of sea water cauldrons, or perhaps there was one fewer, as well as the two or three withered plants in pots that were there. A cat came on to the roof to stare at Peter and then, spotting an alighting sparrow, it lightninged after it and out of the dream. The whitish canvas canopy did not stay where it was. It flew off from over Peter’s head and stretched itself very taut in the sky about nine feet in front of him. It began to fill up with the materials of one of these Roman banquets he had heard about. Haunches of deer, a whole roasted infant camel, writhing lobsters, crabs fighting each other though steaming from the pot, sucking pigs, pigmeat sausages (this he knew though his eyes could not penetrate their skins), a kid seethed in bubbling milk undoubtedly its mother’s. Milk, of goat or cow, in crocks nudging the roast pork. In the dream all this was no abomination. A voice that filled the four corners of the world cried that it was all good. ‘Eat, eat. Nothing is forbidden. All is from God.’ Peter heard himself say: I can’t. It’s unclean. And the voice boomed: ‘God has cleaned it. Eat.’ Peter woke. The awning was back where it had been. He heard Thomas fisting the door, calling: ‘Ye said ye wanted to eat. Eat.’ Peter stumbled to the bolts and drew them. Thomas had a wooden tray with steaming meat on it, bread, a jug. Peter blearily said:

  ‘Pig flesh. Washed down with goat’s milk.’

  ‘Urrrgh. Ye’ve been having a bad dream.’

  ‘We can eat anything, Thomas. He just said so. We can be like the Gentiles.’

  ‘Get yourself properly awake, man, then eat your dinner. All good kasher provender. Milk and roast pig. The devil’s been at ye. Urrrgh.’

  It was while Peter was tearing into the roast mutton that two men of the Italian speira arrived at Simon the tanner’s house on horseback. ‘You want who?’ Simon’s old mother asked. ‘What’s he done wrong, then?’ No wrong. He’s needed in Caesarea. ‘Somebody dying?’ You could say that somebody’s dying for something.

  Peter sat at the rear of Rusticus and Thomas at the rear of Androgeus. They had never before been on horseback. It was a jolting experience that did little good to their dinners. They had to hang on to the belts of the two riders and grip the hot flanks of the mounts with their thighs. Too many new things happening. Thomas yelled against the wind: ‘It’s no done. To enter the house of the uncircumcised. He never did it. It’s again the law.’

  ‘Which law? The law that’s been persecuting us?’

  ‘We’re Jews, man. The followers are still Jews. We keep the law.’

  ‘My dream broke the law. This voice from heaven broke the law about what to eat and what not to eat.’

  ‘And ye’d take pig flesh? Lobsters out of the sea?’

  ‘I know what the dream meant. If I hadn’t been such a fool I’d have known when the new law began. When Philip baptised the black man—’

  ‘He’d no right to. Not only an uncircumcised one but a eunuch too. For all we know, a damned cannibal.’

  ‘Your brain creaks like your joints,’ Peter yelled. ‘The faith has to go to the Gentiles as well.’

  ‘Who says so?’ Thomas snarled over Androgeus’s horse’s snort. ‘I’m no going in, anyway. On your own head be it.’

  Cornelius had got a large company together to welcome Peter. He heard the octuple clop coming up the road and said: ‘Right. We’ll go out to meet him.’ Alighting, Peter nearly fell. Thomas sat till he was helped down. They were in a small garden with a wide gateway. Thomas dissociated himself from the whole business and went to sit on a stone bench under a figtree. Peter stood uncertainly smiling and was shocked when this centurion got down on his knees. Others, anxious to do the right thing, also got down. Peter hurriedly raised Cornelius, saying:

  ‘Up, up. I’m nothing special. I’m a man like yourself. Well,’ with fisherman’s honesty, ‘there are certain differences. Law, I mean, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know the law of your fathers, sir,’ Cornelius said.

  ‘Not sir, please please not sir—’

  ‘That it’s unlawful for you to mix with the uncircumcised. That you’re defiled by association. And for me, us, you’re going to break the law. You’re coming into my house. That’s why I knelt.’

  ‘Into your house,’ Peter said firmly. He heard Thomas groan from under the figtree. ‘God seems to be no respecter of persons. Every nation that fears him and does right – well, it seems as if he accepts. You want baptism?’

  Cornelius gave a solemn nod. He was in full uniform as if on parade. ‘If you’d come inside—’

  From the figtree a fig fell on to Thomas’s lap. He picked it up and began to undress it. It was red and ripe. He started to eat it, shaking his head. ‘A fig from a Roman tree in a Roman garden. Have I your permission, O Lord? Och, a bad business.’

  The ceremony, performed by aspersion, took place in a small salt lake by the shore. Aspersion rather than immersion seemed in order. You did not ask men in uniform to get it all wet.

  The name Cornelius had become common in Rome shortly after Publius Cornelius Sulla liberated ten thousand slaves and let them enrol in his own gens Cornelia. That had been some eighty years or so before Jesus was born. Things were different now. Slaves were property and only fools gave property away. For the seven-day sale of imperial property, which mingled slaves indifferently with golden chamber pots, Greek statuary, nags past their best, title deeds to distant fields of tare and hemlock, the Emperor, with an unwonted gust of shame, preferred to absent himself from the city. He witnessed some second-class games near Neapolis and rather admired the wrestling displays. The Jew Caleb, who called himself Metellus though nobody was taken in, was coming to the end of a provincial tour and, it was said, was now ripe for Rome. Caleb Metellus sent a Pannonian giant to the dust and broke the arm of a sneering Athenian. Gaius Caligula commended his performance. If Caleb had been in Rome, along with his Emperor, he would have b
een able to see his own sister up for sale in the market off the Via Sacra by the Forum. ‘Any advance on that?’ the auctioneer cried. ‘Good Syrian muscle there, not an ounce of fat.’ He referred to a scowling slave woodcutter. ‘Come, come, citizens, straight from the Emperor’s own household. No rubbish here. You can do better than that – did I hear two thousand five hundred?’ The Syrian’s scowl could not compare with that of Sara, who had contrived also to make one leg appear shorter than the other and twist her shoulders into a pose of paralysis.

  ‘A girl from Jerusalem, magic city of the East. Stand up straight, lass, wipe that dirty look off your face. A great joker, as you see, but speaks Latin and Greek, a real asset to any household. Broken in, if you gentlemen know what I mean. Who’ll start the bidding at five hundred sesterces? Seven hundred and fifty that noble senator there. Good day, my lord Lepidus. Anyone make it a thousand? Fifteen hundred? Nobody? Sold to the citizen in the green toga for one thousand. Gold and silver, please. No promissory notes. Emperor’s orders.’ Sara was led off scratching by an unknown buyer. He said nothing. He led her to a small park near the Vicus Patricius. Then he took a small shears from a pocket under his robe and began to cut off Sara’s chain. She looked down, astonished. Marcus Julius Tranquillus appeared from behind an umbrella pine. He said:

  ‘Thanks, Gracchus. I’ll see about getting the bangles off.’

  Peter was considered by his colleagues in Jerusalem to have spent more time in Joppa than was necessary. They had a grave charge to raise against him, and he had reverted, they said, to being a fisher of fish and not of men. ‘I fished enough men there,’ he said, ‘and women too. There was plenty of work, believe me, and if I went back to my old trade it was to earn enough to get the work done. I couldn’t stay in the house of Simon the tanner any more, the stink was killing me, and I found my own lodgings. Lodgings cost money. I joined a kind of fish thing—’

  ‘Syndicate?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the word they used. Then I bethought me that I’d better come back here, though I liked the sea, good air, not like here, better come back here to see how things are going. After all,’ he said defensively, ‘I’m in charge.’

  James the son of Zebedee forbore to say that he had himself taken charge of the church in Jerusalem. ‘Thomas,’ he said, ‘told us something rather disturbing.’

  ‘Where is Thomas?’

  ‘Thomas has gone south.’

  ‘South? What does that mean?’

  ‘He said he fancied travel before he was too old to take it. He left his good wishes. Whether he was to spread the word or not he wasn’t all that sure. Meditation under the sun, he said, whatever that meant. We’ll hear from him, he said.’ Both the two Jameses looked gravely at Peter. There were only three of the disciples left now in Jerusalem. The others assembled in the house of Matthias were mostly new converts, Pharisees chiefly, one or two robed priests among them. They looked even graver than the two Jameses. James the Little said to his namesake:

  ‘Shall I speak?’

  ‘Speak.’

  ‘Well, then. The story is that you’ve flown in the face of the law of Moses.’ Peter frowned ferociously. ‘Everything we practise is laid down in the scriptures, Peter. The law of Moses isn’t changed by the new law.’

  ‘What am I supposed to have done that flouts the law?’

  ‘You’ve eaten unclean food for a start. And you said that there was no such thing as unclean food. You claimed to have heard the voice of the Lord saying that everything was equally good – pigs, lobsters, for all I know toads and spiders—’

  ‘I had this dream,’ Peter said, ‘and it was a dream from God. You only have my word for it, but perhaps you’ve got beyond accepting the word of the rock on which the church is built. As for eating stuff with blood in it, yes, I did. It was in the house of this Roman that I baptised into the faith. What was I to do – scorn his hospitality?’

  ‘Yes,’ James son of Zebedee said. ‘You shouldn’t have been in his house in the first place. It was a Roman centurion, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was,’ Peter said. ‘And he and his family and a lot of his men wanted to become Nazarenes. The grace of the Lord lit them up. I suppose the grace of the Lord had done wrong.’

  ‘We understood,’ a priest named Kish said, ‘that the destiny of Israel was being fulfilled with the coming of the Messiah. A Roman centurion seems rather remote from Israel, except of course for helping to bleed Israel dry and sending blasphemous statues to desecrate the holy city.’

  ‘What’s all this about blasphemous statues?’ Peter asked.

  ‘We’ll come to that later,’ Little James said. ‘One thing at a time.’

  ‘Very well,’ Peter said. ‘So a man has to have his foreskin sliced off before he can have the baptismal waters—’

  ‘That’s a crude way of putting it,’ Kish said. ‘Circumcision is the pledge of God’s choice of one people. That one people is redeemed by the coming of God’s son.’

  ‘So,’ Peter said, ‘I have to turn a Roman centurion into a Jew before I can turn him into a Nazarene?’

  ‘You can’t turn a man into a Jew,’ another priest named Nathan said. ‘You have to be born a Jew. And if you’re born a Jew then you can become a Nazarene. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘And so,’ Peter said loudly, ‘we ignore the Gentiles? As I remember, we were told to get out over the whole damned world and take the message to whoever would listen, and no question of lifting their kirtles up to see if they were circumcised. And we were told nothing about being made unclean if we went into the houses of Gentiles. Damn it, the Lord himself was ready enough to go into the house of another Roman centurion to cure his servant or whoever it was.’

  ‘He didn’t go,’ James son of Zebedee said. ‘The centurion said he was unworthy, which he was—’

  ‘And the Lord,’ Peter cried, ‘said he hadn’t met such faith among the damned Israelites.’

  ‘We didn’t have to be told,’ Little James said, ‘about going into the houses of the unclean. We knew it already. It’s all laid down in the old law.’

  ‘Right,’ Peter said, breathing heavily. ‘So I baptise a dozen Roman soldiers who believe Jesus is the Son of God and I do wrong. Is that it? And I eat a piece of Roman beef and wash it down with a cup of Roman goat’s milk, and that’s wrong too. Is that it?’

  ‘Urrrgh,’ went someone in the assembly.

  ‘You gentry,’ Peter said, ‘seem to forget sometimes who was put in charge. He sends down a vision. And I accept the vision. And you say I’m wrong. I get the call to convert a gaggle of Romans. And that’s wrong too. You’re slow to learn. Poor young Stephen wasn’t slow. That’s why they killed him. Stephen saw that the old way was finished. Priests, synagogues, circumcision, the bill of fare laid down in Leviticus – the lot. We’re not what we used to be.’

  ‘I can’t take it in,’ James son of Zebedee moaned. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Won’t is more like it. Some of this damned stubbornness has to be knocked out of you. And if the bloodstained Caligula himself saw the light and said he wanted to turn Nazarene – what do we do? Do we say no, your bloodstained majesty, you can’t be a Jew so you can’t be one of us, better go back to slicing heads off and having ten wives and buggering little boys? It strikes me you’ve all got a lot of rethinking to do.’

  ‘And how about the Temple?’ James the Little asked.

  ‘What about the Temple?’

  ‘Is it still our Temple? Do we join up with the Jews who aren’t Nazarenes and die for the Temple?’

  ‘Nobody,’ Peter said, ‘dies for a chunk of stone even though King Solomon himself raised it.’ Peter saw that the devil was in him today, but it seemed a clean and salutary devil. ‘When he could take time off from the Queen of Sheba and ten thousand concubines.’

  ‘This is all very unseemly,’ the priest Nathan said. ‘We did not expect such frivolity. The matters under discussion are of a considerable gravity.’

  ‘You don’t
seem to understand what I’m saying, Peter,’ Little James said. ‘We’re still part of the history of the Jews. Which means we have to defend the Temple. He would have stood up there in the Temple with a whip – you know that.’

  ‘Defend the Temple against what?’ Peter was plainly bewildered. He had been away. All sighed.

  ‘The statue of the Emperor Caligula,’ John son of Zebedee said, ‘is waiting on the outskirts of the city. Surely you must have seen that?’

  ‘I saw a cart with troops and a load of Syrian slaves. There was something on the cart covered with a purple cloth. I didn’t think more about it. Some new Roman nonsense, I thought. So it’s the Emperor’s statue. Ah. You don’t mean—’

  ‘The Emperor has declared himself to be God,’ a priest named Nebat said, the rise and fall of his Galilean accent seeming to set the ghastly blasphemy to harmless music. ‘He demands that his effigy be placed in the Holy of Holies. We await the arrival of King Herod Agrippa to arrange for its installation. Or, we pray and hope, to make some statement which will save Judaea from bloodshed. He will probably merely temporise, so we hope and pray. He has become a pagan Roman and has long been a friend of the Emperor. But he is also of the faith of our fathers. One thing will doubtless now be fighting against the other. The Zealots are arming. He will not want bloodshed.’

  ‘Desecration, desecration, desecration,’ the priest Kish intoned.

  ‘Well,’ Peter said, ‘he said, he said – he said it’s not what goes in that makes a man dirty but what comes out. We’ve work to do. We can’t afford to be knifed or strung up on a cross – not yet awhile. We’ve work to do. I’m not going to be sliced by a Roman sword because I—’ He did not finish; he saw that he was going too far. ‘The statue of Gaius Caligula in the Temple. We can’t have that, oh no. What a filthy blasphemy.’ And then: ‘What’s all this about Agrippa being king? You mean king of Judaea?’